This Week in History: The Rosenbergs' execution - Features - Jerusalem Post This Week in History: The Rosenbergs' execution By Tamara Zieve 17 June 2012 14:21 Convicted of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, Jewish American husband and wife Julius and Ethel face the electric chair in an unprecedented sentence for a crime of that nature. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg leave courthouse 390. (photo credit:Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Divisio) On June 19, 1953, Jewish Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in New York, for conspiring to pass nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II. Their unprecedented sentence incensed protesters world-wide, who advocated either that the Rosenbergs had not been given a fair trial, or that the punishment did not fit the crime. Demonstrators called on the US government to revoke the pair's death sentence, while defense attorney Emmanuel Bloch fought for the Rosenbergs’ to the very last minute of the two year battle following their sentence. But to no avail. Be the first to know - Join our Facebook page.

That Friday, Julius and Ethel became the only Americans in history to be sentenced to death in peace time for espionage, meeting their fate on the electric chair. Julius Rosenberg was the son of a Jewish immigrant from Poland, who upon seeing his son excelling in Hebrew Studies, wanted him to become a rabbi. Instead, Julius pursued his passion for politics, laying out a very different path for himself. He joined the Communist Party at the age of 16, where he met his future wife, Ethel nee Greenglass. Ethel's brother David Greenglass worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory on the Manhattan Project – which led the US to develop the first atomic bomb - and his sister and her husband pushed him to pass top-secret information to the Soviets. Greenglass later became the government’s star witness in the trial of his sister and brother-in-law. While there is little doubt today that the Rosebergs were involved in spying for the Soviets, Ethel's part was minimal and indirect. Indeed, in 2008, Morton Sobell, a friend of the Rosenbergs who was also convicted of espionage, admitted that he and Julius had been Soviet spies.

Of Ethel, however, he said: “She knew what he was doing, but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius’s wife.” The prosecution, it later transpired, had a good idea of this, yet put Ethel on trial along with her husband in an unsuccessful attempt to pressure Julius to name other American members of the spying ring. Nonetheless, Ethel also became the first woman to be executed in the US since Mary Surratt, who was sentenced to death due to her role in assassinated US president Abraham Lincoln's death. The Rosenbergs were executed at Sing Sing Prison before Shabbat. Prison officials had advanced the time of execution in order to "spare religious feeling," The Guardian reported. The couple maintained their innocence to the bitter end; in a letter to the two sons they left behind, Ethel wrote, "Always remember that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience." Their son Robert Meeropol went on to found The Rosenberg Fund for Children, whose mission is to help children of targeted activists in the US. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower rejected a final appeal for clemency, and Julius was killed, followed by his wife.

According to witnesses Ethel beckoned to the prison matron who had accompanied her, pulled her toward her and gently kissed her on the cheek. Ethel's heart was still beating after the first 50-second jolt of electricity, and she was only pronounced dead after two more jolts. On the day of the execution, thousands rallied in Paris and London to protest the Rosenbergs' fate, and hundreds picketed in front of the White House. Attorney Bloch fought to the end for the Rosenbergs, pleading at the gates of the White House for a final hearing with Eisenhower in his clients' last hours of life. In a statement released that day, Eisenhower said: "I am not unmindful of the fact that this case has aroused grave concern both here and abroad in the minds of serious people aside from the considerations of law. In this connection I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world.

" "The execution of two human beings is a grave matter, but even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose death may be directly attributable to what these spies have done," he continued. Fifty-nine years on, another case involving a Jewish agent, sentenced to life by the US for spying for an ally, is the center of political and public debate. Just last week, President Shimon Peres plead with US President Barack Obama to release Jonathan Pollard , convicted of spying for Israel in 1987. The US administration appears to be standing firm on the issue, and amid hopeful expectations surrounding Peres's visit to the US, White House Spokesman Jay Carney stated that the US position had not changed . "I would simply remind you that Mr. Pollard was convicted of very serious crimes," he told reporters Wednesday. Peres advisor Nadav Tamir, however, offered Pollard activists a glimmer of hope, stating that "the door has not been slammed," on the possibility of the prisoner's release. The battle therefore continues for Pollard's release, and it is not yet clear whether this time, efforts will be successful to revoke a sentence that activists claim far exceeds the crime.

Michael Omer-Man contributed to this report Relevant to your professional network? Please share on Linkedin Tags: By Gil Stern Stern HOFFMAN Promoted Content Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed - Jun 19, 1953 - HISTORY.com Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed Share this: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed Author Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed URL Publisher A+E Networks Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a brief trial in March 1951 they were convicted. On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death. The pair was taken to Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, to await execution.

During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. Many people believed that the Rosenbergs were the victims of a surge of hysterical anticommunist feeling in the United States, and protested that the death sentence handed down was cruel and unusual punishment. Most Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly. President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke for many Americans when he issued a statement declining to invoke executive clemency for the pair. He stated, “I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.” Julius Rosenberg was the first to be executed, at about 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953. Just a few minutes after his body was removed from the chamber containing the electric chair, Ethel Rosenberg was led in and strapped to the chair. She was pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m.

Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths. Two sons, Michael and Robert, survived them. Related Videos Who are the most notable spies in history? - Quora Quora Noor Inayat Khan She is one of her own kind .She was of Indian and American origin. As an SOE agent, she became the first female radio operator to be sent from Britain into occupied France to aid the French Resistance. Ravindra Kaushik He was a former RAW agent who was caught and jailed in Pakistan where he eventually died.He was a famous theater artist and displayed his talent at the national level dramatic meet in Lucknow, which was witnessed by some officials of the Indian Intelligence Agency RAW. Jeevsiddhi, Originally a Brahmin named Indusharma who under the expert spymaster Chanakya, took on the task of befriending the Rakshasas to save Chandragupta Maurya’s kingdom! Saraswati Rajamani disguised herself as a boy for 2yrs spying for SC Bose against the British. Here is a list of 5 notable spies from around the world.

1) Mata Hari, German Spy Possibly one of the most famous spies of all time, Mata Hari was an exotic dancer and high class prostitute in Paris who spied for Germany during World War 1. The Dutch-born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle began her spying career after working as a courtesan to high-ranking military men and politicians. Her courtesan status and Dutch passport (Netherlands was a neutral country) allowed her to, literally, sleep with the enemy and gather intel for the German Military. Mata Hari’s gig came to a halt in January 1917, when French intelligence intercepted a German Military Attache-encoded radio signal to Berlin which declared that they were receiving amazing information from a German spy codenamed H-21. Mata Hari was identified and arrested in a Paris hotel room on February 13, 1917. She was executed by Firing Squad on September 15, 1917 for espionage. 2) The Rosenbergs, Soviet Union Spies Married couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American Communists who were executed in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.

