U.S. officials have said Julian Assange could be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 and suggested laws could be amended to overcome any legal obstacles to his prosecution.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are the only U.S. citizens to be executed for conspiracy to commit espionage, described as the most controversial death sentence in U.S. history.
The government alleged the couple, along with Morton Sobell, helped the Soviet Union acquire the secret of the atomic bomb. But supporters say there’s no evidence Ethel Rosenberg took part in espionage. And the Rosenbergs’ family has admitted that while Julius Rosenberg did pass on information to the Soviet Union, none of it aided development of the atomic bomb.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were killed on June 19, 1953, after being sent to the electric chair at New York’s Sing Sing Prison. The Rosenbergs’ younger son, Robert Meeropol, was six years old at the time. He’s author of the autobiography An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey. He’s the founder and executive director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children.
conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act of 1917. A lot of people in the United States have been saying, since post-9/11 America—in post-9/11 America, that we feel we have echoes of the McCarthy period. But in the McCarthy period itself, we really had the echoes of the aftermath of our entry into World War I, that period between 1917 and the early 1920s. And World War I was very unpopular in the United States, and there was an effort to convince the public about this war, and that was a two-pronged effort. One was propaganda was put in place to drum up support for the war, but the other was the Espionage Act of 1917 was passed, basically to criminalize dissent. And this criminalization of criticism of government policy landed hundreds of people in jail, perhaps most famously Eugene Debs, the Socialist Party candidate for president who ran from a jail cell and got almost a million votes in 1920. That whole panoply of repressive activity, that quieted down after a while. But in the McCarthy period, it was reinstituted.
the Espionage Act, has been criticized as an attempt to do an end run around the constitutional definition of “treason.” You see, the founders of our nation were very anxious to make sure that the term “treason” wasn’t thrown around to attack people who were dissenters. So they put, within the Constitution, a very narrow definition—giving aid and comfort to the enemy—in as the only way you could be convicted of treason. But as you saw in that television clip of the 1950s, my parents charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, here’s the press reporting “executed for their crime of treason.” So this was an effort to do an end run around the treason clause of the Constitution and turn dissent into treason.
Well, now we fast-forward to today, and we have the possibility that Julian Assange will be charged under that act. That act, by the way, is—it’s pages and pages and pages of things that you can’t do, and if you do it, if you disseminate, publicize, information that the government today declares secret, then you could be subject to massive prison sentences. And again, we have to place this in a broad context. A functioning democracy needs a free flow of information. But what we have in post-9/11 America is a vast expansion of the secrecy complex. So, vast amounts of material can be declared secret. And then, if you reveal those secrets, you could be sent to jail. And, of course, this undermines the basis for democracy. And that’s what’s going on here. And that doesn’t even get into the question of conspiracy.
It’s always hard for me to hear Bob Considine’s description, to relive the last day of my parents’ lives. And people may wonder, you know, how I can react in such a cool and calm manner. I mean, part of it is, is I’ve dedicated my life, through the Rosenberg Fund for Children, to providing for the educational and emotional needs of the children of targeted activists in the United States, my people who I consider kindred spirits, people suffering what I’ve suffered. And that, finding that positive outlet for my grief and rage and anger, has really enabled me, again, to respond in a positive manner.
That said, I think it’s very fitting that you focused on my mother, particularly in the context of the charges that Julian Assange may face, and that is conspiracy. My mother was involved in this case because she was deemed or dubbed a conspirator. She was convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. All that means is that—all that “conspiracy” means is that two for more people got together and planned to commit an illegal act and took one step in furtherance of that plan—could be a phone call, could be a conversation. Well, that was used in my parents’ case. My parents’ chief accusers, David and Ruth Greenglass, testified that my mother was present during the critical espionage meeting, and she typed up David Greenglass’s handwritten notes, descriptions of a sketch, that supposedly gave away the secret of the atomic bomb. Well, it’s come out since that this testimony was false and that David Greenglass himself has even admitted that. But even if it were true, that would mean that the United States government executed someone for typing.
Now, but it’s not surprising that the government would use conspiracy, whether it’s against my parents or whether it’s against the WikiLeaks people, because if you’re anybody who engages in conversation or discussion, and the government can get one person to testify that that discussion was to leak classified material, or to transmit information to the Soviet Union, in my parents case, they could be swept up in the dragnet. And you could get people to rat out their friends in order to get more lenient sentences. It sows distrust among the community of support. It scares other people into silence.
And so, what we see here is, if there is a criminal indictment for conspiracy, not an attack on just Julian Assange himself, but on the entire community of support that is seeking to promote the very revolutionary idea that the people have the right to know what their government is doing, that’s what this ultimately is all about. And every left-wing, every progressive organizer, every organizer, in general—how can you engage in organizing, in getting groups of people to protest and coordinating activities, without engaging in what the government would term a conspiracy? And so, it is a threat to all of us. And that is really why I issued my call for us to recognize this. This Espionage Act of 1917 has been the sword of Damocles, sitting quietly, mostly unused, ready to spring out and attack dissenters. And when you have it in the context of the growing secrecy that we face today and an authoritarian-oriented Supreme Court, it is a danger to us all.
Discussion with Robert Meeropol
The Rosenbergs’ younger son, Robert Meeropol, was six years old at the time. He’s author of the autobiography An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey. He’s the founder and executive director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children. This week, he released a widely read statement in support of WikiLeaks called “My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act—Here’s Why We Must Fight to Protect Julian Assange.”
– from democracynow.org