And so into the house of mirrors. But, as noted, Weisband was not prosecuted for espionage. He implicated Harry Gold as his courier. The Rosenberg prosecution, including that of Julius wife Ethel, now commenced. But at this time our attention again is drawn to 19-year old Theodore A. Hall.
Espionage can present profound dilemmas as regards prosecution.
In this period, anything told to a jury would be learned by the KGB, at a time when large issues turned on preventing the KGB from knowing what we knew. This dilemma was doubly so when dealing with an Allied government. In October 1949, the British spy Kim Philby arrived in Washington as British intelligence liaison to the U.S. intelligence community. What we observe here is tradecraft of a high order, but also a fairly routine example of organizational behavior. Secrets are assets to an organization.