Courtroom 14D in the Federal Courthouse in lower Manhattan is large and well-lit, modern but grand with high ceilings and walls of dark wood with crown molding and decorative arches over the doors.
I’m sitting on a bench seat in the back of the room with a couple dozen reporters, lawyers and other interested parties.
The jury box is empty.
An assistant U.S. District Attorney sits in the center, next to a lawyer from Georgetown University representing the National Archives, one of several plaintiffs fighting for the release of Grand Jury testimony of 44 witnesses called for the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Espionage case in 1950.
Judge Hellerstein sits facing us in a high back leather chair on the bench next to a large American flag. His words and those of the lawyers are well-amplified and clear.
It’s an impressive setting for a historic ruling on the release of evidence 55 years after this nation’s only execution ever of American civilians for spying.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted in a sensational espionage trial of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II. They were Communist sympathizers, executed at Sing-Sing prison in 1953.
Sam Roberts, a New York Times writer, author and expert on the case told me, “Communism looked a little more appealing after the depression when a lot of people were not benefiting from Capitalism, when there was anti-Semitism in this country and there was a perception, certainly not a reality, that there was a lot less of it in the Soviet Union.”
But Roberts and others have long suggested the evidence against Ethel was weak and her execution may have been a mistake.
“Ethel Rosenberg was an actress…,” Sam reminded me. “At some point she realized this was her greatest role. Whatever loyalty she had to Communism and towards the Soviet Union she could perform a lot more as a Martyr than she ever could as a spy.”
There is little doubt Ethel’s husband Julius passed atomic secrets to the Soviets, notes and sketches of the atomic bomb he got from Ethel’s brother David Greenglass, another communist sympathizer who worked at the Los Alamos lab in New Mexico.
David gave Julius notes and sketches of the bomb and Ethel allegedly typed them up before the materials were handed off to the Soviets.
But decades later David told reporters he lied at trial. It was his wife, not Ethel, who typed up the stolen secrets. He helped prosecutors win a death sentence for his sister to keep his wife out of trouble.
Some call it a Shakespearean tragedy and the Rosenberg’s descendants are among those hoping for answers, including how the Government was able to win its case with what may be faulty testimony.
But while the Judge ruled testimony from 39 of the 46 witnesses can be released, he decided some still can’t be because of it’s sensitive nature, inability to determine if the witnesses are still alive, or in Greenglass’s case because he wants to maintain the privacy guaranteed him by the Feds before he walked into the Grand Jury room in August of 1950.
“He may be a scoundrel, a hypocrite and a liar and may have violated the 2nd and 7th Commandments…” the judge said, “…but that doesn’t override the value of Grand Jury secrecy.”
Greenglass’s words remain hidden at least until he dies. The National Archives will now work on releasing the testimony from 39 others, probably sometime within the next couple weeks.