World Cup trophy as it travels through Uruguay to Brazil.
1 David Greenglass
The Last Living Rosenberg Co-Conspirator
On June 19, 1953, an American couple named Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg were executed for spying and handing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets in a trial that was a defining moment in Cold War espionage history. Over 60 years later, only one of their major co-conspirators is left—Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass.
The spy ring began with a brilliant nuclear physicist who worked at the secret Los Alamos nuclear facility designing and building the first atomic bomb, Klaus Fuchs. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded their first atomic bomb, years before they were expected to be able to. Fuchs was the scientist who fed US and Canadian atomic secrets to the Soviets that allowed them to shave years off their development of an atomic bomb. He confessed to spying and implicated a chemist named Harry Gold. Gold, who would be convicted of espionage and sentenced to 30 years in prison, implicated David Greenglass, a US soldier stationed in Los Alamos. Greenglass had been recruited by Julius Rosenberg through Greenglass’s wife, Ruth Greenglass. David Greenglass became a Soviet spy, passing on secrets through Gold and Julius Rosenberg to the Soviets.
Ruth Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg were both passionate communists, but Ethel Rosenberg did not seem to share her husband’s passion and did not appear to be involved in the espionage. Her only guilt seemed to be she was the sister-in-law of Ruth Greenglass. During the Rosenbergs’ trial, David Greenglass testified that Ethel Rosenberg had typed some of the secret documents he had passed along to the Soviets, thus implicating Ethel Rosenberg directly as a spy. Greenglass probably said this to save the life of his wife, who was not prosecuted, even though it appears certain Ruth recruited her husband to spy for the Soviets.
In exchange for his testimony, David Greenglass received a 15-year sentence instead of death. Greenglass would later recant his testimony, stating that Ethel Rosenberg did not type the atomic secrets, but it was too late. Ethel and her husband were put to death at Sing Sing prison for espionage. Many historians feel Greenglass’s testimony sealed her fate. In 2006, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled to keep the secret grand jury testimony of David Greenglass sealed until after his death.