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The Rosenbergs · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and this is Stuff you should know the podcast.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: That's right that we didn't start the fire edition. It's
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: funny because that may have been the first time I've
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: heard about the Rosenbergs. Rosenberg's H bomb Sugar Ray, panmun jump.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: What was the last part? I've never known what the
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: heck he was saying.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: P A n m u n j o m one
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: word pan muon JOm, Brando, the King and I and
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the catcher in.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: There all right, back up? What is panmu JOm?
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, buddy, you'll have to listen to that.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: We didn't start the fire History podcast because I was
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: like earlier today, I was like, oh man, what a
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: great basis for a history podcast. No, yeah, of course
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: it was a thing. Know, it's got a shelf life
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: because they I guess, went through all of them from
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: one to twenty twenty three.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So was each each lyric its own episode.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I would, I mean, that's
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: how I would do it, because you can get a
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: lot of mileage out of that song.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: For sure. That's really cool. That's off.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah I didn't check it out, but.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't check it out.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: There's a man. Surely they didn't do one each because
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: there's so many references and only ran for two years
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: unless yeah, Daily Show.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe they just got bored after like halfway through they forget.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: This anyway, this is a that's Billy Joel's worst song, probably,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And this is a this is a podcast about the Rosenbergs.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Well, what was his best song? And if you don't
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: say Uptown Girl, you're wrong?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Probably Miami twenty seventeen.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I've seen the lights go out on Broadway. That's a
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: great song. But I'm a Billy Joel, like super I'm
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: a stand So are you really?
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't know that?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: No, I had no idea.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Glasshouses was the first record ever bought that. I've
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: seen him live like a dozen times.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: I had no idea.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like, it's kind of cool to listen to
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Billy Joel now. But I suffered many decades of people
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: making fun of me because I would like, go see
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a Pavement show and then put on Billy Joel the
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: next day.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Man, people just stink sometimes.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Hey man, you have a variety of tastes, as.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Do you, for sure, and people should be left alone
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: and not have their tastes made fun of.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll go to bat for Billy Joel in any
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: day of the week, my friend.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you who maybe should have been left alone,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: and that's Ethel Rosenberg.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess we should give us sort of an
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: overview of this before we dig in.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: So the Rosenberg's, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a married couple.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: They lived in New York City, were from New York City,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: and they were convicted of committing espionage in nineteen fifty
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: one and executed and put to death, which was This
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: is a very big deal for a few reasons. One
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: is because a lot of historians basically say, like, I
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: don't think Ethel did this, and she was probably innocent,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: even though Julius did, And a lot of people say,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: and even if he did, and she might have known
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: about it, Like executing these two people with two young
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: sons when no one else was getting executed for this
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: at the time, was a travesty of justice.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And as we'll see, they got caught up in
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Cold War communists aastaria and we're basically put into a
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: deadly game of chicken essentially, is what it amounts to.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And totally it's one of those blemishes on the Department
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: of Justice that's never really gonna go away that they
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: did this. We'll see, we'll explain, but it's just a
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: sad story all around. We want to say, Julius Rosenberg
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: definitely was a spy for the Soviet Union, an enthusiastic
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: one whose spy career spanned more than a decade. Yeah,
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Ethyl probably was in some way, shape or format at
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: least abetting it, if not some way minorly supporting it.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: She may have also played an even bigger role. But
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: I personally do not think that both of them were innocent.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Some people say that, just based on the research I've done,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: it just seems clear as day that they weren't both innocent.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: But to put them both to death. They were not
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: the only spies who were caught and convicted during the
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Cold War. They were the only spies caught and convicted
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: during the Cold War who were executed. And that's what
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: makes the whole thing so significant.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So let's go back and talk a
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: little bit about their early life. We can kind of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: re see this first part, but I mentioned they were
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: both born in New York. Ethel was born there in
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen, had a few brothers, went to Seward Park
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: High School. She was big into theater, and this would
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: come up because she loved to sing and dance, and
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: later on, when she started to get a little political
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and was going to union events, she would like perform sometimes,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I guess to you know, just make it a little
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: more fun, Like, Hey, we're at the union meeting, and
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: now here's a song from Ethel. I guess at the
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: time greenngrass.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the Communist blues with a nice little communist tap dance.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Julius was also born in New York. He's a few
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: years younger, born in nineteen eighteen to Polish immigrants, and
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: he also went to Seward Park High School. But I
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: don't think they knew each other there. It seemed like
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: they met when he was at City College and she
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: was working as a secretary.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and by this time when they met they had
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: both their interests in communism. It definitely blossomed. Yeah, I
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: think Julius is even more than Ethel's by them, but
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Ethel I think it participated in a strike and was
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: fired from her workplace for participating in a strike, and
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: she was like, I think I'm into workers' rights now. Yeah.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: So when they met, it was at a charity benefit
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: for the International Siemens Union SEA M E N and
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: so they were both like, I'm a communist, you're a communist.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Let's get together and make little communist babies.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And do the communist shuffle.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was definitely more into it. He joined a
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: group called the Steinmetz Society, who was an affiliate of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the Young Communist League, and he had a couple of
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: friends that are gonna come up later in a sort
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: of a small issue, but just put pins in the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: names Morton Sobel and Max Elector, who were buddies he
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: made while he was sort of in this affiliated with
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: a Young Communist League group society.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And they had very similar ideas to his.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: And in nineteen forty did you say that he trained
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: as an electrical engineer. That's what he studied.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I know, but you're right.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was hired as an engineer for the US
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Army Signal Corps. And when he was hired, he clapped
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: his hands and rubbed him together and said, what can
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: I steal and pass along a secrets to the Soviet Union?
