The Rosenberg File: Second Edition
by Joyce Milton, Professor Ronald Radosh
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joyce Milton, Professor Ronald RadoshEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1997-02-27
ISBN: 0300072058
Number of pages: 606
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of The Rosenberg File: Second Edition
Book Review: A Pro-Prosection look at the Rosenberg Case
Summary: 2 Stars
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's conviction of espionage and their execution as traitors remains one of the most controversial criminal cases in American history. J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, called it the "crime of the century" (p. xx). Many believe in the Rosenbergs' innocence, adamantly proclaiming their execution resulted from an anti-Communist crusade. Still others see only smoke and mirrors in the Rosenbergs' claims of innocence, vilifying them as spies who sold the secret of the atomic bomb to the Russians. Radosh and Milton enter the fray, extensively reanalyzing the evidence in the case, including over 200,000 FBI documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.
In a lengthy preface, Radosh and Milton admit their book's controversial nature. While neglecting to address its criticisms, the authors comfortably declare the book "the most careful and balanced assessment" of the Rosenberg case (p. xvii). They attempt to bolster this claim through their own experiences with the evidence. Radosh describes, as a high school student, participating in a death vigil for the Rosenbergs, firmly convinced of their status as "martyred innocents" (p. xix). In his adulthood, Radosh felt strongly that a reexamination of the evidence would "prove the complicity of the government in a frame-up" (p. xx). As a trained historian, Radosh claimed he objectively dug into the evidence to search for the truth, no matter the consequences (p. xxii). He defended his motives:
As a man of the democratic Left, I certainly had no interest in serving the cause of domestic reaction or in justifying the actions of the new Cold Warriors. But historical truth also had its claims--even if some of that truth was unpleasant. To deny this would be to concede that the Left stands for falsehood--for the perpetuation of a myth regardless of the facts of the matter and, ultimately, for the right to define truth as whatever myth or constellation of myths serves the interest of a particular political position (p. xxiv).
As Radosh explored the evidence in the case, he became convinced that the Rosenbergs led an "extensive" spy network and that they actually committed the crimes alleged (p. xxiii).
Milton claims a similar journey. She "too originally held the conviction that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were innocent victims of a government frame-up" (p. xxiv). Through working with Radosh, she also changed her opinion of the Rosenbergs' guilt. The authors' stories explain the book's title: A Search for the Truth. Radosh and Milton present their work as the definitive treatment, alleging that the unbiased evidence alone will convince innocence-believers that the Rosenbergs actually committed treasonous offenses.
The authors cite Miriam and Walter Schneir's Invitation to an Inquest, in which the Schneirs asserted the Rosenbergs' innocence. Milton indicates she "found their arguments convincing" (p. xxv). Yet Radosh and Milton dismiss Invitation to an Inquest as "undoubtedly the brief for the defense that [defense attorney] Emanuel Bloch was never able to prepare adequately" (p. 43). Radosh and Milton reject a one-sided perspective and assert that their study remains balanced. Unfortunately, Radosh and Milton's book seeps of deep bias and a refusal to consider both sides of the evidence. Instead of presenting both sides of the case, Radosh and Milton present only the prosecution's view while they systemically dismantle every aspect of the defense. Contrary to their assertions, The Rosenberg File reads like a pro-prosecution argument and not like an unbiased search for the truth.
Radosh and Milton tell a simple story. The FBI discovered a KGB code book that led them to a British scientist named Klaus Fuchs who had been recruited to work on the Manhattan Project. Fuchs admitted to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union through a courier named "Raymond" who later turned out to be chemist Harry Gold. Initially, Fuchs failed to identify Gold in a photo lineup, but subsequently identified him after FBI prompting. When agents questioned Gold, he admitted relaying messages between Soviet agents and identified one such agent, David Greenglass. Under interrogation pressure, Greenglass named other agents, including his sister Ethel Rosenberg and her husband, Julius. The Rosenbergs, when arrested and questioned, strongly maintained their innocence and lack of involvement in espionage.
Assessing the evidence in the case, Radosh and Milton conclude that "Julius Rosenberg, amateur though he may have been, managed over a period of years to become the coordinator of an extensive espionage operation whose contacts were well placed to pass on information on top-secret military projects in the fields of radar and aeronautics. Ethel Rosenberg probably knew of and supported her husband's endeavors ..." (p. 450).
