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Morton Sobell

Morton Sobell, an American electrical engineer with General Electric and Reeves Electronics in the 1940s, worked on military and government contracts. He had fled to Mexico to escape prosecution but was picked up by Mexican undercover police and escorted to the border, where he was seized by waiting FBI men. Sobell was subsequently found guilty of spying for the Soviets as a part of the Rosenberg ring. He was tried and found guilty in 1951 of conspiracy to commit espionage; sentenced to 30 years in prison. Morton Sobell was released from prison in 1969; in 2008 he admitted he had been a Soviet spy. Helen Levitov Gurewitz Sobell married spy Morton Sobell in Arlington, Virginia, on March 10, 1945. Helen Sobell was not prosecuted in the case.

MI5, working with the FBI on the atom spy series, allowed FBI agents to interview Klaus Fuchs. Information Fuchs provided led to the arrest of Fuch’s American courier, known as “Raymond,” and later identified as Harry Gold. It was the Gold arrest that led to a series of spy investigations, including the biggest FBI espionage case to date.Other names were dragged in also, such as Morton Sobell, who fled to Mexico after the Rosenbergs were arrested. The backgrounds of the accused were remarkably similar. All were second-generation Americans of Jewish descent. All became active in left wing politics at an early age, and all had either joined the CPUSA or one of its front groups.

The association of Rosenberg and Sobell began at City College. They had been held together by one common bond: Their mutual devotion to communism and the Soviet Union, and their membership in this conspiracy to commit espionage for that Soviet Union. That is why their classmate, Max Elitcher, was asked to join the Young Communist League when they were at college. That is why Sobell and Rosenberg joined in the concerted action to recruit Elitcher into their Soviet espionage ring. While Sobell was chairman of his Communist Party unit in Washington, delivering to its members weekly directives concerning worship of the Soviet Union, Rosenberg was working his way up in the Communist Party underground.

Morton Sobell was born April 11, 1917, in New York City, the son of Russian-born immigrants. He married Helen Levitov Gurewitz at Arlington, Virginia, on March 10, 1945. Sobell was a classmate of Julius Rosenberg and Max Elitcher in college and graduated from this college in June, 1933, with a bachelor ’s degree in electrical engineering. Subsequently, he attended a graduate school at a university in Michigan in 1941 and 1942 and received a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Sobell was employed during the summers of 1934 through 1938 as a maintenance man at Camp Unity, Wingdale, New York, reportedly a Communist-controlled camp. On January 27, 1939, he secured the position of junior electrical engineer with the Bureau of Naval Ordnance, Washington, DC, and was promoted to the position of assistant electrical engineer. He resigned from this position in October 1940 to further his studies. While employed at an electric company in New York State, he had access to classified material, including that on fire control radar.

After resigning from this company, he secured employment as an electrical engineer with an instrument company in New York City where he had access to secret data. He remained in this position until June 16, 1950, when he failed to appear for work. It is noted that on this date the FBI arrested David Greenglass. On June 22, 1950, Sobell and his family fled to Mexico. He was thereafter located in Mexico City and on August 18, 1950, was taken into custody by FBI agents in Laredo, Texas, after his deportation from Mexico by the Mexican authorities.

Max Elitcher, an admitted Communist, advised that during the period he roomed with Morton Sobell in Washington, DC, he was induced by Sobell to join the Communist party. He stated that this occurred in 1939 and that Sobell had informed him that he, Sobell, was a member of the Communist Party. During the same period, Sobell was reported to have been active in the American Peace Mobilization and the American Youth Congress, both of which organizations have been cited by the Attorney General as coming within the purview of Executive Order 10450. It was ascertained that Sobell appeared on the active indices of the American Peace Mobilization and was listed in the indices of the American Youth Congress as a delegate to that body from the Washington Committee for Democratic Action.

A resident at an apartment building located in Washington, DC, reported that Sobell and Max Elitcher were among the tenants of the building who attended meetings in the apartment of one of the tenants during 1940 and 1941. This individual was of the opinion that these were Communist meetings. The New York Office of the FBI located a Communist Party nominating petition, which was filed in the name of one Morton Sobell, and the signature on this petition was identified by the FBI Laboratory as being in the handwriting of Morton Sobell.

A check at the instrument company where Sobell was employed reflected that Sobell failed to report for work after June 16, 1950. The company received a letter from Sobell on or about July 3, 1950, wherein he advised that he needed a rest and was going to take a few weeks off to recuperate. Aneighborhood investigation by the FBI developed that Sobell, his wife, and their two children were last seen at their home on June 22, 1950, and that they had left hurriedly without advising anyone of their intended departure.

