by Howard Blum
“On or about November 29, 1944,” Bob followed along, his ear glued to the receiver, “my wife, Ruth, arrived in New Mexico from New York City and told me that Julius Rosenberg, my brother-in-law, had asked if I would give information on the Atom Bomb. . . .”
Another new name, Bob realized with a start. Who is this Rosenberg? Where does he fit into the Soviets’ operations? But he pushed those questions aside for the time being, as the disembodied voice continued reading.
“About February 1945, my wife moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, from New York City. . . . Approximately a month after that time, a man came to the place where Ruth was living, 209 North High Street, Albuquerque, New Mexico. I did not know this man’s name at the time but recently recognized his pictures in various newspapers as being Harry Gold. . . .”
We’ve nailed Kalibre! Bob rejoiced. We’ve finally got him! And all the time, oblivious to Bob’s leaping heart, the matter-of-fact reading of the confession continued. Snippets intruded, battling for his attention with the plans that were already starting to take shape in his operational mind: “. . . a torn or cut piece of paper card which fitted a torn piece of paper card furnished me as a means of identifying this man. . . . Gold gave me an envelope containing $500. . . . I furnished him with information concerning the Los Alamos Project. . . .”
Then the confession shifted in tone, and Greenglass’s earnest rationale for his treason held Bob’s full consideration: “I felt it was gross negligence on the part of the United States not to give Russia the information about the Atom Bomb because she was an ally.”
Therefore, Bob thought with utter contempt, you took it upon yourself to betray your country, and in the reckless process change the course of history. Not for the first time he wondered how much of what was done in life, good and bad, was a result of self-delusion. Or was it merely a quest for self-importance, to be an actor strutting across the world stage rather than a member of the audience stuck in the back row?
But Bob understood there would be time later for those sorts of musings. Bob swiftly put aside all his personal animosity, all his unforgiving speculations about the motives for treason, and instead focused on the tasks ahead. Sleep was no longer possible. Instead he bolted out of bed and swiftly began getting dressed. He hurried to his car, and drove, he would recall, “like a crazy man” to headquarters. He needed to ensure that orders were sent immediately to the New York office. Greenglass must be detained overnight. He could not be released to warn Rosenberg or anyone else in the network. And Bob had another sudden, but rapidly developing fear—Rosenberg must not be allowed to flee.
It was still hours before dawn, and as Bob arrived at the Justice Department Building, he saw that it was ablaze with lights. He wasn’t the only one who had concerns about what the day ahead would bring. Al Belmont, an assistant director, and his boss Mickey Ladd, who ran the Domestic Intelligence Division, were already at their desks, and Belmont handed him a sheet of paper. It was the initial cable that had come from New York reporting the results of the Greenglass interrogation. On it was a penciled note, written in a familiar schoolboy cursive, the first letter in each word capitalized for emphasis. “We Must Move Promptly,” the director had written.
Bob drafted the teletype that was sent straight off to New York. They were to confront Rosenberg at his apartment at eight a.m.; it was presumed he’d be home at that hour. “Question him concerning his knowledge of Greenglass, and if appropriate, work into questioning him on his own activities,” Bob ordered.
He needed to know where Rosenberg fit into the case. In his head he was already trying to forge a link to the network of spies and code names Meredith had uncovered. And, wish of wishes, to Liberal, their ringleader. At that speculative predawn moment, his nerves taut as he anticipated the days ahead, he wanted to believe he was getting closer, moving in on them. He tried to convince himself that the first tentative steps he’d taken two years ago in Meredith’s office had been leading him to this moment. But thinking of Meredith and the valuable lessons in his friend’s deliberateness, he also had to concede that his own impetuosity had often betrayed him in the past, and might well be pointing him in the wrong direction this strained morning.