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Essentially, yeah, basically he had one miner brush with the FBI.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: In nineteen forty one, he was called into what's called
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: a loyalty meeting. I guess just sort of sniffed people
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: off the case and see how loyal they were to
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the United States, because they found a couple of mentions
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: of Ethel in the FBI files, one that she had
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: signed a petition for a communist city council candidate and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: another that was just someone who gave a tip that
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: accused her of having Communist leanings. But he was like,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not even into politics that much, which is a lie,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: let alone communism, which was also a lie. And so
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: they pretty much dropped the case, and in nineteen forty
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: two they moved to the Lower east Side to the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Knickerbocker Village and started having those baby communists, Like you said, is.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: The Knickerbocker Village still around? Is that like a neighborhood
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: in the Lower east Side.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: I don't hear it referenced. I mean, I'm sure you
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: could tell where it was, but I don't. I don't
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: know if there are any modern references or signage or
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: anything like that, or it might be wrong, but I've
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: never seen it.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's the KBV that all the cool people in
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: New York talk about. What is that Knickerbocker village? Gotcha? Okay,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: so we've we've laid the foundation. There's Julius, there's Ethel.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Their kids have come along. They're both very loyal Communists,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: especially as we'll see, and Julius's big time into spying
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: and he became a spy. It's not actually clear how
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: that happened. To tell you the truth, there's many different accounts.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: One is Julius's account, which is that he never spied
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: and it was framed by the government. Yeah, that's demonstrably untrue.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: His brother in law, David's account, which will get into
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: more later, but he basically said that Julius would like
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: He actually went so far as to go to the
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Soviet embassy in New York and said, Hey, can I
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: do some spying for you guys. I'm a big fan,
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: like he would he would basically just he wanted to spy.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: He was putting himself out there. And then there are
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: a couple of others that are probably likelier than either
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: of the other two.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one Soviet agent named Alexander Feksilov said he was
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: just introduced to another Soviet agent at a Labor Day
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: rally in Central Park. His name was Semon Semyonov. And
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: then other people said, now it was another intelligence person.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: So we don't know how he got into it. But
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: to set the stage of why he might have done this,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: it was a time in the nineteen forties when the
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: US and the Soviets were allied against the Nazis, and
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: there are historians that say, like Julius didn't think he
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: was betraying the US. He thought he was fighting fascism
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: when he sort of started getting into spying for the Soviets.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but that's what some people say.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the most polite way you could
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: put it. Another way to say it is maybe be
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: betraying the United States was just an incidental part of it.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good way.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: But I saw that one of the things he was
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: well known for. It's like he hated fascism so much
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: that he would be seen walking down the stream and
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: be like, I hate you fascism and he'd be punching
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: the air. Yeah, he hated fascism, So that was one
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: of his big motives for sure. Yeah, and in nineteen
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: forty two, so he's hired in nineteen forty I guess
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: he laid a little bit of groundwork for people trusting him.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: In nineteen forty two, he started passing weapons information to
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: the Soviets, and some pretty big ones too. One of
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: the ones I saw was a proximity fuse, and that
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: is a tiny radio that is used in anti aircraft
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: guns that basically tells the anti aircraft gun okay, that
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: plane is now in range to do maximum damage to it. Fire. Yeah,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: that's definitely something you want to have on your anti
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: aircraft gun. And he passed that along to the Soviets.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: That was just one example, and he was He was
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: first handled by Semyon Semyonov, who you mentioned earlier. He
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: got handed off then to Alexander Feklisov, who you also
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: mentioned earlier. And so those twos account of how he
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: got into spying are probably the likeliest because they were
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: his spy masters when he was a spy.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed also during this time, and this is pretty key.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: He was trying to recruit other people who had that
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: sort of same political leanings as him and recruit them.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And one of those people was the aforementioned brother in law.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: So this is David Greenglass and this is Ethel's Ethel's brother.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: So in March nineteen forty five he was fired from
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the Signal Corps. The FBI said, wait a minute, you've
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: got a Communist Party membership card and it's got your
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: name on it. And he was like, oh, okay, so
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I don't work there anymore. I'm going to start up
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: my own business with Ethel's brothers, David who I just mentioned,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: and Bernie, and it's called Pitt Machine Products. And that
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: did not go well. I guess that just wasn't a
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: good business. I think David accused Julius of being a
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: bad business person. He accused David of being a bad foreman.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And by nineteen forty eight the company was almost not
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: a company anymore.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: No, it was just down to the original investors. I
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: just made scare quotes who were Julius and Ethel's two brothers,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: David and Bernie. Right, So another big part of this problem,
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: I guess we should say what we're describing now is
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: animosity that kind of grew up. Yeah, between David and
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Julius specifically, there was just some tension, even though they
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: still remained in one another's lives, highly involved in one
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: another's lives. Some historians point to this specific instance of
