Bret Weinstein on history: what the evidence says · JRE #2198

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

The VENONA intercepts, decrypted communications between Soviet intelligence and its agents that were declassified by the NSA in 1995, show Julius Rosenberg (covername LIBERAL) as an active and prolific Soviet spy who recruited his brother-in-law David Greenglass and passed U.S. weapons-related information to the KGB; historians treat his guilt as well-established. The evidence against Ethel Rosenberg is markedly weaker: per the NSA's own historical summary, only two VENONA decrypts mention her, showing she was a loyal communist who knew of her husband's espionage and may have run some errands for the KGB, but the decrypts "do not suggest she committed any crimes worthy of capital punishment." The trial testimony that most directly implicated Ethel, David Greenglass's claim that she typed his notes on the atomic bomb, was later described by Greenglass himself, in a recanted 2001 interview, as testimony given partly to protect his own wife from prosecution. NSA historians note that one interpretation for her death sentence is that it was used as leverage to pressure Julius into naming other Soviet sources. Overall, Julius Rosenberg's guilt in passing secrets to the Soviets is well-supported by declassified intelligence, but the claim that Ethel Rosenberg was equally guilty is not well-supported by the same evidence, making the blanket statement that "the Rosenbergs" were guilty misleading as applied to Ethel.