Part 18

In September, Greenglass arrived in New York on furlough. He stayed at his mother’s apartment on Sheriff Street where Rosenberg visited him the next morning. Greenglass told him, “I think I have a pretty good description of the atom bomb.” He turned over a sketch and some data relating to the bomb to his brother-in-law who seemed delighted with them. He gave David $200.00 and told him that “he would like to have it immediately, as soon as I possibly could get it written up....” A replica of this sketch was identified by an atomic engineer at a later stage of the trial as a cross-section of “the bomb we dropped at Nagasaki, similar to it.”

That afternoon, Greenglass typed some twelve pages of information and then drove over to Knickerbocker Village with Ruth where he gave the manuscript to Julius. The latter insisted that the report’s grammar be corrected and Ethel retyped it on a portable in the living room. While this was going on, Julius told David that he had once stolen a proximity fuse when he worked for the Emerson Radio Company. Before the Greenglasses left that afternoon, Julius advised David to stay at Los Alamos as a civilian when he was discharged from the Army.

David received an honorable discharge at Fort Bliss in El Paso on February 28, 1946. He immediately returned to New York where he went into business with his brother Bernard, Julius Rosenberg and a man named Goldstein. The four formed two companies--G & R Engineering and the Pitt Machine Products Corporation. Some time in 1946 or 1947, Julius urged David to continue his schooling at Russian expense “for the purpose of cultivating the friendships of people that I had known at Los Alamos and also to acquire new friendships with people who were in the field of research that are in those colleges, like physics and nuclear energy.” He suggested a number of institutions, including the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University, but Greenglass “never bothered” to go.

In August of 1949, David left Pitt and G & R and got a job with the Arma Engineering Corporation. In the three years he had been working with his brother-in-law, Julius had told him a great deal about his espionage activities. According to Greenglass, Rosenberg was receiving information from General Electric as well as from someone in Cleveland, Ohio. “He told me that he had people going to school in various up-State institutions.” In 1947, he revealed that he had heard “from one of the boys” about a sky-platform project, and information about “atomic energy for airplanes” from another. As a reward for all his varied activities, he informed David, he and his wife had been given watches, a citation and a console table by the Russians.

Q. Did he describe the citation at all?

A. He said it had certain privileges with it in case he was sent to Russia.

A few days after Klaus Fuchs’ arrest in February of 1950, Rosenberg awakened Greenglass one morning and insisted that he accompany him on a walk around nearby Hamilton Fish Park. He told David that the man who had visited him in Albuquerque five years before had been one of Fuchs’ contacts and that he would probably be picked up soon. He urged Greenglass to leave the country and promised to obtain some money for him from the Russians. For the next few months, Rosenberg kept pressing David to get out of the United States but it was not until Harry Gold’s arrest in May that he told him that “you will have to leave the country.”

At that time, he gave David $1000.00 and promised him $6000.00 more. He suggested that David and Ruth go to Mexico City and that they get their tourist visas at the border rather than at the Mexican Consulate in New York. Once the couple arrived in Mexico City, they were to make contact with the Russian Ambassador and, by following instructions that would have delighted E. Phillips Oppenheim, eventually wind up in Czechoslovakia. Greenglass went so far as to have six sets of passport pictures taken. On Memorial Day, he turned five sets over to Rosenberg who, a week later, brought him $4,000 in tens and twenties in a brown paper bag. Almost all of this money, he said, had been given to O. John Rogge as a fee for legal services.

In the days that followed this visit, David began to notice that he was being regularly followed. When Julius asked him, “Are you being followed?” he told him that he thought he was. His brother-in-law then asked him what he intended to do about it and Greenglass told him, “I am not going to do anything. I am going to sit--I am going to stay right here.” On June 15th, he was picked up by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. One month later, Julius Rosenberg was taken into custody and, on August 11th, Ethel was arrested. The circle that Gouzenko had started in 1945 was full.

