--- Turbulo at aol.com wrote:
> Justin wrote
>
>
> > 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?
Depends. Don't know that statute. Dtug conspiracy under current federtal law, all you need is the bare agreement to do something illegal. Normally, and I would guess at that time under that lae, but it is just a guess, you need agreement plus some overt act that is a concrete step in furtherance of the conspiracy. as I recall the facts of the case as present, Ethel's overt act, I forget, was it was that she was supposed to have hidden classified papers in a false-bottomed coffee table? Or it may have been the typing thing you mention, that would do it. It doesn't have to be much.
The Schneiers, in Invitation to an Inquest, prove, to my way of thinking, that the cases against both of them were a total frame up. (My dad thought so too, and he was no left wing conspiracy nut.) The diff was, Julius was actually guilty. With respect to him, the FBI, like Hank Quinlan in Welles' Touch of Evil, hadn't framed anybody . . . anybody who wasn't guilty. The Schneiers, I now believe, concede that Julius was probably guilty on the basis of the Vernoa material.
Regardless of whether Julius was guilty of spying on the US on behalf of an ally, as the Russians were at the time, I think might we find it disturbing that he was framed, if in fact he was. This quite apart from the issue of whether anyone should be executed for anything, or if they should, for anything other than capital murder with aggravating circumstances; and then there is the little detail about framing and executing the wholly innocent Ethel jsut to put pressure on Julius. An ugly business.
>
> 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.
>
>
> > ___________________________________
>
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