Four men with Leica cameras, 1,885 pages of classified documents: the other secrets passed to Stalin by the Rosenberg ring.
The vehemence of Sobell’s denials over so many years made his confession in 2008 all the more remarkable. Still, the Times story was less of a bombshell than it might have been because it provided a forum for Sobell to justify and minimize his spying. It reiterated lies that have long comforted the Rosenbergs’ supporters and muddied the historical record.
In fact, there is no evidence that Sobell or other members of the Rosenberg ring ever withheld any information they thought could be useful to Stalin and the USSR. In the five years between the end of the war and the unraveling of the Rosenberg spy ring, Sobell had access to a wealth of classified military material, including detailed information about the characteristics and capabilities of every American bomber, designs for analogue and digital computers used to automate antiaircraft weapons, and specifications for land-based and airborne radars that were later deployed in Korea.
When the Cold War turned hot in Korea, this technology was used to kill American soldiers. High Air Force and NACA officials told the New York World-Telegram on July 9, 1953, that data stolen by Perl were probably used in the design of the Russian high-tailed MiG fighter jet that was deployed in Korea against American airmen. One unnamed source, described as a “top Air Force expert on aero-dynamics,” told these officials that “the unusual tail of the MiG was specifically a NACA development, as was another antiturbulence design feature which showed up on the MiG a surprisingly short time after the Air Force, with NACA help, had perfected it.” The World-Telegram quoted NACA director Hugh Dryden as saying that “Perl was in a position to supply information which could fill out a bigger picture of a whole field of information.”
Sobell’s recent second confession finally clears up some of the few remaining points of contention about the Rosenberg case—what exactly Sobell contributed, whether he and his comrades gave the Soviets valuable information, and whether it is appropriate to dismiss their actions as youthful indiscretions in aid of a wartime ally. By confirming that he was one of the group who photographed material filched by Perl, Sobell demolished the lie that the Rosenberg ring stole only inconsequential data and engaged in mere “industrial espionage.” He also revealed that, while there is no evidence he engaged in atomic espionage—with which he is associated in the public mind because of his coconspirators—he was guilty of giving the Soviet Union secret data that advanced the capabilities of the Soviet military machine. He has thus put the last nail in the coffin of the arguments of the Rosenbergs’ apologists, who continue to insist that the couple were framed and executed by the U.S. government for their political ideas.
Ronald Radosh, coauthor of The Rosenberg File, is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and a blogger for Pajamas Media. Steven T. Usdin is the author of Engineering Communism: How Two Americans Spied for Stalin and Founded the Soviet Silicon Valley and “The Rosenberg Archive,” a historical timeline at www.wilsoncenter.org/cwihp/rosenberg.
No comments:
Post a Comment