Talking about both people accused on the base of solid evidence of providing information in the making of atomic weapons from the United States to the soviet union. They were americans who are doing what they thought was right. It started in early 1950, when one of the most important soviet spies, a physicist, was arrested and fbi officials learned that he had passed information to moscow by courier, a courier named harry gold. Under interrogation gold identified David Greenglass as his contact. Greenglass identified Julius Rosenberg as the leader of a key spy ring. In june of 1950, julius and his wife ethel were arrested. Both of them charged with conspiracy to commit espionage under the espionage act of 1917. In march of 1951 they were convicted. In june of 1953 they were executed. Since that time, there has been new information produced, and we will talk about some of the new information this evening. What i would like to do now is quickly get into the introduction of the people who know a great deal more about this than i. And who will be sharing some of their wisdom with us. The number two over here is harvey claire, the professor of politics and history at emory university. He has written the code written and cowritten many books dealing with american communism and soviet espionage in the United States, including books coauthored by john, sitting to my right. Notably spies, the rise and fall of the kgb in america. And decoding soviet espionage in america. Mr. Haynes was for many years the 20th century political historian in the Manuscript Division in the library of congress. He retired in 2012 but continues to work on the same subject. Ronald raydosh, the senior adjunct fellow at the hudson institute. He has written widely about the rosenberg case. Including a book he coauthored with joyce milton called the rosenberg file. Stephen is the senior washington editor for bio century. Com and the author of engineering communism, how to american spies founded the soviet silica and valley. He has published several major articles on the rosenberg case. Alan horn bloom. He is the author of the invisible harry gold. The man who gave the soviets the atom bomb. At the far end to my right, i my colleague mark kramer. The director of cold war studies at harvard. I would like to start, if you dont mind, with the history of the rosenberg case. And as professor claire should talk to us. John haynes, we have coauthored so many books we cant remember who writes what. John will offer a brief preseed of the biography of the case. I would like to take a minute and mention something i dont think will be addressed directly by any of my colleagues. I am fascinated by what the rosenberg case illustrates about the tragedy of the jewish relationship with communism. The rosenbergs and their defenders, for many years, presented themselves as ordinary American Jews committed to antifascism who had been swept up in hysteria. That is a trope that is deeply deceiving. Julius first began trying to approach soviet Intelligence Officers in 1940, when the soviet union in the u. S. Were allies. He continued contacts with soviet intelligence until 1950. Well past the time in which the vicious antisemitic purges were underway in both the soviet union and the Eastern European satellite states. One of the interesting psychological questions, and i think it is a tragedy, is why jews like the rosenbergs were so committed to a regime that was second only to adolf hitler and the number of jews it killed. Gentlemen, if you could pick up the historiography. Not surprisingly there were years after journalistic articles about the case after the 1950s. There are number of accounts aimed at the general public from 1963 entitled the betrayers, the rosenberg case, to the 1965 book, invitation to an inquest. Both review the trial transcript, newspaper articles and secondary sources and concluded there was no reasonable doubt of the rosenbergs guilt. In contrast, using the same material another said that they never participated in espionage. Key items of evidence were government forgeries and confessions of green grass greenglass. They said the talking points for the rosenbergs were innocents for decades. These clashing accounts are normal for a high profile case. Thinking of the enormous journalistic accounts of the kennedy assassination. To this day, there continues to be an impressive volume of popular articles, books, tv documentaries, youtube presentations, on the rosenberg case. Many skewed to the rosenbergs were innocent side. 30 years or so after such an event, like the rosenberg case once primary materials become available, one would have expected scholarly accounts of the case to come out. Starting in the 1980s, one would have expected young graduate students to have produced dozens of dissertations later to be transformed into books reexamining with new primary sources the substance of the case. One wouldve expected study in the overall case, and focusing on the roles and biographies of rosenbergs, greenglass, and others in the espionage apparatus. Or, one wouldve expected scholarly accounts of archival documents to expose in detail the governments fake evidence in which officials directed the conspiracy to convict to innocent people. This did not happen. This is what is abnormal about scholarly courage covering the case. Today, 60 years after the case enough time for two generations of scholars to have reviewed the evidence and brought in new material, there is only a single comprehensive examination of the rosenberg case, miltons 1983 the rosenberg file. Despite a decade of service as a soviet spy theres only a single scholarly book on harry gold aptly named the invisible harry gold. Morton sobell who is convicted and tried with the rosenbergs has yet to get a serious biographer. David greenglass has only one serious biography. As for the other half dozen members of the rosenberg bring none have serious scholarly attention except for two recently defected to the soviet union. There are academic articles, dissertations, and books on peripheral aspects of the rosenberg case. Studies focusing on cultural tropes, media coverage, but these peripheral studies largely avoid the original case, did the rosenbergs participate in soviet as panache . Soviet espionage . What did others in the apparatus actually do . These accounts often take a position of agnosticism. Not asserting the rosenbergs innocence but not acknowledging the weight of evidence establishing that Julius Rosenberg was a soviet spy. Why does avoidance of research in the core of the case by academics . I hope later we will have an opportunity to discuss this. We will. Im curious about one point. Let me throw it in now. If there were 50 academic studies, and 50 phds written about it, what large issues would come up that we dont know now . I dont think any new issues wouldve come up, but what you would have ourare Additional Details and reexaminations of the original evidence. Rons book is a wonderful comprehensive book of the case. There is room for other scholars to redo what ron has done, ring bring in new material he didnt have access to in 1983. And to give us, i think, the main points would come up the same, but you would get a different perspective and a filling in of things which were not clear in the 1980s. What we know now about the rosenbergs and the rosenberg spy network, start us off. Is seems every year brings new revelations about the rosenberg case. Thus, reigniting a debate about the meaning of julius and ethel s actions. The extent of what they did for moscow, and whether or not they harmed Americas National security. The debate over their guilt, i think, is over. No one who respects evidence can believe that the rosenbergs were innocent, or that they only stole low level industrial information that during world war ii, the soviets shouldve had anyway. The first danger in the theory of innocence was material made public in 1995, in the First Release of the venona project in the cr decrypts. These were the kgb cables from the Moscow Center to their agents in the United States. 