The couple became embroiled in espionage in 1942, when Julius was recruited by the KGB. He was responsible for passing classified reports and designs to the KGB, including a fuze design which was used to shoot down a U-2 in 1960. He was assisted by his brother-in-law, Sergeant David Greenglass, who admitted to passing on classified information through Julius and Ethel (who typed nuclear secrets). While the degree of Ethel’s involvement was relatively uncertain, prosecutors thought that indicting her would cause her to get Julius to confess. That never happened. The case against them began in 1951 and both were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed by electric chair in Sing Sing Prison in 1953. They were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage during the entire Cold War. 3) Aldrich Ames, Soviet Union Spy Former CIA agent Aldrich Ames turned Soviet Union spy in 1985 after being stationed in Ankara, Turkey. He had originally been sent to target Soviet intelligence officers for recruitment, but instead offered up US secrets to the Soviets due to his own financial and emotional woes.

Assigned to the CIA’s European office, Ames had access to the identities of CIA operatives in the KGB and Soviet Military, and provided the Soviets with this intel. This led to the compromise of about 100 CIA agents and the execution of at least 10. It was Ames’ newly-acquired material wealth that did him in. Ames passed two lie detector tests while spying for the Soviet Union, but he couldn’t hide his Soviet-funded half million dollar home, luxury sports car, or thousand dollar phone bills from the CIA. He was eventually caught by the FBI and in 1994 convicted to life in prison. 4) Giacomo Casanova, Venetian Spy The original Casanova was a Venetian spy who wrote a tell-all book called The Story of My Life. The book, however, details mostly his romantic affairs with powerful women, and he tends to gloss over the escapades of his espionage days. What is known that he worked as a lawyer, and between the years of 1774 and 1782 served as a spy for the Venetian Inquisitors of the State.

His spying endeavors are hush hush, but he eventually was exiled in 1782 for spreading libel against one of the City patricians. 5) Klaus Fuchs, Soviet Union In the long list of Soviet spies we find the name of Klaus Fluchs, a German-born physicist with the distinction of being responsible for significant theoretical work on the first fission weapons and early models of the hydrogen bomb. After fleeing Germany during the Nazi regime, Fuchs worked on his PhD in England and made the cut for the British atomic bomb project. In 1943, Fuchs also found his way to Los Alamos, where he was an integral part of the Manhattan project. During his time in England, Fuchs turned spy and began giving information to the Soviets, reasoning that they deserved to know what the enemy was developing. This passing of information took place over two years, as Fuchs continued to provide information to the KGB on key products including theoretical plans for building a hydrogen bomb, and data that Soviets used to determine the number of bombs the US possessed. He was interrogated in 1946 by the British government and was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment, but only served nine.

10 Of The Most Famous Spies In History 10 Of The Most Famous Spies In History Source: Wikipedia These spies made a name for themselves at home and abroad for their compelling mixture of sex, scandal and secret dealings. Here are 10 of the most dubious, famous spies in history. Famous Spies: Mata Hari, German Spy Source: The Guardian Possibly one of the most famous spies of all time, Mata Hari was an exotic dancer and high class prostitute in Paris who spied for Germany during World War 1. The Dutch-born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle began her spying career after working as a courtesan to high-ranking military men and politicians. Her courtesan status and Dutch passport (Netherlands was a neutral country) allowed her to, literally, sleep with the enemy and gather intel for the German Military. Mata Hari’s gig came to a halt in January 1917, when French intelligence intercepted a German Military Attache-encoded radio signal to Berlin which declared that they were receiving amazing information from a German spy codenamed H-21. Mata Hari was identified and arrested in a Paris hotel room on February 13, 1917.

She was executed by Firing Squad on September 15, 1917 for espionage. Source: Ielmira Married couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American Communists who were executed in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. The couple became embroiled in espionage in 1942, when Julius was recruited by the KGB. He was responsible for passing classified reports and designs to the KGB, including a fuze design which was used to shoot down a U-2 in 1960. He was assisted by his brother-in-law, Sergeant David Greenglass, who admitted to passing on classified information through Julius and Ethel (who typed nuclear secrets). While the degree of Ethel’s involvement was relatively uncertain, prosecutors thought that indicting her would cause her to get Julius to confess. That never happened. The case against them began in 1951 and both were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed by electric chair in Sing Sing Prison in 1953. They were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage during the entire Cold War.

Source: NPR Former CIA agent Aldrich Ames turned Soviet Union spy in 1985 after being stationed in Ankara, Turkey. He had originally been sent to target Soviet intelligence officers for recruitment, but instead offered up US secrets to the Soviets due to his own financial and emotional woes. Assigned to the CIA’s European office, Ames had access to the identities of CIA operatives in the KGB and Soviet Military, and provided the Soviets with this intel. This led to the compromise of about 100 CIA agents and the execution of at least 10. It was Ames’ newly-acquired material wealth that did him in. Ames passed two lie detector tests while spying for the Soviet Union, but he couldn’t hide his Soviet-funded half million dollar home, luxury sports car, or thousand dollar phone bills from the CIA. He was eventually caught by the FBI and in 1994 convicted to life in prison. 11 of the most famous spies in history. 11 of the most famous spies in history.

blue karma level 78653 Basic requirement to be a spy is to stay under the radar, never reveal your true identity but once the job is done or the curtains are removed, Spies are prone to become famous overnight because of the high profile job they do. In following, we present to you the list of eleven of the most famous spies in history of different countries who made a name for themselves at home and abroad for their compelling mixture of sex, scandal and secret dealings.. 1. Mata Hari, German Spy Possibly one of the most famous spies of all time, Mata Hari was an exotic dancer and high class prostitute in Paris who spied for Germany during World War 1. The Dutch-born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle began her spying career after working as a courtesan to high-ranking military men and politicians. Her courtesan status and Dutch passport (Netherlands was a neutral country) allowed her to, literally, sleep with the enemy and gather intel for the German Military.

Mata Hari’s gig came to a halt in January 1917, when French intelligence intercepted a German Military Attache-encoded radio signal to Berlin which declared that they were receiving amazing information from a German spy codenamed H-21. Mata Hari was identified and arrested in a Paris hotel room on February 13, 1917. She was executed by Firing Squad on September 15, 1917 for espionage. 2. The Rosenbergs, Soviet Union Spies Married couple Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were American Communists who were executed in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. The couple became embroiled in espionage in 1942, when Julius was recruited by the KGB. He was responsible for passing classified reports and designs to the KGB, including a fuze design which was used to shoot down a U-2 in 1960. He was assisted by his brother-in-law, Sergeant David Greenglass, who admitted to passing on classified information through Julius and Ethel (who typed nuclear secrets). While the degree of Ethel’s involvement was relatively uncertain, prosecutors thought that indicting her would cause her to get Julius to confess.

