> Conspiracy is just a form of accomplice liability,
> it's an agreement to do something criminal. The
> criminal thing, the main thing, was espionage. The
> Espionage Act, 18 USC sec 794, provides for the death
> penalty, 794(a), and it has a conspiracy provision,
> 794(c), which says that all the conspirators get the
> same penalty, The R's were the last people capitally
> convicted under this law, which was codified
> differently at the time. jks
>
But, in order to convict for conspiracy, is it necessary to prove any concrete acts of espionage, or only that the accused conspirators combined with the purpose of committing it?
A concrete act of espionage was alleged against Julius Rosenberg: that he arranged to have his brother in law, David Greenglass, turn over a sketch of the detonation device for the atomic bomb to a confessed spy, Harry Gold, near Los Alamos, where Greenglass worked at the time. Julius's Soviet handler, a man called Veklisov (sp?) has told his story in recent years. He says the sketch the Soviets received from Greenglass/Rosenberg was of little value. Of far greater value was info Rosenberg provoded earlier in the war concerning conventional American ballistics.
Greenglass, who is still alive, has also told his story recently to Sam Roberts, a New York Times correspondent. The only witnesses to the Rosenberg "conspiracy" were David Greenglass and his wife, Ruth. Greenglass now admits he lied in order to incriminate his sister, Ethel Rosenberg. To prove that Ethel was part of the "conspiracy," the government needed an "overt act" by Ethel on behalf of the conspiracy. Greengalss says that he and his wife, under FBI prodding, falsely accused Ethel of typing Julius's messages to the Russians. This, and this alone, was the "overt act" necessary to implicate her. So the case against Ethel was a total frame-up.
-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20050523/e2ad0588/attachment.htm>