21 of the files decrypted have been translated. They concern the espionage activity of Julius Rosenberg in particular. The files reveal, first, that julius code name was liberal and antenna. They later changed it to other things. Among other findings, they show the kgb regularly made use of the American Communist Party as well as some of its front groups to get participants to engage in espionage. They use the cp usa as a recruiting tool from which to choose and develop new agents. They also showed that both julius and ethel recruited their sisterinlaw, Ruth Greenglass to work for the network. And later, she convinced her husband, david, to join as well. We moved to 2008, when a man named alexander released a complete series of his notebooks. Files meticulously copied when he was working for the kgb and researching a book on its history at the kgb headquarters in moscow. The files reveal that Julius Rosenberg recruited another atomic spy, besides David Greenglass, an engineer and named Russell Mcnutt who worked at a firm atomics building facility in oak ridge, tennessee. They reveal that Ethel Rosenberg was involved in recruiting people, like her sisterinlaw for espionage work. And that the information passed by David Greenglass manually and mutually overlapped with data sent to moscow by major atomic spies, particularly clouse and theodore. The kgb described these messages as highly valuable. Next, as our colleagues book engineering communism. He has laid out in detail the espionage in the rosenberg ring. They escape the United States before the fbi had a chance to arrest them. They ended up in the soviet union. Where steve shows they use their expertise to develop the microelectronics industry and create moscows version of silicon valley. Most recently, alan hornbloom wrote his book, the invisible harry gold. Not only does he make it assertion of rosenbergs it clear he was a spy for the soviets, contrary to the assertion of rosenbergs defenders. He explained sympathetically why he decided to engage in espionage, and reaches the conclusion that goal told the truth and Julius Rosenberg and his colleagues were not. Gold was labeled by the rosenbergs defenders as a delusional psychotic. While the rosenbergs and Morton Sobell were displayed as innocent martyrs to mccarthy witch on. A mccarthyite witchhunt. Gold was very intent on making amends for what he considered his traitorous acts and telling the truth. Although his lawyers had ample legal ground that wouldve allowed gold to escape indictment and prosecution. Perhaps the most recent damming news was the confession of codefendant Morton Sobell to sam roberts of the New York Times in 2008 that he was indeed guilty. Sobell, at the time, claimed in the same interview with roberts that he only gave the soviets defensive weaponry that could not harm the United States. A few years later steve osman and i wrote a article to the Weekly Standard based on the interview was sobell. Sobell told us he gave the soviets Major Military information. In 1948, as we speculated in our book the rosenberg file, that the most prominent aeronautic engineer in the United States doing projects for the government and working at columbia university. Greenglass told us he took the files, had the file stolen by another member of the rosenberg ring, a scientist named william perl, from his safe at columbia university. During a july 4 weekend with a state up 24 hours photographing everything camera. And then handing it, the last day of the july 4 weekend, to a kgb agent waiting for sobell at the platform of the long island railroad. From long island to new york city. That is it for the new information. Other commentators, steve and alan, will have more details to the nature of this new evidence. Stephen will be speaking about the rosenbergs network key role in soviet technological espionage. I want to start with the word about the motivation of the rosenberg ring. It is something that hardly harvey touched on. I got interested in the rosenbergs because i met one of the members of the ring. We became good friends in moscow. We spent time on a sofa in my living room. I got to know him and sobell. The thing that strikes me as important is that they were not spying because they were trying to help an ally of the United States fighting fascism. They were fighting because they were dedicated to communism. They believe the soviet union was building a utopian state and they believe that the United States was a fascist state. They believe after the Second World War that the military conflict between the United States and soviet union was inevitable, and they wanted to help the soviet union. That is the way i see it, and i think that is a critical thing. On to the nonnuclear technology. A word about this, this is Julius Rosenbergs communist Party Registration card. I dont know if you can see it but the critical thing is it is from 1940. Anyone who was a member of the communist party in 1940, at a time when the soviet union was allied with nazi germany, that tells you about his allegiance and dedication. Moving on, Julius Rosenbergs primary value to the soviet union is not information that he personally acquired, it was his talent of recruiting, managing and motivating spies and keeping them on track for years. He had 11 or 12 he recruited. This made the rosenberg ring and productive operation. Many of them are Quality Control engineers, there their jobs were to understand how advanced Weapons Systems were built and to fix problems and manufacture. They had to know how similar technologies were built. It put them in a fantastic position to pass information to the soviet union. Whats more, they were encouraged to bring their work home on the weekend. They had cameras, that the soviets had given them. They were in the position to copy a great deal of material. We know that some of the information, we know exactly what they gave from venona, or soviet case officer or from other documents. On this slide i have some of the information we know the soviets received from the rosenberg ring. The first is the proximity fuse, which is after the atomic bomb probably the second most important and defended technological secret. Help us understand why. The proximity fuse was a technology that made it possible to shoot down airplanes. Later it was used in other technology. It had a radio transmitter that would send out signals and receive them back. When a weapon became close to a target at a set range it would explode. The idea itself was not obvious and the idea how to make it wasnt obvious. Another reason it was critically secret, was if the enemy knew about it wouldnt be that difficult to have countermeasures. You could jam it, things like that. When the United States first deployed it, it was in the pacific, where it would only be shooting down airplanes. If any of the missiles did not explode it would fall into the sea and be of no use. Julius rosenberg gave the soviet union blueprints for the proximity fuse, and a working copy, wrapped up like a Christmas Present in december of 1943. Some of the other technology the rosenberg ring gave, that we know, is the blueprints for the First American designed jet engine. Blueprints for the First American massproduced jet aircraft, and specifications of manufacturing instructions for the fdr 584 radar which is the most important radar that was produced in the Second World War. The russians were so happy with the fdr 584 information they gave the rosenberg ring a 5,000 bonus. 