Rosenberg transcripts raise possibility of perjury

In politics being with someone fifty-percent of the time over this or that issue might be appropriate to say, "Ok, I can support a dumb donkey like Al Franken or even a phony, fake and a fraud like Barack Obama"... but, in a system of justice where the electric chair is the consequence, being right fifty-percent of the time is not acceptable... nor is it excusable... even if, contrary to the opinions of a few jingoistic bigots, the one in the electric chair, Ethel Rosenberg, happens to be a member of the Communist Party USA. Apparently this is something too complex for the "journalists" and editors of the New York Times to comprehend.

This on-going "story" about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg demonstrates the way the American people get sucked into believing a bunch of lies.

The New York Times was (and still is) the "flag ship" of anti-communism in defense of this rotten capitalist system--- and, the primary peddler of lies for state-monopoly capitalism.

There is no lie too big and no lie too small that the New York Times will not peddle if it serves the interest and aims of protecting capitalism--- the Rosenberg Case is a primary example of what these capitalist sooth-sayers are capable of.

The story in today's New York Times--- which I republish following this Associated Press story which is based on the New York Times story--- is a case in point.

I know for a fact that the New York Times lies and creates stories--- fabricates entirely false stories intended to mislead and disorient--- to suit the purposes of the Wall Street coupon clippers--- because this dirty yellow rag passing itself off as a journalistic endeavor, has fabricated stories about me claiming its reporters "interviewed me" when the only thing I told them was to "get fucked." The first such story they did about me was when the New York Times tried to implicate me as part of some kind of "communist conspiracy to kill George Wallace" on the day this fascist bastard was shot simply because I organized several demonstrations in protest against this racist slime-ball who was an advocate of segregation and Jim Crow laws as he criss-crossed the country in defense of "states rights"--- code words George Wallace used to advocate racism and fascism.

The "story" about me was later proven false and an intentional fabrication, many years later when Michigan's Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Brown ordered my "red squad file" released, the "news story" demonstrated to have been a concoction between FBI agents and the Michigan State Police "Red Squad" and the staff of the New York Times with the stated and intended aim of slandering me in order to try to destroy my credibility. J. Edgar Hoover, personally, used the term, "neutralize" in reference to this false and concocted story published in the New York Times.

I wouldn't believe a single word the New York Times publishes about any members of the Communist Party USA or anything it publishes about the Soviet Union or any socialist country. In fact, it usually has to create lies to make this country appear to be the world's "great bastion of democracy" since nothing could be further from the truth as the Rosenberg Case amply demonstrates.

Since the New York Times was the primary newspaper calling for the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, at the time and has repeatedly defended the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations in this case and was the "flag ship" newspaper leading the charge to destroy the Communist Party USA from 1948 on, including turning the prosecutions of the leading members of the Communist Party USA during the Foley Square Trial into the witch hunt it became against the left in this country with the stated intent to destroy the left-wing leadership of organized labor--- the same "leftists" George Bush told the Republican National Convention during his staged televised appearance because Republicans were afraid his presence in St. Paul would create a stinking mess for McCain.

It is quite apparent, from these articles now appearing about the Rosenberg case to the attacks on Barack Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, that the decision has been made to take the phony, and now exposed for what it is--- a cheap political gimmick to hoodwink the gullible American public--- the "case against terrorism" to the next level of "anti-communism;" hence George Bush moving from being the foremost opponent of international terrorism to being the great defender of the capitalist staus quo against the "leftists," even though he didn't dare come to St. Paul. As we all know, had George Bush had the courage to come to St. Paul, possibly the largest demonstration in American history would have taken place against him and the big-business policies of the Republican Party.

The New York Times is now doing with Morton Sobell and the Rosenbergs what Cliff Kincaid and the fascist band of ruling-class remnants of Hitler lovers financing his lies concocted under the guise that anti-communism is tantamount to American patriotism in what they have attempted to do to Frank Marshall Davis.

It is very interesting that the New York Times would continue on its anti-communist crusade using "spies for the Soviet Union" as a pretext for prepping the American people for what will be the most nasty and dirty Presidential campaign in American history.

It is no coincidence that Cliff Kincaid and his fascist backers have gone so far as to say that Barack Obama is not entitled to National Security briefings because his childhood mentor was Frank Marshall Davis, a long-time proud member of the Communist Party USA... and this New York Times story adds fuel--- based upon more lies--- to fuel the anti-Obama drive to come which is more than anything an attack on those working for peace and social & economic justice; just as the McCarthyite witch hunt of the fifties was an attack on this same movement for peace and social & economic justice--- again, Morton Sobell, Julius & Ethel Rosenberg and Frank Marshall Davis are being used, right along with George Bush trying to smear all of his opponents as "leftists."

