Radosh/Rosenberg File

[JKSCHW at aol.com]

I confess not to having read The Rosenberg Files, being allergic to post-left 
Radosh in large doses. However, I will point out that espionage was indeed a 
capital crime in the 40s and 50s, and for all I know may still be, 
technically, today. So if JR spied for the USSR, he committed a crime 
punishable by death under then-existing law. The Verona evidence is pretty 
strong that JR was a Soviet spy: Walter and Miriam Schneier, who proved (to 
my satisfaction) that the FBI framed the Rosenbergs--it appears, now, that 
they did so because they didn't want to reveal the Verona source--accept that 
JR was guilty of espionage. Whether he, or anyone, should have been executed 
for that, or anything else, is another story. The Verona evidence also 
exonerates ER as a spy. She was prosecuted, apparently, ti pressure JR into 
confessing. If she knew about and aided JR's activities, she might have been 
technically guilty under accomplice liability as a co-conspirator or for 
aiding and abeeting, which makes you, in law, guilty of the underlying crime. 
To what extent Radosh says this, I don't know. --jks

In a message dated 10/13/00 6:29:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
ggeboski at hotmail.com writes:

<< The upshot of "The Rosenberg Files" is that:

 

 1) Based on the voluminous documentation presented in the book, Ethel 

 Rosenberg in all likelihood did not commit the crime for which she was 

 executed, and may not have even consciously spied for the USSR;

 

 2) Based on the voluminous documentation presented in the book, Julius 

 Rosenberg in all likelihood did not commit a capital crime, but he was a spy 

 for the USSR;

 

 3) The arrest, trial, and execution of the Rosenbergs was justified and was 

 in fact a triumph of American justice, and people on the Left who still 

 criticize it are simply refusing to face reality, and are hopeless dupes at 

 best, if not outright apologists for treason.

 

 Now, the only way I see 1) and 2) implying 3) is by accepting an unstated 

 assumption something like the following: Julius deserved death because he 

 was a Soviet spy, and Ethel deserved death because she loved a Soviet spy. >>