That never happened. The case against the Rosenbergs began in 1951 and both were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed by electric chair in Sing Sing Prison in 1953. They were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage during the entire Cold War. 3. Aldrich Ames, Soviet Union Spy Former CIA agent Aldrich Ames turned Soviet Union spy in 1985 after being stationed in Ankara, Turkey. He had originally been sent to target Soviet intelligence officers for recruitment, but instead offered up US secrets to the Soviets due to his own financial and emotional woes. Assigned to the CIA’s European office, Ames had access to the identities of CIA operatives in the KGB and Soviet Military, and provided the Soviets with this intel. This led to the compromise of about 100 CIA agents and the execution of at least 10. It was Ames’ newly-acquired material wealth that did him in. Ames passed two lie detector tests while spying for the Soviet Union, but he couldn’t hide his Soviet-funded half million dollar home, luxury sports car, or thousand dollar phone bills from the CIA.

He was eventually caught by the FBI and in 1994 convicted to life in prison. 4. Giacomo Casanova, Venetian Spy The original Casanova was a Venetian spy who wrote a tell-all book called The Story of My Life. The book, however, details mostly his romantic affairs with powerful women, and he tends to gloss over the escapades of his espionage days. What is known that he worked as a lawyer, and between the years of 1774 and 1782 served as a spy for the Venetian Inquisitors of the State. His spying endeavors are hush hush, but he eventually was exiled in 1782 for spreading libel against one of the City patricians. 5.Klaus Fuchs, Soviet Union In the long list of Soviet spies we find the name of Klaus Fluchs, a German-born physicist with the distinction of being responsible for significant theoretical work on the first fission weapons and early models of the hydrogen bomb. After fleeing Germany during the Nazi regime, Fuchs worked on his PhD in England and made the cut for the British atomic bomb project.

In 1943, Fuchs also found his way to Los Alamos, where he was an integral part of the Manhattan project. During his time in England, Fuchs turned spy and began giving information to the Soviets, reasoning that they deserved to know what the enemy was developing. This passing of information took place over two years, as Fuchs continued to provide information to the KGB on key products including theoretical plans for building a hydrogen bomb, and data that Soviets used to determine the number of bombs the US possessed. He was interrogated in 1946 by the British government and was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment, but only served nine. 6. Major John André, British Spy Major John André was a British Army officer during the American War of Independence who conspired against the Continental Army. He was a well-liked major in colonial society during the British occupation in Philadelphia and New York, but behind closed doors was responsible for assisting American General Benedict Arnold’s attempts to sell the West Point fort in New York to the British. He was caught after traveling through New York in civilian clothes with a fake passport. André’s defense?

He never wanted or planned to be behind American lines, and that as a prisoner of war he had the right to escape in civilian clothes. The board was unmoved. André was convicted of being a spy for the enemy, and was hanged on October 2nd, 1780. 7. James Armistead Lafayette, USA Spy Lafayette was the first African-American double agent and came to prominence during the American Revolution. A slave by William Armistead of Virginia, he was granted permission to volunteer in the army in 1781. His missions included spying on the Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, and his reports were vital in helping defeat the British forces during the Battle of Yorktown. 8. Frederick Joubert Duquesne, German Spy Frederick Joubert Duquesne, nicknamed “Black Panther”, was a German spy during both world wars. Fueled by his hatred of the British and their treatment of Boer children and women, he turned to espionage and was responsible for relaying secrets—particularly about Allied weaponry and shipping movements—to the German forces. He is also credited for having sabotaged and sunk the HMS Hampshire in 1916, which was carrying Lord Kitchener to Russia.

Duquesne also organized the Duquesne Spy Ring whose 33 conspiring members were sentenced 300 years in prison. 9. Virginia Hall, US Spy Known by her moniker “Artemis” in Germany, Virginia Hall was a US spy who worked with the Special Operations Executive during World War II in the 1940s and later for a division of the CIA. Her efforts included helping the French Underground in Vichy and the French resistance as a correspondent, and the Gestapo referred to her as “the most dangerous of all Allied spies”. Oh, and she only had one leg – the other was amputated from the knee down. 10. Shi Pei Pu, Chinese Spy. A clandestine story of sex, scandal and an Opera singing spy occurred in Beijing in 1964. Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu met French embassy clerk Bernard Boursicot while teaching English to diplomats’ families, convinced Boursicot that he was a woman dressed as a man, and began a love affair with him that spanned 20 years – even going as far as pretending to have his baby (that he purchased from a hospital).

The affair resulted in Boursicot handing over as many as 150 French embassy documents to the Chinese secret service before returning to France in the early 1980s. Eventually Shi and his “son” were arrested and charged with espionage, serving six years in prison. They were released after 11 months and Shi’s story inspired the play and film, M. Butterfly. 11. Anna Chapman, Russian Spy. Anna Chapman became famous in June 2010, when she was arrested in New York and accused of spying for the Russian government. Born in Russia in 1982, Anna Chapman was living in New York City when she made headlines in June 2010. Along with nine others, she was arrested on suspicion of working as a spy for the Russian government. Chapman plead guilty, and was deported back to Russia in July 2010, in the biggest spy swap deal since 1986. Her good looks made Chapman the focus of the media spotlight, and upon returning to Russia she posed for a men's magazine and hosted a TV show.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Blog Julius and Ethel Rosenberg In one of the most controversial capital punishment trials of the 20th century, a man and his wife were charged, tried, convicted, and executed, for the crime of ï¿½conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States," at a time when the Cold War was just heating up. The avowed Communist Party couple also were accused of working with Soviet KGB agents to acquire nuclear weapons secrets, which smacked of treason. Although their co-defendants in the trial received sentences of 15 to 30 years in prison, the Rosenbergs became the first U.S. civilians to be executed for espionage. Unsurprisingly, media frenzy during the event heated public emotions to a white-hot intensity. While of America learned about the case through newspapers, a large audience followed it on radio and, to a lesser degree, on television. Owing to the overheated political climate and frayed-nerve mindset of post- World War II America, a gulf widened between those who were convinced that a minimal amount of evidence was enough to convict the Rosenbergs, and those who believed the evidence was compromised, as presented by the prosecution.

Background Julius was born in New York in May 1918, to Jewish parents. While working on his degree in electrical engineering at the College of New York, he joined the newly formed Young Communist League (YCL). There he met his future wife, Ethel Greenglass. Born in September 1915, Ethel also was from a Jewish family. After attempts to become a singer or actress failed, she landed a job as a secretary for a shipping company. In an intrepid plunge ï¿½ for a woman of those times ï¿½ Greenglass got involved in labor disputes and joined the YCL. After the two were married in 1939, Julius enlisted in the Army Signal Corps and specialized in radar equipment repair. The KGB In 1943, as World War II was being waged on numerous fronts, Semyon Semenov, a high-ranking officer of the KGB, recruited Julius Rosenberg, through his ties with the Communist Party USA, to provide classified information to the Soviets. Ostensibly, the Soviets needed the information because, as an ally with the U.S., they could fight the Germans on the Eastern Front with the advanced weaponry used by the U.S.