They base this conclusion on their independent investigation. However, none of Radosh and Milton's evidence solidly supports their conclusion. They admit as such, stating the case lacks "hard information," yet somehow remain comfortable concluding guilt based on nothing more than unfounded accusations and conjecture (p. 451).
Radosh and Milton claim this as a work of serious historical scholarship. However, one glaring flaw presents itself repeatedly throughout the narrative. Radosh and Milton do not gather the evidence from both sides and objectively assess the evidence's strengths or weaknesses. They present the prosecution narrative a step at a time and dismiss any defense objections to it. The authors never assess the defense evidence other than to attack or dismiss it. The authors' bias reveals itself so readily that the text lacks any appearance of impartiality.
A few examples demonstrate the authors' lack of objectivity. After Julius Rosenberg's initial interrogation, officers released him. Rosenberg returned to his life and did not flee. Why, the authors ask. "One explanation," they say, "was that he was innocent" (p. 93). The authors then spend ten pages listing several possible explanations for remaining home, including his desire to "look" innocent. They lack any evidence for these assertions other than pure conjecture. The authors devote one sentence to the innocence explanation and spend ten pages attacking it. Examples like this occur so frequently though the narrative that it becomes extremely difficult to view Radosh and Milton's text as an unbiased look at the case or the evidence.
The case surrounding Ethel Rosenberg, in particular, further emphasizes the authors' overall bias. Ethel, according to the evidence, allegedly participated in conversations in which Julius conducted espionage activities and typed key traitorous documents. The prosecutor said Ethel's activities consisted largely of typing each key, "blow by blow against her own country, in the interests of the Soviets" (p. 167). Radosh and Milton admit the dearth of evidence in support of these allegations, which "rest[] entirely on the Greenglasses' uncorroborated word and plac[e Ethel] in an accessory role at best" (p. 98).
In fact, the Greenglasses' original statements to the FBI failed to name Ethel as a conspirator. Only after the Hoover arrested and charged Ethel to "leverage" the case against Julius, and after an FBI meeting with Gold and the Greenglasses, did the Greenglasses change their story (p. 99). Why the change, the authors ask. "One obvious possibility is the desire to shield Ethel," the authors conclude, but fail to consider the other "obvious" possibility that the FBI coerced the Greenglasses into changing their story (p. 164). Since the Greenglasses spent time with the Rosenbergs, the authors summarily conclude the Greenglasses must have told the truth: "The Greenglasses were close to both Julius and Ethel and in all probability their opinion of Ethel's complicity is correct" (p. 167). Additionally, since Soviets often recruited husbands and wives, the authors say, and since Ethel refused to remain a passive housewife, they conclude she fit the mold of a spy. The authors make these conclusions again without evidence. "When it comes to assessing hard evidence, however, the case for Ethel's involvement becomes more difficult to document" (p. 167).
The authors acknowledge the lack of "hard information" of Ethel's active participation and admit that the case against her "was based in large part on a last-minute change of testimony by the key witnesses against her and was relatively weak, even so" (p. 451). Despite these concerns, they easily conclude her guilt in perhaps one of the more offensive leaps of logic in the book:
Ethel was undoubtedly being used as a pawn to push Julius into confessing. This does not mean that anyone in the Justice Department believed they were persecuting [sic] an innocent woman. ... Indeed, based on the entire range of evidence, it would be hard to imagine that Ethel did not know and approve of her husband's activities. Perhaps she was even his full partner ... . Living with a man who saw himself as a "soldier of Stalin" could not have been easy (p. 102).
Radosh and Milton decide, without a shred of hard evidence, that Ethel "perhaps" partnered with Julius based on nothing other than the authors' speculation. Additionally, the authors derogatorily name Julius Rosenberg a "soldier of Stalin." The inflammatory word choice reveals the authors' bias against the Rosenbergs.
