Declassified memo by American cryptologist sheds light on Ethel Rosenberg’s Cold War espionage case

Historians have long considered Julius Rosenberg a Soviet spy. But questions about Ethel Rosenberg’s role have grown over the years, dividing those who side with Meeropols and say she played no role in the espionage from some historians who say there is evidence she supported her husband’s actions.

A handwritten note from Meredith Gardner, a linguist and codebreaker working for the agency that later became known as the National Security Agency, cites decrypted Soviet correspondence and states that Ethel Rosenberg knew about Julius’s espionage work “but due to poor health did not engage in it herself.”

Ethel Rosenberg and her husband went on trial months after the memo was written, despite Gardner’s assessment, which the Meeropols argued should have been available to FBI and Justice Department officials investigating the case.

“This puts a fine line on both sides of the Atlantic—in other words, both the KGB and the NSA ultimately agreed that Ethel was not a spy,” Robert Meeropol said in an interview. “And so we have a situation where a mother of two young children was executed as a master of nuclear espionage when she was not a spy at all.”

The Meeropols recently obtained an Aug. 22, 1950, NSA memo under the Freedom of Information Act and provided it to the AP.

“This bit of documentation, juxtaposing my father’s work with his lack of work, seems apt to me,” Michael Meeropol said.

The document was written more than a week after Ethel Rosenberg’s arrest — her husband had been arrested a month earlier — likely to summarize what was known about the Soviet spy network operating in the United States at the height of the Cold War and related to the development of the atomic bomb.

It refers to Julius Rosenberg, who worked as a civil engineer, using his Soviet pseudonyms — first “Antenna” and later “Liberal” — and characterizes him as a recruiter for Soviet intelligence.

In a separate paragraph titled “Mrs. Julius Rosenberg,” Gardner describes a deciphered message that said Ethel Rosenberg was a “party member” and “devoted wife” who knew about her husband’s work but had no involvement in it.

Harvey Klehr, now a historian emeritus at Emory University, said this week that despite the memo, his position is that Ethel Rosenberg conspired to commit espionage, even if she did not spy or have access to classified information herself.

“Ethel may not have been a spy — that is, she may not have passed on classified information — but she was an active participant in her husband’s spy network, not someone who simply agreed with her husband on political issues,” Klehr wrote in a 2021 article for Mosaic magazine.

Another historian, Mark Kramer of Harvard University, said this week that the interpretation of the Russian correspondence was debatable and that in any case other documents contained “damning evidence” of Ethel Rosenberg’s involvement in espionage and her participation in the assignments, even “if she did not participate directly in the way that Julius Rosenberg did.”

The Meeropols vehemently deny this, saying the evidence clearly shows that the Soviets never viewed their mother as a potential victim and that she played no role in recruiting spies or assisting her husband in his espionage.

Robert Meeropol, 77, said the release of the note is the culmination of decades of work to clear his mother’s name. As young boys, the brothers visited the White House in 1953 in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade President Eisenhower to prevent their parents’ execution. They were later adopted.

In 2016, in an attempt to convince President Obama to acquit their mother, they cited recently released grand jury testimony.

“I’m incredibly happy to be able to publish this while I’m still alive, because for a long time I thought I wouldn’t live to see it,” he said.

Michael Meeropol, 81, said he remembered his brother saying in 1973 that in a few years “the case would be revealed.”

“Well, 1973-2024 is a little more than a few years, but as far as I’m concerned, it just happened. Thank God that this note was published, it blows all that away from our mother,” said Michael Meeropol.