Despite Fresh Evidence, Ethel Rosenberg Is Still Guilty

Editors’ Note: In October 2021, Mosaic published an essay by the historain Harvey Klehr, titled “The Eternal Return of Ethel Rosenberg,” exploring the famous espionage case. Below, he and Mark Kramer investigate the most recent revelations about the subject.

More than 70 years after being executed in a dramatic cold-war spy case, Ethel Rosenberg was recently back in the news. Last month, her two sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol, obtained a formerly classified memorandum through the Freedom of Information Act and tried to convince an Associated Press (AP) reporter that it was a “smoking gun” demonstrating her innocence. In reality, the document does no such thing. This episode was just the latest attempt by the Meeropols to propagate baseless claims about Ethel Rosenberg’s innocence. It is worth setting the record straight.

In July 1950, Ethel’s husband, Julius, was arrested on suspicion of espionage, and a month later she was also arrested. The two were eventually tried on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage. In the early spring of 1951, they were convicted and sentenced to death, and in June 1953 they were electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison. The death penalty for the two was excessive, but this does not mean they were innocent of the charges brought against them. All the evidence that has emerged from U.S. and former Soviet archives over the past 75 years shows that the conviction was fully justified, even if the punishment was not.