The New York Times Book Review Gives New Credibility to the Rosenbergs’ Most Discredited Defenders
In this weekend’s New York Times Book Review, journalist Sam Roberts, who wrote a book about David Greenglass and his role in the Rosenberg case, The Brother:The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case, has a review of two new books about the Rosenbergs.
Roberts pays little attention to what is in fact a major new book about the case, one that is a real page-turner as well as one filled with much new information about the man whose testimony led to the conviction of both Klaus Fuchs, the German born British subject and atom spy, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and David Greenglass. That man is the little- known Philadelphia chemist Harry Gold, who is usually depicted by the Rosenberg’s defenders as a liar, moral monster and a total psychopath. The book is Allen Hornblum’s The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb. (I am in the process of writing a review of it for The Weekly Standard.)
The other book, the main focus of Roberts’ attention, is by the late Walter Schneir and his wife Miriam, Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case. Really not more than a short pamphlet — supposedly the result of ten years of research and writing, and yet a scant 100 pages of large print text with only seventeen footnotes — it is already no.1 in US History on Amazon’s book page. I suspect this is because of the attention Roberts gives it, and the misleading and laudatory treatment he presents. (My review of it will appear in the December issue of Commentary.)
True, Roberts calls it a “slim posthumously published volume,” but he is incorrect to say it is based on “new evidence,” and also incorrect to say that Walter Schneir really changed his mind about his original belief that the United States had framed up the Rosenbergs because of testimony from “self-serving liars.” The truth is that although Schneir and his wife now believe that Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet agent, they still believe their original take on the case was right: the Rosenbergs were framed up for giving the Russians the “secret” of the A-bomb because of their “progressive” political views.
It is rather ridiculous that the Schneirs, who for forty years or more argued on behalf of the Rosenbergs’ complete innocence, now should be awarded stars for reluctantly concluding what others had proved since the mid 1980s, especially since they write that for those (who like this writer) had proved the Rosenbergs were Soviet agents, they say they have one response: “No regrets. No apologies.”
Having once said that courier Harry Gold never met David Greenglass near Los Alamos and gave a sketch of the bomb to be handed over to Julius Rosenberg, they now admit he had been there, but argue instead that not only was his material worth little, but that David Greenglass was the only real atom spy, and that he testified against his brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg to cover up his own active spy career. It is about this preposterous theory — for which Walter Schneir offers no evidence at all — that Roberts writes his “version is not completely implausible.” Moreover, he adds that the truth “will have to await the full opening of K.G.B. archives for verification.”
The latter — which may never take place and therefore means waiting till Kingdom Come — is also misleading. Roberts does not mention that the KGB files collected by former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev have been scanned and are posted in both English and Russian on the website of the Cold War International History Project, and can be found here. A timeline created by Steve Usdin that has details about the complete nature of the espionage they committed is also online at the site. Moreover, Vassiliev, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have written at length about what the files contain, including much material about the Rosenbergs, in their book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which although a volume of the greatest importance (unlike the small volume by Walter Schneir), the NYTBR chose not to review.
In their book, the three co-authors provide new KGB messages which indicate that Ethel Rosenberg not only knew about her husband’s espionage activities, but actively recruited for the ring and indeed was the person who first suggested that her husband be recruited, as well as her own brother.
The Haynes-Klehr-Vassiliev book also reveals that Julius Rosenberg recruited another atomic spy, Russell McNutt, who was not only brought into espionage by Rosenberg but instructed by him to seek work in the area of atomic energy and the bomb. While Greenglass was, by chance, assigned by the Army to work on the bomb assembly, McNutt was recruited on Rosenberg’s “initiative…to cultivate ‘Enormous’” (the Manhattan Project). McNutt worked at the Kellex design office in New York, which had the contract for building the massive atomic facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. So contrary to what Miriam Schneir argues in the afterword that Sam Roberts terms “cogent,” and Walter Schneir, who as Roberts writes, “largely absolves the Rosenbergs of any involvement in atomic espionage,” the evidence shows that Julius Rosenberg did lead a major Soviet spy ring, that among other things, sought data relating to the atomic bomb.
The question to raise is a simple one: Why did The New York Times Book Review see fit to give attention to a minor and unimpressive book about the Rosenbergs, written by a late author and his wife who have been completely discredited for decades, thereby giving new grist for the mill for what Allen Hornblum rightfully and correctly terms “the Rosenberg propaganda mill”? That does exist, as the Schneir book, as well as two others soon appearing, makes quite clear. Yet Roberts calls Hornblum’s appropriate term and his other criticisms of the delusional “the Rosenbergs are innocent crew” simply “gratuitous put-downs.”
