Thinner Than Water

They were all guilty, Arthur Koestler wrote in “Darkness at Noon” about the old Bolshevik leaders trapped in the infamous Moscow trials of 1936-1939, but not of the crimes for which they were charged. The statement might also be applied to convicted “atom spy” Ethel Rosenberg, whose 1953 execution with her husband Julius occasioned the hyperbolic subtitle of “The Brother,” Sam Roberts’ book on their chief accuser and Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass.

Roberts, a veteran New York Times reporter and editor, spent 13 years tracking down Greenglass and persuading him in 50 hours of conversation to discuss the story of how he became a Soviet agent. After Greenglass’ release from prison, he and his family sought anonymity under a different name. Other than a single 1979 interview with historian Ronald Radosh and his colleague Sol Stern, Greenglass had not surfaced for a researcher’s scrutiny. He claimed to have turned down proposals to tell his story--until Roberts appeared. Why? “I don’t want to take any money off other people’s deaths.... I never have, despite offers,” he said. Then why now?

“Now,” the aging Greenglass told Roberts, “I need the money.” He agreed to cooperate on this book, the author writes, “in return for a share of the proceeds. No vetting of the manuscript.” One final surprise: “David could not veto anything I wrote. He is reading it for the first time in this book. So are his wife [Ruth] and children, whom he never told about our collaboration.” Ruth presumably never knew until now that he had decided to tell his story--alone.

“The Brother” provides a fascinating narrative of growing up in East Side immigrant radical communities from which both the Greenglasses and Rosenbergs emerged. The author handles skillfully--while acknowledging Richard Rhodes’ two masterful volumes on the subject--the scientific context of what Greenglass may or may not have conveyed to Soviet operatives through the Rosenbergs. Despite his eloquently compassionate treatment of the Rosenbergs facing execution and of their sons in the years after, most of “The Brother” treads on familiar historical ground.

What is new and thus debatable, however, is Roberts’ argument that the testimony David and Ruth Greenglass gave at the 1951 trial may have been concocted to assure the government of Ethel Rosenberg’s conviction along with her husband’s. In this season of national anguish following terrorist attacks, “The Brother” could not have appeared at a timelier moment, if only to remind Americans that, in an excess of zeal, government agents and prosecutors can create a judicial process in which punishment exceeds the crime.

The arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in July 1950, readers may recall, occurred amid growing American fears about internal subversion, the Korean War, the conviction earlier that year of Alger Hiss on perjury charges for denying involvement in Soviet espionage and the Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic device the previous year. There existed the belief that the Russians could have become an atomic power so quickly only by stealing American secrets. A chain of earlier arrests had led in June 1950 to the identification of Greenglass, a machinist in the Los Alamos installation, who quickly confessed his involvement in atomic espionage. Greenglass named the Rosenbergs as the individuals who persuaded his wife to transmit to him in 1944 the proposal that he spy for the Russians.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg denied any involvement but were arrested and identified by the government as principals in what became known as the “Rosenberg spy ring.” At their March 1951 trial, the Rosenbergs, Greenglass and a fourth defendant, Morton Sobell, were all found guilty. Ruth Greenglass escaped indictment essentially in exchange for her husband’s testimony. David Greenglass and Sobell received prison terms. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death, but their execution was delayed by a variety of legal appeals--many from world leaders and from a number of people who did not challenge the verdict but only the extreme sentence. Even FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who led the bureau’s investigation of the couple, recommended clemency for Ethel Rosenberg (though not her husband). On June 19, 1953, however, after their final appeals failed, the Rosenbergs were executed at New York’s Sing Sing Prison.

Both the VENONA intercepts of World War II (deciphered Soviet intelligence messages between Moscow and its U.S. operatives made public only in the mid-1990s) and other KGB records have confirmed Julius Rosenberg as a major Soviet agent and handler of other agents, though mainly on projects other than atomic espionage. As a result of this newly released evidence, even some longtime defenders of the couple’s innocence have conceded his probable involvement in Soviet espionage. Thus, debate on the facts of the case today has focused on Ethel’s degree of participation (if any). The additional release of FBI and Justice Department files during the 1990s suggests that the government had far less evidence that she was involved, that the Rosenbergs were not “master spies” and that two other spies--Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall--provided far more significant help to the Soviets than did David Greenglass. “By definition the very fact that virtually every bit of information attributed to [Greenglass] was corroborative means that Fuchs and Hall had already given it to the Soviets,” Roberts explains. Moreover, even most Americans who accept the couple’s guilt recognize that, in a less fear-ridden atmosphere, they would surely have avoided a death sentence or, if issued, would almost certainly have received a reprieve.

“The Brother” is Roberts’ extensive “search for David Greenglass”: a thorough and often critical scrutiny of its protagonist’s life and character. Roberts highlights Greenglass’ various “lies” and what the author apparently felt was an almost lifelong proclivity on his subject’s part to avoid telling the truth. His most devastating “lie”--and his wife’s, according to Roberts--was to recall conveniently at trial that Ethel Rosenberg had typed the scientific material given by David Greenglass to her husband in handwritten notes, which enabled the government to show her involvement. Lacking such evidence of direct participation, prosecutors would have been able to show only that she knew what her husband was doing but was detached from the work itself--and therefore more legally insulated from indictment. It would be extremely helpful to have Ruth Greenglass’ memories along with her husband’s on this pivotal recollection and others.

By describing Julius Rosenberg’s (and perhaps his wife’s) grubby wartime Soviet agent activity as the demonically unique work of “master spies” and by sentencing them to death, the U.S. government assisted in creating a fictitious and polarized debate. Were the Rosenbergs diabolical traitors or hapless martyrs? It would have been more fitting to have sentenced them to prison terms and left them to live out their lives as communists. Instead, their single foray with David Greenglass into atomic espionage (rather than the non-atomic thefts upon which Julius Rosenberg’s spying was largely based) led them to a dreadful and undeserved end.

Although Roberts appears to accept the confirmation of Julius Rosenberg’s clear involvement in Soviet espionage from books like “The Haunted Wood,” Radosh and Joyce Milton’s “The Rosenberg File” and John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr’s “VENONA”--also confirmed by one of Rosenberg’s Soviet handlers, Alexander Feklisov, whom Roberts cites--he gives virtually no mention of the Rosenbergs’ lack of truthfulness at their trial, and afterward, about participating in wartime spying. Instead, he dwells on Greenglass’ “lies.” Indeed, “The Brother” focuses so sharply on David Greenglass that the Rosenbergs retain in Roberts’ treatment their iconographic status mainly as “Cold War victims.”

Undeniably, after his arrest Greenglass focused on a single goal: to prevent the arrest and conviction of his wife, who had brought him Julius Rosenberg’s original request and who had been involved in that espionage effort throughout its twists and turns. Never imagining--or so he insists in Roberts’ book--that the government would execute his sister, Greenglass expressed regret over the executions but blamed the Rosenbergs themselves for choosing loyalty to their communist faith over cooperation with the government: “To die for something as nebulous as that is stupidity.”

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg left the world a quasi-memoir in the form of the “Death House Letters” that the couple exchanged in prison while awaiting execution. Sam Roberts has now provided an absorbing quasi-memoir of David Greenglass in “The Brother.” Feklisov has provided fascinating glimpses of Julius Rosenberg’s covert efforts in a memoir and on television. We now await only Ruth Greenglass’ account, if it ever comes, to provide the final memories of an embattled principal in this hauntingly tragic American drama, which retains the ability to stir passionate debate today.