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David Greenglass

Julius Rosenberg testified "I felt that the Soviet Government has improved the lot of the underdog there, has made a lot of progress in eliminating illiteracy, has done a lot of reconstruction work and built up a lot of resources, and at the same time I felt that they contributed a major share in destroying the Hitler beast who killed six million of my coreligionists and I feel emotional about that thing."

Greenglass married and entered the Army. A machinist in civilian life, he was transferred to the bleak mesa of Los Alamos, NM, where he made up gadgets to the specification~ of scientists. He knew his project was top secret but, aside from his immediate jobs, had no inkling of its true significance. Nor did he much care. His wife, Ruth, who had remained home in New York, mentioned her husband's assignment to the Rosenbergs. Julius was well aware, through his espionage contacts, that Los Alamos was working on the A-bomb and to have an insider on the premises, in the person of his brother-in-law, came as a stupendous stroke of good luck. Greenglass, he informed Ruth flatly, would have to get him secret information. When the sergeant's wife demurred, Rosenberg was said to have "parroted the familiar Communist arguments, whining that Russia was an ally with whom the United States and Britain churlishly refused to share secrets. Ethel Rosenberg chimed in as the sergeant's "older sister." Their clincher, though, was more concrete. They offered Ruth Greenglass $150 to visit her husband in New Mexico and, separated from him for months, she accepted. Their instructions to the sergeant were specific: They wanted a physical description of the project, approximate number of employees, names of scientists, security measures and distances from Los Alamos to nearby cities. Learning from his wife, for the first time, that he was working on an A-bomb, Greenglass began by refusing to spy for his brother-in-law. Before his wife returned to New York, however, he gave her some of the desired information. Just one item, the fact that Dr. Niels Bohr, the famous Danish nuclear scientist, was at Los Alamos, was in itself invaluable to the Russians. Bohr had been using the name Nicholas Baker to conceal his real identity. In January 1945, Greenglass himself visited New York and, in Rosenberg's apartment, drew from memory a rough design of a lens mold used in atomic experiments. Rosenberg then made new arrangements. He gave the Greenglasses money with which to rent an apartment in Albuquerque and told the sergeant that thereafter he would pass his information to a courier who would call on them, identifying himself with a carefully cut half of a panel from a Jell-0 box. The Greenglasses kept the other half, even though Ruth objected that they were -getting "mixed up in things that are too big for us." On a Sunday morning in the following June, at the Greenglass apartment at 209 North High Street, Albuquerque, a plump young man appeared with the greeting: "Julius sent me." He presented his half of the Jell-0 box, which matched the half held by the Greenglasses. The stranger, who identified himself as "Dave from Pittsburgh," was Harry Gold. He gave Greenglass $500, receiving in return drawings and a written description of A-bomb components. On August 6, the first atomic bomb used against an enemy wiped out Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb of a different type devastated Nagasaki. The following month, Greenglass-back home in New York-drew detailed drawings explaining how the second bomb differed from the first. Ethel Rosenberg retyped his reports, correcting his ungrammatical English, and Rosenberg passed the information to his superiors. That just about concluded Greenglass' spy work. In March 1946, Greenglass left the Army, returned to New York and saw the Rosenbergs occasionally although relations, for personal reasons, were severely strained. Soviet intelligence maintained contact with him, urging him to enroll at the University of Chicago in order to re-enter atomic research. The NKGB (the People's Commissary for State Security and the predecessor to the KGB) offered to pay his tuition, but Greenglass's application to Chicago was rejected. Then Fuchs was arrested. Greenglass had not known the Briton personally but realized from newspaper stories that he and Fuchs had been part of the same spy network. Rosenberg met with Greenglass, and outlined the standard escape route for suspected Soviet agents in America: Mexico, to Switzerland, to Czechoslovakia, to Russia. Whether the Greenglasses might ever have started that dreary journey will never be known because the next morning Ruth suffered painful burns when her flannel nightgown caught flre from a gas heater. Then on 18 May Rosenberg burst into the apartment, clutching a newspaper. On its front page appeared the picture of Harry Gold, arrested as a spy suspect. Rosenberg had the Greenglasses' future all arrangeq. He handed them $1,000 in cash. They were to obtain five sets of passport photographs and innoculation certificates, give them to him, and head for the Mexican border. When Greenglass reached Mexico City he was to write to the secretary of the Russian Ambassador. Three days later he was to go to the Plaza de Colon with his fingers stuck in a guidebook and stand in front of the statue of Christopher Columbus. There, with the proper passwords, he would meet a contact who would produce passports and money for the next stage of the trip. Greenglass did get the passport pictures and gave them to Rosenberg, who handed him another $4,000 and confided that he and his wife would soon be following them to Mexico. Ruth Greenglass looked at her husband. "Wwe're not going" she said quietly. In 1950, the confession of Klaus Fuchs led the FBI to his handler, Harry Gold, who in turn led the FBI to David Greenglass. When confronted, Greenglass confessed, implicating his wife Ruth and his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. This was soon confirmed through VENONA intercepts (Rosenberg was codenamed ANTENNA and LIBERAL, Ethel was WASP, Greenglass was BUMBLEBEE and CALIBER, and his wife Ruth was OSA). Greenglass testified that Rosenberg asked David and Ruth Greenglass to visit him in Knickerbocker Village. When they arrived, a woman by the name of Ann Sidorovich was also there. Greenglass said that Rosenberg told him that Sidorovich would probably meet Greenglass in a movie theater in Denver to pick up information that he is able to get in Los Alamos. Because his contact might turn out to be someone else, Rosenberg cut a Jell-O box with a scissors and gave one half to Ruth Greenglass while keeping the other half. He told Greenglass that whatever person he sent to meet with him would carry the matching half of the Jell-O box as a recognition signal. The meeting point was changed from Denver to Albuquerque. Greenglass then testified as to a meeting (also in New York) arranged by Julius, with a Russian in a car. Greenglass described the lenses to the unknown Russian and answered his questions about activities in Los Alamos.

