David Greenglass

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David Greenglass
Atomic spy for the Soviet Union
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1942; died 2008)​
Children2
Relatives
Ethel Rosenberg (sister)
Michael Meeropol (nephew)
Robert Meeropol
(nephew)

David Greenglass (March 2, 1922 – July 1, 2014) was an American

Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico
from August 1944 until February 1946.

He provided testimony that helped convict his sister and brother-in-law Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed for their spying activity. Greenglass served nine and a half years in prison.

Early life and career

David and Ruth Greenglass

Greenglass was born in 1922 in the

Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute but did not graduate.[2]

Greenglass married

Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. In order to pass his security clearance, he disguised or omitted details of his communist associations, and had friends write glowing references.[2][3]

Alexander Feklisov. In September 1944, Feklisov suggested to Rosenberg that he should consider recruiting his brother-in-law, David Greenglass, and his wife.[4] On September 21, 1944, Feklisov reported to Moscow: "They are young, intelligent, capable, and politically developed people, strongly believing in the cause of communism and wishing to do their best to help our country as much as possible. They are undoubtedly devoted to us."[5] David wrote to his wife, Ruth: "My darling, I most certainly will be glad to be part of the community project [espionage] that Julius and his friends [the Soviets] have in mind."[6]

After Julius Rosenberg recommended his sister-in-law Ruth Greenglass to his NKVD superiors for the use of her apartment as a safe house for photography, the NKVD realized that David was working on the Manhattan Project. He was then recruited into Soviet espionage by Ruth at Rosenberg's behest in November 1944.[7] Greenglass began to pass nuclear secrets to the USSR via the courier Harry Gold, and more directly with a Soviet official in New York City.[8]

According to the Venona project intercepts decrypted by the National Security Agency between 1944 and some time in the 1970s, Greenglass and his wife Ruth were given code names. David was codenamed "KALIBR" (Cyrillic: Калибр, "calibre") and Ruth "OSA" (Cyrillic: оса, "wasp").[9]

Greenglass turned down requests from the Los Alamos Laboratory (and Rosenberg) to work on the

Bikini Atoll because he wanted to be with Ruth. He was honorably discharged from the Army on February 29, 1946. Greenglass returned to Manhattan, where, with his brother Bernie, and Julius Rosenberg, he ran a small machine shop known as G & R Engineering.[10]

On February 14, 1950, Ruth, who was pregnant with their second child, came too close to the gas heater in their

second degree burns to his right hand. He was already aware that the UK and US intelligence agencies had discovered that a Los Alamos theoretical physicist, Klaus Fuchs, had spied for the USSR during the war.[11]

Through Fuchs' confession, they found that one of his American contacts had been a man named

Catskills and used the money to seek legal advice.[14][15]

Trial and aftermath

David Greenglass was arrested by the FBI for espionage in June 1950 and quickly implicated Julius Rosenberg. He explicitly denied his sister

Julius Rosenberg and I did not want my hero to fail ..."[16]

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
to pass on to the Soviet Union

During subsequent testimony in 1951, Greenglass related in detail the secrets he passed on to the Soviet Union. He falsely attributed the passing of the cross-section drawing of the Atom Bomb to the Soviets to Julius and he also acknowledged having passed other sketches through Gold. He described his work on the molds into which were poured the component of the

bombing of Nagasaki. At first this was a matter of difficulty for the prosecution, who wanted Greenglass to testify in open court about the secrets he had given—something which would by definition make them no longer "secret".[16]

The

implosion concept could be declassified for the trial, and limited all discussion to the weapons used in World War II (fearing that Greenglass may have seen prototypes for future weapons while at Los Alamos). As a result of a surprise defense motion that all testimony about the alleged "secret of the atomic bomb" be impounded, Federal Judge Irving Kaufman at first made all spectators and news reporters leave the room when Greenglass began testifying about his "secrets".[16]

Ten minutes later, Judge Kaufman invited the news reporters back in, asking them to use their discretion in reporting on Greenglass's testimony. The Rosenbergs' defense attorney, Emanuel H. Bloch, attempted to convince the jury that his clients were concerned about issues of national security, but failed. Greenglass' testimony, later seen to be crude and in the words of many scientists who examined it "worthless", remained sealed until 1966. He also testified that Rosenberg had stolen and given to the Soviets a proximity fuze.[16]

However,

Aleksander Feklisov also claimed that Julius Rosenberg supplied him with a whole proximity fuze, which corroborated at least that part of Greenglass' testimony. During the trial, Bloch claimed Greenglass wanted revenge for the machine shop business failure. Bloch attempted to discredit Greenglass' character and testimony. At Greenglass' sentencing hearing, his attorney O. John Rogge repeatedly told the court his client deserved "a pat on the back" for his testimony and argued that a light sentence, no more than five years, would encourage others to follow his example. Greenglass was sentenced to 15 years in prison.[17] He was released after nine and a half years and reunited with his wife.[18]