Ruth Greenglass told much the same story as had her husband. Julius and Ethel had persuaded her to encourage her husband to commit espionage. Her brother-in-law had given her $150.00 for railroad fare when she first visited David in Albuquerque in late November of 1944. A few days after she arrived, she and her husband took a stroll out of Albuquerque on Route 66 and she “told him that Julius was interested in the physical description of the project at Los Alamos, the approximate number of people employed there, whether the place was camouflaged, what the security measures were, and the type of work that David himself did....” The next day, after consulting “with memories and voices in my mind,” Greenglass told her what she wanted to know and, when she returned to New York a few days later, she wrote it all down for Julius who seemed “very pleased.”

She said that the plan to switch pocketbooks with Ann Sidorovich in a Denver theatre had soon been abandoned in favor of a meeting in an Albuquerque supermarket. On March 3, 1945, she left New York for her second trip to Albuquerque where, after three weeks of apartment-hunting, she found the place on North High Street. On April 18th, she suffered a miscarriage and immediately wrote to Ethel Rosenberg to tell her that she was confined to bed and would be unable to keep the supermarket rendezvous which had been scheduled for “the last Saturday in April or the first Saturday in May.” Ethel wrote back that “a member of the family would come out to visit me the last weeks in May, the third and fourth Saturdays.” The Greenglasses visited the Central Avenue Safeway, which had been chosen as the meeting spot, on both Saturdays but “no one came.” It wasn’t until Sunday, June 3rd, that Harry Gold walked into their living room and announced that he came “from Julius.”

Her description of the Gold visit was similar to David’s except that she insisted that her husband had taken the Jello box side out of her wallet while, as he remembered it, it had been in her purse. The remainder of her testimony pertaining to the various acts of espionage that took place during the rest of 1945 did not differ materially from her husband’s. She did recall a conversation with Ethel in 1946 about a “mahogany console table” which her sister-in-law told her “she had gotten ... as a gift.” Julius interrupted to say that “it was a special kind of a table” and pointed out that its underside had been hollowed out so that it could be used for microfilming.

The defense made a monumental effort to discredit both witnesses. The spectacle of a brother testifying against his sister was not a pretty one and Emanuel Bloch made the most of it.

Q. Do you bear any affection for your sister Ethel?

A. I do.

Q. You realize, do you not, that Ethel is being tried here on a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage?

A. I do.

Q. And you realize the grave implications of that charge?

A. I do.

Q. And you realize the possible death penalty, in the event that Ethel is convicted by this jury, do you not?

A. I do.

But David insisted that he had always loved his sister “as far back as I ever met her and knew her.” If his testimony hurt her, he was sorry, but he felt “remorse” and had to get it off his chest.

Bloch also tried to show that Greenglass lacked the technical knowledge necessary to understand the material he said he was obtaining for Julius. David admitted that he had failed all eight courses he had taken at Brooklyn Polytech, that he had never obtained a degree in science or engineering, and that he had had no training in nuclear or atomic physics. As far as the Army was concerned, he was classified as an automotive machinist and a toolmaker. What he did know about the bomb, he had “picked it up here and there.”

As far as the Blochs were concerned, the Greenglasses were testifying against their clients in the hopes of avoiding punishment for their participation in the espionage conspiracy. At the time of the trial, Ruth had neither been arrested nor indicted despite the fact that she had been very much a part of Rosenberg’s plans. Bloch _fils_ pumped David about this.

Q. Now, Mr. Greenglass, your wife has never been arrested, has she?

A. She has not.

Q. And she has not pleaded guilty to any conspiracy to commit espionage, has she?

A. She has not.

Q. And your wife is at the present time home taking care of your children; isn’t that right?

A. That’s right.

His father tried the same tack when he had Ruth on the stand. She had stated that, after her husband’s arrest, she had informed her lawyer, O. John Rogge, that she wanted to testify for the Government.

Q. Well, was it your state of mind, that you thought you would not be punished?

A. No, I didn’t want to be punished.

Q. Did you hope not to be punished?

A. I did.

Q. And did you at the time you spoke to Mr. Rogge, hope that, if you told the truth and your husband told the truth, you wouldn’t be punished?

