Radosh, the Rosenbergs and DSA

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Fri Jul 13 21:03:32 PDT 2001


Wheh he was on the left he wrote a pretty good book on the unions and US foreign policy.

The post on the Rosenbergs put here is flaed in various respects. I don't know enough about the ins and outs of the R case, although I read his book and the Schneier's. I was persuaded by the latter at the time that the FBI framed the Rs. That is consistent with Julius and/or Ethel being spies. The frameup might have been to conceal the real sources of their information. A few years ago in the Nation the Schneiers said that they thought that the Verona material showed that Julius was a spy.

However, Radosh says that Julius provided the Soviets with lots of high-grade nuclear intelligence. This is simply false, and demonstrably so. I do know a fair amount about the history of the US and Soviet nuclear weapons programs. If Julius did what he was accused of, he gave the Soviets, at best, the information that the design of the "Fat Man," the implosion bomb. used TNT "lenses" to implode the uranium core. This information was, if not worthless, not worth much. Unless you have the exact specs on the lens design, you can't build a working bomb. Moreover, as is well, known, the Soviets had really good, technically informed spy data mainly from Klaus Fuchs, a top-grade physicist--which did not, however, include the specs on the lens design. He didn't have access to that.

We know, according to David Holloway, the pre-eminent historian of the Soviet bomb project, that the Soviet a-bomb team had decided on a lens design before they had any decent spy material from Fuchs or any other US spies, and basically did their own work. If they got anything from the R's, Holloway doesn't think it is worth remarking on. So Radosh's claim is hot air. Which isn'tsurprising: the Rs supposed source was David Greenglass, a low-level technician without real scientific training or the ability to understand what was at the frontiers of applied physics in its time.

--jks


>
>Does Ron Radosh have any redeeming characteristics, or is he just a
>low apologist for U.S. imperialism?
>
>Doug

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