1000 bonus. Which was money back then. Embers of the rosenberg ring were aghast that it was suggested they were doing it for money, they wouldnt take the money. That gives you an idea how important it was for them. The rosenberg ring gave thousands of pages of documents to the soviets. We dont know what was in them. A 12,000 page blueprint for the shooting star and another 5000 pages. In 1945 sobell gave 2000 pages to the soviets. It is reasonable to infer that anything they had access to the y gave. That is what they were doing. What ive done is to look into what they had access to that they likely gave. This gives, some of the Radar Technology they had access to, the summary is basically every radar system the United States produced during the Second World War they had access to, and radar designed and produced after the Second World War that was first deployed in the korean war. They had access to, and i would say they gave to the soviet union. They also had access to early computer technology. And bill perl worked for the predecessor to nasa during the war and gave details about advanced aircraft design, jet engines, wind tunnel data, and more. His information was so valuable to the soviets that they paid for a couple of communist agents to move to cleveland, and his job was to copy the documents that bill pro produced. In his wifes job was to be a courier to take the information to new york. That gives you an indication of the volume of information they were providing. After the war pearl worked for the most prominent engineer in the United States at that time who was involved in advanced technology and drafting and crafting American Military doctrine. Over the july 4, 1948 holiday, members of the rosenberg ring extracted the context of von carmens safe and spent all night copying the documents. Morton sobell said the film was so heavy, there were so many canisters of 35mm film, he staggered under the weight of the box carrying it to a soviet contact. This is 1948. Spying for the soviet union was a different matter than spying for the soviet union in 1944. Thank you very much. Im sorry. One more bit of the story. I will go over it very quickly. Two americans that escaped from the fbi and a dramatic fashion. They ended up in the soviet union, and helped create the soviet computer industry. This is a picture of them in may 1961. The can i say thank you now . Alan hornbloom, you are the expert on gold. Harry gold was far from the prepossessing character. In fact, he was nearly invisible. You could easily pass him on the street a dozen times and never take notice. He was no james bond, at least not in the swab, imposing manner. As everyone knows, hollywood creations do not mesh with reality. Make no mistake, portly, mildmannered harry gold was the real deal. He was a secret agent who won the order of the red star. His impact on espionage and the endless rosenberg saga is nothing short of momentous. Not surprisingly, J Edgar Hoover would call gold a master soviet spy, the target of the toughest case the fbi ever made and the center of the crime of the century. Even someone he helped put in jail said of harry, this man set off an explosion that is reverberating around the world. A seemingly shy, wellintentioned connoisseur of baseball and italian opera, how he pulled off cloak and dagger military capers or over a decade, including what is described as the greatest scientific heist in history, is intriguing and worthy of study. Especially so, as gold underscores the importance of not overlooking the meek and unassuming as capable of treacherous transgressions. Gold is also important from a propaganda perspective. A human trip wire who brought down numerous american spies working on behalf of the soviet union, he admitted guilt, was given a 30 year sentence, and was shunned by americans. The greatest animus he would face would come from progresses and colonist sympathizers, similar to gold in worldview who view him as something akin to the antichrist. As the informant who brought down the rosenbergs and put them in the electric chair, he would become one of the most denounced figures of 20th century america. For them, he was a pariah, a participant. The castigation campaign commenced as soon as gold confessed and began to name names. By the mid1950s, the verbal onslaught was in full swing. One critic, for example, described gold as the product of a phenomenal imagination, and imposter of the first rank, a pathological liar, a lonely creature of cold manhood with a crying need of personal relationships, his only means of gratifying his emotional needs was in acting out a spy career based on a fantasy wishful filament. Naturally, one would assume such insisive psychological portrait would come from a highly Trained Medical mind. But the author was actually john wesley, a famous screenwriter whose most noted works were angels with dirty faces, and other movies, which helped make stars of Humphrey Bogart and edward g robinson. Wesley was also a devout communist, and his mission was simple. Prop up the myth of the rosenbergs innocence and destroy their accusers credibility. His writings stamped gold as a deeply troubled mind. The Cottage Industry of tracts attacking gold flooded the market. The bestknown of these is walter and miriam schneers invitation of an inquest. The New York Times called it a major event. The book told of a government frame up, and psychopathic personalities. Once again, harry gold is the centerpiece of a monstrous hoax. The authors relied on cut and paste documentation and character assassination. Gold was called unnatural and a strange specimen. A halfcentury after publication, we recognize the book is a great work of fiction. That should be studied in propaganda courses for its ability to deceive and trick millions of poorly informed readers over several decades. Even the authors themselves parted company with it when they revised their theories of the case with their last book in 2010. That volume actually an elongated pamphlet with minimal documentation, was a lastditch attempt to salvage their credibility, as evidence mounted confirming golds account of the rosenbergs guilt. In conclusion, i would like to close on a sobering note regarding the the publics capacity to buy well packaged malarkey. One of the key lessons of the rosenbergs saga was best expressed by hl mencken, who said about the success of similar books, no one ever lost money underestimating intelligence of the american public. Thank you. Mark kramer, the whole history of the soviet espionage, where would you place the rosenberg case . Thank you very much, marvin. I will be talking about the soviet archives, what is accessible, and where we get sources there. I have worked extensively in the archives over the last 23 years. However, there are three important archives dealing with espionage, really, four archives. One would be, because the kgb was both a state security apparatus, internal security but also had for an intelligence directorate, they