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: them going into business together, which is, yeah, all a
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: bad idea to go into business with family. Uh, across
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: the board. Okay again, we'll go back to my original motto,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: never trust family.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Never trust family. Man. He's been saying that for years.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, Julius Rosenberg would agree with me, so would Ethel.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: But so David started to become resentful, and there was
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: animosity throughout this period, and some people point to that
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: as the basis of what came later.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, David had borrowed a lot of money
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: from Julius without returning it. So the animosity is building.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: His wife, David's wife, Ruth, so their sister in law,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: the Rosenberg sister in law. She in February of nineteen
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: fifty was a lit a fire when her nightgown brushed
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: up against the heater of her apartment. She had a
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: lot of hospitalization and severe burns and high medical bills
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and gave birth to a daughter while she was recovering
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: from this. So all this is just to basically set up,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: like you said that David is he's in a pretty
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: bad place in his life at this time.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's going through a rough patch.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: So we'll talk a little bit more about what happened,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: because there's different accounts depending on who you talk to.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: But what we do know that happened next was that
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: they started to get caught. So the whole thing kicked
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: off in February of nineteen fifty when a guy named
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Klaus Fuchs, who was a physicist, he was British. He
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: was discovered by I six as being a Soviet spy,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: and he was a big time Soviet spy. Apparently the
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: spying he did is estimated to have helped the Soviets
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: skip ahead an entire year in their development of the
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: atomic bomb. Huge, huge damaging spy. And when he was
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: caught he implicated others, but he didn't know others' names,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: He only knew their code names, and he mentioned Raymond Well.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: The FBI, the US government had what are now known
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: as the Venona Cables. The US had cracked secret cables
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: that were encrypted that the USSR had sent during World
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: War two, and in it it talked about a lot
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: of the spies working for them, and by having these
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Venona cables and knowing people's different code names, they were
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: able to basically root out at least one hundred spies
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: using these cables. And Klaus Fuchs was first, and then
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: after Klaus Fuchs was Harry Gold, who was the rayman
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: that Klaus Fuchs mentioned in his confession.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, so he was his US contact, Fuchs's
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: US contact. And then eventually that trickled down and Gold
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: led them to David green Glass, the Rosenberg's brother and
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: brother in law.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: So on June fifteenth, nineteen fifty, the FEDS got David
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: green Glass and they rounded him up, brought him to
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: HQ to question him, and he was, I'm not into
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: espionage at all, like deny, deny, deny, which is I
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: guess the sensible thing to do. But then they said no,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: this guy, Harry Gold, identified a photo of you, and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: he went, okay, you got me. I am committing espionage.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: He was arrested and he said, I passed on this
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: atomic information and we'll get to how he knew this stuff.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: In a minute. I passed it on to Harry Gold
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: in June nineteen forty five. I was initially recruited to
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: do this by my wife, Ruth, and Ruth was recruited
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: by no good brother in law Julius. Key to all
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: this is that he never mentioned Ethel being involved at first.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a big one right there. Just put that
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: in your pipe and stick it in your hat, right Yeah.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Should we take a break down and talk about what
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: came next?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good cliffhanger.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, we'll be right back. So the FEDS have David
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Greenglass now, who was one degree removed from the Rosenbergs,
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: and he's already implicated Julius, but not Ethel. So the
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: FBI goes to start talking to Julius. They questioned him
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: in June of nineteen fifty and I guess basically the
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: day after they started talking to David Greenglass's brother in law,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: pretty quick. Yeah, and they didn't have enough on Julius
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: to bust him yet. They knew enough because again, remember
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: they had the Venona cables and all of these people
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: are mentioned in the Venona Cables. They had basically figured
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: out who was who, but the Venona cables were so
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: sensitive and so highly cied the FBI, the Department of
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Justice could not use them in court. Oh yeah, so
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: they could only use them as a background information. And
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: then they had to extract these confessions and piece together
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: like as if those things didn't exist. So they knew everything,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: but they had to basically get David Greenglass and then
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: later his wife Ruth to talk.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which they did over the course of a month
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: or so. They started talking to Ruth, kept talking to
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: David and about Yeah, like one month later, July seventeenth,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: they said, all right, we got enough, We're going to
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: arrest Julius. And then a little less than a month later,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: on August eleventh, after Ethel participated in the grand jury
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: hearing for her husband, she was also arrested and they
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: were both charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. And that
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: was under the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for some reason, going and being just a
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: part of a grand jury trial and then getting arrested
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: right after, I can't compare it to anything, but it
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: just seems almost mean, like there should be a break
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: in between, like you think you're going in and you're
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: gonna be fine and then bam, you get arrested on
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: the like as you're walking out.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: It just just mean, It's like the when they invited
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: everyone of the football game the criminals.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a good one.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Operation What was that?
