Spies, Whistleblowers, and the Case That Changed America

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg circa 1942. Photo courtesy of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center

It was a case that mesmerized the country and the world. On June 19, 1953, at the height of the Cold War, New York City–born Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were put to death in the electric chair. Convicted of conspiring to pass atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union, they were the first civilians to be executed by the United States on espionage charges. The subject of dozens of books and several documentary films, the case continues to smolder in the nation’s collective memory, and tonight a panel of journalists and BU professors will be joined by the Rosenbergs’ sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol, in a public event hosted by the Friends of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center (HGARC) at BU.

The center, which is home to the papers of the Rosenbergs’ adoptive father, teacher and songwriter Abe Meeropol, who died in 1986, has just mounted the exhibition Love-Conscience-Conviction: The Rosenberg Case. It features recently acquired prison correspondence between the Rosenbergs in the days leading up to their deaths. The exhibition coincides with the posting of the archive online. In addition to the Rosenberg letters, the Meeropol archive is a trove of writings and correspondence from his years as a social activist and contains letters regarding his song “Strange Fruit,” a haunting ballad about Southern lynchings that became a hit for Billie Holiday.

French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, who went on to win the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, called the Rosenbergs’ trial and death sentence a “legal lynching” in a country “sick with fear.” Over the decades, questions resurface: Did Julius Rosenberg, an engineer who had worked for the US Army Signal Corps, and his wife, Ethel, both convicted of spying in 1951, plot to pass top-secret data, with the help of Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, on the Los Alamos atomic bomb project to the Soviet Union, as most scholars of the case now believe? Or were either or both of them falsely accused? And if they were indeed guilty, did they deserve to die? Would their case have played out differently today, in the age of WikiLeaks, unapologetic cyber hackers, or notorious National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who, ironically, has sought asylum in Russia?

Tonight’s panel discussion, titled Rosenberg & Snowden, focuses on both the Rosenberg case and the much more recent, but also riveting  Snowden case—his leaking of classified documents from the NSA. In organizing the discussion, Gotlieb Center director Vita Paladino (MET’79, SSW’93) and her colleagues hope to stimulate discussion and debate about issues that still resonate more than six decades after the Rosenbergs’ execution. What, Paladino asks, do these words mean to us today: treason, traitor, patriot, betrayal, national security, exile?

During the discussion, to be moderated by John Carroll, a College of Communication assistant professor of journalism and a producer-panelist on WGBH-TV’s Beat the Press, the Meeropols, who wrote the 1975 book We Are Your Sons, will discuss their parents’ convictions and the legacy of their executions with journalist and best-selling author Jonathan Alter, veteran correspondent, author, and former College of Arts & Sciences visiting professor Stephen Kinzer (CAS’73), and Igor Lukes and Joseph Wippl, both Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and CAS professors.

“The Rosenberg case is very different from the ongoing saga of Edward Snowden, but there are parallels, there are some echoes,” says Carroll. “One of the things we want to explore is just how changes in technology, in political environments, and in the public mood have had their particular effects on each one of these situations.”

The purpose of the panel is not to debate the Rosenbergs’ guilt or innocence, Carroll says. On that account things keep changing: “People come out and recant what they said before—this is a moving target,” he says. The intersection of these two cases is instead about the process of gathering up confidential government information and distributing it, the contrast in how it was done, and how many moving parts there were. According to their conviction, “the Rosenbergs had to get physical documents, they had to conduct a network of people to transport and deliver that information,” Carroll says. On the other hand, “Edward Snowden is a single agent here, he has no cohorts to turn on him, he has no sort of multifaceted organizations to effectively deliver the information. He’s got a flash drive and a network of computers, and so what we’re looking at now is much more vast, much more streamlined, and in a way easier if you know what you’re doing and the government doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

Michael and Robert Meeropol have been outspoken about their parents’ legacy throughout their long professional careers. A retired chair of economics at Western New England University, Michael edited a 1994 collection of his parents’ prison correspondence, titled The Rosenberg Letters. His younger brother, Robert, a former practicing lawyer, is a lifelong progressive activist who founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children in 1990, which assists children of targeted activists. His memoir, An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey, was published in 2003, the 50th anniversary of the executions of his parents.

The evening’s other panelists reflect a range of backgrounds and historical perspectives. Lukes specializes in Central European history, Eastern European politics, and contemporary Russia. Wippl is a former case officer for the US Central Intelligence Agency and was an internationally deployed operations officer in its National Clandestine Service. Kinzer, now journalist in residence at Brown University, was New York Times bureau chief in Nicaragua, Germany, and Istanbul. Alter spent 28 years at Newsweek and is a contributing correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC.

The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center’s Friends Speaker Series panel discussion Rosenberg & Snowden begins tonight at 6 p.m. at the Metcalf Ballroom, George Sherman Union, 775 Commonwealth Ave., second floor. Admission: free to Friends members and students with a BU ID, $25 for the general public. For more information, call 617-353-3696.