ROSENBERG HAD BEEN SHAVING, AND he was still shirtless when he opened the door to the two agents, William Norton and John Harrington, at eight that morning. Your brother-in-law has been picked up for questioning in connection with charges arising out of his wartime work in Los Alamos, the agents explained with a deliberate vagueness. Then they waited to see how he would react. Rosenberg was unruffled. Perhaps, the agents silently wondered, he assumed the Bureau had once again been hounding Greenglass about the stolen U-238 ashtray souvenirs. Or maybe he did realize this was the catastrophe he’d been anticipating for years but had long ago girded himself with a soldier’s battlefield resignation. Then again, the agents also had to concede, there was always the chance he was an innocent man. The two FBI men considered all these possibilities as they weighed the suspect’s calm, collected reaction to their early-morning appearance at his door. But they could draw no conclusion.
Rosenberg at last told them to take a seat; he needed to finish shaving and dressing. And when he returned and they asked permission to search the apartment, he flatly refused. Not without a warrant, he said evenly. It was only when they suggested he might prefer to continue the conversation at their offices that he softened and acquiesced.
At Foley Square, the questioning dragged on for six hours, growing increasingly barbed and reproachful. Had he known about his brother-in-law’s secret work at Los Alamos? Had he spoken to Ruth Greenglass about approaching her husband to pass on secret material to the Soviets? Had he arranged for a Soviet courier to contact Greenglass? Had he introduced Greenglass to the Russian agent who’d hurled questions about detonation lenses during an evening’s drive around Manhattan? Rosenberg’s responses were a snapped drumroll of no, no, no, and more nos.
Agent Harrington, frustrated, fearing the interrogation would soon come to an end without any conclusive results, decided to shake Rosenberg out of his complacency. “What would you say if we told you your brother-in-law said you asked him to supply information to the Russians?” he pointedly challenged.
“Bring him here,” Rosenberg shot back without skipping a beat. “I’ll call him a liar to his face.”
Greenglass was just down the hall, but the FBI was not ready to have the two men face each other. The outcome was too unpredictable. They had Greenglass’s signed confession, but how would he respond when staring into his brother-in-law’s stony, unforgiving face?
After that, things began to fall apart. The FBI had tried to shake Rosenberg, but he had not budged. He would not admit to anything. Sensing their loss of confidence, Rosenberg finally asked to call a lawyer.
“Ask the FBI if you are under arrest,” the lawyer instructed.
Rosenberg put the question to his interrogators, and they conceded he was not.
“Then pick yourself up and come down to our office,” the lawyer advised.
Rosenberg rose from his chair and, after giving the agents a bow whose formality was nothing but mocking, turned on his heels and left. He undoubtedly felt he’d handled himself well. He had taken all their shots, rebuffed all their questions, and he had not revealed anything.
But in the course of questioning, Rosenberg had absently mentioned his wife’s name, and this small disclosure would come back to haunt him even before the day was over.
THEY SAT SIDE BY SIDE around a conference table that was very much like the one in Foley Square, only this one was in the Justice Department Building in Washington. Jim McInerney, a shrewd former FBI man who now headed the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, presided, and Bob, along with Belmont and Ladd, were the Bureau’s representatives. Experience had taught Bob that these discussions were too often tugs-of-war between the FBI and the Justice lawyers over whether the Bureau had built a sturdy enough case against a suspect to prosecute, and
over the years Bob had come out on the losing end of these arguments more times than he liked to recall. This morning, his nerves jangling from too little sleep and too much coffee, he’d entered the arena with his mind set to put up an epic fight. He knew that at the same time in New York both Greenglass and Rosenberg were being interrogated and he was going to do all he could to make sure they weren’t turned loose. The chance that either of them might flee before he had a chance to prove whether they were operatives in the network he and Meredith had been pursuing made him reckless. His temper was famous, and even though he was the lowest-ranking man in the room, he was ready to let it fly. He took measure of the government lawyers, and all he could see were newcomers, and not very knowledgeable ones at that, to what had for so long been his own personal mission.
