Brothers seek exoneration of mother Ethel Rosenberg in Soviet spy case; declassified documents a ‘smoking gun’
Published: 09-23-2024 6:00 PM |
For decades, Northampton resident Robert Meeropol and his brother Michael Meeropol have been pleading the case that their mother, Ethel Rosenberg, was not a spy. Armed with newly declassified documents that shed more light on their mother’s case, the pair believe that the culmination of their nearly 40 year effort to prove her innocence could be just around the corner as they call on President Joe Biden to exonerate her.
“A formal acknowledgment of the wrong done to our mother and our family will help prevent similar injustices in the future,” their petition reads. “The government cannot return our mother to her loving family. But it can admit this miscarriage of justice.”
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death in 1953 when they were convicted of conspiracy to share secrets about the atomic bomb with the Soviet Union, but remained steadfast in maintaining their innocence through their last moments. While Julius Rosenberg has long been considered correctly identified as a spy for the Soviet Union, doubts have circulated about Ethel Rosenberg’s supposed involvement in the espionage. Earlier this month, the Meeropols received a response to a 2022 Freedom of Information Act request including a memo written by U.S. codebreaker Meredith Gardener which they say essentially confirms that the federal government knew long before Ethel Rosenberg’s conviction and execution that she was not a spy.
The current campaign by the Meeropols and the Rosenberg Fund for Children, an Easthampton organization founded by Robert Meeropol to provide children with support when their parents are targeted for their activism, involves a petition asking for President Biden to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg. This is reminiscent of their 2016 petition campaign asking the same of former President Barack Obama, which yielded no action. With the new evidence offered by Gardener’s memo, the Meeropols are more hopeful about their current campaign’s success.
“This was additional confirmation of what the evidence all pointed to and justification for the relaunching of the campaign,” said Robert Meeropol, 77, in an interview with the Gazette. “Our case is now even stronger. Frankly, this is a smoking gun.”
The handwritten memo from Aug. 22, 1950, written more than a week after Ethel Rosenberg’s arrest and about a month after Julius Rosenberg’s arrest, refers to Julius Rosenberg’s Soviet code names and role as a recruiting agent for Soviet intelligence. Robert Meeropol emphasized that there is no mention in any previously decoded Soviet messaging of Ethel Rosenberg being assigned any code name, which Soviet intelligence assigned to all of their agents.
“The KGB gave all its agents code names, and my mother had no code name,” Meeropol said.
Most notably, Gardener wrote in the newly available memo that although Ethel Rosenberg knew about her husband’s work, she “did not engage in the work herself” because of “ill health.”
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Meeropol also said that the document compares Ethel Rosenberg’s espionage involvement with that of her husband, particularly in a paragraph on “Mrs. Julius Rosenberg” which describes a previously decoded message classifying Ethel Rosenberg as a party member but not involved with her husband’s work but knowledgeable of it. He also pointed to a different memo written by Gardener stating that Ethel Rosenberg did “not work,” which the brothers believe is a reference to her lack of involvement in Soviet espionage.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, two historians responded to the new evidence contesting that it truly paints Ethel Rosenberg as innocent. Harvey Klehr, retired former historian of Emory University, said he still believes that Ethel Rosenberg conspired to commit espionage even if she did not use classified information or work as a spy herself.
Mark Kramer of Harvard University stated that he finds interpretations of the decoded Soviet communications to be debatable, and that other documents provide evidence of Ethel Rosenberg’s involvement in espionage although she may not have been as directly affiliated with Soviet intelligence as her husband.
However, the Meeropols disagree that Ethel Rosenberg had any involvement in her husband’s activities. Robert Meeropol expressed frustration that certain verbal testimonies were heavily weighted in the decision to execute his mother, particularly a testimony from her brother, David Greenglass, which heavily implicated his sister’s involvement in espionage but was contradicted by his secret grand jury testimony, which was unsealed in 2015, following his death in 2014. In the unsealed testimony, he did not implicate his sister as he had in his previous testimony, which Robert Meeropol said included “evidence concocted against her.”
The Meeropols mention in their current petition that Greenglass admitted to lying in his initial testimony about Ethel Rosenberg’s involvement in espionage to protect himself and his wife on national television in 2001.
Meeropol also stated that, regardless of whether Ethel Rosenberg was entirely uninvolved or adjacently involved in her husband’s work, the evidence contradicts the judge’s sentencing speech which “said she was a full-fledged partner.”
“The justification behind her execution is gone,” said Meeropol, who added that the evidence surrounding his mother indicates that the Soviet Union did “not treat her as an asset,” and that the newly released memo solidifies that fact.
“I’m glad that they’re being more transparent,” he said regarding the government’s recent release of the memo. “On the other hand, it makes me pretty angry they sat on this document, that could have saved my mother’s life, for 74 years.”
All the while, Meeropol said he and his brother have just wanted to know the truth about their parents, even if the evidence were to point to Ethel Rosenberg being a Soviet spy, as it did with Julius Rosenberg.
Now, Robert Meeropol and his older brother Michael Meeropol are hoping for long-awaited closure. The brothers were orphaned at the ages of 7 and 11 when their parents were executed, and Robert Meeropol recalls enduring public ridicule before the pair was adopted by the Meeropol family, which led to a change in their last names and the subsequent “drop from public sight.”
“It was extremely difficult,” he said. “Being the child of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were on trial for giving the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union… during the McCarthy period was like, after 9/11, being the child of Osama bin Laden.”
Meeropol recalled that the support he and his brother received from the Meeropols and others were what got them through that time, and what inspired him to found the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which is now led by his daughter, Jenn Meeropol, and seeks to pass such support onto other children.
At the time of writing, the current petition put forth by the Meeropols and the Rosenberg Fund for Children has 1,269 signatures. While Robert Meeropol said the previous petition directed toward the Obama administration was “very successful” in garnering public support for their cause, he hopes that the Biden petition will yield the awaited exoneration.
“It’s closure. It’s getting to see what you have known in your heart as the evidence has accumulated over decades,” said Meeropol. “I think we all want to know our parents’ story, so I can’t help but feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction.”
Alexa Lewis can be reached at alewis@gazettenet.com.