In 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for allegedly providing the Soviet Union with information about the atomic bomb.
In 2022, their son Robert Meeropol is working to get to the bottom of the case and attempting to clear his mother’s name.
At Friday’s Amos Fortune Forum, Meeropol discussed how documents released after his parents executions all but prove his mother’s innocence. He along with his brother, Michael Meeropol, founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children in 1990. They’ve also been working with historical documents, such as a series of released files from the National Security Agency’s VENONA project.
The Rosenbergs were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, which, according to Meeropol, is different from a charge of espionage or treason, in that conspiracy cases rely almost entirely on credibility. Other key players in the case were Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, and his wife Ruth.
After introducing his parents’ case how it is told in mainstream history, Meeropol told the audience exactly how the rest of his talk would go.
“I intend, in the rest of my talk, to prove that Ethel was not a spy,” he said.
According to Meeropol, only three pieces of evidence were brought against his mother at trial. These pieces of evidence were encouragement, attendance, and typing.
“(The case) was so weak, you can see why I wanted to focus on my mother,” he said. “How could this evidence, even if it was 100% true, justify a death sentence? But, it wasn’t true.”
Apparently, Ethel had encouraged her sister-in-law, Ruth, to recruit David into the conspiracy. However, Meeropol presented evidence that Ruth was enthusiastic on her own and didn’t need encouragement.
As for attendance, the Greenglasses claimed that Julius and Ethel met with them in September of 1945 and discussed sharing plans with the Soviets.
“One of the things you learn in law school is that it’s better to make up a lie based in something real than a lie based in nothing,” Meeropol said. He added this this September 1945 meeting likely did happen, but that it had nothing to do with a conspiracy. Meeropol believes that this meeting was to celebrate this mother’s 30th birthday.
According to Meeropol, there is one piece of evidence in particular that all but proves his mother’s innocence – unlike his father Julius, Ethel was never given a code name.
“The final piece, and perhaps the most powerful, is presented in the VENONA Files,” he said. “We know that all KGB agents were given a code name. Ethel did not have a code name.”
This jarring piece of evidence was one instigator for Meeropol to attempt to separate his parents’ cases from each other. He says that there were always two camps of people: one group who believed they were both guilty, and another who believed they were both innocent. Because of these rigid mindsets, it was difficult for him to convince many people to separate the two.
“I was caught in between and didn’t make much progress,” he said.
In 2008, Ruth’s Grand Jury testimony was released due to a change in standard that allows testimonies of dead people to be released to the public. These documents had been classified until then. This event gave Meeropol groundbreaking new information.
“We found that she had no evidence against Ethel,” he said. “In fact, Ruth Greenglass testified under oath that she got nothing from Ethel in 1945.”
After David’s death in 2014, his Grand Jury testimony was released as well. Meeropol says that he was quoted in this testimony as saying, “Ethel was not involved.”
This directly contradicts what David testified against Ethel at trial. This opposition, Meeropol said, proves that he lied under oath one of those times, making him guilty of perjury.
This testimony from David is also what refutes the accusation against Ethel of typing. She was said to have typed David’s handwritten notes about an atomic bomb, but his testimony mentioned nothing about this.
Upon obtaining this information, Meeropol was working harder than ever to clear his mother’s name. He and his brother wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times in 2015 calling for President Obama to exonerate Ethel.
“We were not asking for a pardon or clemency. You don’t pardon innocent people, you pardon guilty people. And you can’t grant clemency to someone who was already executed. We were asking Obama to annul the verdict and declare her wrongfully convicted,” Meeropol said.
The Obama administration never responded to this call. However, Meeropol does not believe that the lack of response was malicious or intentional.
“The combination of the Trump panic and the unusual nature of our request caused it to be pushed to the bottom,” he said.
Meeropol plans to ask President Biden the same thing, but he wants to wait until there is less chaos in the White House, so as not to have the request get lost again. He said he and his brother had planned to make the request early in his presidency, but the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated things. Now perhaps they’ll try after midterm elections, he says.
Meeropol ended his Amos Fortune presentation a few minutes early so as to leave time for questions from the audience. He answered questions about the strength of his parents’ lawyers, antisemitism in the trial, how much he understood at the time of their trial and execution (being only four years old when the trial began), and how the records he referenced can be accessed.
His final message to the crowd was about the importance of freely flowing and accessible information to the general public. The Meeropol brothers have used the rights granted by the 1967 Freedom of Information Act, with allows citizens to request the release of previously classified government documents, in their investigations.
“We have made the concept of freedom of information a centerpiece of the work we’ve done,” he said. “If you want to have a functioning democracy, you nee to have an informed public.”
The next Amos Fortune Forum will take place on Friday, July 29. The talk is called “Brave Soles: Hidden Truths of Concealment Shoes” by Cheryl Hackett.