Back in the 1930s and 1940s the Soviet Union took advantage of the American Left's infatuation with the Soviet experiment to place agents and sympathizers in key positions throughout the American power structure. Then in the Cold War period, as these foreign agents began to be exposed and prosecuted the political Left rose in their defense. Their tactic was to attempt to delegitimate the prosecutions and to demonize the prosecutors. Their most conspicuous victim was Sen. Joseph McCarthy who, for those on the Left and their stooges, became emblematic of what they branded a "witch-hunt". One of the key, perhaps the most important, rallying points for Left wing ideologues was the prosecution, conviction and execution of Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for having transferred American atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
For decades the Left stubbornly asserted the innocence of the Rosenbergs and cast despicable aspersions on those who had prosecuted them. These assertions were widely repeated in the mainstream media and even made their way into history classes and texts. It was not until the end of the Cold War, at which time Western scholars were granted access to internal Soviet records which contained damning evidence of Soviet espionage activities in the United States, that some on the Left grudgingly admitted that the prosecutions had perhaps been justified. But still a substantial number of scholars and commentators continued to promote the lie that the Rosenbergs had been the innocent victims of a Right-wing witch-hunt.
Well, as Emily Litella used to say -- "never mind".
Martin Sobell, one of the Rosenbergs' co-defendants, has finally fessed up. In an interview with the New York Times he admitted that he and Julius Rosenberg were in fact Soviet agents who had transferred American military secrets to the Soviet Union and that Ethel Rosenberg had been fully aware of their actions.
Read about it here.
Of course, this is the New York Times, so don't expect to find any reference to the innocent victims of these despicable traitors, the lives and careers destroyed by their sympathizers and apologists, or the damage done to our national security. Instead, they hold to the fallback position taken by many left-wing scholars that while Julius Rosenberg may indeed have been guilty, his wife was the victim of a conspiracy by right-wing prosecutors run amok.
Sheesh!