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Uh? No, that was maybe that was the one where
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: they created the corpse that they threw overboard World War
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: two to fool the Nazis.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that inspired a Broadway show. But I think maybe
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: a Broadway show should be inspired by the Redskins football game.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: I agree, And I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or at least a Simpsons episode.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet. No, it did. Remember
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: we talked about it where they had the free boat giveaway.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: That's why I said, wink wink.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Oh god, I didn't know you were winking at me.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: You're like, I thought you were just alurting, right, all right,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: So we should tell the story, and this is the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: official story according to the Department of Justice, on how
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: this all went down. So we're just gonna kind of
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: tell it that way to begin with. Yeah, I mentioned
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: David Grenglass had atomic secrets and how he got those?
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Was he was in the army in nineteen forty three,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: and he was transferred to Los Alamos in August of
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty four and was around the work of the
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Manhattan Project.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden, Yeah, he was rubbing elbows with Oppenheimer. Yeah,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: so that was August of nineteen forty four when you
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: started working on the atomic bomb project. A few months later,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Ruth came to visit David and his wife. Yes, his
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: wife Ruth. So by this time when she came to
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: visit her husband in Albuquerque, she had actually been recruited
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: as a spy by at least Julius Rosenberg, and she
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: essentially went to Albuquerque to convince her husband to become
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: a spy. All these like, both couples were very much
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: into the Soviet Union, very much into Communism, so they
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: have very similar views. This wasn't like, didn't take a
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: lot of persuading from what I understand, And she basically said, hey,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: Julius figured out, probably as Soviet handlers told him that
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: you're working on as the atomic bomb project. So he
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: wants you to tell me everything you know about it,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: and then I'm going to take it back to him.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Then he's going to pass it on to the USSR
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: and our glorious leader Joseph Stalin.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: That's right. January of nineteen forty five, David went back
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to New York on furlough, and just a couple of
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: days after he got back, Julius came around, knocked on
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the door of his apartment and he said, Hey, what
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: else you got for me on this atomic bomb? He said,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: write it all down, anything you can think of that's useful.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I'll pick it up tomorrow. His wife, David's wife, Ruth,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: was like, his handwriting is terrible. You're not gonna be
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: able to read this, and Julius said, according to the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: DOJ said, not a problem. Ethel did I mention to
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: he as a secretary, she can type like the wind.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: She'll type everything up so it's nice and neat and orderly,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and we'll all be a working family together in this
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: espionage project.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: All attention will dissolve after we start spying together. And
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: that same furlough visit in January nineteen forty five, David
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: and Ruth have dinner with the Rosenbergs and they're actually
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: introduced to a Soviet operative named Ann Sidorovich and a
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: really interesting plan is hatched here that ultimately leads to
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: the downfall of David green Glass. Julia says, hey, Anne
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: is going to be your contact. Now, she's going to
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: come visit you in Albuquerque. By the way, Ruth, why
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: don't you move to Albuquerque to be with your husband
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: and you guys can spy more effectively together. But when
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Anne comes to visit you, just give her all the
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: information and she will give it to me. We should
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: say there were people like Anne, like Harry Gold. Their
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: entire job was to act as couriers. And the reason
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: why is because the Soviets rightly assumed that the Feds
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: were following all of their operatives in the United States,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: so they couldn't possibly use an operative to connect two spies.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: They had to use a third spy to work as
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: a courier. That's what Anne was doing. But somebody said,
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: what if Anne, like is indisposed, what if she, you know,
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: gets a stomach bug and it's just pooping everywhere, or
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: what if what if she falls in love and runs
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: off and gets married and frig it's all about the USSR.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: And Julius said, I've got a great idea, a plan
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: B if you will, and That is where the phrase
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: plan B was coined.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Are you messing with me? Okay? Yeah, So one small
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: detail here is that Anne was in Denver, so Ruth
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: would get the information from David and Alberquerque, then visit
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Anne in Denver to pass this along and if Anne
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: had that stomach bug. This was the brilliant plan that
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Julius came up with. He said, hey me that jello
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: box over there, Raspberry, and they were like, we've already uh,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: we've already had dessert. Why do you want this jello box?
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: He ripped the jello box open and took one of
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the cardboard pieces and he ripped that in half, handed
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Ruth one and said, I'm going to give this other
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: half to someone with a secret identity that you don't
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: know yet. That's our Plan B person. So if you
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: show up to Denver, Ann is not there and somebody
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: shows up with this jello box half that I'm holding
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: and showing you, remember it's going to match. You can
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: put it together like a locket. Yeah, that will be
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: the confirmation of their identity, which is so low fi
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: it's actually kind of brilliant.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: It is brilliant, And I think that jello box those
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: two pieces are in a spy museum somewhere. They got it,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: and rightfully so, but it actually came into play because
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: and did get intosposed in some way that I hadn't
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: figured out. And Harry Gold, who again one of his
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: only job was as serving as a courier, he showed
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: up in New Mexico on David and Ruth's doorstep and said, hey,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Julius sent me I spy. And they said, you got
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: the the password, you got the code, you got the
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: I don't know what would you call an object that
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: serves as a password past key.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: They probably said, do you have the rip piece of
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: jello box?
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Right? Or or they said I am the key master?
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Are you the gate keeper?
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Goeser?