But no sooner had Bob settled into his seat and the latest summaries of the talkative Greenglass’s post-breakfast revelations had been passed around than it became apparent that everyone was of the same mind, at least regarding one of the suspects. Greenglass had revealed that Rosenberg had introduced him to a Soviet agent who had “asked me questions about a high-explosive lens which was being experimented with at the Los Alamos Bomb Project.” Justice was all onboard with charging the former soldier with conspiracy to convey to another country information vital to the national defense of the United States. As Bob listened, the call was made to the U.S. attorney in Manhattan requesting that Greenglass be taken into custody.
With that done, the discussion moved on to Ruth Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg. Greenglass had implicated both of them, but McInerney argued that without additional supporting evidence there was no case against the couple. Ruth, he pointed out, hadn’t even been questioned. And as for Rosenberg, the agents in New York reported he was holding strong, not admitting to anything.
Bob, as if on cue, erupted. We can’t let him run. There’s too much at stake, he insisted, more emphatically than he knew was appropriate.
Perhaps, then, it was simply to give his friend a moment to pull himself together that Mickey Ladd spoke up. He patiently made the case that it was unlikely Rosenberg would try to escape. He had a family. Two children. And his wife was David Greenglass’s sister. Ethel, he added, after consulting one of the pages in front of him.
The discussion continued, but Bob no longer had any awareness of the debate. In his mind he was transported back to Meredith’s office. And there was the code breaker in his soft, yet confident, voice sharing his latest “Special Study.” Intelligence on Liberal’s wife. Surname that of her husband. Christian name Ethel. 29 years old.
Bob knew he had at last found Liberal.
At that instant he knew he would break the ring.
And with that sudden heartening understanding, with his thoughts focused on the investigations he’d need to launch, Bob’s anger seeped away. He sat there mutely, the conversation swirling around him. All his thoughts were centered on the attack he’d lead, on the KGB cables filled with code names he hoped to soon untangle. When the meeting concluded, and the decision had been made that “process should not be issued at this time” against Ruth Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg, his reaction was restrained. Then he hurried back to his desk, eager to share what he had just learned with his friend at Arlington Hall.
“Discreet surveillance?” BOB BELLOWED INCREDULOUSLY to Al Belmont. The Bureau’s lackadaisical policy made no sense, he argued, his temper once again ignited.
A month had passed since Greenglass’s initial confession, and while Bob had begun to make progress in identifying other members of the ring, he had also grown increasingly concerned that Liberal would slip away before he finished the job. Yet the Bureau was only maintaining a half-hearted watch on Rosenberg. Worse, Bob knew from reading the New York agents’ reports that the Knickerbocker Village housing project where Rosenberg lived was a surveillance nightmare. The buildings were connected by a maze of underground passageways; an army of watchers would be put to the test if Rosenberg took it into his head to flee. A few agents, most of them working straight nine-to-five shifts, could never get the job done. Bob came to work every morning, he confided to Belmont, waiting to hear the news that Rosenberg had fled, vanished into thin air.
But Belmont said his hands were tied. The fifth floor was working with Justice on this. And the official position, frustrating as it might be to Bob, was that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to move against Rosenberg. Greenglass’s initial confessions were not enough. And apparently on the advice of his attorney, who was busy trying to work out a plea deal, he’d stopped talking.
Bob shuffled off in disgust. He had the evidence to convict Rosenberg. It was there in the cables that Meredith had decoded. The incriminating words screaming at him. Only the government wouldn’t allow the decrypted messages to be introduced as evidence in court. It could not be revealed that Arlington Hall had cracked the Soviets’ code. Hell, even the president had not been told about Venona. The intelligence brass would rather the ringleader of a KGB spy network escape than let the Russians know we had read their mail. It was sheer madness. To be this close and yet unable to claim his rightful victory left Bob deeply demoralized.