in their battles. Of particular interest to the KGB was the ï¿½proximity fuse." When installed on air-to-ground, air-to-air, or ground-to-air missiles, the device could detonate a warhead without having to make a direct hit on the target. The fuse was based on the Doppler principle of the sudden dropping of frequency waves once past its target. That was a vast improvement over timing devices and other means of bomb detonation. While the Rosenbergs, especially Julius, were possibly duped into thinking they were helping to bolster an ally, they were nonetheless complicit in acts against the U.S. in a time of war. Co-conspirators and the Manhattan Project When Semyonov was called back to Moscow in 1944, his duties were assumed by his protï¿½gï¿½, Alexander Feklisov. Feklisov cultivated a warm relationship with Julius, and eventually persuaded him to bring in his brother-in-law, David Greenglass ï¿½ a machinist on the Manhattan Project ï¿½ to supply the pipeline with information. Owing to the viewpoint that the U.S.

should not possess the only atomic bomb, Julius managed to recruit Joel Barr, Al Sarrant, William Perl, and Morton Sobell. Following the war, the U.S. was ultra-sensitive about sharing information with the U.S.S.R., so it came as a great surprise that the Soviets had managed to produce their own nuclear warhead. It was determined that German defector Klaus Fuchs, a theoretical physicist working for Great Britain, had passed secret documents to the Soviets via a courier. Following his arrest, David Greenglass confessed to supplying documents to the KGB, then testified against his sister and Julius. Greenglass also named Sobell as an accomplice, but Sobell fled to Mexico City, seeking asylum. He was later extradited back to the U.S. for trial. The trial and verdict The trial predictably attracted media attention of a similar magnitude as the recent Alger Hiss affair. Some observers argued that media bias had influenced the verdict and/or the sentence imposed on the Rosenbergs.

During the trial, which began on March 6, 1951, the prosecutionï¿½s star witness, David Greenglass, continued to point the finger at his sister and Julius as conspirators who passed along sensitive information to the Soviets during wartime. Ethel was described by her brother as a ï¿½probationer" or ï¿½agent," according to information provided by a sophisticated code-breaking device, known by its acronym VERONA. It was used by the U.S. intelligence corps to unravel foreign coded correspondence to and from Soviet operatives in the U.S., during and following the war. She was found guilty of the charges, but many supporters felt that a capital charge of conspiracy was not only too harsh, but clearly was not supported by the evidence. They point to the fact that Ethel was never given a code name (Julius was ï¿½Antenna" or ï¿½Liberal") making her role appear less significant than her husbandï¿½s.

The defining stroke of ignominy came down in 2001, when David Greenglass admitted that he had perjured himself regarding the testimony about his sister ï¿½ nearly 50 years after her death ï¿½ to protect his wife and children from persecution and possible prosecution. As for Julius, he took the Fifth Amendment whenever questions about his connections to the Communist Party, or any of its members, were asked. That did not earn him any sympathy points with the jury. Evidence showed that indeed, he met with Feklisov more than 50 times during a three-year period. The quality of information, however, is somewhat suspect beyond that of the proximity fuse. The trial ended on March 28, with the guilty verdicts read the following day. A week later, Judge Kaufman imposed the death penalty on the Rosenbergs; Sobell received a 30-year sentence. Without being charged, Fuchs returned to England in 1946. However, he was arrested there in 1950, after intelligence officers gleaned enough information from the VERONA Project to confront him.

Fuchs confessed, was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years in prison, the maximum in England for passing secrets to a ï¿½friendly nation." The execution A series of appeals, including to the U.S. Supreme Court , ran out on July 19, 1953. The Rosenbergs were put to death in the electric chair. Julius died on the first surge of juice. But the chair was not a one-size-fits-all contraption ï¿½ it was not designed for a petite female. The grisly results were that, because of incomplete connections, three attempts had to be made on Ethel before death was pronounced. Some onlookers said that smoke could be seen rising from her scalp, with a foul odor wafting through the observation room. Aftermath The entire proceedings left many in tears, many more with a bad taste in their mouths, and a feeling that justice was far from served. An angry sentiment prevailed, and a grassroots crusade began, in part owing to the real fear of individual rights being usurped without the entire truth being heard by oneï¿½s peers. Such maddening questions remain as: Were the Rosenbergs given a fair trial?

Did they really help the Soviets? To what extent did they pass along secrets regarding the building of an atomic bomb? Could the Soviets have built their bomb without the Rosenbergs? To what extent did Ethel know she was involved? Did the sentence fit the evidence? Was the judge anti-Semitic? Was he coerced by outside sources to put them to death? Out of all the co-conspirators, why were only the Rosenbergs sentenced to death? Beyond the grave The Rosenberg case refuses to go away. Their sons, orphaned at 10 and six, co-wrote a book, We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1975), about their experiences as orphans. Not one family member was willing to take them in, owing to fears of being fired by employers, or worse. Documentaries, as well as fiction novels, have helped keep the case from collecting dust: The Book of Daniel (1971), a novel based on the case by E.L. Doctorow, became the basis for Daniel, a film starring Timothy Hutton (1983).

The play, Angels in America (1992), starring Meryl Streep, portrays Ethel Rosenberg in a new light. Another play, The Rubenstein Kiss (2005), was inspired by the couple. Even Alexander Feklisov had his say in The Man behind the Rosenbergs (2001). - - - Books You May Like Include: ---- David Greenglass obituary; David Greenglass, A-bomb spy, dies - LA Times David Greenglass, figure in 1951 Rosenberg spy case, dies at 92 David Greenglass knew how history would remember him. He was "the spy that turned his family in." His confession was key to the government's case against Ethel Rosenberg — Greenglass' sister — and her husband, Julius, who were executed in 1953 for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union in the most notorious espionage case of the Cold War era. Later, his betrayal was burned into cultural memory. Greenglass inspired the contemptible Selig Mindish, the protagonist of E.L.

Doctorow's 1971 novel based on the Rosenberg case, "The Book of Daniel." His name was invoked in "Crimes and Misdemeanors," the 1989 Woody Allen film in which Allen's character says of a loathsome relative, "I love him like a brother — David Greenglass." Greenglass, an Army machinist who spent a decade in prison for passing nuclear secrets to the Rosenbergs and later admitted that he had lied about a crucial part of his incriminating testimony, died July 1. He was 92. His death, which was not announced publicly at the time, was confirmed Tuesday by his attorney, Daniel N. Arshack, who declined to give any details other than that Greenglass died "somewhere in New York state." Read the story Since his release from prison in 1960, Greenglass had lived under an assumed name in the New York City area. He avoided the spotlight until 2001, when he admitted in the book "The Brother" by Sam Roberts that he had lied about Ethel Rosenberg's involvement in her husband's spying to save his own wife.

The Rosenbergs' convictions in 1951 bolstered Sen. Joseph McCarthy's campaign to expose Communists in the government and other fields. The only people executed in the United States for Cold War espionage went to their deaths as martyrs. Their supporters clung to their views of the couple as victims of the Red Scare until 1995, when the U.S. government released Soviet intelligence cables that had been intercepted and deciphered in the 1940s. Democracy is doomed without informed citizens, says a son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed by the U.S. for spying. (Robert Meeropol) The declassified documents, known as the Venona transcripts, provided incontrovertible evidence of Julius Rosenberg's involvement in a Soviet spy ring, but how valuable his information was — and whether either he or his wife deserved to die — are questions that historians and others continue to debate. When a group of historians petitioned the government for the release of grand jury testimony from the Rosenberg case, Greenglass refused to allow his testimony to be made public.

