Just Security
Robert and Michael Meeropol
December 20, 2024
Nearly 75 years after our mother, Ethel Rosenberg, was arrested for conspiracy to commit espionage and 50 years since we filed our first legal action under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to gain access to U.S. government records about our parents’ case, we have found the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle we have been working on for half a century.
The National Security Agency (NSA) recently declassified and released a 1950 NSA memo, which makes clear that the top U.S. expert on Soviet espionage concluded 11 days after her arrest in August 1950 that our mother was not engaged in espionage. This information was transmitted by the FBI’s liaison with the NSA to his boss, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Despite their knowledge, the U.S. government indicted, tried, and later executed our mother in June 1953, along with our father, Julius Rosenberg, at Sing Sing prison north of New York City, leaving us at ages 6 (Robert) and 10 (Michael) as orphans.
Now is the time for President Joe Biden to correct the historical record before he leaves office, by declaring our mother’s conviction and execution wrongful and apologizing to us and to our family for our grievous loss.