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Sure, So he said, yes, I am the key master.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Check this out. And he produced the half of the
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: jello box.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: And what a moment.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Ruth, I think it was one of the other ruthor.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: David produced the other half and they put it together
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: and they said, let's let's wrap brother.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: So, uh, he's now the guy David writes up as
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: much as he knows at that point, you know, the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: extra stuff about the bomb that he you know, since
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the last meeting, and also like, here's some other people
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: that you know, they're always trying to recruit people within
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Los Alamos and elsewhere, and Gold said, great, thanks a lot.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Here's five hundred bucks. Which is interesting because they, I mean,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: these thing weren't doing it for money, right, Was this
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: just a bit of a bonus for being a good soldier?
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: I think so?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: I don't jump change back then nor now.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: No, I mean they were definitely true, true believers in
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: communism and fighting fascism, so maybe it was just a
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: little a lene yap.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: All right, So they gave him five hundred bucks. September
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: of nineteen forty five, he went back to New York.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: David did on another furlough, and here he provided information
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: right to Julius's face, said, here's some more notes. I
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: even drew a sketch of the atomic bomb. Julius is like,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: this isn't very good, and he said, no, trust me,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: it looks basically like that. And he claims that ethel
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: typed up the notes, and then Julius burned those notes
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: in a frying pan, gave David two hundred bucks for
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: his troubles. And that's where we find ourselves.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when I saw that frying pan detail. I was like, God,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: how long did they have to heat those up to
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: get them to catch fire? And then I realized that
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: they were using the frying pan as like basically a fire. Yeah.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: I got it now, but it took me a couple
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: of days.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: That'd be very funny in the movie though. It's just
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: like just another forty five minutes? What's the flashpoint for
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: jello boxes?
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Right? So are we at another stopping point?
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, we're gonna stop everybody if we just hanched down.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back to the contemporaneous present when everyone
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: had been arrested, basically right out of the gate. David
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: and Ruth, the husband and wife team the Green Glasses,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: hired an attorney named O John Rogue or rog or Rogie,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know you pronounce that r O gge. And
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: so they had a pretty good attorney, and he said, Hey,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: here's what you gotta do. Let me ask you this question. First,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: how much do you like your sister and her husband?
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: He said, because what we should really do if you
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: want to get out of this is we should blame
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the Rosenbergs. And if you can make a case against them,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: then they're probably going to let you off pretty light.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: And he was right on the money with that line
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: of thinking.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Green glasses said, sure, why not. I
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: have a pet theory that if David and Ethel had
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: been closer in age, she was seven years older than him,
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: you may not have betrayed her quite as easily. But
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: seven years is a pretty decent amount of distance between
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: you and an older sister, and I think that makes
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: the betrayal all the all the easier.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: My sister's six years older, and I would totally sell
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: her out.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: There you go, So my pet, my pet theory is correct.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: That's right. So they this led to basically a different account.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Some people may say it was an account that shifted.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Other people might say, no, David just basically lied about
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Ethel's involvement. Yeah, and you might be wondering, like, well,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: what's the rumpus here? Like they had Julius dead to rights,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Like why did they need to get Ethel involved? This
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: is because they were living in a time of the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: j Edgar Hoover FBI and prosecutors like Roy Kohane who
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: basically were like, hey, if you want to get Julius.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: You got to get his wife involved and use her
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: as leverage, basically.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the other thing too, is even though they
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: had Julius dead to rights, he was not cooperating in
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: any way, shape or form. He maintained his innocence until
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: the very end. And they wanted more spots. They wanted
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: to flip him and get more and more and more people. Yeah,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: so they used Ethel, like you said, as leverage and
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: they ended up picking her up. Based on the green
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Glasses testimony. Remember when David green Glass's first first question,
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: he does not mention Ethyl. He mentions Ruth, his own wife,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: He mentions his brother in law, Julius. He does not
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: say Ethel was part of the spy ring. Now, all
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: of a sudden he is saying she definitely was. And
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: then even more damning before the Department of Justice came
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: and said like, hey, why did you just touch a
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: perjury to help our case out. He gave that grand
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: jury testament, the same grand jury that Ethel was arrested
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: right after, rather unfairly, and he said, point blank, Ethel
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: was not involved in this.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we know all this is true because in
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: two thousand and one, David Grenglass said, Yeah, I lied
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: about my sister because I wanted to save my own wife.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he lied. During the trial, he perjured himself. He
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: admitted it. So not only did he perjure himself, he
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: perjured himself to implicate his sister, which a lot of
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: people think she was basically innocent, if not fully innocent.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: So that's a really hard thing to swallow. But we're
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: still not done with the d Jane and what they
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: did here.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Julius and Ethel were tried together, along
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: with Julius's college classmate that I mentioned at the beginning
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: that I just had to put a pin in Morton, Sobell,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: you can take that pen out now. So the three
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: of them are being tried. And if David and Ruth
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: hired an attorney that had a pretty great idea to
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: blame it on the Rosenbergs, they did not hire well
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: because they hired Emmanuel manny Block, and I think that
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: was Julius's attorney. They had separate attorneys, and Ethel's was
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: his father, Alexander, and neither one of these people were
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: criminal attorneys at all.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Now, Alexander specialized in facilitating the sale of bakeries I
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: don't get it. I don't understand why they hired them.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't see I don't know.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: There had to be some connection. I doubt if they
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: just yellow page that, you know.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe they were trying to help their careers. I
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: don't know, but it was.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Somebody probably knows. I bet someone will let us know.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the prosecution had a bunch of federal prosecutors
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: led by Irving Sapaul, who time called the nation's number
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: one legal hunter of top communists. Not who you want
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: prosecuting you if you are a spy for the Soviets.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: And then the judge was also not the judge you
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: wanted to draw. His name was Irvin Kaufman, and he
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: was known for hating communists and he used his bench
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: to essentially punish them as harshly as he possibly could.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: He was the kind of judge who would actually add
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: ten years onto whatever sentence the DOJ was asking for
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: in trials of communist spies. He was that kind of judge,
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: and that's who they drew, you know.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: To be funny, as if who let us know about
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the connection to those attorneys was Billy Joel. What if
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: he sent us an email said I know this guy's
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: then attached you'll find an additional verse that I cooked
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: up for you.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, to we didn't.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Start the fire where I explain about the bakery guy.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he'd be like, ps, what's this with my
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: worst song craft? Right?