His attorney told the court in 2008 that Greenglass and his family wished to avoid the "unwanted spotlight which has dogged their lives ever since" he emerged as a crucial witness in what FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had called the "trial of the century." "He was a man who impressed me [as] having very little morality, a man governed by situational ethics," Roberts, a New York Times editor who pursued Greenglass for 13 years, told National Public Radio in 2001. Ronald Radosh, a historian of the Rosenberg affair who interviewed Greenglass extensively in 1978, had a different view. "Greenglass may not have been a hero," Radosh said Tuesday, "but as soon as he saw the government had the evidence that espionage was conducted, he realized the only way out was to own up to his guilt. He saved his own life. I don't fault him for making that decision." Although he displayed an early aptitude for machines and gadgetry, Greenglass, the youngest of four children, often went to the movies instead of helping out at his father's repair shop.

He had a reputation as a loudmouth and windbag. He was 14 when his sister Ethel began to date Julius Rosenberg, an electrical engineering major who was embroiled in leftist politics. Julius encouraged David's interest in science and persuaded him to join the Young Communist League. On the witness stand years later, Greenglass would describe Julius as his hero. In 1942, Greenglass married his childhood sweetheart, Ruth Printz. He was working as a machinist when he was drafted into the Army in 1943. He served at Army posts in California and Tennessee before being assigned to the top-secret weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., in mid-1944 with a full security clearance. No one asked if he had ever been a Communist, and he deliberately omitted from the security questionnaire his membership in the Young Communist League. Back in New York, Ruth too had joined the league and attended political rallies with Ethel and Julius. By late 1944, Julius, who had learned through his contacts that David's assignment involved the atom bomb, had enlisted Ruth as an intermediary. Her job was to ask David if he would engage in espionage.

On a weekend in December 1944, she met her husband in Albuquerque and put the question to him. He quickly agreed, believing that stealing atomic secrets would help a U.S. ally, the Soviet Union, and create a balance of nuclear power. Soon he had a Soviet code name, Kalibr. Spying, Greenglass later told Roberts, was not particularly hard work. He did not have to furtively search cabinets and desks for classified documents. He picked up information about trigger mechanisms and the bomb's plutonium core through eavesdropping and casual conversations with scientists, who considered him "too stupid and too outspoken to be a spy," Roberts wrote. Security at Los Alamos was so lax that Greenglass slipped a cartridge for an exploding-wire detonator into his pocket and walked out the door with it. In June 1945 Greenglass met Soviet agent Harold Gold in New Mexico to hand over his first batch of secrets: sketches of a high-explosive lens mold and a list of co-workers who might be ripe for spy work. Gold paid him $500.

"I felt there should have been more," Greenglass said in Roberts' book, "but somebody gives me money, I take it." A few weeks later, on July 16, 1945, the first test of the atomic bomb took place in the New Mexico desert. On Aug. 6, the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. In September, Greenglass went to New York on home leave. He turned over a drawing of the bomb and a sheaf of handwritten notes to the Rosenbergs at their apartment. The importance of Greenglass' stolen information would later be contested. Both Soviet and American experts would characterize his notes and sketches as relatively inconsequential, providing at most corroboration of details already known to the Soviets. But Ethel Rosenberg's fate would turn on those notes, which were never recovered by investigators. Greenglass was arrested in 1950 and not only confessed to being a spy but fingered both his wife and Julius as co-conspirators. He promised the government his full cooperation in exchange for immunity for Ruth Greenglass. The government agreed, and Ruth was never indicted.

Although Greenglass had not implicated his sister at this point, the government eventually arrested the mother of two boys to pressure Julius, who had been taken into custody shortly after his brother-in-law. Ten days before the Rosenbergs' trial was to begin, Ruth Greenglass told government investigators that Ethel had typed up the notes David had given Julius at the Rosenbergs' apartment. Upon re-questioning, David corroborated Ruth's account. At the close of the trial, the allegation was used to maximum effect by federal prosecutor Irving Saypol. He told the jury that in typing up Greenglass' description of the atom bomb Ethel Rosenberg had "struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country." Half a century later, Greenglass confessed to Roberts that he had no memory of Ethel typing up his notes. "I frankly think my wife did the typing," he told Roberts, "but I don't remember." When the grand jury transcripts were released in 2008 historians said the files showed "irreconcilable" differences between Ruth Greenglass' grand jury testimony and the remarks she made under oath at the Rosenbergs' trial.

She told the grand jury that she had hand-written the information that her husband had stolen. She later told Radosh that she could not remember ever saying that the notes had been typed. To what degree, if any, Ethel Rosenberg was involved in her husband's spying may never be known. Morton Sobell, who had been convicted along with the Rosenbergs, told the New York Times in 2008 that she was aware of her husband's activity but did not directly participate in it. Greenglass insisted that he had tried to save his sister. "I told them the story and left her out of it, right?" he told Roberts. "But my wife put her in it. So what am I gonna do, call my wife a liar? "My wife is more important to me than my sister…" he said. "And she was the mother of my children." Ruth Greenglass died in 2008. Greenglass is survived by two children and grandchildren. The Rosenbergs were on death row for two years before Greenglass wrote a letter to President Eisenhower to plead for leniency.

"I would be less than human if I did not state that if these two die, I shall live the rest of my life with a very dark shadow on my conscience," he wrote. At the same time he blamed them for not saving themselves by confessing. That they failed to do so — and made orphans of their two young sons — was, Greenglass said, "stupidity." "What Greenglass did is unforgivable," Robert Meeropol, the Rosenbergs' younger son, told a Canadian interviewer in 2003. "On a personal level, he is dead to me." Robert and his brother, Michael, were adopted by another couple, Abel and Anne Meeropol, after their parents' execution at Sing Sing, and had no contact with Greenglass in the ensuing decades. If given a chance to speak to his nephews, Greenglass told Roberts, he would say that he was sorry their mother and father were dead. Cold War espionage Cold War espionage Sean Connery as James Bond, a fictional Cold War secret agent One of the enduring motifs of the Cold War is stories of spies, agents and assassins, operating with great secrecy and living double lives so they can infiltrate enemy governments or agencies.

While the extent of Cold War espionage is often exaggerated, the US and USSR certainly spent large amounts of money recruiting, training and outfitting spies and agents, then deploying them around the world. The primary purpose of espionage was to gather information and intelligence about the enemy, their military and technical capabilities, their actions and intentions. This information was gathered in a myriad of ways, including paying informers, using double-agents, stealing documents, intercepting communications, setting up ‘bugs’ (listening devices) or other means of surveillance. Agents also carried out disruptive missions, such as kidnapping or assassinating enemy agents or politicians, or conducting sabotage operations. Cold War spies were rarely the secretive, overcoated figures or flamboyant James Bond types portrayed in literature and film. The success of their missions – and indeed their very survival – often hinged on them looking and behaving like ordinary employees and members of society. A manual for ‘trickery and deception’, for CIA field agents All major Cold War powers maintained at least one government agency dedicated to intelligence-gathering and espionage. In the US, this was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA began as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the military arm that conducted espionage and undercover operations during World War II.