A. Mr. Bloch, I have always hoped that ...

Q. Will you answer my question, please?

A. Yes.

Bloch Junior’s parting shot at the Greenglasses involved the nature of their relationship with Julius after the failure of the machine shop in 1949. Ruth testified that “we lost everything in that business.” When her husband pulled out in August of that year, he had asked to be compensated for his twenty-five shares of stock. In fact, Ruth had “bought a book of promissory notes” and drafted several notes for her brother-in-law to sign. “We asked Mr. Rosenberg to sign the promissory notes and he refused, and he said we did not have the understanding that required it--a verbal understanding was sufficient, and he gave neither my husband nor his brother a note.” But she insisted that the incident did not cause any friction between the two families even though she had consulted Mr. Rogge about David’s rights.

Q. Well, aren’t you a bit angry at either Mr. or Mrs. Rosenberg because they did not pay you what you think you were entitled to?

A. I don’t think I am angry. I just can’t understand their actions because there was a debt due.

Q. You are not angry?

A. No, I am not angry. I don’t understand people who do not pay their debts, Mr. Bloch.

Q. And you resent it?

A. I don’t think I resented it. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t being paid for what was rightfully mine.

It was David’s recollection that he had assigned his stock to his sister’s husband in January of 1950 but that it hadn’t been turned over to him until late April. There was some discussion about the price to be paid for the stock--David wanted $2,000.00 but finally agreed to accept half that amount in the form of a note. After he gave the stock to Julius, he claimed that Rosenberg never signed the promissory note which Ruth had prepared for him. When Greenglass was arrested, he asked Rogge to start a law suit against Rosenberg for the “few thousand dollars” he said he had lost in the machine shop venture. When Ruth testified, she swore that David had never asked his lawyer to sue Julius--“I was the one who spoke of it,” she insisted, “not my husband.”

The Greenglasses were followed on the stand by Harry Gold whose apologia included the saga of his trip to Albuquerque in June of 1945. His version of the episode was identical with those previously put into the record by David and Ruth. He had arrived in Santa Fe on Saturday, June 2nd, where he had a thirty-minute conversation with Fuchs. He then took the bus to Albuquerque, a sixty-minute run, where he “managed to obtain a room in the hallway of a rooming house.” Early the next morning, he had registered in his own name at the Hilton Hotel and then walked to the North High Street address Yakovlev had given him, and climbed “a very steep flight of steps” to the Greenglasses second-floor apartment. Although Ruth and David had testified that they did not receive the $500.00 from Gold until his afternoon visit, the courier remembered that he had given them the envelope containing the money that very morning.

Because Gold, other than by his references to “Julius,” did not implicate either the Rosenbergs or Sobell, he was not cross-examined by the defense team. As he vacated the witness chair to return to the Lewisberg Federal Penitentiary, Saypol called Dr. George Bernhardt. Bernhardt was a physician who lived only a few doors away from the Rosenbergs on Monroe Street. He recalled a telephone conversation he had had with Julius in May of 1950. According to him, the defendant had said, “Doctor, I would like to ask a favor of you. I would like to know what injections one needs to go to Mexico.” When the doctor demurred, Julius had assured him that “it is not for me; it’s for a friend of mine.” Bernhardt then told him that he would need “typhoid injections and a small-pox vaccination.”

During this conversation, Bernhardt informed Rosenberg that if his friend was a veteran “all he would need would be booster doses instead of going through the entire series of injections, and he said, ‘Yes, he is a veteran.’” He told his caller that the typhus injection would not be necessary, however, if his friend was going only to Mexico City but Rosenberg said, “He will probably go into the interior.” Then, Bernhardt had recommended, “if he decided to go ... give me a little notice because I don’t usually stock a typhus vaccine and I would have to get it, and he said he would let me know.”