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I can't believe I said that out loud. Yeah,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: I have to edit that out, which is just what
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: I meant to say was there is no bad Billy
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Joel song.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: That was perfect. There you go. We'll just clip that
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: out and put it over what you said originally.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: No, I'm going to leave it in. I'm gonna stand
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: by it. Hey, listen, there's a big hit Billy. If
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: you're listening. I love almost everything you ever did, but
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: you can't win them all.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: That's a great lesson to learn. Billy Joel really is.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Okay. So one thing we should point out, getting back
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: on track here, about this trial and the prosecution, which
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: hated communist. The jury of twelve had one black man,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: one white woman, and no Jewish members on the jury.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: The other were ten white Christian men who all were
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: in favor of the death penalty.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which you know in their defense, like you can't
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: be on a capital jury if you are in favor
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: of the death penalty, but still it was not the
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: kind of position that you would want to find yourself in,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: like this is.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: I never thought about that. I guess that's true.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Huh, yeah, I think we talked about it in the
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: jury episode. I'm pretty sure that's that's where I got
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: it from, which means it could be wrong.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: But yeah, well, if you were against a death built,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: you just come up the works. They don't want you
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: in there.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so they're in a pickle, I guess
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: is what you want to call it. And they're still like,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: this is all wrong. We're just we're maintaining our innocence.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: And the prosecution said, oh yeah, we'll sit there while
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: we trot out a bunch of witnesses against you. Guys.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: They brought Max Elector, who was a classmate with Morton,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Sobel and Julius. Remember Ruth's brother in law, lewis Abel
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: and I guess that was from I guess she had
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: a sister. I didn't see that anywhere. George Bernhardt, who
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: was Julius's doctor, Harry Gold, the courier for the Soviets,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: and Elizabeth Bentley, who was also a former spy, and
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: each one had quite a story to tell.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And if you're wondering, like why did they get
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Julius's doctor in there, it's because he testified that Julius
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: had inquired about going to Mexico and like, what inoculations
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: do I need to get if I go to Mexico,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: like very suddenly? And the prosecution was like, hey, and
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I just made up for the very suddenly part, But
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the prosecution basically took it that way and was like, hey,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: this is evidence he was gonna flee, he was going
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: to go to Mexico. Get that doctor in here.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: Right, So let's see Elizabeth Bentley, the former spy. She
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: said I saw him or somebody who looked like him
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: once talking to Jacob Golos, who was a known Soviet
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: operative and the head of the Communist Party of the
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: USA in Knickerbocker Village. The KBV no less in nineteen
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: forty two. It's a little thin. Some of the other
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: ones were a little more damning too. Yeah.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: By the way, I know, I sounded very dumb earlier
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: when you said KBV right after Knickerbocker Village, and I
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: didn't pick up on that. In my defense. I thought
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: it would have been kV because knickerbucker is one word.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: That's what can be.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, but people like to like.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: No, I agree, I'd like three eating everyone. No, I'm
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: not a not a one hundred percent more on. I'm
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: just fifty percent more.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: No one thinks you're a moro on or even a
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: more on.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: You should read the internet.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: Uh, people, there's plenty of people who don't like me either.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Oh no, people take it personally. They're people that hate us.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: No, I don't. I don't read that stuff.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: Good Again, they can soak their heads.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: That's just that's right, kick sand, touch grass, all those things.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: So like so, like I said, touch grass, you haven't
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: heard that. No? Is that like you they've been knocked down?