In 1947 the OSS was dissolved and transformed into the CIA. From the outset, the CIA’s structure, mission and methods were shaped by the Cold War. One early directive (1948) authorised the CIA to conduct secret operations “against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups” so that “US government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons”. The CIA was also supported by other US government agencies. The National Security Agency (NSA, formed 1952) obtained information by monitoring, intercepting and decoding signals and radio traffic. The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI, formed 1908) was responsible for investigating domestic criminal activity, including espionage and treasonable activities. The Agency The Shah of Iran, one of several figures helped into power by the CIA The CIA’s Cold War activities ranged from general surveillance of suspected foreign agents, to the deployment of agents abroad, to illicit operations like assassinations and human experimentation. The CIA also supported US foreign policy by providing support, funding and equipment to anti-communist leaders and groups abroad (one of its first major missions was to assist non-communist parties in Italy in 1948).

Several Cold War coups and attempted coups, such as the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, were conducted with the backing or active involvement of the CIA. In 1959-61 CIA agents recruited and trained 1,500 Cuban exiles, who in April 1961 attempted to invade the island-state and overthrow Fidel Castro. CIA pilots flew U-2 flights over Soviet and Cuban territory, collecting data about military facilities, armaments and troop movements. The CIA also plotted assassination attempts on foreign leaders, like Castro. In 1974 the CIA spent more than $US800 million on Project Azorian, a mission to recover codebooks and nuclear technology from a sunken Soviet sub, laying under 16,000 feet of water in the Pacific Ocean. The CIA, sometimes operating jointly with the Department of Defense, also funded extensive research into nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the effects of these weapons on humans, as well as effective interrogation and mind control strategies.

The largest of these research programs was Project MK-ULTRA, which ran from 1953 to the late 1960s and soaked up more than $US10 million in funding. MK-ULTRA was chiefly concerned with the effects of hypnosis and mind-altering drugs, and identifying whether these could be utilised for Cold War purposes. Many questions have since been raised about MK-ULTRA and the unethical nature of its research. Hundreds of Americans, military personnel chiefly, were subjected to drug trials and experimentation without their informed consent. MK-ULTRA experiments are believed to have contributed to several deaths, including Harold Blauer and Frank Olson, who died in 1953 after being injected with hallucinogenic drugs. Other secret programs conducted by the CIA included Operation Mockingbird (aimed at facilitating sympathetic media coverage), Project Resistance (information-gathering about radical student groups) and Operation Chaos (the disruption of American left-wing and anti-war groups). One CIA project, Stargate, even investigated psychic abilities and their possible use in intelligence applications. Hoover and the Bureau J.

Edgar Hoover, the long-serving head of the FBI US law prohibited the CIA from conducting domestic operations (a restriction it often breached during the Cold War). Within US borders, investigating and prosecuting suspected spies was the responsibility of the FBI. Between 1935 and 1972 the FBI was headed by J. Edgar Hoover, a fanatical anti-communist and a ruthless political operator. The FBI began investigating Soviet espionage in America in 1943, after receiving an anonymous letter. Within two years the FBI had more than doubled in size, to 13,000 agents. In late 1945 the FBI was provided with extensive information about Soviet espionage by Elizabeth Bentley, who herself had been passing information to Moscow. Bentley provided the FBI with a 112-page confession, naming 80 people as paid informers or agents working for Moscow. Bentley’s defection, along with accusations against State Department lawyer Alger Hiss, fuelled the anti-communist hysteria in America during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

In 1956 Hoover authorised COINTELPRO (short for Counter-Intelligence Program), a prolonged campaign targeting domestic political organisations. For 15 years, FBI agents infiltrated a range of organisations, including left-wing political parties, unions, civil rights groups, radical student associations, the anti-war movement, regional militias and race hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. These agents fed information back to the FBI and occasionally took action to disrupt these groups from within. Russian leader Vladimir Putin began his career in the KGB Soviet Russia had a much longer history of intelligence-gathering and espionage. Russian secret police organisations dated back to the Okhrana in the late 1800s, the communist CHEKA (1917-22), the OGPU (1922-34) and Stalin’s NKVD (1934-54). All used covert methods to gather information about political dissidents and potential ‘enemies of the state’. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, the NKVD was replaced by the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or ‘Committee for National Security’).

The KGB assumed responsibility for both domestic security and foreign intelligence. Another department, Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye (GRU) gathered intelligence for the Soviet military. Decades of experience, along with a greater preparedness to employ devious tactics, gave the Soviet Union a distinct ‘head start’ when it came to espionage. The Soviets began mobilising agents and recruiting informers in Western countries during the 1930s. During World War II, Moscow prioritised the infiltration of the Manhattan Project, America’s nuclear weapons research program. Soviet agents were able to obtain and pass on technical information about this program, including blueprints, with remarkable ease. By the time the US dropped its first atomic bomb on Japan in August 1945, Stalin knew more about this new weapon than many American politicians. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg “The issue of Soviet espionage became a US obsession, and domestic security dominated public discourse. Legislative committees vied with one another to expose communists. The executive branch laboured to root out disloyal government employees.

The courts wrestled with the balance between constitutional rights and societal self-protection… There was a widespread consensus that Soviet espionage was a serious problem, that American communists assisted the Soviets, and some high officials had betrayed the United States.” John Earl Haynes, historian Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for passing nuclear secrets to the USSR The passing of American nuclear secrets led to probably the best-known spy case of the Cold War. FBI investigations in the late 1940s uncovered a chain of Soviet spies and paid informers within the US. By 1950 the FBI was investigating Julius Rosenberg, a civilian engineer formerly employed by the US Army. Rosenberg, who had ties with an American communist group, was arrested in 1950 and accused of passing information to a Russian agent. When he refused to confess or provide investigators with more names, the FBI began targeting his wife, Ethel. Both were eventually charged under the Espionage Act and sent for trial, where they denied the charges and refused to testify or name associates. In April 1951 they were sentenced to death in the electric chair. This generated outrage and disbelief both in America and internationally.

Many thought the Rosenbergs were innocent, while others believed they were little more than go-betweens, undeserving of the death penalty. They were electrocuted in New York in June 1953 – the only Americans to be executed for espionage during the Cold War. The US was not the only Cold War nation to suffer infiltration by Soviet spies. In 1963, British journalist ‘Kim’ Philby disappeared from Lebanon. Philby had earlier been a high-ranking member of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (or MI6) before his resignation in 1951. In reality Philby was a double-agent: he had been passing information to Moscow since the mid-1930s. Philby and two of his fellow agents, Donald McLean and Guy Burgess, defected to the USSR and lived there until their deaths. The British government was further damaged in 1963 when it was revealed that Donald Profumo, a member of cabinet, was sharing a mistress with a known Soviet spy. In 1954 Vladimir Petrov, a Soviet diplomat and KGB colonel, defected to Australia. Petrov provided the government there with information about Soviet spies operating in Australia.

