by Vikas Khatri
After the fairest and most impartial summing up of the evidence by Judge Kaufman, the jury retired at 4.53 in the afternoon of March 28 and did not return until 11 o’clock next morning—when they pronounced all three defendants guilty as charged.
“Your crime is worse than murder,” Judge Kaufman told the Rosenbergs when they came up for sentence. “In your case
I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russian the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused the Communist aggression in Korea, with resulting casualties exceeding 50,000 Americans.”
While not doubting for a moment that Morton Sobell was also engaged in espionage activities, the judge said he was bound to recognise the lesser degree of his implication. He was consequently given 30 years, the maximum prison term provided by the statute. Next day, David Greenglass was sentenced to 15 years in the light of the considerable help he had rendered in the prosecution of the Rosenbergs.
A series of appeals and petitions followed, which in the case of the Rosenbergs had the effect of delaying the execution of the death sentence for more than two years. Their petition for executive clemency was presented to President Truman on January 11, 1953. It was supported by a flood of letters mostly in favour of the sentence being commuted. Among the writers were Albert Einstein, the world-famous scientist—who had earlier urged President Roosevelt to make sure that the United States did not fall behind in the race to make the atom bomb—and a group of 3000 lawyers who declared that “the death penalty would not conform to the great pattern of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence”. But President Truman declined to act on the petition which reached him during the last days of his term of office, and he left the decision to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, his successor in the White House.
President Eisenhower refused to interfere with the sentence on the Rosenbergs. Meanwhile, the appeals and motions for stays of execution continued. At the beginning of June, the Rosenbergs’ counsel announced that their clients had rejected the offer which had been made to them on behalf of the Attorney-General that their sentences would be commuted to life imprisonment if they made full confessions and exposed any other members of their spy ring who had not been brought to justice.
“By asking us to repudiate the truth of our innocence,” they said at the time. “The government admits its doubts concerning our guilt. We will not help to purify this foul record of a fraudulent and barbarous sentence.” Shortly afterwards the Supreme Court voted by a majority of five to four against granting a further stay of execution.
At the last moment, however, it looked as if there would be a stay when Supreme Court Justice Douglas ordered it in response to an application for time to argue a point of law—namely that the Espionage Act of 1917 had been superseded by the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, under which a death sentence could not be imposed except on the recommendation of a jury. On June 19, Justice Douglas’s decision was revoked by a majority of the Supreme Court. Defence counsel submitted a final petition to the President for clemency which Eisenhower again rejected.
The Rosenbergs went to the electric chair in Sing-Sing the same evening and met their end bravely, protesting their innocence to the last. The time of execution was advanced from the usual hour of 11 p.m. to 8 p.m. to avoid carrying out the sentences on the Jewish Sabbath.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the first Americans to be sentenced to death for espionage by a non-military court—while Mrs. Rosenberg was the first woman in the United States since Mrs. Surratt had been sentenced for her part in the assassination of President Lincoln, to suffer death by the judgement of a Federal tribunal.
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The Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus Affair involved the arrest and conviction in 1895 of French Captain Alfred Dreyfus on charges of treason. The case and the aftermatch caused a division in French military and political circles.
Alfred Dreyfus was born in Alsace, France, the son of a Jewish textile manufacturer. His family eventually moved to Paris where in 1880 he entered École Polytechnique Military School. He would eventually make his way through the military ranks where he rose to the rank of Captain. In 1892, he took the War College examination but was given poor scores from General Boonefond, a member of the panel judging the candidate. Boonefond felt that Jews were not desired on the staff. Dreyfus and another Jewish candidate protested the action, but to no avail.
In 1894, French Army counter-intelligence became aware that military information related to new artillery positions was being passed to the Germans. It was determined that the person passing it must be in a position high up in the General staff. Suspicion fell upon Dreyfus, who was arrested and convicted of treason in a secret court martial, was stripped of his military rank and was sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.
In 1896, Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart presented evidence that showed that Dreyfus was not the party guilty of passing the information, but instead that Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy had done so. The French government sought to silence Picquart by transferring him to southern Tunisia, but the information had been leaked to the French press. Dreyfus case had been championed by Emile Zola, the author of the pamphlet J’Accuse, an open letter published on January 13, 1898, in the newspaper L’Aurore. Zola pointed out judicial errors as well as how flimsy the evidence was against Dreyfus. He also accused the French government and then-President Felix Faure of anti-semitism. Because of his stance and the stir that he caused, Zola was found guilty of libel in February, 1898 and fled to England. Public outrage over the anti-semetic overtones of the prosecution as well as the following coverup forced the French President, Emile Loubet to grant a pardon Dreyfus in 1899 and he was released from prison. Although he was no longer in prison, he was officially still termed a traitor. He stated that “The government of the Republic has given me back my freedom. It is nothing for me without my honor.”
Finally on July 12, 1906, Dreyfus was officially exonerated by a military tribunal and was reinstated in the army, now as a Major. After serving in World War I, he eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and received the Croix de Guerre for his service. Dreyfus died on July 12, 1935 in Paris.
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The Guillaume Affair
The Guillaume Affair was an espionage scandal that threatened to bring down the government of West Germany during the Cold War.
Willy Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm to an unwed mother in the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck, a part of the German empire. At the age of 19, he fled Germany to escape Nazi persecution and changed his name to Willy Brandt to avoid detection by Nazi agents hunting him down for his anti-Nazi activities. He soon thereafter became a Norwegian citizen. He returned to Germany in 1946 and became the Mayor of Berlin in 1957, a position he would hold until 1966 when he became the German Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor. In 1969, he was elected Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
As Chancellor, Brandt was a controversial but admired figure for his work in trying to solidify relations between West Germany and Cold War adversaries. He was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1970 and in 1971 and was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his work in improving relations between Poland, East Germany and the Soviet Union. He negotiated a peace treaty with Poland and agreed on boundaries between Poland and West Germany as well as between Czechoslovakia and West Germany.
One of Brandt’s closest aides was his personal assistant Gunter Guillaume. In 1973, West German intelligence agents became suspicious of Gullaume and determined that he was an East German spy operating under Markus Wolf, the head of intelligence for the East German Ministry for State Security and Guillaume was arrested on April 24, 1974. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison for espionage and his wife Christel was sentenced to eight for aiding him. They had both become spies for the East Germans in 1956 and returned to the country in 1981 as they were released separately in a prisoner exchange between the East and
West German governments. Guillaume was treated as a hero upon his return.
For Brandt and his Social Democratic Party, the revelation was an enormous blow to an already fragile government. Brandt had been caught up in several scandals for alleged adultery as well as other personal issues. He accepted the brunt of the blame for Guillaume’s espionage and resigned from his position as Chancellor on May 6, 1974.
Despite Brandt’s suggestion that Guillaume was planted as a spy in order to orchestrate his (Brandt’s downfall) Markus Wolf later swore that such was not the case and that the Guillaume affair had been of the biggest mistakes in the history of the East German secret service.
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