Secret Testimony Released from the Rosenberg Atomic Espionage Case

Rosenberg Grand Jury Files

Secret Testimony Released from the Rosenberg Atomic Espionage Case

For more information contact:
Thomas Blanton or Meredith Fuchs – 202/994-7000
David Vladeck – 202/662-9535

www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080911/index.htm

Washington, D.C., September 11, 2008 – Most of the Rosenberg Grand Jury files were released today, more than fifty years after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted on espionage charges, convicted, and executed.

According to historians who reviewed the documents this morning at the National Security Archive, the most striking new evidence comes from the grand jury testimony of Ruth Greenglass, sister-in-law of Ethel Rosenberg. In contradiction to Ruth Greenglass’s later trial testimony, her grand jury testimony does not mention Ethel Rosenberg’s typing any of the information being passed to the Soviets about the U.S. atomic program. In fact, the grand jury testimony describes that information being passed in Ruth’s own longhand (p. 9142).

Ronald Radosh, co-author of The Rosenberg File and one of the experts who filed affidavits in the case, commented, “The grand jury documents cast significant doubt on the key prosecution charge used to convict Ethel Rosenberg at the trial and sentence her to death.”

“It is quite clear that if the trial were held today the government would have had a very difficult time establishing that Ethel Rosenberg was an active participant in this conspiracy and indeed it looks like the key testimony against her was perjured,” concluded lead counsel David Vladeck. “It is clear that at some point the government strategy took a dramatic turn. Grand jury testimony reveals that there was a great deal of espionage on conventional munitions but none of that came out at trial. Why not? It may be that the government did not want to reveal the extent to which Rosenberg and other Soviet spy rings had managed to penetrate the U.S. defense establishment.”

To see the transcripts and more information, go to www.nsarchive.org. Return to our website later today for more insights into the contents of the records.

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