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: No, I think touch grass is a more modern thing.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Like when people are just social media fighting, someone will
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: say touch grass, like, you know, get off the computer.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Go outside. Yes, yes, yeah, okay, I think that's what Weirdly,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: I came across that for the first time within the
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: last couple of weeks, and I promptly forgot it.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well you know what they should say, smoke grass,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Quit internet fighting, go smoke some weed.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: So what about Max Elektor.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Uh who was that? Oh he was the former roommate
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: I think. And he came out in testimony against him too.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, he said Julius tried to recruit me as
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: a spy.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, not good.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Lewis Abel, Ruth's brother in law, said, hey, I got
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: some money from Ruth and David, And if you know David,
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: that is weird. So I asked him where they got it,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: and he said Julius gave it to them, and I
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: suspect for spying, and and Manny Block stood up as
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: aid objection, and the judge said, overruled. You call me,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: you call me lover.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, his dad's over there rolling some biscuits out.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: Oh. I'm glad you said that, because I have to
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: get this out there. I don't know where it came from,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: but it will not leave my head. Sir, mix a
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: lot buttermilk biscuits song. It's just I don't know that song.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Parts of it are you don't.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: No and I love Sir mexical, I just don't know.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: It's a weird like novelty song that he had like
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: very early on surely like.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: The rest of his serious work exactly.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: It's even more novel than his later stuff.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man Seattle's own what a legend.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't know he's from Seattle. Yeah.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because when they did the do you remember the
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Judgment Night movie and that amazing soundtrack.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: I remember the movie.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Well, the movie wasn't great, but the soundtrack was great
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: because they paired rock bands with the hip hop artists
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: because that was a big thing. Oh yeah, and Sir
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Mix a Lot and mud Honey repaired because they were
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: seattleites and their song was awesome.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Nice remember body Count with Iced Tea?
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I saw them at the first Lollapalooza.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: That was when Iced Tea was still making music. And
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: was it like he's on that He's on that cop
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: show forever now right?
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean this is a rapper who had a
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: song called cop Killer. Yeah, and he plays a cop,
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: and apparently he's gone through some like metamorphosis in the
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: eyes of police and people who support police. I bet
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: from hating him to being like, hey, he's actually kind
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: of a good guy because he plays a cop on TV.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: So well, it's really interesting.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: No, I remember the time, boy, he was persona non
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: grata for law enforcement.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: For sure, and Icy didn't care. He's like, just watch,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: I'll be back in the most surprising way you can
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: possibly imagine.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: As literal iced tea.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: He's like, well, not that surprising.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Right, the second most surprising thing? You mean you play
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a cop on a TV show?
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: He said, yep, bingo, that's what he was naring to say. Bingo.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Oh man, we're getting really sidetracked. This is a fun one.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Who knew the Rosenbergs are going to bring this out?
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: I did not know.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: So it was a three week trial in all, like
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: you said, they till the end said they were not guilty.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: The trial concluded in March of nineteen fifty one guilty
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: all three defendants sentenced. The third guy, Morton Sobell, to
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: thirty years in prison, sentence the Rosenberg's to death, saying
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: their crime was worse than murder and that their work
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: caused the communist aggression in Korea, so they were really
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: taking the fall for a lot here. There were a
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: lot of appeals that were launched by Manny Block and company,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: petitioning the Supreme Court delayed things by a couple of years.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: All of those failed, but he did launch a pretty
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: successful media campaign that got a lot of people very
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: interested in the Rosenberg's sentence.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he finally got a newspaper to agree to look
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: into the case. It was the National Guardian, a very
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: left wing paper, and they investigated it and produced a
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: very sympathetic, what I take to be, long form article
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: on the Rosenberg's case, and that that article created a
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: bunch of other press which spread further and further, really
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: drummed up public sympathy to the point where they were
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: holding vigils where a thousand people would show up in
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: cities around the world in support of them, and people
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: thought like, this is this is not right. Pablo Picasso,
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Albert Einstein, the Pope, they all said like these people
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: should not be executed, certainly not Ethel should be executed.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: And the judges like, I don't, I can't hear you.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: He had his fingers in his ears, like la la la.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and their historians to say like this all just
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: sort of organically came about because of this press. The DOJ,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: of course, was like no, no, no. The Communist Party
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: of the United States and the Communist Party overall launched
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: a propaganda campaign on behalf of the Rosenbergs. So you know,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: it's a bit of a he said, she said, or
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: they said they said in this case. But here's the
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: deal on the execution. You said it was a game
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: of chicken early on, and I'm sure people that noticed
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: that that mentioned were like, what is Josh talking about
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: a game of chicken? And this is what you were
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: talking about. Was the idea was even Herbert Hoover did
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: not want to execute them, and it was all a
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: ploy to try up until the last moment. And there
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: were supposedly people on the on the walk to the
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: electric traier that were like, don't want to change your mind,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: because you don't have to die right now. If you
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: want to give up some names.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So the execution was essentially leveraged, just like
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: they used Ethel. They railroaded Ethyl into a conviction to
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: use his leverage against Julius to get him to flip
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: on other spies. They used the death sentence in the
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: exact same way. And they expected one or both of
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: them to be like, Okay, yeah, okay, that's fine, it's
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: not we got two young kids at home. Let's all
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: just cool off. We'll give you some names and some information.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: And Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg did not do that.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: And in fact, there was the head I think he
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: was a deputy Attorney general at the time, who said
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Ethel Rosenberg called our bluff. So rather than one party
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: the DOJ or the Rosenbergs veering off at the last second,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: they crashed head on and Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: were put to death, even though essentially no one thought
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: that was the right thing to do. And that's how
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: they went down.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean didn't you find too that Hoover
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: even himself got in touch with a judge and was like, hey, listen,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: we don't want you to install the death penalty here,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: and the judge was had his fingers in his ear.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the FBI took an official stance that that Ethel
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: in particular should not be executed. That was the official
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: stance of the FBI, and it still happened anyway.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a good look. I mean, they were worried
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: about the optics for sure, of especially because they were
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Jewish and you know, coming off the heels of World
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: War two and they're like, they got two young kids.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: You cannot execute this woman.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and even more so Manny Block, Remember he was
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: like an appeal machine. He had one last Hail Mary.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: Appeal that that was on the billboard on the highway.