In March 1953, three months before the Rosenbergs' executions, he wrote a letter for his attorney to deliver to President Eisenhower asking for their sentences to be commuted to prison terms so that they would have an opportunity to confess. He wrote: "if these two die, I shall live the rest of my life with a very dark shadow on my conscience". He described his own testimony as "an act of contrition for the wrong I had done my country, my family and myself" and explained how he now viewed its consequences: "Here I had to take the choice of hurting someone dear to me, and I took it deliberately. I could not believe that this would be the outcome. May God in His mercy change that awful sentence."[19] That same month he admitted he had stolen a few ounces of uranium-238 from a bomb laboratory at Los Alamos years before and had tossed it into the East River in 1950 after he first denied having stolen it.[19]

Later years

After his release in 1960, Greenglass and his family lived in New York City under an assumed name. For some years they lived on 228th Street in

Laurelton, Queens, New York. In 1996, Greenglass recanted his sworn testimony in an interview with The New York Times reporter Sam Roberts and stated he had lied under oath about the extent of his sister's involvement in the spying plot in order to protect his wife. At the trial, Greenglass had testified that Ethel Rosenberg typed his notes to give to the Soviets. However, in the Roberts interview, he stated, "I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don't remember ... My wife is more important to me than my sister. Or my mother or my father, okay? And she was the mother of my children."[2] When Roberts asked Greenglass if he would have done anything differently, he replied, "Never."[20][21][22]

In 2008, when a group of academic historians sought the release of the transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that indicted the Rosenbergs, Greenglass objected to the government's release of his testimony. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein declined to order the release of the testimony of Greenglass and other surviving witnesses who withheld their consent or could not be located.[23]

The grand jury testimony was finally released in July 2015. Greenglass never mentioned involvement by his sister in Rosenberg's delivery of atomic secrets to the Soviets.[24]

David Greenglass died on July 1, 2014. He was predeceased by his wife, Ruth, who died on April 7, 2008. His death was not publicly announced by his family and was only discovered on October 14, 2014, when The New York Times called the nursing home where he had been living under an assumed name.[2]

References

  1. ^ Mickolus, Edward (July 30, 2015). The Counterintelligence Chronology: Spying by and Against the United States from the 1700s Through 2014. McFarland & Company. p. 52.
  2. ^ a b c d e McFadden, Robert (October 14, 2014). "David Greenglass, the brother who doomed Ethel Rosenberg, dies at 92". The New York Times. Retrieved October 15, 2014. Mr. Greenglass died on July 1, a family member confirmed. He was 92. His family did not announce his death ...
  3. ^ Rhodes 1995, pp. 135–37.
  4. ^ Radosh & Milton 1983, p. 444.
  5. ^ Alexander Feklisov, report on David and Ruth Greenglass (September 21, 1944) Simkin, John (November 2014). "Alexander Feklissov". Spartacus Educational Publishers. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
  6. ^ Andrew & Mitrokhin 1999, p. 169.
  7. ^ "New York 1340 to Moscow". Central Intelligence Agency. September 21, 1944. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
  8. ^ Rhodes 1995, pp. 140–45.
  9. ^ "Venona Files: Yet another recruitment by Rosenberg" (PDF). National Security Agency. July 11, 1995. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 18, 2013. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
  10. ^ Rhodes 1995, pp. 258–59.
  11. ^ Rhodes 1995, pp. 411–15.
  12. ^ Rhodes 1995, pp. 425–26.
  13. ^ Rhodes 1995, pp. 289–91.
  14. ^ a b Rhodes 1995, pp. 428–30.
  15. ^ Radosh & Milton 1983, pp. 199–200.
  16. ^
    University of Missouri-Kansas City. March 1951. Archived from the original
    on May 5, 1999. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
  17. ^ Conklin, William R. (April 7, 1951). "Greenglass Gets 15 Years; Judge Recognizes Spy's Aid" (PDF). The New York Times. Retrieved June 14, 2013.
  18. ^ Benjamin, Philip (November 17, 1960). "Greenglass Freed from Prison. Served 9 1/2 Years as Atom Spy" (PDF). The New York Times. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  19. ^ a b Kihss, Peter (December 4, 1975). "F.B.I. Yields Rosenberg Files in Bid by Sons to Prove Parents were Innocent" (PDF). The New York Times. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  20. ^ "A Brother's Betrayal: Interview by Robert Siegel with Sam Roberts". NPR. October 9, 2001. Retrieved August 14, 2015.
  21. ^ Roberts, Sam (September 12, 2008). "For first time, figure in Rosenberg case admits spying for Soviets". The New York Times. Retrieved May 7, 2010.
  22. ^ McFadden, Robert (September 25, 1990). "Khrushchev on Rosenbergs: Stoking old embers". The New York Times. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
  23. ^ Weiser, Benjamin (July 23, 2008). "U.S. judge upholds secrecy of Rosenberg testimony". The New York Times. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  24. ^ Roberts, Sam (July 15, 2015). "Secret grand jury testimony from Ethel Rosenberg's brother is released". The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2015.

Sources

Further reading

External links

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