worked together at the lubyanka in the archives there until 1974, when the foreign intelligence archive was moved to the suburb on the outskirts of moscow. However, there are still many foreign intelligence materials in the lubyanka. It is not a Precise Division between those two archives between the kgb archives and the lubyanka and the foreign intelligence directorate. A third archive would be be gru archives, military intelligence archives, no one that i know of has access to that. The fourth archive would be the president ial archive, which has the public records. In there, you would find what was going to stalin, how he judged it, and other important leaders, particularly an official who, from august 1945 until august 1949, was overseeing the effort to build a soviet Nuclear Weapon. He had been head of the secret police in earlier years, and gained notoriety there. But, his role in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War was to oversee the soviet unions bomb program. Everything coming in from espionage went to him. How do we know that, given that the archives are inaccessible . There are three collections that are extremely important. One of these two of these have been mentioned. This decrypted soviet foreign intelligence documents that were released in 1995 and 1996 by the cia and the nsa. Those were decrypted by analysts in what is now the National Security agency. Second, the vyacheslav archives. Vyacheslav himself was a foreign Intelligence Officer in the kgb, in what became the separate Foreign Intelligence Service during the yeltsin era. He was given access, in connection with others. The 11 notebooks he was able to smuggle out of russia eventually, after he moved to london, are now fully accessible online at the Cold War International history project website. Another collection, which fortunately is now fully deposited at the cambridge university, the churchill archive center, is the archive of a kgb archivist in charge of the archive in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He transcribed and made notes from a lot of documents, and now, his notes and other papers are accessible. I went there in september, and they were made available only in july. I went there in september, and photographed the materials pertaining to, among other things, the United States. They do add new information, even though i didnt see anything directly connected with the rosenberg case. There is a great deal of new information about the extent of soviet espionage in the United States. Finally, one other thing, then i will get to a couple points i want to raise about the role of the rosenbergs in the espionage efforts. In many books, that have been produced in russia, memoirs in particular, these range from the extraordinarily unreliable and propagandistic to other memoirs that are actually very useful, but have to be approached with great caution. As all memoirs, particularly when you are dealing with intelligence matters. There are also official collections that have been released by these inaccessible archives. One of these collections in particular, is of great value and directly relevant to the rosenbergs, which is a nine volume, nine very large volumes of materials pertaining to the soviet Nuclear Weapons program. It is called atomic project of the ussr. That contains some of the intelligence that was going to the chief soviet nuclear scientists. It gives an incomplete sense of how they weighed this information that had been provided by the rosenbergs and other spies in the Manhattan Project. The two points i want to emphasize quickly in thinking about the rosenbergs, in light of the evidence that has emerged, we now have a much better sense of the extraordinarily aggressive soviet espionage effort, not only in the United States, at around the globe. During the stalin era. This targeted senior officials but also, often lower ranking officials, or even secretaries and janitors, to be extremely valuable sources of information. What i would emphasize is, the purpose of the program was largely to gain secret information, much more so than having a direct influence on u. S. Policymaking. Not to say that stalin would not have wanted that, but if you try to influence policymaking, then you risk being exposed if you are a spy. Whereas, simply smuggling out secret information is something that a wellplaced spy, even one who is only a janitor, can do and be invaluable for both soviet intelligence and the soviet Nuclear Weapons program. That is why the Manhattan Project was such a prime target in the United States, such a prime target of the soviet Espionage Network. Particularly military intelligence spies, are still very poorly understood. We now know a lot more about the nkvd network and the networks in the Manhattan Project. Even that isnt complete. We do, however, know a great deal more about the rosenbergs. The other point i want to come to quickly, has to do with stalin himself, in the subsequent great terror in the space of 16 months in the soviet union, about 820,000 people were shot by the nkvd, most all of them noncommunists. The accusations that were often used were ones of spying against the soviet union, either american, british, japanese spies. That was something, as archival sources about stalin have emerged, it seems to some degree, he did believe there was an extensive espionage effort underway against the soviet union. Some of this was clearly manufactured, and deliberate obfuscation. That makes it more ironic, after the rosenbergs were convicted, to the time that they were executed in june 1953, that there was such an aggressive soviet Propaganda Campaign to portray them as completely innocent, and to suggest that they were simply victims of a smear. That is a thing that stalin had emphasized, as the basis for killing millions in the soviet union itself. He saw not stalin, but soviet officials were trained that even the execution of two people, and i am not trying to defend the execution, but just to say that the execution of those two were seen as unconscionable. No one was questioning the millions who had died in the soviet union. Mark, it is true, isnt not, that the rosenbergs were the only two spies throughout the cold war executed in the u. S. . In the United States, right. I would like to make a couple points, then ask questions. That will be for another several minutes or so. Then, for the next half hour, i would like to entertain your questions. I will note that there is a microphone over there, and over there. That is where the questions get asked. If you want to ask a question, please go to the microphone. My observation to begin is espionage is so common. It has happened since the beginning of relations among nations. And, among tribes. There are examples in the bible. You can pick up examples in the dreyfus case, when the french government wanted to find out what mrs. Dreyfus was doing, they put in a maid who would do it. Another person who would do the ironing, was a spy for the french government. The idea that the russians were doing this, they were picking up what happens all the time. My sense is that we are dealing with a subject that is common, and yet, we address it in a most uncommon way let me finish, as if it were unnatural, that people are spying on one another. They are always spying on one another. The thing that is unusual about the rosenberg case is that these were not spies were sent in, russians who were sent to the u. S. These were people who were americans, who volunteered just for