Ethel Rosenberg's Sons Say FOIA Documents Clear Her Name
The children of convicted Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spent more than half their lives hunting for a smoking gun document that would prove their mother's innocence. They said their quest is now over.By Jason Leopold
November 1, 2024 at 2:30 PM UTC
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Happy Friday, FOIA Files readers! This week, to briefly avert your eyes from what is shaping up to be a hotly contested election, I’m going to do something a little different: highlight a Cold War-era document that was obtained by other frequent FOIA filers. If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here.
For half a century, intense government secrecy has surrounded the most notorious McCarthy-era espionage case in history—the investigation, prosecution and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the husband and wife convicted of conspiracy to steal secrets about the atomic bomb for the Soviets.
The Rosenberg’s children, Michael and Robert Meeropol, believe their mother was innocent and have devoted their lives to using the Freedom of Information Act to prove it.
Michael was 10 and Robert was 6 when their parents, members of the Communist Party, were sent to the electric chair at New York state's Sing Sing Prison on June 19, 1953. There's a chilling photograph of Michael intently reading about his parents' case in The New York Daily News while Robert looks over his brother’s shoulder. The front page headline says: Spies Get 1 More Day.
The orphaned brothers later went to live with family friends Abel and Anne Meeropol and took the couple’s surname after they were adopted. (Abel Meeropol was a teacher, poet and songwriter, best known for composing the anti-lynching song “Strange Fruit,” which was made famous by jazz singer, Billie Holiday.)
Now in their late 70s and early 80s, the Meeropol brothers described to me in a recent interview how they have devoted more than half their lives hunting for a secret, smoking gun document that would prove that the US government knew their mother wasn’t a Soviet asset. They’ve long been convinced that such a document was locked away in a filing cabinet somewhere in the bowels of a US spy agency.
Finally, they say, their quest is now over.
A few months ago, the National Security Agency sent the Meeropols a box of records the spy agency declassified—more than 200 pages—about Ethel Rosenberg. Inside was a seven-page handwritten memo that they believe is the key document they’d been searching for, and that proves once and for all that their mother was wrongfully convicted and executed.
The relevant passage in the memo is just eight words: “she did not engage in the work herself.”
After he read it, Robert said his eyes welled up. “Michael and I looked at it and our reaction was, ‘We did it,’” Robert said.
His brother added: “To think that the final piece of the puzzle has fallen into place and we could now prove that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy, the United States government knew this and executed her anyway, yeah that was a tremendous relief,” Michael said. “I wasn’t sure I was ever going to see that while I was still alive.”
We need to back up for a moment to explain the significance of those eight words.
The memo is based on encrypted Soviet cables US codebreakers cracked. It was marked TOP SECRET/SI, for “special intelligence,” and says REL to USA, GBR, which means it was authorized for release to certain United States citizens who held a security clearance and had a need to know and Great Britain. It’s dated August 22, 1950, 10 days after Ethel Rosenberg was arrested. It was declassified nearly 74 years to the day after it was written by the NSA’s famous codebreaker, Meredith Gardner, while he was working at the Army Signals Intelligence Service.
Click here to view the documents (page 1)
The Meeropols requested access to this memo two years ago.
The top of it says, “Highlights” of the AFSA Project. AFSA is the Armed Forces Security Agency, a predecessor of the NSA. Remarkably, after all of these years, a word between “AFSA” and “Project” remains redacted because it relates to the “internal personnel rules and practices of an agency,” which could basically mean anything. Right below that line it says, “Atomic Energy Espionage Ring.”
“All major figures in the Soviet MGB ring which shared information on the U.S. Atomic Energy project during the war, have been completely identified and arrested by the FBI,” Gardner wrote.
MGB was the Soviet Union’s Ministry of State Security, or secret police, that was created by Joseph Stalin, the brutal leader of the Soviet Union.
“The identities of several lesser personalities who had some contact with the ring are still unknown, but these persons will probably be identified through normal FBI investigation. The key espionage personnel who appeared in 1944 MGB message texts recorded by the AFSA unit are as follows…”
Ethel Rosenberg is identified in the memo as “Mrs. Julius Rosenberg,” a member of the communist party.