In fact, there is probably no way to "check the facts" involved in the Rosenberg frame-up because who would believe that the United States Department of Justice and the FBI... the very agencies who are responsible for framing the Rosenbergs through intimidating and scaring "witnesses" to lie and perjure themselves initially, have not tampered with the Grand Jury testimonies which has been kept from public view and inspection for over fifty-years has not been tampered with in order to continue the lies.

The United States Department of Justice and the FBI have to continue with fabrications and distortions of the facts surrounding the Rosenbergs in order to protect themselves and cover up their own hideous deeds... among one such hideous and dirty deed of the worst order is the cold-blooded murder of Ethel Rosenberg.

Why isn't this one living prosecutor being brought to justice for framing what even he admits in this New York Times article was his role in the cold-blooded murder of Ethel Rosenberg? The New York Times does not ask this most fundamental of all questions pertaining to the Rosenberg case.

Shamefully, the New York Times, the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation now want us to believe that since they had half the case right (the case against Julius Rosenberg) they should be forgiven for executing the innocent victim in the other half of their case. This is atrocious reasoning and logic which runs counter to everything taught about "justice" to the American people from childhood on up.

In fact, neither Julius or Ethel Rosenberg were involved in any kind of "atomic espionage ring;" and even if they were, which we now know for a fact from the very mouths of those who orchestrated this vicious anti-Semitic, anti-communist frame-up--- Ethel Rosenberg was completely innocent, intentionally framed by a bunch of bigots employed by the United States government to work this country into an anti-communist frenzy because it served the purposes of U.S. imperialism and state-monopoly capitalism bent on ruling the world--- their politics, membership in the Communist Party USA--- was in no way related to the "espionage."

In fact, very real espionage agents who provided very real security information to the Soviets, who are in fact FBI agents and those employed by Military Intelligence, are presently sitting in prison and they are "card-carrying members" of the Republican Party! Not a single person, let alone any reporter for the New York Times has taken to drumming up a campaign against Republicans.

Another espionage trial is taking place right now in our country involving spies--- high level U.S. government officials who turned over state secrets to Israel--- again, card-carrying members of the Republican Party brought into "working for" the United States government by none other than George Bush and Karl Rove! Traitorous spies putting our country at the greatest risk, hired because they are loyal Republicans--- who, like all Republicans will sell their country out for a PROFIT.

What we have here are examples of more lies being used to further confuse and disorient the American public.

If Morton Sobell now really believes what the New York Times is claiming: “Now, I know it was an illusion,” Mr. Sobell said. “I was taken in.” This is his problem.

More likely than not, though, this statement is an outright fraud concocted by the New York Times with the same motivation which has motivated the New York Times for for so many years: anti-communism when it is politically expedient to serve its corporate masters and Wall Street coupon clippers. The rest of the big-business media has always been quick to join the vicious anti-communist crusades initiated by the New York Times so we shouldn't be surprised such a story would be spread without any reporters seeking to do their own research and inquiry to the real facts.

A "possibility" of perjury?

Give us all a break... this entire case against the Rosenbergs is based upon nothing other than perjury... in politics agreeing with someone fifty-percent of the time might work when it comes to supporting a bunch of Dumb Donkeys like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Franken, Jennifer Granholm, Debbie Stabenow, Carl Levin and Amy Klobuchar--- or even a bunch of Dumb Clucks like Norm Coleman, John McCain and Sarah Palin...

But, when it comes to a system of JUSTICE, it is not good enough that justice is "blind" only fifty-percent of the time--- especially when an innocent mother of two little boys ends up being murdered in cold blood in the electric chair.

I hope people think long and hard about what they are reading... and being subjected to this time around by the New York Times.

I wonder when, or if, the New York Times will ever get around to telling the American people what political party is responsible for them having unemployment compensation insurance, the right to organize unions, welfare and Social Security along with laws against racial discrimination?

Probably when they get around to telling us that the worst spies in U.S. history have been Republicans and when they get around to telling us that Henry Ford, the Mellons and the DuPonts along with Charles Lindberg were collaborating with Hitler, Mussoulini, Franco and Tojo at a time our country was supposed to be one of the leaders in the great fight to stamp out fascism--- talk about your traitors and passing on "state and industrial secrets," let's examine why it took so long--- and so many lives--- to defeat a fascist beast like Adolph Hitler... Henry Ford was not only arming the bastard... he was passing on important industrial secrets which enabled Hilter to march across Europe into Russia where the Red Army stopped him at Stalingrad while United States Steel was supplying Tojo with the scrap iron we "got back" at Pearl Harbor--- if Morton Sobell provided the Red Army with anything in the way of useful information which helped the Soviets destroy this fascist beast he should be awarded this nation's most prestigious medal of honor for having the courage to do what is right even if Henry Ford, the CEO's of United States Steel and Harry Trueman thought it wrong, not derided on the pages of a yellow rag like the New York Times.

