Michael Yates
JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>
> 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. >>