the soviet union because of their ideological their religious you made that attachment. That is what makes it interesting. I dont think it is unusual. There have been people and societies from the beginning of time, who have spied. It is simply what people did do, it is how nations behaved. When we have friendly nations, not the soviet union against the u. S. Or anything like that friendly nations, we should have learned within the last two or three years, spy on one another. That is simply because they do not ultimately trust one another. They werent as good as the soviets. They were the new york yankees the 1927 yankees. Every nation has spies, but they were all in the Minor Leagues compared to what was sent here in the 1930s and 1940s. They developed a copy of americans that i dont think you can find in any other nation. The other thing that is unprecedented about soviet espionage in the United States in the late 1930s and 1940s, is how large it was. John and i estimated that somewhere north of 500 americans were spying for the soviet union during world war ii, when we were allies. Which is remarkable. There was hardly any agency in washington that was not infiltrated by soviet agents. There is a great story that, when not see germany attacked the soviet union, one of the things mentioned in churchills orders is that britain ceased espionage efforts against the soviet union. They said, we are allies now. I want you to stop. When the soviets british spies were telling their soviet handlers the one thing the soviets wanted, who are the british spies in moscow . Who is spying for the british . Those guys said, there are none. For about two been years, the soviet union seriously thought that these guys were triple agents, working for the british. Stalins attitude was, of course i will continue to spy. Why wouldnt the british . But in fact, they were right. The british had stopped. Some of the emphasis on what we are saying, there are americans who came to believe the spy stories after world war ii were the product of hysteria, that there were not soviet spies, the road almost everyone accused, they thought was innocent, they thought it was hysteria. There was some hysteria and extremism in that. But the stories of espionage were wellfounded. The thought that soviets did not spy or in world war ii is still believed by many people. You have to realize that these people lied about what they were doing. My favorite example is a newspaperman, if you dont know his name, cedric bell fridge who started the national guardian. He was arrested and deported to his native britain, and he wrote a book about the campaign against the Mccarthy Campaign against them, in which he said they accused me of being a spy because my Progressive Political views and outspoken radicalism in defense of socialism, and it turns out he was a paid kgb agent. Do you have any idea how Many American spies, that is, russians, were spying for the u. S. During world war ii . Very few, if any. Churchill called off the british did we call it off . We called off what little we had. Keep in mind, we didnt have in the early 1930s and 1940s, we did not have an equivalent of the cia. That was established in 1942. That was the first time we had a robust intelligence program. Its policy from the beginning was, they would take in material and analyze things about the soviet union. But, we would not use covert means and covert agents. We would only do analytic work. When did that start . After world war ii. Do we know arbitrarily, in the 1960s, when there were Many Americans going into the soviet union, i remember that, were they dealing with russian spies working for the u. S. . The nature of espionage for the soviet union at that point changed, in that far more often, by then, the incentive would be monetary, rather than ideological. It was some combination, in some cases. Whereas, during the stalin era it was entirely ideological. You are talking about people spying for the soviets . Yes. He was asking about americans spying, americans in the soviet union. I was curious as to whether their existence certainly, the fbi was interested in knowing what people encountered. Many people met with the fbi personnel. We do know of some that did. It is relatively small. It was the United States it wasnt secret information they were turning over. They were just giving an impression of what daily life was like, how strict the restrictions were on them, that sort of thing. Remember, when i was a correspondent in moscow, the one responsible for providing a maid, a driver, that sort of assistance. Once a week, the maid came to me, and asked, is there anything you can tell me that i can pass on . [laughter] it is required that i pass information on about what you are doing. I felt very sorry for them. I said, well, tell them that on wednesday, we had dinner with the british ambassador. Really . That would be passed on. That would be regarded, too, as information. What im getting at here, i think, or i am trying to, is what at this point, about the rosenberg case, dont we know . I appreciate that what we dont know, we dont know. We know that the rosenbergs getting back to the technology we know that tens of thousands of pages of documents about American Technology went to the soviet union. We know that the soviets produced versions of much of the technology the rosenberg ring gave them. We know some of that was deployed in korea. We dont have a Straight Line to say, this document went to the soviet union, and because of that, this weapons system was built. It might be reasonable to suspect that, but you cant actually draw that line. That is the thing that we do not have, and we wont have unless we get access to some of the files that i should add that, picking up on what steve said, we still dont have a good sense of what the filtering of information was, even in the case of the former secret police chief who was then in charge of the soviet unions effort to build a nuclear bomb. The materials that were published showing some of what went to him are extremely interesting, because it is clear that he followed it closely. But exactly what was sifted out from that is by no means clear. The role of the military intelligence is a gaping hole in what we know, because we were able to decrypt very little in terms of military intelligence communications. It was a most all the foreign intelligence apparatus of the nkvd. If the military intelligence files were to be opened, i suspect we would find that they had considerably more spies targeting military targets like the Manhattan Project. I would like to ask any of you who choose to join the discussion, a cultural question. I just finished a book, i forgot the name, the author is then mcintyre, the english journalist. He talks about the soviet case. Fact. The british spy group began to have suspicions about soviets. In 1960, after two years, they conducted an investigation about him. If they talk to people it also got to cambridge and oxford, who had gone to the same clubs, who were of the same faith, the line they got was, he would never do anything like this. Lets not carry on, it is embarrassing. Not until 1971 did they nail him. But the evidence was overwhelming. That is britain. In the u. S. , with the rosenbergs and other spies, the atmosphere, the mood, would not have allowed that kind of easy approach to espionage. And ron, i am curious as to whether we are dealing with National Differences here, or is it that the United States is a great power, and we act differently from others . What is your feeling . The closest analogy is, alger hiss. Alger hiss, unlike the rosenbergs, was working with jews living in new york in public housing, without much money. Their motivation was different. Alger hiss was part of the establishment. He was a clerk, a Prestigious Law Firm clerk in the state department. That is what harry truman they were trying to protect him. They couldnt conceive that someone like him, could become a spy. They thought that was unfathomable. So that is the same thing. The other thing is, you should never underestimate the blundering of intelligence agencies. Steve knows this better than anybody. I think it was joel barr, the fbi checked him when he was working the story on that is the joel barr was fired from the army on a radar project because the fbi found out he was a communist. Six weeks later, he got a job working in private industry with access to higher levels of information. It was widely known at the place he had been fired from, that he was a communist. Julius rosenberg was fired because he was a communist. A few weeks later, he was hired in private industry, again with access to high levels of information. Alfred semyon was fired, and got a job in private industry. That sounds Like Washington dc. There were occasional things like that on the soviet side as well. Where spies, in particular would be highly unreliable often alcoholics. Yet, they would be kept on. Sometimes, they still provided useful information, but sometimes it wasnt as useful. In other cases, though, the gaps were deliberate. For example, the soviet union had an extensive Espionage Network in japan prior to the Second World War, and into the early stages of the war. It could have provided that information to the United States, but none of that was provided. It is unfortunate, because in some cases, given what is now accessible, including in these files, it is clear that it would have been useful to the u. S. War effort. Was that prior to pearl harbor . Most of it was. As far as i can tell, the u. S. Was unaware of soviet Espionage Networks in japan. It is true that the soviet union was receiving materials from some of its agents in japan, that were telling them that hitler was getting ready to attack. And stalins response was, that cant be true. People can spy, and people they are reporting to can filter it in different ways. They had the precise timetable of operations. And all the code words. He ended up being executed. We will go to the audience. I see one brave soul to my left, identify yourself and ask a question. Dont make a speech. Lets go. Chris guthrie. During the 1950s, joe mccarthy had a random Number Generator that created how many spies were in the government. Of course, we dismiss that as part of the hysteria. Is the attitude of the panel that Joe Mccarthys figures were low . Mccarthy was right about the larger point. The u. S. Government had been severely infiltrated by soviet spies. He was wrong about most of the details. Mccarthy, of the people he named, several of them we now know were soviets buys. A number of the people he named were not. The problem was, mccarthy, his charges were scatter shot. John and i, in a book we wrote talk about, you make up stupid charges and the people dont even believe the real ones. Jay jupiter. How would you compare Edward Snowden and the current wiki leakers to the disclosure is going on back then . Are they more dangerous, more valuable . How does that compare . Thank you very much. One of the huge differences is, it is a different situation when some but he is providing espionage to the soviet union, and that information is secret and remains secret. And, some of you is leaking to the american public, or to the public of the world, there is an enormous difference in the motivation and the consequences. Let me add about the snowden revelations. Snowden if snowdens only concern was to reveal domestic surveillance, which i think is a valid thing to be debated, much of what he released was highly valuable foreign intelligence programs that have nothing to do with domestic surveillance. Therefore, i would say, it was very damaging. I certainly dont share the admiration that quite a few people have for snowden, even though domestic surveillance is a valid issue for debate. Thank you, mark. Yes, sir. Marcus weld. Ive a question about a documentary done in the 1970s about the rosenberg case starting with a press person who saw the execution, talking about what happened to both of them in the execution. What is your opinion of the situation in regards to whether it was it is documented, it is sympathetic to them. Several people interviewed later on came out and said that was similar to wechslers book. It was a piece of leftwing propaganda, where the rosenbergs were absolutely innocent, and gold was this psychotic figure. My question for that situation is, for an espionage case, a Capital Punishment case in this country, and the only case as such where people were put to death for that, they said they were innocent to their death. Why not just say, i am guilty, and suffer the consequences . Any opinions on that . We just discussed this over dinner. I think there is uniformity of believe that if they had admitted guilt, they would have possibly still been alive, maybe even been on the street. Certainly, i believe ethel would have been out in five years. But they were prepared to die for their cause. Communism was the most important thing of their life. Their sons argue today that their parents, now, they finally state, were involved in espionage for decades. They attacked people for saying they were guilty, but we know they were. Their defenders argue, they did not want to give up names. They did not want to turn over people being recruited to do you espionage work. I see criminals all the time under serious charges, and finally, when the pressure is put on, they admit guilt. But they do not give up names. They hope for a more lenient sentence. There is no doubt in our minds it would have been spared. They would not have been executed. They just had to admit guilt. They wanted to become martyrs, and they did. They wanted to serve the soviet union, and they did. That is why they received their medals, and today, there is still debate and argument taking place. Both the communist party and groups that ran the rosenberg defense, two things about that. One, they wanted to die because it was a great use. As we argue in the rosenberg file, the trial, the appeal, that whole Propaganda Campaign and the execution, coincided with trials in czechoslovakia. People who waged the rosenbergss defense said, it innocent people are being killed in czechoslovakia because they are jewish. And in the u. S. , guilty people are being killed. Jews are being killed because they are progressive and jewish. They brought in the idea that it was antisemitic. Late in the campaign, there was a liberal lawyer named fyke farmer. He entered an appeal to the supreme court, based on the article that the rosenbergs were tried under the wrong law. They had been tried not under the espionage act, but on the Atomic Energy act. There should have been no death sentence. He argued that but for the supreme court. The rosenberg lawyers testified, and Emanuel Bloch argued so vigorously, arguing against this, Farmers Point was that he wanted to save their lives. One of the justices turned to them and said, mr. Bloch, you seem to be arguing for the governments case. The point i want to make, that leads us to one of the last points mark