And as far as any information Morton Sobell provided that enabled the Soviets to shoot Francis Gary Powers out of the sky over Soviet Russia--- I say "good," because the President of the United States lied, in denying to the American people and the world, that such activity was taking place... once Powers was shot from the sky this proved the U.S. ruling class as the liars and provocateurs of war that they really are... the Soviet Union is no more, but the massive U.S. military machine continues to be built up and both McCain and Obama have "pledged," about their one and only pledge during this campaign which we can trust them to keep and make good on, that they will increase military spending... reason enough for me not to give my vote away to Obama.

And, as for anything Morton Sobell provided to the Soviets which they in turn provided to the heroic Vietnamese people fighting to defend their homeland from U.S. imperialist aggression which United States Senators George McGovern and Wayne Morse described as "an illegal, unconstitutional, immoral war against a sovereign people and nation"--- again, I say "Good for Morton Sobell for doing the right thing."

At the time Morton Sobell provided this information to the Soviets it was used so that one less American soldier would have to die at the hands of the Nazi butchers and there would be one less Lidice... although, unfortunately, there followed the mass murder of Communists in Korea, a My Lai Massacre along with the "Shock and Awe" of Iraq--- now turned "quagmire." And, let us not forget the war in Afghanistan, which both John McCain/Sarah Palin and Barack Obama/Joseph Biden want to piss away more money on as the flag-draped coffins come home while even the right-wing government of Stephen Harper in Canada says, "Enough" in order to try to get re-elected.

The New York Times continues its tradition of lies, lies, lies and more lies. No wonder why the American people are stupid when it comes to war.

Morton Sobell's courageous acts are in league with the heroic young Americans who took up arms against the fascist Franco in Spain... as Minnesota Governor Elmer Benson said, in honoring the courageous Communist Congressman from Minnesota's Iron Range--- John Bernard, who put his political career on the line in voting in the United States Congress to send arms to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the other anti-fascists brigades in Spain--- had all America stood with John Bernard at the time there would have been a good possibility that Hitler would have been shot or hung by his own people, thus averting the bloodiest and most expensive war in world history.

Alan L. Maki




Rosenberg transcripts raise possibility of perjury


Sep 12, 8:23 AM (ET)

By PETE YOST

(AP) In this 1951 file photo, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are shown during their trial for espionage in...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Newly released grand jury transcripts add strong evidence to the argument that the conviction and execution of Ethel Rosenberg in the Cold War's biggest espionage case were based on perjured testimony.

In recent years, one of the two key witnesses against Rosenberg recanted his testimony. It now appears that the other witness made up her testimony. too. The witnesses were Ethel's brother and sister-in-law, David and Ruth Greenglass.

Thanks to the work of a team of lawyers and historians, the government released the grand jury testimony that formed the basis for the charges against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

At the Rosenbergs' trial, the Greenglasses testified that Ethel Rosenberg had typed stolen atomic secrets from notes provided by David Greenglass. The testimony provided the direct involvement the jury needed to convict Ethel Rosenberg and that the judge in the case needed to sentence her to death.

On Thursday, after spending several hours poring over the transcripts, the lawyers and historians spotted a major omission in Ruth Greenglass' testimony to the grand jury. Nowhere does Ruth Greenglass tell the story about seeing Ethel Rosenberg type up the secrets.

In fact, in her grand jury testimony, Ruth Greenglass says she herself wrote out the secrets in longhand. That testimony is consistent with subsequently decrypted Soviet cables from the time in which the Soviets describe material received from the Rosenbergs as being in longhand.

Also Thursday, a man who was convicted with the Rosenbergs on espionage charges in 1951 admitted for the first time that he spied for the Soviet Union.

Morton Sobell, 91, told The New York Times that he turned over military secrets to the Soviets during World War II, when the country was allied with Washington fighting the Nazis. Asked if he was spying, he said: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that. I never thought of it as that in those terms."

Sobell, who lives in New York, was released from prison in 1969 and had maintained his innocence.

In the interview for the Times' Friday editions, Sobell, an electrical engineer, said the equipment he stole for the Russians were radar and artillery devices, not atomic secrets.

Sobell said he believes Ethel Rosenberg was aware of espionage by her husband but didn't actively participate. "What was she guilty of? Of being Julius's wife," he said.