The Petrov affair led to the USSR and Australia severing diplomatic ties for five years. 1. Espionage is the process of gathering information about a rival or enemy, usually through secret operations. 2. Major Cold War powers had agencies that engaged in espionage, like the CIA (US), KGB (USSR) and MI5 (UK). 3. The CIA, for example, collected info, assisted anti-communist leaders and researched new weapons and techniques. 4. The Soviets had a much longer history of espionage and employed it to successfully obtain American nuclear secrets. 5. Espionage and spies became an enduring motif of the Cold War. There were many incidents and accusations involving espionage, including the execution of the Rosenbergs, the capture of Gary Powers and his U2 spyplane, and the Petrov affair in Australia. © Alpha History. Content on this page may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use . This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn, Jim Southey and Glenn Kucha. To reference this page, use the following citation: J.

Llewellyn et al, “Cold War espionage”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], Rosenbergs convicted of espionage - Mar 29, 1951 - HISTORY.com Rosenbergs convicted of espionage Publisher A+E Networks In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953. The conviction of the Rosenbergs was the climax of a fast-paced series of events that were set in motion with the arrest of British physicist Klaus Fuchs in Great Britain in February 1950. British authorities, with assistance from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathered evidence that Fuchs, who worked on developing the atomic bomb both in England and the United States during World War II, had passed top-secret information to the Soviet Union. Fuchs almost immediately confessed his role and began a series of accusations. Fuchs confessed that American Harry Gold had served as a courier for the Soviet agents to whom Fuchs passed along his information.

American authorities captured Gold, who thereupon pointed the finger at David Greenglass, a young man who worked at the laboratory where the atomic bomb had been developed. Gold claimed Greenglass was even more heavily involved in spying than Fuchs. Upon his arrest, Greenglass readily confessed and then accused his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of being the spies who controlled the entire operation. Both Ethel and Julius had strong leftist leanings and had been heavily involved in labor and political issues in the United States during the late-1930s and 1940s. Julius was arrested in July and Ethel in August 1950. By present-day standards, the trial was remarkably fast. It began on March 6, and the jury had convicted both of conspiracy to commit espionage by March 29. The Rosenbergs were not helped by a defense that many at the time, and since, have labeled incompetent. More harmful, however, was the testimony of Greenglass and Gold. Greenglass declared that Julius Rosenberg had set up a meeting during which Greenglass passed the plans for the atomic bomb to Gold.

Gold supported Greenglass’s accusation and admitted that he then passed the plans along to a Soviet agent. This testimony sealed Julius’s fate, and although there was little evidence directly tying Ethel to the crime, prosecutors claimed that she was the brain behind the whole scheme. The jury found both guilty. A few days later, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. They were executed on June 19, 1953 in Sing Sing Prison in New York. Both maintained their innocence to the end. The Rosenberg case garnered worldwide attention. Their supporters claimed they were being made scapegoats to the Cold War hysteria that was sweeping America. The French writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called their execution a “legal lynching.” Others pointed out that even if the Rosenbergs did pass secrets along to the Soviets during World War II, Russia had been an ally, not an enemy, of the United States at the time. Those who supported the verdict insisted that the couple got what they deserved for endangering national security by giving top-secret information on a devastating weapon to communists.

Related Videos Spies Who Spilled Atomic Bomb Secrets | History | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use Spies Who Spilled Atomic Bomb Secrets As part of the Soviet Union's spy ring, these Americans and Britons leveraged their access to military secrets to help Russia become a nuclear power In the 1940s, the Soviet Union launched an all-out espionage effort to uncover military and defense secrets from the US and Britain (Klaus Fuchs, left, and David Greenglass, right). (Associated Press, Bettmann / Corbis) By Marian Smith Holmes smithsonian.com April 19, 2009 Despite being an ally during World War II, the Soviet Union launched an all-out espionage effort to uncover the military and defense secrets of the United States and Britain in the 1940s. Within days of Britain's highly classified decision in 1941 to begin research on building an atomic bomb, an informant in the British civil service notified the Soviets. As the top-secret plan to build the bomb, called the Manhattan Project, took shape in the United States, the Soviet spy ring got wind of it before the FBI knew of the secret program's existence.

Barely four years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, the Soviet Union detonated its own in August 1949, much sooner that expected. The Soviets did not lack for available recruits for spying, says John Earl Haynes, espionage historian and author of Early Cold War Spies. What drove these college-educated Americans and Britons to sell their nations' atomic secrets? Some were ideologically motivated, enamored of communist beliefs, explains Haynes. Others were motivated by the notion of nuclear parity; one way to prevent a nuclear war, they reasoned, was to make sure that no nation had a monopoly on that awesome power. For many years, the depth of Soviet spying was unknown. The big breakthrough began in 1946 when the United States, working with Britain, deciphered the code Moscow used to send its telegraph cables. Venona, as the decoding project was named, remained an official secret until it was declassified in 1995.

Because government authorities did not want to reveal that they had cracked the Russian code, Venona evidence could not be used in court, but it could trigger investigations and surveillance hoping to nail suspects in the act of spying or extract a confession from them. As Venona decryption improved in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it blew the cover of several spies. Investigations resulted in the execution or imprisonment of a dozen or more people who had passed atomic secrets to the Soviets, but no one knows how many spies got away. Here are some of the ones we know about: John Cairncross Considered the first atomic spy, John Cairncross was eventually identified as one of the Cambridge Five, a group of upper-middle class young men who had met at Cambridge University in the 1930s, became passionate communists and eventually Soviet spies during World War II and into the 1950s. In his position as secretary to the chairman of Britain's scientific advisory committee, Cairncross gained access to a high-level report in the fall of 1941 that confirmed the feasibility of a uranium bomb. He promptly leaked the information to Moscow agents.

In 1951 when British agents closed in on other members of the Cambridge spy ring, Cairncross was interrogated after documents in his handwriting were discovered in a suspect's apartment. Ultimately he was not charged, and according to some reports, asked by British officials to resign and keep quiet. He moved to the United States where he taught French literature at Northwestern University. In 1964, questioned again, he admitted to spying for Russia against Germany in WWII, but denied giving any information harmful to Britain. He went to work for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome and later lived in France.