Then on July 17, even though a plea deal had not yet been fully negotiated, both of the Greenglasses started talking once again. The husband’s statement ran for seven typed, single-spaced pages, and for the first time he portrayed Rosenberg as the linchpin in a network of Soviet spies. He claimed his brother-in-law had contacts with scientists and engineers—his “boys,” Rosenberg had proudly called them—and made regular deliveries of microfilmed documents to Russian couriers. He had even stolen a highly classified proximity fuse from his job at Emerson Radio. And Rosenberg had repeatedly urged him to run, giving him money as well as sharing an escape plan the Soviets had devised.
Ruth Greenglass’s statement was, in its own bitter way, no less damning of her brother-in-law, but, more significant, it also for the first time made accusations against Ethel Rosenberg. She said that her sister-in-law had been present when Rosenberg had asked her to persuade David to “make scientific information available to the Russians.” In fact, she claimed, Ethel “told me I should at least ask” her husband to spy.
Bob read these statements as soon as they came in over the teletype. After only his quick initial read, he was certain that he had just been handed the evidence he needed. But just in case, he read them again. Finally satisfied, he confronted Al Belmont, gave him a quick summary of the smoking guns he was holding, and asked Belmont to accompany him; the sticklers at Justice would pay a lot more attention to an assistant director than to a supervisor.
The two of them confronted Jim McInerney in his office. McInerney had grown up on the streets of New York, a tough Irish kid who had made it, against all odds, to Fordham Law School, and he still had a lot of fight left in him. If the two Bureau men thought they were going to steamroll him to reverse his original decision not to prosecute Rosenberg, they were in for a battle. But after he read the new statements, he was a convert. He told them to have the New York field office issue a complaint and an arrest warrant for Julius Rosenberg.
There was not, however, sufficient evidence to charge Ethel Rosenberg. “So far,” as McInerney saw the case, “it appears there would be just one witness against Ethel to show her complicity, which witness would be Ruth. . . .”
And that, Bob thought to himself, was how he saw things, too. He still remembered the deciphered cable: Christian name Ethel. In view of her delicate health she does not work.
At six forty-five in the evening of that same day, seven agents marched into the Knickerbocker Village apartment and arrested Julius Rosenberg. His eight-year-old son, Michael, had been listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio. One of the agents abruptly turned the set off; it was a small, petty gesture, but he apparently felt it was nevertheless a necessary one.
The boy, his father’s son, turned the radio back on.
BOB RECEIVED THE NEWS ON August 7 that Ethel Rosenberg would
be summoned before a grand jury. The government’s evidence against her, he knew better than anyone, consisted of only Ruth Greenglass’s assertions; and he still remembered enough of his law school classes to know that hearsay was inadmissible. So he’d been surprised that she’d been subpoenaed, and then further taken aback to learn that she had invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than testify.
Four days later, Ethel Rosenberg was summoned again. This time she was told if she would not answer questions, she would be charged with conspiracy. She refused, and was arrested.
Sitting at his desk in Washington, Bob thought about the Justice Department’s strategy. Perhaps her indictment was a way to ramp up the pressure, to get her to talk. After all, she must have known about her husband’s activities. A case for conspiracy, Bob had to admit, could reasonably be made. But at the same time, he recalled something Meredith had pointed out: Moscow Center had not considered her significant enough to have a code name. Christian name Ethel. Does not work. Yet, Ruth Greenglass’s complicity had been obvious to the Russians. The KGB had given her the code name Wasp—and she was not facing any charges. Bob told himself nothing would come of Ethel Rosenberg’s indictment.
Only later, he’d say, would he remember another moment that happened just days after this indictment. His eyes had strayed to a newspaper on an adjacent desk at headquarters. The headline was about the fighting in Korea. The conflict was less than two months old and going badly for the UN Command led by over 100,000 U.S. troops. Nearly every day American soldiers were dying in a war that many believed would not have come about if an emboldened Russia had not had its own atomic weapon to brandish. And by the time that memory rose up in his mind, Bob had lost all his previous certainty about Ethel Rosenberg’s fate. Instead he found himself grappling with the sickening notion that this nation, feeling threatened, might prove to be as ruthless and vindictive as its enemies.