"ROY: You have heard of Ethel Rosenberg. Yes. Maybe you even read about her in history books. If it wasn't for me, Joe, Ethel Rosenberg would be alive today, writing some personal-advice column for Ms. magazine. She isn't. Because during the trial, Joe, I was on the phone every day, talking with the judge... Every day,, doing what I do best, talking on the phone, making sure that timid Yid nebbish did his duty to American, to history. That sweet unprepossessing woman, two kids, boo-hoo-hoo-reminded us all of our little Jewish mamas--she came this close to getting life...:
JOE: Roy, you were the Assistant United States Attorney on the Rosenberg case, ex-parte communication with the judge during the trial would be... censurable at least, probably conspiracy and... in a case that resulted in execution, it's...
ROY: What? Murder?..."
(pt. 1, act 3, scene 5)

"ROY: I have forced my way into history. I ain't nevery gonna die.

ETHEL: History is about to crack wide open. Millennium Approaches."
(pt. 1, act 3, scene 5)


Julius Rosenberg and his wife were listening to the Lone Ranger with their two young sons when a stranger rapped on the door of their battered and drab apartment near the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge. Twelve men filed in from the small hallway and announced that they were from the FBI. They arrested 32-year-old Julius Rosenberg as a spy.
A puffy, spectacled native New Yorker with a smudge-sized mustache and disappearing black hair, Rosenberg was the fourth U.S. citizen arrested in the atomic spy roundup that began after the arrest of British Physicist Klaus Fuchs. The FBI said Rosenberg had been an important cog in the machinery, working directly under Anatoli Yakovlev, Soviet vice consul in New York. An electrical engineer (C.C.N.Y., class of '39), Rosenberg had been an inspector for the War Department's Signal Service until early 1945, when he was fired for Communist affiliations. He broke off all open contracts with the party, quit subscribing to the Daily Worker and set up as the owner of a small, non-union machine shop in Manhattan. But the FBI kept its many eyes on him.

It was he, said the FBI, who recruited his brother-in-law, David Greenglass, for the spy ring when Greenglass was on furlough from his sergeant's duties at the Los Alamos A-bomb project. Rosenberg tore the top of a Jello box in half, gave a piece to Greenglass as his badge of identification and told him that his contact at Los Alamos would produce the other half. The contact turned out to be Spy Courier Harry Gold, the Philadelphia chemist, who got atomic-energy data from Greenglass and paid him $500.

After the arrest of Fuchs and Gold, said the FBI, Rosenberg told Greenglass to leave the country and report to the Soviet embassy in Czechoslovakia; he gave him "substantial funds in 20-dollar bills" to do so (reportedly $5,000). But before he could get away, the FBI got Greenglass, and he talked. Julius Rosenberg was not surprised when the FBI came for him.

Alone of the four arrested so far, Rosenberg stoutly insisted on his innocence. The FBI's story, said he, was "fantastic--something like kids hear on the Lone Ranger program." Three days after Rosenberg's arrest, Harry Gold pleaded guilty in federal court to all the FBI's charges.

TIME, 31 July 1950



Judge Irving Kaufman looked down at the man and woman before him. "Plain, deliberate, contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed," he told Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in a hoarse, faint voice. "I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb...has already caused the Communist aggression in Korea...and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason."
"I have deliberated for hours, days and nights," said Judge Kaufman. "I have searched my conscience to find some reason for mercy. I am convinced, however, that I would violate the solemn and sacred trust that the people of this land have placed in my hands were I to show leniency... The sentence of the court upon Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is that, for their crime, they are sentenced to death."

Sallow Julius Rosenberg and his wife were led away. Later, in their adjoining cells, the Rosenbergs sang to each other: her choice was Puccini's One Fine Day, his The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

There would be appeals. But though higher courts may reverse the conviction, none may reduce the sentences. If the sentences are carried out, the Rosenbergs will be the first spies ever executed by order of the U.S. civil court.