The grand jury testimony from Ruth Greenglass confirms that the trial testimony about Ethel Rosenberg typing secrets is a fabrication, said Georgetown University law professor David Vladeck, part of the team that succeeded in gaining public release of the transcripts.

"The Rosenberg case illustrates the excesses that can occur when we're afraid," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, one of the private groups that fought in court to get the testimony released.

"In the 1950s, we were afraid of communism; today, we're afraid of terrorism. We don't want to make the same mistakes we made 50 years ago," Fuchs said.

The material reveals that nearly four dozen witnesses testified to the grand jury. Only four of them testified at the Rosenbergs' trial. Among those who did not testify at the trial but did testify to the grand jury were a man and wife who the FBI believed were Soviet agents.

But they never were charged and the transcripts show that prosecutors made no effort to question any of the grand jury witnesses about a series of stolen U.S. non-nuclear defense secrets that the government felt many of the witnesses knew about. The stolen secrets included proximity fuses used by the Soviets to shoot down the U-2 spy plane of Francis Gary Powers.

The government also had evidence that the Rosenberg ring gave the Soviets secrets about airborne radar, land-based radar, analog computers used for guiding anti-aircraft weapons and information for the first designs of U.S. jet engines, said Steve Usdin, an author who helped win release of the grand jury material.

Why didn't the grand jury delve into the theft of non-nuclear secrets?

"I think that discussion of all of these other secrets that they gave the Soviets probably would have caused a great deal of alarm among the public and would have raised questions about the competence of American counterintelligence," said Usdin.



New York Times article:

Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits to Soviet Spying

Through it all, he maintained his innocence.

But on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, 91, dramatically reversed himself, shedding new light on a case that still fans smoldering political passions. In an interview, he admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.

And he implicated his fellow defendant Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information and what the American government described as the secret to the atomic bomb.

In the interview with The New York Times, Mr. Sobell, who lives in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, was asked whether, as an electrical engineer, he turned over military secrets to the Soviets during World War II when they were considered allies of the United States and were bearing the brunt of Nazi brutality. Was he, in fact, a spy?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that,” he replied. “I never thought of it as that in those terms.”

Mr. Sobell also concurred in what has become a consensus among historians: that Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed with her husband, was aware of Julius’s espionage, but did not actively participate. “She knew what he was doing,” he said, “but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius’s wife.”

Mr. Sobell made his revelations on Thursday as the National Archives, in response to a lawsuit from the nonprofit National Security Archive, historians and journalists, released most of the grand jury testimony in the espionage conspiracy case against him and the Rosenbergs.

Coupled with some of that grand jury testimony, Mr. Sobell’s admission bolsters what has become a widely held view among scholars: that Mr. Rosenberg was, indeed, guilty of spying, but that his wife was at most a bit player in the conspiracy and may have been framed by complicit prosecutors.

The revelations on Thursday “teach us what people will do to get a conviction,” said Bruce Craig, a historian and the former director of the National Coalition for History, a nonprofit educational organization. “They took somebody who they basically felt was guilty and by hook or crook they were going to get a jury to find him guilty.”

The Rosenbergs’ younger son, Robert Meeropol, described Mr. Sobell’s confession Thursday as “powerful,” but said he wanted to hear it firsthand. “I’ve always said that was a possibility,” Mr. Meeropol said, referring to the question of his father’s guilt. “This is certainly evidence that would corroborate that possibility as a reality.”

In the interview, Mr. Sobell drew a distinction between atomic espionage and the details of radar and artillery devices that he said he stole for the Russians. “What I did was simply defensive, an aircraft gun,” he said. “This was defensive. You cannot plead that what you did was only defensive stuff, but there’s a big difference between giving that and stuff that could be used to attack our country.”

(One device mentioned specifically by Mr. Sobell, however, the SCR 584 radar, is believed by military experts to have been used against American aircraft in Korea and Vietnam.)

Echoing a consensus among scientists, Mr. Sobell also maintained that the sketches and other atomic bomb details that the government said were passed along to Julius Rosenberg by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, were of little value to the Soviets, except to corroborate what they had already gleaned from other moles. Mr. Greenglass was an Army machinist at Los Alamos, N.M., where the weapon was being built.

“What he gave them was junk,” Mr. Sobell said of Julius Rosenberg, his classmate at City College of New York in the 1930s.

The charge was conspiracy, though, which meant that the government had to prove only that the Rosenbergs were intent on delivering military secrets to a foreign power. “His intentions might have been to be a spy,” Mr. Sobell added.

