In response to a July 2022 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Rosenberg sons Michael and Robert Meeropol, the National Security Agency (NSA) released an August 22, 1950 handwritten memo (available below) from Meredith Gardner, then-chief analyst of the NSA. The newly declassified memorandum reveals he concluded from reviewing Soviet intelligence that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy. Specifically, Gardner explained in the memo (in section 5) that “she knew about her husbands work, but that due to ill health she did not engage in the work herself.”
Despite this finding by the government’s top expert on decoding Soviet communications seven months before Rosenberg’s trial, federal prosecutors proceeded to try her on the charge of conspiring to commit espionage, recommended the death penalty, and colluded to deliver a swift, unjust death sentence. The long-discredited Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover, was made aware of the conclusion of Gardener’s memo but chose not to share it with those with the power to alter her conviction, including presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The release of this recently declassified memo serves as the capstone for an overwhelming body of evidence that the U.S. government knew that Ethel Rosenberg never spied for the Soviet Union.
A press release containing comments from Robert and Michael Meeropol and additional supporting materials is available here.