Moynihan Takes on Rosenbergs Biased Defenders
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Michael Moynihan reviews Walter Schneir's latest history of the Rosenberg spy case:
Attending a 1983 debate in New York City on the Rosenberg spy case, a correspondent for the New Republic—as it happens, the distinguished Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick—commented that he had "never before seen anyone exude such absolute self-righteousness, or any adult exhibit such petulance." He was watching the journalist Walter Schneir defend, in the face of mounting contrary evidence, the atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—and denounce a recondite government conspiracy to frame them—30 years after their execution. Presenting the opposite case, for the Rosenbergs' guilt, were Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, who had recently published "The Rosenberg File." In the atmosphere of the evening—to judge by Mr. Nozick's account—Mr. Radosh and Ms. Milton were made to play the role of villain, McCarthyites masquerading as historians, to be mau-maued by New York's beau monde.
Mr. Schneir at the time was known, along with his wife, Miriam, as one of the Rosenbergs' most dogged defenders. Together they had written "Invitation to an Inquest" (1965), a book positing a massive government conspiracy to frame the Rosenbergs. The only problem with their position was that it proved to be wrong. Starting in the 1990s, with the release of intelligence decrypts and the testimony of ex-KGB employees, historians firmly established that Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet agent and that his wife, Ethel, helped the network to courier documents and recruit pro-Moscow leftists.
Now, almost a half-century after the publication of "Invitation to an Inquest" we have "Final Verdict," again revisiting the Rosenberg case. Mr. Schneir, who died in 2009, is the author; Mrs. Schneir provides a preface and afterword. The book does grudgingly admit that Julius Rosenberg was a Stalinist agent (Ethel remains, in the Schneirs' view, an innocent bystander). But "Final Verdict," a slim volume purporting to tell "what really had happened" in 200 pages and two-dozen footnotes, makes no serious attempt at reaching historical truth, instead offering a selective and ultimately unconvincing attempt at personal vindication.
It is evident that the Schneirs were never unbiased, truth-seeking historians. Upon discovering yet another piece of evidence suggesting that Julius Rosenberg labored on behalf of the Kremlin, Mr. Schneir sighs that the new information is "not what we would have hoped." The couple "had to admit" that new, contradictory evidence was damaging to the case for innocence. The revelations of the past two decades, he writes, were "painful news for many people, as it is for us."
It is advisable to discount the judgments of those who, when attempting to solve a historical riddle, declare archival revelations "painful" or contrary to the investigator's "hopes." But after decades of impugning the integrity of scholars with whom they disagreed, Mr. Schneir declares grandly that he has "no regrets, no apologies." (Before her execution, Ethel Rosenberg wrote that she had "no fear and no regrets.")
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