Q. Did that complete the conversation which you had with him?

A. That is right.

Bernhardt admitted to Block Junior that he had been treating Julius for hay fever during May of 1950. Rosenberg used to come to the physician’s Knickerbocker Village apartment once a week for injections. These injections were usually given in Bernhardt’s living room. But the witness couldn’t remember whether he had ever discussed vacations with his patient or shown him pictures he had taken on Cape Cod. He was certain, however, that he had never discussed “with Julius Rosenberg his taking a vacation in Mexico.”

The Government got back to the subject of Morton Sobell again with the testimony of William Danziger, another City College graduate who had worked with him in the Bureau of Ordinance. Danziger had left Washington in March of 1950 to take a job with the Academy Electrical Products Corporation in New York. Shortly after his arrival, he had looked up the Sobells and, with his wife, visited them in Flushing. It was during this visit that Sobell, after learning that his guest was in “the electrical business,” had suggested to him that he might be able to use Rosenberg’s machine shop.

In the latter part of June, Danziger visited the machine shop where he was informed that Julius was “out at a stamping place. I was at that time rather interested in getting an estimate on stamping, so I went out to the stamping place and saw him out there.” In July, Danziger dropped in at the shop once more “to look over the ... facilities.” Rosenberg told him that “he was rather tied up at that time” and would be unable to accept any new work “for some months.” If Danziger wanted some work done, he was advised “to contact him some time in the future.”

On June 20th, Danziger telephoned Sobell and told him that he was looking for an electric drill in order to do some repair work at his home. Sobell informed him that “he was getting ready to leave for a vacation in Mexico,” but if Danziger wanted a drill, he would have to come to Flushing to get it. When he arrived at the Sobell apartment that evening, he noticed that “there was packing going on, there were valises standing there.” He also saw a car in the driveway with some valises in it. After Sobell gave him the electric drill, he told Danziger that “he was going to Mexico City by air.”

Some weeks later, Danziger received a letter addressed to him at the Academy Electrical Products Corporation from an “M. Sowell” in Mexico City. It was from Sobell and contained two enclosures which he was asked to “forward ... and I will explain to you when I get back.” One was a note to Sobell’s parents and the other to Edith Levitov, a sister-in-law who lived in Arlington, Virginia. Danziger delivered both notes and also followed Sobell’s directions to “deliver my address to Max Pasternak.”

Q. Did you know who Max Pasternak was?

A. I knew he was related in some way.

In the middle of July, he received a second letter from Mexico City. This time, the name on the envelope was “M. or Morty Levitov.” It contained “a letter for me, an enclosure for Miss Edith Levitov and a short additional note which he asked me to forward, using somewhat similar phraseology, ‘I will let you know about it when I get back.’” Danziger promptly forwarded the note to Miss Levitov and never heard from Sobell again. Before he stepped down, the witness said he thought that the return address on the second communication--a Cordova or Corbova Street--was different from the one on the first envelope.

Then a Mexico City interior decorator with the impressive name of Manuel Giner de Los Rios sauntered up to the stand. With an interpreter at his side, he testified in a soft Spanish that he lived in Apartment 5 at 153 Calle Octava de Cordoba. He remembered that the Sobells had rented Apartment 4 at the beginning of July, 1950, and that he had had a conversation on the stairs with Morton about a tank of cooking gas on the day they moved in. A week later, he invited the new tenants to “a party for the family and friends in honor of the saint’s day....”

The Sobells soon reciprocated by inviting de Los Rios and his wife to dinner. A few days afterwards, Sobell, who appeared to be “a little nervous, a little worried,” asked his new friend “how one could leave Mexico.”

Q. Did he make any statement as to why he wanted to leave Mexico?

A. Only because he was afraid.

Q. Did he say specifically what he was afraid of?

A. He was afraid that they were looking for him so that he would have to go to the Army.

Q. Did he say who was looking for him?

A. The military police.

“Sometime around the 20th or 22nd of July, 1950,” de Los Rios recalled, Sobell had gone to Vera Cruz where he stayed “for about fifteen days.” The decorator had received two letters from him during this period, both of which began with the salutation, “Dear Helen.” The first was postmarked Vera Cruz and the second was from Tampico. He delivered each letter personally to Mrs. Sobell.

