Four years after the United States flattened a couple of Japanese cities with atomic weapons and the Soviets said holy fucking ass crackers, we need those things too, they got those things too. And part of the reason they got them was American treachery giving them secret plans on how to build such fission-explode toys. But the later trial of these traitors was fraught with fuckery, and their execution more motivated by politics and fear than justice.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: March 29, 1951--
Lawyer Roy Cohn was a steaming pile of hematochezia. Don’t google that. He was a McCarthyism (neurotic-level anti-communism) lackey who also targeted homosexuals as being threats to national security while himself being closeted. He first made his name in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were on trial for giving atomic weapon secrets to the commies. Cohn wanted them to die.
Cohn wasn’t lead prosecutor but played a key role when he examined Ethel’s brother David Greenglass, getting him to testify that he took plans stolen by Manhattan Project scientist (and spy) Klaus Fuchs and gave them to Julius, also saying that Ethel typed up notes about the plans. It was clear Julius, who loved that communism stuff, was fucking guilty, but the whole question of his wife Ethel was in some doubt. Especially considering Greenglass later said he lied on the stand to protect himself and his wife, and that the prosecution urged him to do so.
On March 29, 1951, both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of espionage and a week later, quite possibly due to the urgings of Roy Cohn, sentenced to the hot squat on Old Sparky. Two years later they both rode the lightning on the same day, June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Their two sons, only young boys at the time, later launched a campaign to prove their parents’ innocence.
Cold War paranoia contributed to the convictions and sentences, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t do it. Evidence was slowly declassified and trickled out over the years that proved Julius was indeed involved, which his sons acquiesced to, but they then said the information their father provided was superficial and didn’t help the Soviets much. Further evidence, including 2009 documentation from the KGB, also showed Ethel was almost certainly guilty, but that didn’t stop the sons from entreating President Obama to give her a posthumous pardon.
Senator Elizabeth Warren supported pardoning Ethel, but no government action was taken. Most historians consider her guilty, but a question remains as to whether a death sentence was appropriate for either Rosenberg. Cohn, bastard that he was, considered the executions a significant career accomplishment. Later, he became a lawyer for Donald Trump.
Told you he was a dick.
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Hi James,
I’m a fan and a subscriber, and enjoy your column, so I hope you will see this as the friendly comment it is intended to be: please don’t use apostrophes to make anything plural. They are intended to show the possessive—Ethel’s hat, the Rosenbergs’ case—or intended to tip off the reader that something is missing—can’t, wouldn’t.
This has become a common misuse, but is always a bit jarring.
Cheers,
Maryhelen