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DECLASSIFIED MEMO FROM US CODEBREAKER SHEDS LIGHT ON ETHEL
ROSENBERG’S COLD WAR SPY CASE  
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Eric Tucker
September 10, 2024
AP News
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_ According to a recently declassified memo that her sons say proves
their mother was not a spy and should lead to her exoneration in the
sensational 1950s atomic espionage case. _

Ethel Rosenberg, who along with her husband, Julius, was put to death
in 1953 after being convicted of conspiring to steal secrets about the
atomic bomb for the Soviet Union., (AP Photo, File)

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top U.S. government codebreaker who decrypted
secret Soviet communications during the Cold War concluded that Ethel
Rosenberg
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about her husband’s activities but “did not engage in the work
herself,” according to a recently declassified memo that her sons
say proves their mother was not a spy and should lead to her
exoneration in the sensational 1950s atomic espionage case.

The previously unreported assessment written days after Rosenberg’s
arrest and shown to The Associated Press adds to the questions about
the criminal case against Rosenberg, who along with her husband,
Julius, was put to death in 1953 after being convicted of conspiring
to steal secrets about the atomic bomb for the Soviet Union.

The couple maintained their innocence until the end, and their sons,
Robert and Michael Meeropol, have worked for decades to establish that
their mother was falsely implicated in spying. The brothers consider
the memo a smoking gun and are urging President Joe Biden to issue a
formal proclamation saying she was wrongly convicted and executed.

Historians have long regarded Julius Rosenberg as a Soviet spy. But
questions about Ethel Rosenberg’s role have simmered for years,
dividing those who side with the Meeropols and say she had zero role
in espionage from some historians who contend there’s evidence she
supported her husband’s activities.

The handwritten memo from Meredith Gardner, a linguist and codebreaker
for what later became known as the National Security Agency, cites
decrypted Soviet communications in concluding that Ethel Rosenberg
knew about Julius’ espionage work “but that due to ill health she
did not engage in the work herself.”

Ethel Rosenberg went on trial with her husband months after the memo
was written despite Gardner’s assessment, which the Meeropols
believe would have been available to FBI and Justice Department
officials investigating and prosecuting the case.

“This puts it on both sides of the Atlantic — in other words, both
the KGB and the NSA ended up agreeing that Ethel was not a spy,”
Robert Meeropol said in an interview. “And so we have a situation in
which a mother of two young children was executed as a master atomic
spy when she wasn’t a spy at all.”

The Meeropols recently obtained the Aug. 22, 1950, memo from the NSA
through a Freedom of Information Act request and provided it to the
AP.

“This piece of documentation, juxtaposing my father’s work with
her not doing the work, it seems to me nails it,” Michael Meeropol
said.

Secretive findings

The document was written more than a week after Ethel Rosenberg’s
arrest — her husband was arrested a month earlier — presumably to
summarize what was known about a Soviet spy ring operating in the U.S.
at the height of the Cold War and associated with the development of
the atomic bomb.

It refers to Julius Rosenberg, who worked as a civil engineer, by his
Soviet code names — first “Antenna” and later “Liberal” —
and characterizes him as a recruiting agent for Soviet intelligence.

In a separate paragraph titled, “Mrs. Julius Rosenberg,” Gardner
describes a decoded message as saying Ethel Rosenberg was a “party
member” and “devoted wife” who knew of her husband’s work but
didn’t engage in it.

Harvey Klehr, a now-retired Emory University historian, said this week
that the memo notwithstanding, his position is that Ethel Rosenberg
conspired to commit espionage even if she did not spy herself or have
access to classified information.

“Ethel may not have been a spy — that is, she might not have
actually passed on classified information — but she was an active
participant in her husband’s spy network, not just someone who
happened to agree with her husband about politics,” Klehr wrote in a
2021 piece for Mosaic Magazine.

Another historian, Mark Kramer of Harvard University, said this week
that the interpretation of the Russian communication was debatable and
that in any event other documents contain “damning evidence” of
Ethel Rosenberg’s involvement in spying, and her participation in
tasks, even “if she was not directly participating in the way Julius
Rosenberg was.”

The Meeropols adamantly dispute that, insisting the evidence is clear
that the Soviets never considered their mother an asset and that she
had no role in recruiting spies or assisting her husband’s
espionage.

A brother’s account

The memo is the latest information that Ethel Rosenberg’s supporters
say casts doubt on her criminal conviction and the narrative of her as
a spy. For instance, previously deciphered Soviet cables showed that
she, unlike her husband, was not given a code name. The Meeropols also
point to a separate memo from Gardner stating Ethel Rosenberg did
“not work,” a presumed reference to espionage.

In a 2001 television interview,
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Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass, acknowledged that he lied on
the stand about his sister to assure leniency for himself and keep his
wife out of prison so she could care for their two children. A fellow
communist sympathizer, he was indicted as a co-conspirator and served
10 years in prison.

In 2015, secret grand jury testimony from Greenglass was unsealed that
contradicted damaging statements he made during the Rosenbergs’
trial that helped secure their convictions.

Greenglass claimed at trial that he had given the Rosenbergs research
data he obtained while working as an Army machinist at the Los Alamos,
New Mexico, headquarters of the Manhattan Project, where the first
atomic weapons were produced. He also said he recalled seeing his
sister using a portable typewriter at the Rosenbergs’ apartment to
type up handwritten notes to give to the Soviets.

But in his grand jury testimony, which a judge unsealed after
Greenglass’ 2014 death in response to a request from historians and
archivists, he never implicated his sister.

Greenglass told the grand jury that Julius Rosenberg was adamant he
should stick with his Army service so Greenglass could “continue
giving him information.” But when Greenglass was asked whether his
sister was similarly insistent, he replied, “I said before, and say
it again, honestly, this is a fact: I never spoke to my sister about
this at all.”

Sons feel relief

The Meeropols believe the newly released memo would almost certainly
have reached high levels of the FBI given that Gardner, its author,
worked closely with an FBI agent. They say the information may have
influenced then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s recommendation that
Ethel Rosenberg not receive the death penalty, though she ultimately
did.

Robert Meeropol, 77, said the memo’s release is a capstone of
decades of work to clear his mother’s name. As young boys, the
brothers visited the White House in 1953 in a failed bid to get
President Dwight Eisenhower to prevent their parents’ executions.
They were later adopted.

In 2016, they cited the newly released grand jury testimony to try to
persuade President Barack Obama to exonerate their mother.

“I’m incredibly relieved to have this out while I’m still alive,
because for a lot of time, I didn’t think I was going to survive to
see it,” he said.

Michael Meeropol, 81, said he recalled his brother saying in 1973 that
in a few years they were going to “blow the lid off the case.”

“Well, 1973 to 2024 is a little bit more than a few years, but
it’s just happened as far as I’m concerned. This memo being
released, thank God, blows the lid off it in terms of our mother,”
Michael Meeropol said.

_EricTucker covers national security in Washington for The Associated
Press, with a focus on the FBI and Justice Department and the special
counsel cases against former President Donald Trump._

* Ethyl Rosenberg
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