Around 30 years ago I had dinner at Dick Roberts’ place in New York.
Also in attendance was his girl friend Laura and David Thorstad. All of
us have left the SWP, but Dick-to my knowledge-was the only one to have
become a committed Christian. (Right, Dave?) At the time Dick was the
SWP’s economics expert and a rather blustering opinionated individual
without certain charms. He was also a notorious drunk. His path into
organized Christianity, as I understand it, was greased by sessions at
Alcoholics Anonymous.
At some point in the evening, the topic turned to the Rosenbergs. Dick,
who enjoyed being provocative especially after a few scotches under his
belt, stated emphatically that they were guilty-number one. Number two,
he thought that they should have admitted their guilt and crowed about
it along these lines: “Yes, we helped socialist Russia develop the
A-Bomb because we believe that the U.S. would have destroyed the country
if had no adequate defenses. In fact, Truman stated that he only dropped
A-Bombs on Japan in order to show the Russians that he meant business.
We acted on behalf of peace and social justice. Punish us if you must,
but history will absolve us.” In other words, give the same kind of
speech that Castro gave after going on trial for the attack on the
Moncada barracks.
Today’s New York Times contains an admission of sorts of Julius
Rosenberg’s guilt from a now self-confessed spy:
In 1951, Morton Sobell was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg on espionage charges. He served more than 18 years in Alcatraz
and other federal prisons, traveled to Cuba and Vietnam after his
release in 1969 and became an advocate for progressive causes.
Through it all, he maintained his innocence.
But on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, 91, dramatically reversed himself,
shedding new light on a case that still fans smoldering political
passions. In an interview, he admitted for the first time that he had
been a Soviet spy.
And he implicated his fellow defendant Julius Rosenberg, in a
conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and
industrial information and what the American government described as the
secret to the atomic bomb.
In the interview with The New York Times, Mr. Sobell, who lives in the
Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, was asked whether, as an electrical
engineer, he turned over military secrets to the Soviets during World
War II when they were considered allies of the United States and were
bearing the brunt of Nazi brutality. Was he, in fact, a spy?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that,” he replied. “I never thought of it as
that in those terms.”
I got to know Morton Sobell in 1989 after he showed up at a Tecnica
meeting. I had already read his memoir “On Doing Time,” an extremely
powerful account of his radicalization in the 1930s, his trial, and his
19 years at Alcatraz. He had returned recently from Vietnam where he had
been working on a project to develop low-cost hearing aids and now
wanted to do something similar in Nicaragua. I could be wrong, but I
seem to remember the staff in our California holding him at arm’s length
because of his past. We would soon be charged with running an espionage
ring out of Nicaragua, so perhaps caution did make sense in retrospect.
Of course, it didn’t help matters with Morton being even more
cantankerous than me on most occasions.
The Rosenberg trial has been one of the most important issues for the
left since the 1950s, when an international campaign mounted on their
behalf could not stave off Cold War hysteria. Their sons Robert and
Michael Meeropol spent decades trying to establish their innocence,
while journalists Walter and Miriam Schneir’s “Invitation to an Inquest”
made in my opinion a powerful case for both their innocence in one of
the century’s most blatant show trials. The judge Irving Kaufman, a Jew
like the Rosenbergs, did everything he could to prejudice the jury
against the defendants in order to establish his credentials as a “good
American”.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/atom-spies/
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