made, the entire Propaganda Campaign i found from close reading of the notebooks was that the kgb gave instructions to communists about how to wage a Propaganda Campaign in the u. S. It is online, you can look it up or details. Let me add to that, some of the documents in the department known as the Propaganda Department and the party the department of foreign relations, shows that there were officials in the departments in charge of the Propaganda Campaign, visavis the rosenbergs. Some of them were hoping that the rosenbergs would be put to death, because they saw them as creating martyrs that they could exploit. They also saw it as a way of silencing the rosenbergs before they disclosed more about, or disclosed anything about, the extent of soviet espionage in the United States. We have 15 minutes left. Go ahead. My name is thence. Vince. You use the term rosenbergs, and that term they. The evidence against ethel is ambiguous. Anybody have misgivings about ethels role, she has known by name. Im wondering if anybody feels that we should separate julius and ethel and look at them differently. I dont think there is anything ambiguous about the evidence on ethels participation in espionage. She was not a major spy. She acted as his assistant. He was the primary, she was the secondary. But she was not little woman in the kitchen. She was actively involved, there are references by kgb officers who cite ethel, saying julius is suggesting recruiting xyz, and ethels opinion is the same. Any report written by julius himself on the recruitment of Ruth Greenglass, he makes it clear that he does not think he could have her crew did ruth without ethels help. She assured ruth that her husband would walk to join the network once it was made clear what they were involved with. Greenglass, julius could not recruit him. Ruths, as his wife, could. Recruiting ruth was key to recruiting David Greenglass. Ethel was key to recruiting ruth. It is clear that the governments decision to indict ethel, and the Death Penalty was an effort to pressure julius. I dont know how others feel even the fbi agent who worked on the case was shocked by ethels death sentence. Someone who worked extensively on the case said, he wrote the letter that was sent under J Edgar Hoovers signature asking that ethel not be put to death. Interestingly, the reason that hoover gave in the letter, was that ethel was the mother of small children. I am from the university of maryland. I would like to underscore the point that harvey made at the outset, the neglect of the antisemitic purges in the soviet union, which has occupied a far smaller place and the american political discussion over the last 40 years than the rosenberg case did. I have two questions. At the time, and since, there have been people who said that the Nuclear Secrets that the rosenbergs gave to the soviets were elementary drawings of no great significance. Is that the case . And the second question, concerns the response to the rosenberg files. As an historian, it seems to me that the response to your work is one of the less impressive moments in the history of the american historical profession. Namely, i think there was a lot of denial of fact and evidence what it was supposed to be about. Thank you. Who wants to pick that up . The first part, again how valuable . Philip morrison, the scientist we have the patent for the bomb in his name. He was in a different realm of physics and research of physics, then fuchs. Notice, when i signed a brief, he said, that the rosenbergs life should be spared, i was careful not to say to they were innocent. I always felt they were guilty. Moreover, as a scientist, i knew immediately, as limited as that sketch was, the russians could immediately see the information they were getting from other people about the process of implosion that this confirmed it, they were not being misled with this information by intelligence agents. He says, in fact, this little sketch, that the defense says, what a joke, he was not even hired as an engineer, he was in the production plant, he said, that may be true, but nevertheless, this sketch was enough for any scientist to know what it meant, and it was valuable. That is the point. Let me add, although at the time greenglass only admitted to the sketches, we now know from soviet notebooks that he actually turned over to the soviets, an actual model of part of the implosion trigger mechanism, a real item, not just a sketch. He didnt get that at the time because that would have damaged him in the eyes of prosecutors. He said, just a quick addition, with regards to the soviet union, the volumes i mentioned that have documents about the early soviet Nuclear Weapons program, show these sketches, and all the other information, was provided. They were analyzed and weighed by soviet scientists, so even things that were seemingly not that important, were ways of trying to confirm what was there, and also trying to sift out wasnt what wasnt reliable. One other quick thing, what jeff mentioned about the antisemitic campaign and the soviet union during the final years of stalins life, from 1948 on, was extraordinarily ugly. It is hard to overstate how repugnant some of the comments being made in the soviet union were, both in public and in private. Stalin had not, certainly in his early years, manifested any sign of antisemitism. But in the final years of his life, he took a vicious antisemitic turn. It came to an end when he died. But by the time the rosenbergs were put to death in june 1953 that wave of antisemitic hysteria and the soviet union had abated. Thank you, mark. Last question. Judge kaufman, one of his biggest charges against a rosenbergs was by providing the soviet union the bomb, it gave them the courage or fortitude to start the korean war. It makes logical sense, that has that been proven by any documents found in the soviet archives . This is for dr. Kramer. The timing, again, the book on the building of the soviet bomb, estimated that the extent to which the soviet unions own Nuclear Weapon was accelerated by espionage, was probably he gave a range, from six months to two years. That range, i would say, is borne out well by what has emerged. At the time the author wrote the book, it came out in 1994, he had no access to any of the information i mentioned. The volumes that were published. I look at that information, i would say it was between one year and 18 months. It would include the point in time of the start of the korean war in 1950. From what is available now there were important factors but i would give greater it did play a role, it is brought up, but i would give greater weight to the lack of u. S. Response to the revolution in china that brought communists to power, and also, the speech in 1950 played a role in suggesting that the United States would not respond in korea. Stalin, definitely, as evidenced from the archives, believed that. He was stunned when harry truman sent troops to defend south korea. Very quickly, kim ilsung had been requesting assistance for invasion of the south from stalin. Stalin finally decided to support the invasion. A memo cites some of the things that changed his mind. A prominent one was mao zedongs success in china. Also, the soviet unions success in setting off a Nuclear Weapon, it would neutralize america upon using Nuclear Weapons in response. Stalin cites those as factors in his decision. What i would like to do before we wrap it up completely, as if we were doing a Television Program in the old days, i want to ask