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JOHN YANG: As President
Biden leaves office,
he's been exercising his
presidential clemency

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powers. Just this week, he
commuted nearly 2,500 nonviolent
drug offenders sentences.

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It was, he said, an
important step toward
righting historic wrongs.

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He's also being asked to right
what some people see as another
historic wrong and exonerate

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Ethel Rosenberg. She and her
husband, Julius, were executed
in 1953 after being convicted as

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Soviet spies in a
sensational atomic espionage
case at the height of
the Cold War Red Scare.

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While historians regard Julius
Rosenberg as a Soviet spy,

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his wife's role has been
debated for years. And
a document declassified

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last year is seen as
the strongest evidence
yet of her innocence.

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Robert Meeropol is the
younger son of Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg. He and his

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brother Michael have
been working for decades
to clear their mother's
name. Mr. Meeropol,

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first of all, can you tell
us about this document? What
is it and what does it say?

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ROBERT MEEROPOL, Son
of Ethel Rosenberg:
Well, what's remarkable
about this document is,

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first of all, who wrote it? That
is Meredith Gardner, who was
the chief decryptor, considered

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to be the heroic spy
catcher who broke the Soviet
codes, which led to the
arrest of certain people.

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Now, what he said in this memo
about my mother was that she
knew about her husband's work,

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but due to ill health,
did not engage in the work
itself. And earlier in
the memo, he described her

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husband's work that my
father, Julius Rosenberg,
as spying. So what we
have here is a definitive

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pronouncement by the chief
decryptor at the time
of my mother's arrest
that she was not a spy.

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And what's remarkable about
this document is it dovetails
with earlier work that Meredith

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Gardner did in decrypting
what are called the
Venona transcriptions
of Soviet spy cables in

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which it was noted that
the KGB gave all of its
agents code names, but
Ethel had no code name.

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JOHN YANG: Armed with this
new evidence, what do you
want President Biden to do,

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and where does that
process stand as he is
about to leave office?

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ROBERT MEEROPOL: Well, ideally,
we would like President Biden
to apologize for the wrongful

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conviction and execution of
my mother. But the reality is
whether you're going to call

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it an exoneration or a pardon
or an apology, any step, major
step, that he takes to show

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that my mother was wrongfully
executed would be a remarkable
step in the right direction.

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And we know that the pardon
office has our material, that
it is under consideration.

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So we're kind of sitting on
edge in the last few days
of Biden's administration,

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knowing that we might not hear
anything until almost the last
minute, but we remain hopeful.

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JOHN YANG: I should note that
there have been historians
who read that document

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in other ways. Mark
Kramer directs Harvard's
"Cold War Studies
Project." He told PBS News

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the declassified Soviet and
U.S. documents make clear
that the August 1951 document,

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that's the document we're
Talking about changes nothing.
The Rosenbergs were convicted of

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conspiring to commit espionage,
and both of them were indeed
guilty of that crime. The

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punishment was unjust,
but the guilty verdict
was fully justified.
What do you say to that?

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ROBERT MEEROPOL: Well, this is a
historian who's made his career

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claiming that Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg were both guilty
spies. And when you have a

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definitive statement that
comes out like this from the
chief decryptor that says,

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no, she wasn't a spy. It is
very difficult for them to
admit, like, it's difficult

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for a lot of people that they
were wrong, particularly when
it's based on their careers.

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In fact, it's kind of
embarrassing because
the reality is what this

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historian is saying is that
he knows better than the
KGB who is the KGB agent.

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JOHN YANG: Now, this is not the
first time or first evidence
to suggest your mother's

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innocence. Within the past
decade, there have been some
others. What else has come up?

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ROBERT MEEROPOL: This particular
memo is kind of like the final
piece of a jigsaw puzzle that

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my brother and I have been
putting together for 50 years.
We filed our first Freedom of

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Information Act lawsuit in the
mid-1970s, and one of the first
set of documents we got were

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Justice Department and
FBI documents saying
the case against Ethel
Rosenberg was weak,

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but we should arrest her
so we can use her as a,
quote, lever to force
her husband to cooperate.

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Then we find out that at the
trial, the only people who
testified against my mother,

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David and Ruth Greenglass,
gave oral testimony. There's
no physical evidence,

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and it turns out that
they swore the opposite
before the grand jury.

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David Greenglass said
he never even talked to
my mother about spying.

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So we know that the
only evidence presented
against her was by proven
perjurers. Now that

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said Judge Coffman, in
sentencing her to death,
said she was a full-fledged
participant in this

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crime. And yet a mother
of two young children ends
up executed for something
that she didn't do.

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JOHN YANG: Mother of two young
children. You and your brother

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were quite young when your
parents were arrested.
What are your memories?

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ROBERT MEEROPOL: Well, you
know, I was three at the
time of my parents arrest,

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so I don't really have
many specific memories of
that. Most of my memories
come from visiting them

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in prison. And they were
kind of calm affairs. They
weren't, what, hysterical.
They wanted me to

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think things were normal
and I wanted them to be
normal. So they fooled me
and I was easy to fool.

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JOHN YANG: What would a
presidential apology mean
to you and your brother?

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ROBERT MEEROPOL: It would
mean a tremendous amount. It's
not only a personal thing for

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us. People could understand
why the children of people
convicted of this kind of crime

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would try to clear their names
for personal reasons. But
this is more than personal.

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The reason this travesty
occurred and my mother was
wrongfully executed was

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because of the politicization
of the Justice Department and
the American judicial system

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during the Great Red Scare of
the early 1950s. We now face a
very similar situation where the

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Justice Department and the rule
of law are under threat. So this
couldn't be more timely to show

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how the judicial process can be
abused. It will help to prevent
it from happening in the future.

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JOHN YANG: Robert Meeropol,
one of the sons of Ethel
Rosenberg. Thank you very much.

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ROBERT MEEROPOL: Thank you.