They are anything but gratuitous, as the constant barrage of propaganda shows. A recent example is from the Communist Party’s weekly newspaper, titled “Time for U.S. to exonerate Rosenbergs,” and it serves as a fine case of their never-ending campaign to indict the United States and depict the Rosenbergs as progressive heroes. Ironically, the author notes that all the protests about the Rosenbergs at the time came from the ranks of the CPUSA. As she writes:
[It] “is clear from the authors’ narrative of the remarkable history of the committee and the massive movement to save the lives of the Rosenbergs that Communists played an enormous role in the growth of the committee and the movement as a whole.”
If you are looking for new insight into the Rosenberg case, one thing is certain. You can’t any longer find what you want in the pages of The New York Times.
Ronnie: my suspicions were arounsed, just this morning, when I read the
review. Why was there no mention of your exemplary work? Why such
ignorance (am I being too kind?) on the part of the N.Y.T.B.R.?
Hugh
The myths and propaganda of the left die hard. When proved the Rosenbergs were spies, or Alger Hiss was a spy, or that Joseph McCarthy was largely right despite his large numbers of flaws, they’ll conclude, “Well, but, we were right all along …”
Makes you scratch you head. But this is the nature of doublethink. It’s the ability two hold two contrary notions notions in you head and accept them both.
I agree Cowboy these people knew what they where doing,and any one defending there actions now knows what who and why there defending them,or may be they have been taught not to care about freedom.And thank God the rosenbergs were caught when they where or shurely today they would gotten a free pass.
Bob T.
Um, I dunno guys, but I think that it would have been more effective to have run an M & M Candy video with a subliminal message that the Rosenbergs were innocent.
The NYTBR is fish-wrap like the rest of the NYT. The Rosenbergs’ remains should be dug up and electrocuted again.
No wonder fewer and fewer people are reading the NYT any more. And it isn’t because news is so easy to get from the blogosphere.
It’s because the NYT is full of lies.
Of course they were prosecuted for their “progressive” views – those being the so common progressive views that one should spy, commit treason, and make every effort to destroy America.
Just remember – Progressive means never having to deal with reality.
Ron,
What is your take on the argument that Mrs. Rosenberg was innocent?
She was also guilty. The new Vassiliev notes show that she not only knew what was going on, but recruited her husband and her brother.
The real question is why the cottage industry that grew up around the guilt of the Rosenbergs has proven so durable. No more books or long articles. Time to move on, folks.
No, it’s time to re-establish and highlight the facts of the case, and all the other cases of the so-called “Red Scare” era.
See, those who held for so long that these dirty Commie rat-bastard traitors were poor innocent liberal lambs persecuted by evil troglodyte scoundrels have a lot to answer for.
Mainly, whom did they influence and promote and advance…and why.
The Red subversives in this country were quite notable for their facility at hiring, supporting and covering for each other in the pursuit of Moscow’s and Peking’s agenda.
To think that Dies and McCarthy and Roy Cohn and Bobby Kennedy rooted them all out is ridiculous.
We can hazard a pretty good guess as to which cockroaches survived by their past public statements on cases like the Rosenbergs or Alger Hiss along with their policy positions.
The late Howard Zinn and his poisonous little textbook comes to mind…
And then we can examine their circle of associates and see who is active today.
Barack Obama was obviously influenced by Weatherman terrorists William Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, as well perhaps as the Communist Frank Marshall Davis.
Who influenced and protected and employed these people?
And who were the as-yet unknown sponsors of those unknown incubators of treason?
Trace the virus rather than from the latest infected back, but from the earliest carrier to our day…and see what histories might have been.
(Without John Stewart Service, Philip Jaffe, Lauchlin Currie and the Amerasia/IPR crew, would we have today a China that was not Communist? Mao having been defeated in 1946? And with a Chiang Kai Shek regime on Mainland China, would we have needed fight the Korean or the Viet Nam wars?)
What I would like to know is how close were the Rosenbergs to Obama’s family and those that connected our President to the SDS.?
The NYTImes is the last bastion of whitewashing communist excesses and atrocities. While Duranty’s work no longer lives on in a column, it survives in the subtleties each day, wafting from the perfumed caskets, where truth is cremated or buried daily.
It’s a sort of journalistic ethic cleansing ritual, observed by the faithful, who have never met a Stalin apologist, or for that matter, a Chavez apologist, a Pol Pot apologist/whitewasher, a mass murdering Mao apologist, or a Che apologist/whitewasher…that it wouldn’t place on a pedestal.
There seems to be a new wave of apologia mania sweeping the far left reaches of the political spectrum, where the inane and insane reside, now looking to give a little cleansing to Hitler as well. Oliver Stone has permanent residence in this loony bin, but he has neighbors. And they all have the NYTImes delivered to their doorstep.
No man or woman of honor should continue working in such a place, ah…but they do. And perhaps THAT is the saddest fact of all. Those who know, from the inside…and remain silent.
Ronald, as you well know you can’t really expect too much from a newspaper that refused to support the revocation of Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize for his proven falsified reporting of the Holomodor.