Through an airlines company at LaGuardia Field, it was determined that Sobell and his family had departed for Mexico City on June 22, 1950. It was further determined that roundtrip excursion tickets for transportation from New York City to Mexico and return were purchased on June 21, 1950, in the name of Morton Sobell. Further investigation of Sobell’s flight to Mexico reflected that he had communicated through the mail with relatives through the utilization of a certain man as a mail drop. This man was interviewed and reluctantly admitted receiving letters from Sobell with instructions to forward these letters to Sobell’s relatives. This admission was made after the individual was advised that the FBI Laboratory had identified handwriting on the envelopes used in forwarding letters to Sobell’s relatives as being in his handwriting.

In August, 1950, the Mexican authorities took Sobell into custody and deported him as an undesirable alien. On the early morning of August 18, 1950, FBI agents apprehended Sobell at the International Bridge, Laredo, Texas.

On October 10, 1950, a superseding indictment was returned by a Federal Grand jury in the Southern District of New York charging Morton Sobell, Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg, David Greenglass and Anatoli Yakovlev with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Statutes. On January 31, 1951, a Federal Grand jury in the Southern District of New York, handed down a second superseding indictment charging Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, Anatoli Yakovlev, Morton Sobell, and David Greenglass with conspiracy to commit espionage between June 6, 1944, and June 16, 1950. The Rosenberg trial began in March 1951. Charged with espionage were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell. On 28 March 1951, counsel for both sides summed up their case to the jury, and, on 29 March 1951, the jury rendered a verdict of guilty against Morton Sobell. On 5 April 1951, Morton Sobell was sentenced to 30 years in prison for being a co-conspirator although his part in the conspiracy was never as clear as the Rosenbergs.

Bertrand Russell - Lord Russell - claimed that he had looked into the evidence regarding the Rosenbergs and Sobell, and was certain of their innocence. They were convicted, he said, through perjured testimony which our Federal Bureau of Investigation elicited by use of Nazi-like atrocities and blackmail. Lord Russell wrote 26 March 1956 in the Manchester Guardian : "Elitcher bad stated under oath that he had never been a Communist and the FBI discovered that in making this statement he had committed perjury. They let him know that he could escape punishment if he would denounce other people as accomplices in his treasonable activities. He decided to save his own skin by denouncing his best friend, Sobell. While negotiations in this sense were going on between him and the FBI, Sobell and his wife and their two small children went to Mexico. Sobell toyed with the idea of not returning to the United States, but rejected it.

"His decision to return became known to the FBI, which had determined to present him as a fugitive from justice. In order to be still able to present him in this light, they hired thugs who beat him into unconsciousness, hustled him and his wife and their two children into fast cars, and drove them without stopping from Mexico City to the United States border. There they were handed their card of entry with the words "Deported From Mexico," although the Mexican Government had not been privy to the kidnapping and had expressed no intention of deporting them.

"When Sobell was brought to trial these facts were not released as his counsel considered any criticism of the FBI, however justified, would only increase the severity of his sentence, his condemnation being regarded by his counsel as certain in spite of lack of evidence. The judge instructed the jUry that they cou1d not find Sobell guilty unless they believed Elitcher. Elitcher, because he was useful in this trial, has never been indicted for his acknowJedged perjury and, in spite of his being known to be a perjurer, every word that he said against Sobell was believed.

"People express scepticism when it is said that most Germans did not know of Nazi atrocities, but I am sure that the immense majority of Americans are quite ignorant of the atrocities committed by the FBI. They do not know of the standard techniques of these defenders of what, with cynical effrontery, they still call "the free world." The technique is one with which we have been made familiar in other police states such as Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia. The police find a man whom they can prove to be guilty of some offense and they promise him immunity if he will manufacture evidence against people who could not otherwise be indicted. Perjury is especially useful as a lever because many people who have been Communist in their student days rashly hope that this can be concealed and swear that they were never Communists.

Sobell arrived at Alcatraz in November of 1952 and remained until March of 1958. He served more than 18 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, traveled to Cuba and Vietnam after his release in 1969 and became an advocate for progressive causes. Through it all, he maintained his innocence. In the interview with The New York Times 12 September 2008, Sobell, who then lived in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, was asked whether he had been a spy. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that,” he replied. “I never thought of it as that in those terms.” Sobell drew a distinction between atomic espionage and the details of radar and artillery devices that he said he stole for the Russians. “What I did was simply defensive, an aircraft gun,” he said. “This was defensive. You cannot plead that what you did was only defensive stuff, but there’s a big difference between giving that and stuff that could be used to attack our country.”

Sobell was a committed Communist at the time he spied for the Soviets. “Now, I know it was an illusion,” Sobell later said. “I was taken in.”

Morton Sobell died on 26 December 2018 in Manhattan. He was 101.