A judge signaled on Tuesday that he would order the release in the coming months of much of the secret testimony in the notorious espionage case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
But US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said he would make an exception for a pivotal witness whose questionable testimony helped send Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair: her 86-year-old brother.
The decision on the brother, David Greenglass, came at a Manhattan hearing at which leading historical groups argued that the biggest spy case of the Cold War era was important enough to qualify for a rare exception to secrecy rules protecting grand jury testimony.
Prosecutors had already consented to the unsealing of transcripts for 36 of the 46 grand jury witnesses’ testimonies that were requested by historians. Since the 36 witnesses are dead or gave permission for the disclosure, the judge didn’t bother to address those transcripts on Tuesday and was expected to formalize their release yesterday in a written order.
But in the case of three living witnesses who objected — Greenglass and two lesser figures — the judge said he agreed with the government’s stance that their privacy “overrides the public’s need to know.”
He cited letters to the court from an attorney for Greenglass saying the case still haunts his family.
Greenglass and his wife, Ruth Greenglass, after confessing to being part of a scheme to smuggle atomic secrets to the Soviets, agreed to testify against the Rosenbergs. During the 1951 trial, the couple linked Ethel Rosenberg to the plot by saying they saw her transcribing the stolen research data on a typewriter.
By cooperating, David Greenglass, a wartime machinist in Los Alamos, New Mexico, was spared a possible death sentence and served 10 years in prison. Ruth Greenglass, who died this year, was never charged.
The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.
Since then, decoded Soviet cables have seemed to confirm that Julius Rosenberg was a spy, but doubts have remained about Ethel Rosenberg’s involvement.
Georgetown University law professor David Vladeck, who represented the historical groups, argued on Tuesday that David Greenglass forfeited his right to keep his testimony secret by “thrusting himself” into the limelight with media interviews in recent years. In the interviews, Greenglass said he made up the trial account about the typewriter to protect his wife and she may have improvised the tale to appease prosecutors.
“If indeed the government was a party to that, then the public needs to know,” Vladeck said.
The judge responded that Greenglass “may be a hypocrite. He may be a liar. ... But does that cause me to release grand jury testimony?”
Afterward, Vladeck still called the judge’s position on the other witnesses “very good news” and predicted that the transcripts would be made public in the fall.
The judge reserved decision regarding the testimony of seven missing Rosenberg witnesses pending further efforts to confirm that they are either dead or will never be located.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS