The memo that 'proves' notorious spy Ethel Rosenberg was blameless
'I now believe that a presidential exoneration is appropriate and necessary because it will correct the view that Ethel was an active spy,' says historian Lori Clune, of California State University, Fresno.
President Joe Biden is under pressure to exonerate Ethel Rosenberg over her role in the 1950s atomic espionage case, amid fresh evidence that she knew about her husband's spying but was not herself involved.
Lori Clune, a California State University, Fresno history professor, has added her voice to a campaign led by the Rosenbergs' sons — Robert and Michael Meeropol — that Biden clear Ethel's name before he steps down in January.
It follows the release of documents that cast further doubt on the case against Ethel, who along with her husband, Julius, was executed in 1953 after being convicted of plotting to steal nuclear secrets for the Soviet Union.
'I now believe that a presidential exoneration is appropriate and necessary because it will correct the view that Ethel was an active spy,' Clune wrote in The Conversation this week.
'It will address the serious flaws in her trial and conviction. And it will set right the historical record.'
The White House did not answer DailyMail.com's request for comment.
The couple maintained their innocence until they were put to death at New York's Sing Sing Prison.
Their sons, who took the name of their adopted parents, have worked for decades to establish that their mother was falsely implicated in spying.
Historians have long regarded Julius as a Soviet spy.
But doubts over Ethel's role have simmered for years, dividing those who side with the Meeropols, and say she was blameless, and others who say there's evidence she was involved in the sensational spy network.
The case against Ethel grew weaker in September, with the release of a declassified memo from a Cold War-era US government codebreaker who concluded that she knew about her husband's activities but 'did not engage in the work herself.'
The Meeropol brothers say the previously unreported memo from August 1950 is a smoking gun, and want Biden to go beyond a pardon and issue a formal proclamation saying Ethel was wrongly convicted and executed.
The handwritten memo from Meredith Gardner, a national security linguist and codebreaker, cites decrypted Soviet communications in concluding that Ethel knew about Julius' espionage work 'but that due to ill health she did not engage in the work herself.'
It was written more than a week after Ethel's arrest — her husband was arrested a month earlier — summarizing what was known about a Soviet spy ring operating in the US covering the development of atomic weapons.
It refers to Julius, who worked as a civil engineer, by his Soviet code names — first 'Antenna' and later 'Liberal' — and characterizes him as a recruiting agent for Soviet intelligence.
In a separate paragraph about 'Mrs. Julius Rosenberg,' Gardner describes a decoded message as saying Ethel was a 'party member' and 'devoted wife' who knew of her husband's work but was not involved.
Ethel went on trial with her husband months after the memo was written despite Gardner's assessment, which the Meeropols say had likely been available to federal investigators and prosecutors.
The Meeropols obtained the memo via a Freedom of Information Act request made in July 2022. Robert, 77, said in September that its release was a capstone of decades of work to clear his mom's name.
'Both the KGB and the NSA ended up agreeing that Ethel was not a spy,' he told AP.
'And so we have a situation in which a mother of two young children was executed as a master atomic spy when she wasn't a spy at all.'
As young boys, the brothers famously visited the White House in 1953 in a failed bid to get then-president Dwight Eisenhower to prevent executions that would leave them orphaned.
The memo was just the latest release that Ethel's supporters say casts doubt on her criminal conviction and the narrative of her as a spy.
They highlight the fact that Ethel, unlike her husband, did not have a codename.
Another memo from Gardner also states Ethel did 'not work,' a presumed reference to spying.
In a 2001 television interview, Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, said he'd lied on the stand about his sister to assure leniency for himself and keep his wife out of prison so she could care for their two children.
A fellow communist sympathizer, Greenglass was indicted as a co-conspirator and served 10 years in prison.
In 2015, secret grand jury testimony from Greenglass was unsealed that contradicted damaging statements he made during the Rosenbergs' trial that helped secure their convictions.
At trial, Greenglass said he'd given the Rosenbergs research data he obtained as an Army machinist about the US atomic program, and that he recalled seeing his sister typing up notes for the Soviets.
But in his grand jury testimony, which a judge unsealed after Greenglass' 2014 death, he never implicated Ethel, saying that he 'never spoke' to her about spying.
In her article this week, California scholar Clune said the case against Ethel had eroded over the years.
The Rosenbergs' trial was 'riddled with problems such as perjured testimony and an incompetent defense team,' she wrote, while its judge appeared to be in cahoots with prosecutors.
FBI investigators knew Ethel was 'not an active spy' and she was only arrested 'as leverage to pressure Julius to name his dozen or so collaborators,' Clune added.
Ethel's execution was a 'morally repugnant miscarriage of justice,' she wrote.
'That's why a presidential pardon by Biden, who is now contemplating his end-of-term pardon list, would not be sufficient redress,' added Clune.
'A pardon forgives someone for a crime they committed. Ethel Rosenberg did not commit the crime for which she was convicted, so it's the US government that should beg forgiveness from Ethel's descendants.'
Clune has softened her stance against Ethel over the years, but other historians maintain she knew about her husband and was active enough in his spy ring to merit scrutiny and even blame.
Harvey Klehr, a retired Emory University historian, said the memo did not change his mind that Ethel conspired in espionage even if she did not spy herself or have access to classified files.
Mark Kramer of Harvard University said the interpretation of the Russian communication was debatable, and that other documents still detail 'damning evidence' of Ethel's involvement.
She was part of the Soviet operation even 'if she was not directly participating in the way Julius Rosenberg was,' Kramer said.