TIME, 16 April 1951

September 28, 1915: Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg born
March 1917: The Russian Revolution begins

1917: Espionage Act that the Rosenbergs are convicted of violating is enacted

May 12, 1918: Julius Rosenberg born

1929: Communist Party of the United States is founded

Early 1930's: Julius Rosenberg is member of Young Communist League; campaigns for Scottsboro Boys

1934: Julius Rosenberg enters City College of New York; is involved in radical politics

Summer 1939: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg married

December 7, 1941: United States enters World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor

1942: Julius Rosenberg becomes member of U. S. Signal Corps

1943: Rosenbergs cease open activities with Communist Party; Daily Worker subscription stops

1943: Soviet spymaster Feklisov first meets with Julius Rosenberg

July 1944: David Greenglass chosen to work on the Manhattan Project

November 1944: Julius Rosenberg recruits aid of Greenglasses in obtaining information about the Manhattan Project

December 1944: Julius Rosenberg provides Soviets with a proximity fuse

January 1945: David Greenglass provides his own notes and a sketch of a high-explosive lens from the Manhattan Project

June 1945: Harry Gold meets with Greenglass in Albuqurque

July 16, 1945: United States explodes first Atom bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico

August 6, 1945: United States drops Atom bomb at Hiroshima

September 2, 1945: World War II ends with the Japanese surrender

September, 1945: Greenglass meets with Rosenberg while on forlough in New York

1945: Julius Rosenberg is dismissed from U. S. Signal Corps

1946: Feklisov meets with Julius Rosenberg for the last time

Late 1946: The Venona Code is broken

1947: Rosenberg's machine shop business fails

June 30, 1948: Max Elitcher and Morton Sobell drive to Catherine Slip where Sobell met with Julius Rosenberg to exchange microfilm

August 28, 1949: Soviets detonate their first Atom bomb

January 21, 1950: Alger Hiss convicted of perjury in denying that he passed secret documents to Communist agent Whittaker Chambers

February 2, 1950: Klaus Fuchs arrested

March 1950: Julius Rosenberg warns Greenglass to flee country

May 1950: Rosenberg asks his physician about what kind of shots are necessary for trip to Mexico

May 22, 1950: Harry Gold confesses to the FBI

May or June 1950: Rosenbergs visit a photographer to obtain passport photos

June 15, 1950: David Greenglass names Julius as the man who recruited him to spy for the Soviet Union

June 16, 1950: Julius Rosenberg is first interviewed by FBI; Joel Barr disappears in Paris

June 30, 1950: United States forces engage in the Korean War

July 17, 1950: Julius Rosenberg arrested while shaving

August 11, 1950: Ethel Rosenberg arrested

August 1950: Sobell and family are kidnapped by Mexican thugs and delivered to U. S. authorities at border

January 31, 1951: Grand jury indicts Rosenbergs, Sobell, David Greenglass, and Yakolev

February 1951: Greenglasses change their story, implicating Ethel Rosenberg in spy activities

March 6, 1951: Trial begins

March 15, 1951: William Perl is arrested on espionage charge

March 28, 1951: Trial ends

March 29, 1951: Jury returns verdict: Guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage

April 5, 1951: Judge Kaufman imposes the death sentence on Rosenbergs, sentences Sobell to 30 years

January 10, 1952: Appeal before the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

February 25, 1952: Appeal denied by Second Circuit Court of Appeals in opinion by Judge Jerome Frank

October 13, 1952: Supreme Court announces that it ruled against granting certiorari on the Rosenberg's appeal

June 13, 1953: Supreme Court denies stay of execution

June 17, 1953: Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas grants stay of execution

June 19, 1953: Supreme Court, in special session, vacates Justice Douglas's stay of execution

June 19, 1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed

June 21, 1953: Funeral of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

1960: Proximity fuse enables Soviets to shoot down American U-2 spy plane over Soviet territory

1969: Martin Sobell is released from prison

1970- 1974: Khrushchev tape records his memoirs containing observations on the Rosenbergs spy role

1985: Barr and Sarant flee to Soviet Union

1990: Khrushchev memoirs are published, suggesting that Rosenbergs helped Soviets acquire the A-bomb

July 11, 1995: Decoded Venona cables indicating Rosenberg's involvement in espionage are released by NSA and CIA

1997: Soviet spymaster Feklisov admits in interviews that he met with Julius Rosenberg between 1943 and 1946

2001: David Greenglass admits that the trial testimony of the Greenglasses concerning Ethel Rosenberg's role in the conspiracy was perjured.