Invitation to a Bad Time

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE ROSENBERG FILE by Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton Holt, Rinehart & Winston; 608 pages; $22.50

For 30 years the story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and their mom-and-pop spy ring has been told to the accompaniment of grinding axes. The Stalinist left propagandized the trial and execution of the couple as being a joint venture of fascists and anti-Semites. Never mind that the Soviet Union was busy shooting its own Jews. At the other extreme was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover intoning "the crime of the century," as if Hitler's recent transgressions had been reduced to a string of drunken driving charges.

Crowding the middle were historians, legal scholars, journalists and even a novelist--E.L. Doctorow, whose Book of Daniel used fact as a springboard to fiction. In 1975 the Rosenbergs' sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol (the name of their adoptive parents), published a memoir of their frightening childhoods. The appearance of We Are Your Sons coincided with a campaign to clear the Rosenberg name and with the Meeropols' successful suit to examine previously closed Government files.

Ironically, the release of some 250,000 pages of documents have proved to be a boomerang. The files forge stronger links between Julius Rosenberg and Soviet agents. The case against Ethel for conspiracy to commit espionage is weaker, although she was almost certainly an accessory. The nature of the evidence against Rosenberg Friend and Co-Defendant Morton Sobell suggests that he might have fared better in court had he not suddenly rushed off to Mexico. The Rosenbergs clearly recruited Brother-in-Law David Greenglass. As one of the Government's star witnesses, Greenglass testified that while serving as an Army technician at Los Alamos, N. Mex., he had given Julius rough sketches of the implosion device used to trigger the atomic bomb.

The Rosenberg File dispassionately supports its subjects' guilt and at the same time dramatically documents the ragged and unsavory way that justice was served. Historian Ronald Radosh and Writer Joyce Milton disclose an embarrassing trail of legal blundering, intimidation, judicial improprieties and political expedience. Emanuel Bloch, principal attorney for the Rosenbergs, repeatedly played into his opponents' hands, spoke when he should have remained silent, and said nothing when he should have argued. Said an outmaneuvered Bloch at one point: "For the purposes of going over the Government's witnesses' testimony which we think is fatal..." He meant "vital." Fair weight is given to various reasons for these lapses, but in the final analysis, the authors are led to dark speculation. Could it be, they ask, that the deeply troubled lawyer felt it was better to sacrifice his clients as martyrs to Communism than risk their eventual confessions?

The brief against the prosecution is stronger. Hoover wanted his agents to arrest Julius Rosenberg without a warrant. "Strict observance of technicalities in favor of openly avowed conspirators is shocking," he wrote at the bottom of a memo, without attributing the source of the avowals. U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol, who prosecuted the case, made prejudicial statements to the press. FBI and Atomic Energy Commission files indicate that Trial Judge Irving R. Kaufman conducted improper discussions with a Justice Department official and with other judges. In many ways, Radosh and Milton make Kaufman the heavy of their book. He had the onerous job of deciding for capital punishment, but there were also his pious remarks from the bench. In a 1958 letter to Federal Judge Learned Hand, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, "I despise a Judge who feels God told him to impose a death sentence," and added, "I am mean enough to try to stay here long enough so that K will be too old to succeed me." Frankfurter then lobbied to delay Kaufman's appointment to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

It was, of course, the death sentence that inflamed emotions throughout the world. The standard explanation for the extreme penalty is that the Korean War and the militant anti-Communism of the early '50s created a climate of fear and vengeance. But there is also ample evidence that the threat of electrocution was tactical. Ethel was arrested shortly after Julius. Federal authorities evidently hoped that the ineffectual-looking engineer would crack quickly if his wife were in jail and his bewildered children left at home. But the Rosenbergs never talked, even though confessions might have saved their lives.

The verdict of The Rosenberg File is that there was no frame-up, although some of the evidence was tainted. Radosh and Milton also conclude that the penalty was inappropriate, in part because the Rosenbergs did not, as the prosecution maintained, give the vital secret of the bomb to the Soviet Union. In all likelihood, that was done by Physicist Klaus Fuchs, and he was sentenced to only 14 years. The authors answer many questions and satisfy much curiosity, but theirs is not a book that one can finish and say "Rest in peace." --By R.Z. Sheppard

Excerpt

"Judge Kaufman noted that he had searched his conscience for reasons why he should show mercy and he had found none. Therefore, he was sentencing both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to die in the electric chair some time during the week beginning Monday, May 21, 1951.

Borth the Rosenbergs had prepared for the possibility of Julius' receiving the maximum sentence. But despite the rumors in the newspapers, Ethel's sentence came as a terrible shock ... Visibly shaken and ashen-faced ... Ethel had tried to bolster her own and her husband's spirits by singing the aria Un bel di from Madame Butterfly in a clear though tremulous voice. Julius, no musician, had responded with The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a brave if rather grimly impersonal answer to Puccini's aria of love and longing." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.