According to Radosh and Milton, Ethel ended up losing her life because she engaged in espionage. Yet their own evidence supports a much stronger purpose motivating Ethel's execution: Ethel failed to comport herself with dominant gender roles. She "failed to display the proper signs of victimization" (p. 260). Ethel's "behavior on the witness stand" established her as a dominant woman, which "cost her her life" (p. 260). J. Edgar Hoover sympathized with Ethel initially until he discovered her negative maternal qualities:
[Hoover] continued to regard Ethel as an accomplice who could "be presumed to be acting under the influence of her husband." ... In the category of humane considerations, Hoover chose to stress not Ethel's sex per se but her situation as the mother of two small children. Incredibly, Hoover appears to have been the only government official to raise this objection to the prospect of a double execution that would leave two children orphaned. Perhaps Hoover was primarily worried about the wave of public sympathy that the children's plights might generate. Then again, Hoover may have found the prospect of Ethel's execution genuinely repugnant. The bachelor Hoover had been closer to no one than to his own mother, sharing her house and caring for her devotedly until she died after a long illness in 1938, and an idealized conception of motherhood appears to have been as much a part of his ideological makeup as his reflexive hatred for "subversives." Significantly, he was not to change his mind about Ethel's fate until much later, when secret FBI reports gave him an excuse for convincing himself that Ethel was not a good mother after all (p. 280-81).
When asked why he failed to pardon Ethel, President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated that Ethel deserved death because she was "the more strong-minded and the apparent leader of the two" (p. 378).
At no point do Radosh and Milton analyze the blatant gender discrimination motivating Ethel's prosecution and execution. Ethel, it appears, deserved to be executed because she took on masculine roles. Women who refuse to conform to societal expectations become outcasts and degenerates. The prosecution successfully demonized Ethel as an overly-masculine woman, which ultimately landed her in the electric chair. Radosh and Milton refuse to consider these possibilities, concluding instead that because Ethel married Julius, she must have "known and approved of [his] activities" (p. 102). The fact that Radosh and Milton so willingly condemn Ethel without considering the lack of evidence or barefaced gender discrimination undermines their objectivity.
Much of the book contains the authors' assertion that defense attorney, Emanuel Bloch sabotaged the case to appease Communists. Bloch "had to tread carefully in [his] cross-examinations lest [he] turn up matters better left buried" (p. 203). Bloch "had to know that the Communist element ... could only be satisfied by the Rosenbergs' martyrdom" and so he sabotaged his argument at the Supreme Court (p. 409). Bloch prevented the Rosenbergs' new trial because it "might well place in jeopardy accomplices who had so far escaped prosecution" (p. 400). Again, no evidence supports any of these claims. In fact, Bloch asserted until his death the Rosenbergs' innocence (p. 209). Radosh and Milton continually speculate and assign motives to parties without data or evidence.
The authors rely on 200,000 FBI documents as conclusive proof of many of their assertions. Yet they acknowledge in a bibliographical note that the FBI files were routinely destroyed, altered, or edited if "the release of classified information ... would damage the national defense" (p. 478). They claim, even in the face of contradictory evidence, that "this is not the case with the Rosenberg material" (p. 478). The authors validate the FBI documents as authoritative "proof" of the Rosenberg's guilt. However, they tacitly admit that "the files do, as a matter of course, contain deletions" and that "the FBI has refused to release a great deal of material on security grounds" (p. 478). Radosh and Milton's willingness to condemn the Rosenbergs based on the reports of an agency which admittedly alters, destroys, and refuses to release information pertinent to the case further evidences their lack of objectivity.
Nonetheless, Radosh and Milton engaged in an exhaustive study. They extensively footnote the entire text and rely heavily on primary source material. They assert that when possible, they sought to confirm every fact through multiple sources. When a fact rests on only one source, Radosh and Milton identify the fact as such and openly admit the fact's lack of independent verification. The authors appear to have thoroughly engaged in primary research and attempt to justify their conclusions with as much evidence as possible.
At the end, one conclusion remains certain from Radosh and Milton's work: the FBI, in over 200,000 pages of documents, could not produce one piece of hard evidence against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg other than the word of questionable witnesses. Unfortunately, Radosh and Milton's work reveals an FBI, a prosecutor, and a judge who willingly sent two potentially innocent people to their deaths based on speculative evidence. Did Radosh and Milton discover "the truth" on their journey? Regrettably, Radosh and Milton not only failed to find the truth, they only created more questions surrounding the guilt or innocence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Summary of The Rosenberg File: Second Edition
This highly acclaimed book -- hailed as the definitive account of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case -- now includes a new introduction and epilogue that discuss the most recent evidence. It provides information from the Khruschev and Molotov memoirs, the Venona papers, and material contained in a Discovery Channel documentary that will be shown in March.20th Century Books
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