you for a final thought. I dont want each of you to go beyond a minute. We will start with mark and go down the line. Looking at the materials that have emerged over the past 23 years in russia and outside russia, the thing that strikes me most, at the end, is simply the scale and aggressiveness of the soviet espionage effort during the stalin era. Again, we have been focusing on the networks in the United States, but it was true all around the world, at least, i have been able to i have been tabulating how many countries, and at least 40 countries that i can see, there were extensive soviet spy networks. In that context, the Manhattan Project spy network was especially important. There was this vast in flow of information from around the world. I would like to compliment you folks for coming out on a cold night. You could be home, watching reruns of laverne and shirley. So i think we applaud you coming out tonight. The only thing that i would bring up, and i am sorry that we didnt get into it, i think it is important, it does irritate me, is the ability of a small but dedicated crew of people, in this case, that trot out they are tremendous at dedicating and convincing people that there is truth to what they are arguing. Although there was so much evidence out there that shows, in this case, the rosenbergs were involved, they were guilty. Harry gold was telling the truth. There is a popular movie out now, the imitation game, some of you have seen it. They have been running a confidence game. For decades, two generations at least. It has hurt the fabric of american philosophy, it pitched battles between various forces that we dont need. There are enough problems in the country, you dont have to make things up to start a philosophical war. Steve . The thing i started with that fascinates me, is the idea that a very small group of ideologically motivated people who grew up in this country, committed crimes for a foreign and a false ideology, and that they were able to get away with it for so long, is a fascinating, important thing. You could argue that it has some relevance for things that are happening in other parts of the world today. Ron . I take up what allen said. Much of the American Academy today is where the strength of what i call the hard left is in america. Particularly in the profession of history. He mentioned, one of the reasons i was attacked by wellknown historians who spoke on this stage, said that the rosenberg case was not about espionage, it was about suppressing the Progressive Movement of the time, and the American Communist Party. It was a witch hunt. There was a campaign against me personally, at the time of the book, for violating tenets of history for daring to say they were guilty, and so forth. The reason they do that today, in this contemporary time, is hatred of america. America is always the single force of evil in the world. Secondly, hatred of israel. America gives it money for defenses. If you hate america, it comes down to, if you say america was right during the cold war in some of these cases, you are defending america, and not making it the enemy. In order to maintain the ideological stance, people like the rosenbergs, despite the evidence, have to be essentially innocent, if not innocent, morally innocent. One of the things that fascinates me is the psychology of the rosenberg case. Morton sobell confessed to espionage after 50 years of denying it, he wrote a big book, he gave speeches in which he would talk about how he was innocent, how julius and ethel were martyrs, they were innocent. If you suggested that the rosenbergs could have saved their lives, and avoided making their children orphans merely by admitting the truth, the response was, they couldnt do that because that would be lying. We now know, if they told the truth, they probably would not have been executed. The whole psychology of that is, to me, quite fascinating. Summary mentioned comments about psychoanalyzing somebody who has a medical degree, but it strikes me that one of the saddest aspects of this is, the children what to live with the fact that their parents were more committed to stalin and communism than they were to their children. John . Let me follow up briefly on what ron said about the vehemence of the attacks on him. Those attacks were so vehement that it is why the historians and researchers have written books on this case, they are sitting right here. That is all there is. Because, so many young historians realize that going in there it was a career killer. Why . There is a sufficient number of hard left historians who would be in a position, sitting on hiring committees, to veto someone who wrote in this area. They are not in the position to hire their own. In modern american political history, there are hundreds of applicants for every position. Blackballing them is easy. That i think is why the scholarly study in this case is a lot thinner than it ought to be because the academy took the younger historians have been intimidated. I think we have heard some fascinating, i think controversial issues now about american education, about the role of a small group in terms of influencing policy perhaps. Eric holder, our attorney general still, believes that the single largest problem that he has is homegrown muslim terrorists and how you manage terrorists. And how you manage that problem since they are all americans but they appear to have what, and allegiance . A desire . Whatever it is, to move in an antiamerican direction. With every today there are many yesterdays. I think that we are picking up continuously a strain of Important Information that has to be absorbed and somehow or another woven into our common psyche. I think that you guys have been absolutely wonderful tonight. But you have been even more wonderful for coming. Thank you all very much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] john dean joined the Nixon White House in july of 1970 as counsel to the president after John Ehrlichman left the position to become chief advisor. Coming up next, part one of the twopart interview with mr. Dean. He talks about some of his early white house assignments, watergate, and the individuals behind the 1972 breakin at the Democratic National committee headquarters. Richard nixon president ial library conducted this interview as part of a project to document the 37th president s administration. This portion is about one hour. In the early days, what kind of access to the president did you have . I knew enough about how the white house worked from my dealings with the staff at the justice department. If the president calls you and you did not call the president when he wanted you to do something, typically, he was a president who liked particularly to work with paper. My memorable first assignment that i did not know was from the president initially was a memo that was waiting for me when i arrived from the staff secretary, john brown. It said cryptically it was an action memo archival people are familiar with. It has been noted that a magazine called scandals monthly has made an outrageous charge about spiro agnew, the Vice President , that he is planning to cancel the 1972 election and repeal the bill of rights. I said, well i knew spiro was a man of some rhetoric but i dont know how he would do that. It went on to say that it was recommended some action be taken against this magazine. I wasnt quite sure what kind of action you take against this. I thought it was pretty
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