"Seventy-five years ago, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. During their trial the following year in 1951, presiding judge Irving Kauffman termed their actions in passing secrets to the Soviet Union 'worse than murder.' Despite a worldwide campaign for clemency, the Rosenbergs were executed in Sing Sing prison in 1953. American society was deeply fractured between detractors who believed that their treason constituted—in the words of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover—the 'crime of the century,' and supporters convinced that they were innocent victims of Cold War hysteria. Since 1953, the Rosenberg case continued to haunt a generation of Americans, and passionate arguments over their guilt or innocence persisted."