After David Greenglass was arrested, Mr. Sobell fled to Mexico and lived under false names until he was captured — kidnapped, he maintained — and returned to the United States in August 1950. He said he was innocent, but his lawyer advised him not to testify at his trial. He was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment and was released in 1969. The Rosenbergs were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing in 1953 after President Dwight D. Eisenhower turned down an appeal for clemency.

In an interview for a 2001 book by this reporter, “The Brother,” Mr. Greenglass acknowledged that he had lied when he testified that his sister had typed his notes about the bomb — the single most incriminating evidence against her. His allegation emerged months after Mr. Greenglass and his wife testified before the grand jury and only weeks before the 1951 trial.

Government prosecutors later acknowledged that they had hoped that a conviction and the possibility of a death sentence against Ethel Rosenberg would persuade her husband to confess and implicate others, including some agents known to investigators through secretly intercepted Soviet cables.

That strategy failed, said William P. Rogers, who was the deputy attorney general at the time. “She called our bluff,” he said in “The Brother.”

The grand jury testimony released on Thursday by the National Archives appeared to poke even more holes in the case against Ethel Rosenberg, who was 34 and the mother of two young sons when she appeared before the grand jury and was arrested on the courthouse steps after her testimony.

Bowing to David Greenglass’s objections, a federal judge declined to release his testimony. But the transcripts released on Thursday reveal that his wife, Ruth, in her grand jury appearance, never mentioned typing by Ethel Rosenberg, said she transcribed Mr. Greenglass’s notes in longhand on at least one occasion herself and placed Ethel Rosenberg out of earshot during several important conversations.

“It means the grand jury testimony by Ruth Greenglass directly contradicts the charge against Ethel Rosenberg that put her in the electric chair,” said Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit group based at George Washington University that challenges government secrecy.

Ronald Radosh, a scholar of the case and a plaintiff in the suit to release the grand jury minutes, said the testimony “confirms what we always suspected, that they manufactured the typing story at the last minute.”

Still, the grand jury transcripts indicate that Mrs. Rosenberg was aware of the conspiracy. Spying was broached the first time by her husband in 1944 at the Rosenbergs’ Knickerbocker Village apartment in Lower Manhattan, Mrs. Greenglass testified. “I was horrified,” she said, but added that Mrs. Rosenberg “urged me to talk to David. She felt that even if I was against it, I should at least discuss it with him and hear what he had to say.”

Mrs. Greenglass, who died earlier this year, said her sister-in-law also was in the kitchen when Julius bisected the side of a Jell-O box that a courier would use as a signal to retrieve atomic secrets from David Greenglass.

But David C. Vladeck, the lawyer who argued for the grand jury transcripts to be released, said they had inconsistencies with the trial testimony that might have been used to undermine prosecution witnesses.

“Imagine if the Rosenbergs had a good lawyer,” he said.

Among other things, Harry Gold, a confessed courier for the spy ring, told the grand jury that “everything I have done for the past 15 years, practically all of my adult life, was based on lies and deceptions.” He said he had met Julius Rosenberg, which contradicted his other accounts. And he does not invoke before the grand jury the damning password, “I come from Julius,” that he mentioned during the trial.

The nearly 1,000 pages of grand jury transcripts are peppered with aggressive, sometimes belligerent jousting by prosecutors with witnesses, insights into how they defended themselves, and factoids that aficionados of the case are likely to parse for years.

James Kilsheimer, the only surviving prosecutor of the Rosenberg-Sobell case, said on Thursday, “We always thought Sobell was guilty, and we knew that Julius was.” He said that the trial testimony about Ethel’s typing was not inconsistent with what Ruth Greenglass told the grand jury but was developed by him “during the pretrial process.”

Mr. Sobell, who was never implicated in atomic espionage, has been ailing, but says his long-term memory is sound. He was interviewed a number of times over the summer by Walter and Miriam Schneir, who wrote a damning indictment of the Rosenberg prosecution years ago, but who, on the basis of decoded Soviet cables and other information, have since reconsidered their verdict that Julius was completely innocent. In those interviews, Mr. Sobell has implicated himself in espionage.

“Do I believe Morty? Yes,” Mr. Schneir, who is writing a magazine article about Mr. Sobell, said on Thursday. “The details that he’s given us so far we’ve been able to check the peripheral parts, and they check out.”

Most of the protagonists in the case, Mr. Sobell included, were committed Communists at the time they spied for the Soviets. “Now, I know it was an illusion,” Mr. Sobell said. “I was taken in.”

Robert Meeropol, the Rosenbergs’ son, said that even if he were to accept Mr. Sobell’s verdict, “It’s not the end of what happened to my mother and it’s not the end of understanding what happened to due process.”