Greenglass testified that "There was a knock on the door and I opened it. We had just completed eating breakfast, and there was a man standing in the hallway who asked if I was Mr. Greenglass and I said, yes. He stepped through the door and said, "Julius sent me," and I said, "Oh" and walked to my wife's purse, took out the wallet and took out the matched part of the Jell-O box. He produced his piece and we checked them and they fitted, and the identification was made. I offered him something to eat and he said he had already eaten. He just wanted to know if I had any information, and I said, "I have some but I will have to write it up. If you come back in the afternoon, I will give it to you." I started to tell him about one of the people who would be good material for recruiting into espionage work-- He cut me short and he left and I got to work on the report. "

Greenglass testified that Ethel Rosenberg, in his presence, typed the secret information on a portable typewriter while he and Julius clarified ambiguous and ungrammatical language in Greenglass's draft. Greenglass then testified that Julius bragged as the typing was in progress that he had stolen a proximity fuse when working at Emerson Radio. He told me that if he wanted to get in touch with the Russians, he had a means of communicating with them in a motion picture theater, an alcove where he would put microfilm or messages and the Russians would pick it up. If he wanted to see them in person, he would put a message in there and by prearrangement they would meet in some lonely spot in Long Island.

RUTH GREENGLASS: "I told my husband that I knew that he was working on the atomic bomb. He asked me how I knew and who had told me. I said that I had been to Julius Rosenberg's house and that he had told me that David's work was on the atomic bomb, and he asked me how Julius knew it and I told him of the conversation we had had, that Julius had said they spent two years getting in touch with people who would enable him to do work directly for the Russian people, that his friends, the Russians, had told him that the work was on the atomic bomb, that the bomb had dangerous radiation effects, that it was a very destructive weapon and that the scientific basis, the information on the bomb should be made available to Soviet Russia....

"Julius said that I might have noticed that for some time he and Ethel had not been actively pursuing any Communist Party activities, that they didn't buy the Daily Worker at the usual newsstand; that for two years he had been trying to get in touch with people who would assist him to be able to help the Russian people more directly other than just his membership in the Communist Party... he went on to tell me that the atomic bomb was the most destructive weapon used so far, that it had dangerous radiation effects that the United States and Britain were working on this project jointly and that he felt that the information should be shared with Russia, who was our ally at the time, because if all nations had the information then one nation couldn't use the bomb as a threat against another....

"Ethel said that she was tired, and I asked her what she had been doing. She said she had been typing; and I asked her if she had found David's notes hard to distinguish. She said no, she was used to his handwriting. Then she said that Julie, too, was tired; that he was very busy; he ran around a good deal; that all his time and his energies were used in this thing; that was the most important thing to him; that he was away a good deal and spent time with his friends, that he had to make a good impression; that it sometimes cost him as much as $50 to $75 an evening to entertain his friends; "

Greenglass figured that if he couldn't put the finger on somebody, he would lessen his own punishment; and he had to put the finger on somebody who was here in the United States, and he had to put the finger on somebody who was a clay pigeon; and that man sitting there (indicating defendant Julius Rosenberg) is a clay pigeon, because he was fired from the Government service, because it was alleged that he was a member of the Community party; and he was the guy who was very open and expressed his views about the United States and the Soviet Union, which may have been all right when the Soviet Union and the United States were Allies.

Greenglass, who had pleaded guilty, drew 15 years' imprisonment-a reward for his cooperation in nailing the Rosenbergs. Sobell received a 30-year sentence. For the Rosenbergs, Judge Kaufman on April 5, 195-1, pronounced the sentence of death.

David Greenglass was released from prison in 1960 and lived under an assumed name. In 2001, Greenglass admitted that he had committed perjury with regard to Ethel’s role in the conspiracy in order to save his wife Ruth from prosecution.