The interpreter had his work cut out for him that afternoon. Señor de Los Rios had no sooner left the courtroom when the bailiff called out the name of Minerva Bravo Espinosa, who, it turned out, worked in an optical shop on the Calle Cinco de Mayo in Vera Cruz. On July 26, 1950, an American who gave his name as “Mr. M. Sand,” had placed an order with her for a pair of glasses. She had no difficulty in recognizing Sobell as that man. He had filled out a card “which purchasers make out to specify what they buy.” At this point, Mr. Kuntz stood up and announced that “we will concede that we filled out the card and used the name of Sand and bought a pair of glasses there.”

José Broccado Vendrell, who was one of the proprietors of the Grand Hotel Diligencias in Vera Cruz, remembered that a “Morris Sand” had stayed at his establishment until July 30th. Vendrell was followed by Dora Bautista, a clerk at a Tampico hotel. On July 30th, an American, who gave his name as “Marvin Sand,” had registered and asked her for directions to the Banco Granadero. Both witnesses identified Sobell as the man they had seen. Glenn Dennis, an official of a Mexican airline, confirmed that a passenger by the name of “N. Sand” flew from Vera Cruz to Tampico on July 30th, and a “Morton Solt” from Tampico to Mexico City two days later.

Elizabeth Bentley, fresh from her triumphs before sundry Congressional investigating committees, contributed little to the prosecution’s case. Outside of adding to the aura of Communism that permeated the entire trial, her testimony consisted of innuendo only. In the fall of 1942, she had accompanied Golos, her party superior (and lover), to the vicinity of Knickerbocker Village, where he was “to pick up some material from a contact, an engineer.” At that time, she had waited in a car while Golos talked to his “contact.” From then until November of the next year, she used to receive telephone calls from a man “who described himself as ‘Julius.’” Golos had told her that this man “lived in Knickerbocker Village,” but she had “never met anyone whose voice I heard, whom I could describe as Julius.”

The government’s last witness was James S. Huggins, an immigration inspector for the Department of Justice. On August 18, 1950, nine Mexican security policemen had brought Morton Sobell to his office in Laredo, Texas. He identified a manifest record which he had filled out from information given to him by Sobell. At the bottom of the card, he had written, “Deported from Mexico,” despite the fact that the Mexican authorities had not shown him any deportation orders. As soon as Huggins had laboriously typed in the necessary personal data on the manifest, the defendant was arrested by FBI agents who were waiting in the outer office.

As Huggins left the witness stand and headed back for the anonymity of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Saypol announced that “The Government rests, if the Court please.” In a little less than two weeks, the prosecution had presented the evidence which it hoped would convict all three defendants. After some defense motions for a mistrial because of the infusion of testimony about the Communist Party were denied, Bloch Junior informed Kaufman that “my first witness is the defendant Julius Rosenberg.”

It was late on the afternoon of March 21, 1951, that the mustached, bespectacled Rosenberg sat himself down in the witness chair. A thirty-three-year-old electrical engineer, he proudly stated that he had married Ethel on June 18, 1939, and that they were the parents of two boys, Michael and Robert. Outside of the fact that he knew a great many people whose names were mentioned during the trial, he denied that he had in any way been involved in espionage. As for Russia, he “felt that the Soviet government had improved the lot of the underdog there ... and at the same time I felt that they contributed a major share in destroying the Hitler beast who killed six million of my co-religionists.”

Q. Did you feel that way in 1945?

A. Yes, I felt that way in 1945.

Q. Do you still feel that way today?

A. I still feel that way.

But he was, and always had been, loyal to the United States.

He testified that Greenglass had asked him for $2,000.00 in May of 1950. When Julius asked him why he needed this money, he was told, “I need the money. Don’t ask questions.” David had also urged his brother-in-law to see if his doctor “would make out a certificate for smallpox vaccination.” In addition, he had wanted to know “what kind of injections are required to go into Mexico.” It was after this conversation that Rosenberg had questioned Dr. Bernhardt about the medical requirements for a Mexican trip.