Cairncross returned to England a few months before his death in 1995, and went to his grave insisting that the information he gave Moscow was "relatively innocuous." In the late 1990s when Russia under its new democracy made public its KGB files from the last 70 years, the documents revealed that Cairncross was indeed the agent who provided "highly secret documentation [of] the British Government to organise and develop the work on atomic energy." Klaus Fuchs Dubbed the most important atomic spy in history, Klaus Fuchs was a primary physicist on the Manhattan Project and a lead scientist at Britain's nuclear facility by 1949. Just weeks after the Soviets exploded their atomic bomb in August 1949, a Venona decryption of a 1944 message revealed that information describing important scientific processes related to construction of the A-bomb had been sent from the United Sates to Moscow. FBI agents identified Klaus Fuchs as the author. Born in Germany in 1911, Fuchs joined the Communist Party as student, and fled to England during the rise of Nazism in 1933.

Attending Bristol and Edinburgh universities, he excelled in physics. Because he was a German national he was interned for several months in Canada but returned and cleared to work on atomic research in England. By the time he became a British citizen in 1942, he had already contacted the Soviet Embassy in London and volunteered his services as a spy. He was transferred to the Los Alamos lab and began handing over detailed information about the bomb construction, including sketches and dimensions. When he returned to England in 1946, he went to work at Britain's nuclear research facility, and passed information on creating a hydrogen bomb to the Soviet Union. In December 1949, authorities, alerted by the Venona cable, questioned him. In a matter of few weeks, Fuchs confessed all. He was tried and sentenced to 14 years in prison. After serving nine years he was released to East Germany, where he resumed work as a scientist. He died in 1988. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are shown leaving New York City Federal Court after arraignment. (Bettmann / Corbis) Harry Gold was sentenced to 30 years in prison for sending stolen information about American industries to the Soviets.

His confession put authorities on the trail of other spies. (Bettmann / Corbis) At 19, Theodore Hall was the youngest scientist on the Manhattan project in 1944. He sent vital secrets to the Soviets before Klaus Fuchs but was able to get away with his misdeeds. (Associated Press) Klaus Fuchs was the primary physicist on the Manhattan Project. He sent information regarding the process relating to the construction of the A-bomb to Moscow. After confessing, Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years in prison. (Associated Press) David Greenglass was Ethel Rosenberg's brother. He was the third mole at the Manhattan Project. (Bettmann / Corbis) Theodore Hall For nearly half a century Fuchs was thought to have been the most significant spy at Los Alamos, but the secrets Ted Hall divulged to the Soviets preceded Fuchs and were also very critical. A Harvard graduate at age 18, Hall, at 19, was the youngest scientist on the Manhattan project in 1944. Unlike Fuchs and the Rosenbergs, he got away with his misdeeds.

Hall worked on experiments for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, the same type that the Soviet detonated in 1949. As a boy, Hall witnessed his family suffer during the Great Depression and his brother advised him to drop the family name Holtzberg to escape anti-Semitism. Such harsh realities of the American system affected young Hall, who joined the Marxist John Reed Club upon arrival at Harvard. When he was recruited to work at Los Alamos, he was haunted, he explained decades later, by thoughts of how to spare humanity the devastation of nuclear power. Finally, on leave in New York in October 1944, he decided to equalize the playing field, contacted the Soviets and volunteered to keep them apprised of the bomb research. With the help of his courier and Harvard colleague, Saville Sax (a fervent communist and aspiring writer), Hall used coded references to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass to set up meeting times. In December 1944 Hall delivered what was probably the first atomic secret from Los Alamos, an update on the creation of the plutonium bomb.

In the fall of 1946 he enrolled in University of Chicago, and was working on his PhD in 1950 when the FBI turned its spotlight on him. His real name had surfaced in a decrypted message. But Fuch's courier, Harry Gold who was already in prison, could not identify him as the man, other than Fuchs, that he had collected secrets from. Hall never went to trial. After a career in radiobiology, he moved to Great Britain and worked as a biophysicist until his retirement. When the 1995 Venona declassifications confirmed his spying from five decades earlier, he explained his motivations in a written statement: "It seemed to me that an American monopoly was dangerous and should be prevented. I was not the only scientist to take that view." He died in 1999 at age 74. Harry Gold, David Greenglass, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg When Klaus Fuchs confessed in January 1950, his revelations would lead to the arrest of the man to whom he had passed the atomic secrets in New Mexico, even though the courier had used an alias.

Harry Gold, a 39-year-old Philadelphia chemist had been ferrying stolen information, mainly from American industries, to the Soviets since 1935. When the FBI found a map of Santa Fe in Gold's home, he panicked and told all. Convicted in 1951 and sentenced to 30 years, his confession put authorities on the trail to other spies, most famously Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Ethel's brother David Greenglass. After being drafted into the Army, David Greenglass was transferred to Los Alamos in 1944, where he worked as a machinist. Encouraged by his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, a New York engineer and devoted communist who actively recruited his friends to spy, Greenglass soon began supplying information from Los Alamos. In addition to Fuchs and Hall, Greenglass was the third mole at the Manhattan Project, although they did not know of each other's covert work. In 1950 as the atomic spy network unraveled, Gold, who had picked up material from Greenglass in New Mexico, positively identified Greenglass as his contact. That identification turned the investigation away from Ted Hall, who initially was a suspect.

Greenglass confessed, implicating his wife, his sister and his brother-in law. To lessen their punishment, his wife came forward, providing details of her husband and her in-laws' involvement. She and Greenglass had given Julius Rosenberg handwritten documents and drawings of the bomb, and Rosenberg had devised a cut-up Jell-O box as a signal. The Venona decryptions also corroborated the extent of Julius Rosenberg's spy ring, though they were not made public. The Rosenbergs, however, denied everything and adamantly refused to name names or answer many questions. They were found guilty, sentenced to death in 1951 and despite pleas for clemency, executed on June 19, 1953 in the electric chair at Sing-Sing prison in New York. Because they chose to cooperate, Greenglass received 15 years and his wife was never formally charged. Lona Cohen Lona Cohen and her husband Morris were American communists who made a career of industrial espionage for the Soviets. But in August 1945, she picked up some Manhattan Project secrets from Ted Hall and smuggled them past security in a tissue box.

Soon after the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, authorities ramped up security for the scientists in the Los Alamos region. After rendezvousing with Hall in Albuquerque and stuffing Hall's sketch and documents under the tissues, Lona discovered that agents were searching and questioning train passengers. Posing as a hapless woman who had misplaced her ticket, she successfully distracted police, who handed her the "forgotten" box of tissues, whose secret papers she spirited to her Soviet handlers. When the investigations and trials of the early 1950s got scorchingly close, the Cohens fled to Moscow. In 1961 the couple, under aliases, resurfaced in a London suburb, living as Canadian antiquarian booksellers, a cover for their continued spying. Their spy paraphernalia included a radio transmitter stashed under the refrigerator, fake passports, and antique books concealing stolen information. At their trial the Cohens refused to spill their secrets, once again thwarting any lead to Ted Hall's spying. They received 20 years, but in 1969 were released in exchange for Britons incarcerated in the Soviet Union.

Both received that country's highest hero award before their deaths in the 1990s. Like this article?

Question: What was the name of the couple executed in 1953 for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, the first execution of civilians for espionage in US history?
Answer: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg