‘World

By AARON KATZ

June 19, 1953, is a never-to-be-forgotten
date in American history.

On that day, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,
a young Jewish-American couple, died in
Sing Sing’s electric chair, on the frame-up
charge of “conspiring to commit espionage
for the Soviet Union.” They left behind two
young sons.

They had been falsely accused by a cabal
of right-wing ideologues, including FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover, Sens. Joseph
McCarthy and Pat McCarran, U.S. Attor-
ney Irving Saypol and key assistant prosec-
utor Roy Cohn, in collusion with the
Supposed “impartial arbiter” trial Judge
Irving R. Kaufman. The intent of the cabal
was to establish in the public mind the false
equation, “Communist equals un-American
equals spy.”

If successful, it would have virtually out-
lawed America’s Communist movement
and permitted Hoover’s FBI to proceed
with his plan to round up some 500,000
Communists and sympathizers. At the
time, the United States was involved in its
undeclared war against Communists in
Korea. To those right-wing ideologues, to
Protest against an unjust war and dissent
against unjust government policies was tan-
tamount to treason.

Framing the Rosenbergs was a simple
matter at the height of the McCarthyite
anti-communist hysteria of the early 1950s,
when any alleged Communist would be
found guilty whatever the charges. The
basis and precedent for the notorious “‘con-
Spiracy trials” had been provided by the
Smith Act, the conspiracy convictions and
imprisonment of 11 top Communist Party
leaders and the “contempt” jailing of Hol-
lywood screenwriters, actors and directors.

It was claimed by the Hoover-Cohn-
Kaufman cabal that the Rosenbergs had
stolen the secret of the atomic bomb and
transmitted it to the Soviets, thereby bear-
Ing responsibility for the war in Korea and
“untold millions” of future lost lives. The
near-unanimous daily press, radio and TV
regularly reported the false version of the
Hoover-led cabal, never pointing out that

Trade and

By WILLIAM POMEROY

LONDON — One of the odd aspects of
the present period is that Western capital-
ism gives the appearance of moving in two
different directions at the same time in its
relations with the Soviet Union. This may
be inevitable as the cold war gives way to
maturing detente, but the confusion reflects
badly on Western leadership.

The contrast is essentially between the
hard line political and military-industrial
groupings in NATO and the trading and
investment sectors that seek to do away
with outmoded cold war policies so that
they can carry on normal economic rela-
tions.

The Western press is filled with stories
about a struggle between pro- and anti-
perestroika groupings in the Soviet Union.
NATO cold war adherents claim that the
policies identified with Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev may be reversed, and
therefore should not be the basis for East-
West relations. But such claims have more
to do with the conflict within capitalism.

What is happening in Britain provides
one of the best examples of Western differ-
ences. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is
currently the loudest in persisting in the
outworn military strategy of nuclear con-
frontation and arms race. But at the same
time she is proclaiming her desire to “do
business” with Gorbachev.

Remembering Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg

the Rosenbergs had not been indicted or
found guilty of any act of espionage; and
that no witness testified that they ever
passed any classified information to

anyone.
Judge Kaufman’s death sentences focus-

sed attention on the depth of the hysteria. -

Never before in American history had there
been an execution for actual espionage in
peace time. Here, the convictions were only
for “conspiring,” and involved two parents-
-yet the judge ruled death. Axis Sally and
Tokyo Rose, who worked for Germany and
Japan during World War Two and were
convicted of treason, served less than 10
years in prison.

The truth was that the lying junta did not
want the Rosenbergs to die. What they
wanted from the Rosenbergs were false con-
fessions and names in return for leniency
and freedom, confessions of “Communist
espionage” and names of new victims.
When the Rosenbergs refused to buy life
and freedom by sacrificing friends and com-
rades and principle, it marked the defeat of
the junta’s plot and cost the Rosenbergs
their lives — but it saved the country!

The only evidence at the trial implicating
the Rosenbergs in the atomic conspiracy
came, as noted by the Court of Appeals,
from David and Ruth Greenglass, who
gave oral testimony, undocumented, uncor-
roborated — and bought. They were con-
fessed spies, offered leniency and freedom in
return for their testimony.

The Rosenbergs were electrocuted in the
face of clemency pleas from the world’s
greatest leaders — Nobel laureates, theolo-
gians and philosophers, statesmen, clergy-
men and’ scientists — and also workers,
artists and housewives, deeply concerned
because this was taking place not in Nazi
Germany, but in the citadel of democracy,
the United States.

Today, 36 years later, it can no longer be
plausibly maintained by any honest observer
that the Rosenbergs had a fair trial.

Roy Cohn was the key assistant prosecu-
tor at the trial. In his Autobiography of Roy
Cohn (published in 1988), the frame-up was
clearly spelled out. Cohn revealed how

, ee ae
A huge crowd of Rosenberg su
York on execution night, June 19, 1953.

Kaufman had importuned him to use his
influence to have him assigned as the trial
judge. Cohn succeeded and was assured by
the judge, before the trial began, that he
would sentence Julius to death. Cohn and
Saypol were in unlawful collusion with
Judge Kaufman throughout the trial.

In one segment of his autobiography
(page 160), Cohn details a frame-up tech-
nique, the very one that he and Saypol used
to convict the Rosenbergs: “As a young
assistant U.S. attorney, I convicted my
share of people on uncorroborated accom-
plice testimony.” He described how the U.S.
attorney offers a deal to a guilty defendant.
That defendant goes free if he agrees to
name as his accomplice the party the pro-
secutor wishes to frame. The jury convicts
both, the framed victim gets a heavy sent-
ence, while the actual criminal goes free!

In the Rosenberg case, confessed spy

BSS Ae. vs BEAN
pporters stands vigil on West

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as

Street in New

Ruth Greenglass was not even indicted,
David served under 10 years in prison, while
the innocent Rosenbergs were executed.
The Greenglasses chose to perjure them-
selves and lived. The Rosenbergs refused to
save themselves with false confessions and
betrayal of friends and comrades and jus-
tice. Their beautiful lives were snuffed out in
their prime, but their honour, courage and
nobility will live on forever, an inspiration
to humanity the world over.

On June 19, from 12 noon to 2 p.m., the
36th annual demonstration will take place

in front of the U.S. courthouse in Foley:

Square, New York where Judge Kaufman
now sits on the Second Circuit Court.

Aaron Katz is the director of the National:

Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case,

853 Broadway, Room 1120, New York, N.Y. °

10003.

politics pose dilemma for West

On one level the British government is
demanding the “modernization” of NATO’s
nuclear arsenal and the stationing of more
U.S. F-111s armed with cruise missiles on
British soil. On another, that Thatcher
government is actively helping British com-
panies to boost trade and joint venture ties
with the Soviet Union.

In April, a British trade month opened in
Moscow with an exhibition at which over
300 British companies were represented.
Planeloads of British businessmen arrive

~ regularly in Moscow to talk trade. Energy

Minister Cecil Parkinson, who is very close
to Thatcher, headed a large group at the end
of April.

British trade with the Soviet Union ranks
a poor sixth among Western countries, just
above that of the United States. If it has
remained relatively static at around $2.5
billion, the sticking point is probably the
contradictory British attitudes that lead
periodically to the expulsion of large
number of Soviet trade mission members as
well as diplomats on transparently faked
spying charges.

Significantly, through chills and thaws,
some of the biggest British companies have
kept their economic links with the Soviet
Union — ICI, Shell, GEC, Courtaulds,
John Brown and Davy engineering.

These are among the companies now
pressing for a big expansion of ties. Cour-

taulds’ executive Norman .Wooding declares
of the 286-million person Soviet market:
“It’s a damn big country. Even if we get just
a small percentage of its trade, that is big
numbers.”

The director of the British-Soviet cham-
ber of commerce in London, Michael Wil-
son, says that among the top 100 British
companies, “there is not a chairman who
has not read the papers, got on the phone to
his export director and said: ‘What are you
doing about the Soviet Union?”

Many British firms are chafing because
they are lagging behind other Western
countries in joint venture opportunities
opened by the trade and investment relaxa-
tion that are part of perestroika. Of the 365
such ventures registered by the beginning of
April, only 27 have British involvement.
Among them is Rank Xerox, which recently
opened a pilot store to sell copying
machines in Moscow. Ralph Land, head of
the company’s East European export div-
ision, said: “To give an idea of the potential,
there are presently 60,000 copying machines
in the Soviet Union. If it were to have the
same number per capita as a West Euro-
pean country, it would need four million
machines.”

While Thatcher presses for modernizing
NATO’s nuclear weapons, the British com-
pany John Brown and the British bank
Morgan Grenfells are taking part in a $300

million joint venture project supported by
the Soviet Ministry of the Chemical Indus-
try to modernize the ethylene and polyethy-
lene plant at Budyennovsk in the Stavropol
region. Polyethylene from the plant will be
marketed outside the Soviet Union by the
U.S.-based Union Carbide.

At the end of April the wraps were lifted
on an illuminating venture. The Thatcher
government has rejected the Bush adminis-
tration’s objections to a huge $450 million
sale of high technology construction and
processing equipment to the Soviet Union
by the British firm Simon Carves. The con-
tract is to build an electronic control
equipment factory in Yerevan, Armenia.
The programmatic control system is for
machine tools, and technology would is to
come from British General Electric.

This deal is opposed by the United States
under the Committee for Multilateral
Export controls banning lists, used to block
the sale of Western technology and equip-
ment to the Soviet Union. But Thatcher is
reported to have written Bush, telling him
that the sale is going ahead in spite of Pen-
tagon and State Department objections.

It is apparent that the two directions of
British policy must eventually become one if
the inclinations of British capitalism are to
be heeded.

William Pomeroy is London correspondent
for the U.S. People’s Daily World.

Pacific Tribune, June 19, 1989 « 7

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