Subversion? The line between guilt and innocence is blurred

Lately Malice has been enthralled with the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the couple who were executed for treason by the United States government in 1953, having allegedly passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. All these years hence there seems little doubt that Julius was involved in espionage. However, revelations from the principle witness (David Greenglass, who was Ethel's brother) in the late 1990's seem to clear her name. It brings up all sorts of questions about defining treachery. I wonder if Ethel feels more betrayed by her brother than by her government...

Say what you want about Communism. I hate it - it doesn't work. But paranoia can create an atmosphere of hate, and any government that could do this to two children must surely question its motives.

Jean-Paul Sartre called the trial "a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation. By killing the Rosenbergs, you have quite simply tried to halt the progress of science by human sacrifice. Magic, witch-hunts, auto-da-fés, sacrifices — we are here getting to the point: your country is sick with fear... you are afraid of the shadow of your own bomb."

News-reporter Bob Considine witnessed Ethel's execution and gave this interview to the live television media:  "She died a lot harder. When it appeared she had received enough electricity to kill an ordinary person, and had received the exact amount which had killed her husband, the doctors went over and pulled down the cheap prison dress - a little dark green printed job - and placed the stethoscope to her, and looked around and looked at each other dumb-founded, seeming surprised that she was not dead. Believing she was dead, the attendants had taken off the ghastly strappings and electrodes and black belts and so forth, and these had to be adjusted again, and she was given more electricty which started a ghastly plume of smoke which rose from her head and went up against the skylight overhead. After two more of those jolts, Ethel Rosenberg had met her maker. She'll have a lot of explaining to do."