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, with somebody holding a check for a million
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: dollars that he got for them for their bakery. So
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: he filed one last appeal and he basically said, dude,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: you're going to execute two Jewish people at the beginning
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: of the Sabbath. Do you know how bad that's going
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: to upset the Jewish community worldwide? And Judge Kaufman, who
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: was Jewish himself, said, you know, I hadn't really thought
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: of that, And Manny Block's like, great, so let's postpone
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: this indefinitely, And Judge Coffin said no, no, we're just
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: going to move it three hours earlier before the Sabbath starts.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They were put to death at eight pm, and
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: that judge was a real sob. They had a funeral
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: in Brooklyn in June twenty first, nineteen fifty three, where
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: ten thousand people reportedly attended. They were buried finally accepted
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: after some closer cemetery said no, at the Wellwood Jewish
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Cemetery in Long Island, and the boys it's just still
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: hard to believe they didn't know that one of them, didn't,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: you know, for the sake of being a parent to
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: their kids, didn't recant, But they didn't, And those boys,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Robert and Michael, were adopted by Anne and Abel mirror Pole.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: Little interesting side note here. Abel wrote the song Strange Fruit.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Which have you ever heard the Susie and the Banshees
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: version of that?
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Oh no, but that's great.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really good. That's how I first heard that song.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Another reference to the first Lallapalooza. Even who knew?
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's really something.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Wow, I know, right, did not expect that. Billy Joel
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: is spinning in his piano stool right now.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: He's like, I know, I should have accepted that offer.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: Michael got a PhD In economics, and Robert Rosenberg became
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: an attorney.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: And both of them, they've dedicated their lives of trying
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: to clear their parents' names. Finally, after years and years
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: and years, they admitted, like, Okay, dad was a spy,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: but not mom. Yeah, and you said that. They were
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: criticized by some people for basically choosing loyalty to Joseph
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Stalin over their two children and leaving them behind, and
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: David Green Glass again who lied to and got his
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: sister and brother in law killed. I said they were stupid.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: He said, that was a really stupid thing for them
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: to do, to not accept some sort of bargain to
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: take the death penalty off the table. That's his opinion
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: on the whole thing. Wow, that's what I said too. Yeah,
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: and oh, I should say real quick, the reason that
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: the brothers the sons finally were like, okay, Dad was
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: a spy was because those Venona tables we talked about earlier.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Finally released starting in the nineties, and it showed quite
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: clearly that Julius was a very enthusiastic spy for the
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Soviet Union and probably Ethel definitely knew about it. But
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: she may have been involved in recruiting Ruth, and if
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: she did that, she was definitely a spy. But again,
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: that doesn't change most people's thoughts that they probably should
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: not have been executed.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally, because I mean that's a whole differferent argument.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like, maybe they were guilty, but you
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: should not have put them to death. That's what a
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: lot of people seem to think.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, including people from their own spiring didn't
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: even come close to the death sentence. It was just
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: specifically leverage that just never got taken away because the
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: government wasn't about to be like, okay, you got us,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: all right, we won't kill you.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's just crazy.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Boy. Yeah, this is a fun win. And there was
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of jokes. I hope it didn't come across
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: as insensitive. I mean that's kind of what we do here,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: so not be insensitive. Try to you know, kind of
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: make jokes about stuff.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you can't laugh about everything, then what can
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: you laugh at?
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Nothing?
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Exactly? Actually I don't know if that's exactly true, but
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: still yeah, since Chuck said exactly.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: That's not to examine that way exactly.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: It's listener mail time.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: That's right. This is about we heard from a lot
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: of our Canadian friends. We love it when Canada points
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: out something that they know that we don't, and in
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: this case, it's about Cole's Notes. A great episode about
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: the Cliffs Notes guys. The name rings of Bell to
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: me probably through American movies and TV, but as a
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: millennial Canadian, I'm far more familiar with Cole's Notes. Cole
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: was a legendary bookstore across Canada, and so every location
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: had a stand of Cole's Notes booklets focused on books
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: and plays covered in the Canadian school curriculum. I even
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: remember reading them in school alongside Shakespeare plays to understand
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the better. Yes, they were often used to cram before
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: a test without reading the material. They're also used as
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: coal intended chapters. Slash Indigo is the big Canadian book
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: read tailor now and they bought out the Cole's locations,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: but they still print and sell Cole's Notes today, so
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: that guy did alright in the Canadian market. Thanks for
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: making me a little smarter each week. And that is
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: from Natalie gud orm Son Catormson, great name from Alberta, Canada.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Natalie, Thanks for making us a little
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: smarter this week. We appreciate it big time. Yeah. And
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: if you want to be like Natalie and tell us
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: something we didn't know. We love that kind of thing.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: You can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: dot com.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,