Now, for the eight words, italics mine: “A message of 27 November 1944 stated that Mrs. Rosenberg was a party member, a devoted wife, and that she knew of her husbands work, but that due to ill health she did not engage in the work herself. She has recently been arrested by the FBI.”
Click here to view the documents (page 4)
The Meeropols say the word “work” refers to spying for the Soviets. They also say Gardner's characterization that Ethel Rosenberg was not engaged in “the work” is clear-cut evidence that the US government knew their mother wasn’t a Soviet spy – years before she was executed.
Historians of the Cold War—who the Meeropols refer to as their opponents—have said there is plenty of other evidence that has been disclosed in response to the Meeropols’ earlier FOIA efforts that proves Ethel Rosenberg was an active participant in her husband’s espionage activities.
“I'm sure some of our opponents will manage to say, ‘This makes no difference whatsoever’ but it is clear to me that’s not the case,” Robert said.
Venona cables
As far as historical documents go, Gardner’s memo is noteworthy, but it’s based on intercepted Soviet cables publicly revealed in 1995. Those cables, which were decrypted by US codebreakers, make up the Venona files, a top-secret counterintelligence program that Gardner was part of, which uncovered Soviet espionage in the United States.The declassified portion of the typewritten Venona cable that references Ethel Rosenberg and was previously released says she is “sufficiently well developed politically” and “knows about her husband’s work.” It goes on to say that “In view of delicate health does not work.”
One of the previously declassified Venona cables of which Gardner’s handwritten memo is based upon.
Gardener explained in comments attached to the cable that the “work that ETHEL cannot do in view of her delicate health may not be the earning of her bread and butter, but conspiratorial work.”
Gardner’s commentary about the possible meaning of the word “work.”
The Meeropols believe the word “work” is in reference to her work as a spy. They say that Gardner’s interpretation of that cable, which he memorialized in his memo is “unequivocal” proof of that because he wrote that Ethel Rosenberg “did not engage in the work herself,” meaning, the Meeropols reiterated, that she didn’t spy for the Soviets.
The Meeropols pointed out that neither Gardner’s memo nor the Venona cables it was based upon were ever presented at Ethel Rosenberg’s trial.
The NSA declined to comment about the memo. On the agency’s website that houses the Venona files it still says, “The VENONA files are most famous for exposing Julius (code named LIBERAL) and Ethel Rosenberg and help give indisputable evidence of their involvement with the Soviet spy ring.”
Congressional intervention
Obtaining records through FOIA from the NSA or any of the intelligence agencies is an arduous process. But the Meeropols had some help from Democratic Representative James McGovern, the ranking member of the House Committee on Rules, who met the Meeropols nearly a decade ago and signed on to support their cause.Earlier this year, McGovern and Democratic Representative Jim Himes sent a letter to Colleen Shogan, the Archivist of the United States at the National Archives and Records Administration, and asked her to intervene in the Meeropols’ FOIA request.
In late August, Shogan responded to the lawmakers, indicating that the records would be released imminently.
McGovern said the release of Gardner’s memo is a big deal.
“It shows that Ethel Rosenberg's conviction and execution for activities as a spy was wrongful,” McGovern said. “She was not a spy. And here's the deal. The NSA was aware of this.”
The Massachusetts congressman says that, “in light of the information that’s now been revealed,” he is preparing to send a letter to President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting that Ethel Rosenberg be pardoned.
“I think it's important for the administration to admit that she was wrongfully convicted and executed,” McGovern said. “I'm still idealistic enough to believe that truth and justice matter in this country.”
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Meeropols are still expecting additional records from the NSA, in response to what was likely the last FOIA request the brothers will ever file.
“I am so proud,” Robert said. “We started this in 1974. People said to us, ‘You're asking for the government's own material, what if you find out what you don't want to find out?’ And you know, our response was, ‘let's let the chips fall where it may.’”
Michael added: “We saw it not only as a personal thing, but as our civic duty,” he said. “You know, it seems to me that the juxtaposition of freedom of information and a democratic society is that you can't have one without the other.”
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