1 00:00:02,166 --> 00:00:04,666 JOHN YANG: As President Biden leaves office, he's been exercising his presidential clemency 2 00:00:04,666 --> 00:00:09,666 powers. Just this week, he commuted nearly 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders sentences. 3 00:00:11,466 --> 00:00:15,866 It was, he said, an important step toward righting historic wrongs. 4 00:00:15,866 --> 00:00:20,866 He's also being asked to right what some people see as another historic wrong and exonerate 5 00:00:22,966 --> 00:00:26,433 Ethel Rosenberg. She and her husband, Julius, were executed in 1953 after being convicted as 6 00:00:28,700 --> 00:00:32,833 Soviet spies in a sensational atomic espionage case at the height of the Cold War Red Scare. 7 00:00:34,633 --> 00:00:37,766 While historians regard Julius Rosenberg as a Soviet spy, 8 00:00:37,766 --> 00:00:42,733 his wife's role has been debated for years. And a document declassified 9 00:00:44,500 --> 00:00:46,833 last year is seen as the strongest evidence yet of her innocence. 10 00:00:46,833 --> 00:00:51,100 Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He and his 11 00:00:51,100 --> 00:00:55,900 brother Michael have been working for decades to clear their mother's name. Mr. Meeropol, 12 00:00:55,900 --> 00:00:59,933 first of all, can you tell us about this document? What is it and what does it say? 13 00:00:59,933 --> 00:01:03,900 ROBERT MEEROPOL, Son of Ethel Rosenberg: Well, what's remarkable about this document is, 14 00:01:03,900 --> 00:01:08,900 first of all, who wrote it? That is Meredith Gardner, who was the chief decryptor, considered 15 00:01:11,266 --> 00:01:16,000 to be the heroic spy catcher who broke the Soviet codes, which led to the arrest of certain people. 16 00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:24,400 Now, what he said in this memo about my mother was that she knew about her husband's work, 17 00:01:26,800 --> 00:01:31,700 but due to ill health, did not engage in the work itself. And earlier in the memo, he described her 18 00:01:34,300 --> 00:01:39,300 husband's work that my father, Julius Rosenberg, as spying. So what we have here is a definitive 19 00:01:41,700 --> 00:01:46,666 pronouncement by the chief decryptor at the time of my mother's arrest that she was not a spy. 20 00:01:50,766 --> 00:01:55,733 And what's remarkable about this document is it dovetails with earlier work that Meredith 21 00:01:58,833 --> 00:02:03,800 Gardner did in decrypting what are called the Venona transcriptions of Soviet spy cables in 22 00:02:07,500 --> 00:02:12,500 which it was noted that the KGB gave all of its agents code names, but Ethel had no code name. 23 00:02:16,666 --> 00:02:20,300 JOHN YANG: Armed with this new evidence, what do you want President Biden to do, 24 00:02:20,300 --> 00:02:24,100 and where does that process stand as he is about to leave office? 25 00:02:24,100 --> 00:02:29,100 ROBERT MEEROPOL: Well, ideally, we would like President Biden to apologize for the wrongful 26 00:02:31,200 --> 00:02:36,200 conviction and execution of my mother. But the reality is whether you're going to call 27 00:02:38,333 --> 00:02:41,866 it an exoneration or a pardon or an apology, any step, major step, that he takes to show 28 00:02:47,266 --> 00:02:52,233 that my mother was wrongfully executed would be a remarkable step in the right direction. 29 00:02:54,466 --> 00:02:59,433 And we know that the pardon office has our material, that it is under consideration. 30 00:03:03,533 --> 00:03:08,533 So we're kind of sitting on edge in the last few days of Biden's administration, 31 00:03:10,700 --> 00:03:14,633 knowing that we might not hear anything until almost the last minute, but we remain hopeful. 32 00:03:17,133 --> 00:03:21,066 JOHN YANG: I should note that there have been historians who read that document 33 00:03:21,066 --> 00:03:26,066 in other ways. Mark Kramer directs Harvard's "Cold War Studies Project." He told PBS News 34 00:03:28,133 --> 00:03:32,466 the declassified Soviet and U.S. documents make clear that the August 1951 document, 35 00:03:34,533 --> 00:03:37,900 that's the document we're Talking about changes nothing. The Rosenbergs were convicted of 36 00:03:37,900 --> 00:03:42,900 conspiring to commit espionage, and both of them were indeed guilty of that crime. The 37 00:03:45,100 --> 00:03:48,066 punishment was unjust, but the guilty verdict was fully justified. What do you say to that? 38 00:03:49,533 --> 00:03:53,300 ROBERT MEEROPOL: Well, this is a historian who's made his career 39 00:03:53,300 --> 00:03:58,266 claiming that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were both guilty spies. And when you have a 40 00:04:00,333 --> 00:04:04,900 definitive statement that comes out like this from the chief decryptor that says, 41 00:04:06,933 --> 00:04:10,200 no, she wasn't a spy. It is very difficult for them to admit, like, it's difficult 42 00:04:12,333 --> 00:04:16,233 for a lot of people that they were wrong, particularly when it's based on their careers. 43 00:04:17,933 --> 00:04:22,433 In fact, it's kind of embarrassing because the reality is what this 44 00:04:24,333 --> 00:04:28,300 historian is saying is that he knows better than the KGB who is the KGB agent. 45 00:04:30,866 --> 00:04:35,400 JOHN YANG: Now, this is not the first time or first evidence to suggest your mother's 46 00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:40,400 innocence. Within the past decade, there have been some others. What else has come up? 47 00:04:42,533 --> 00:04:45,500 ROBERT MEEROPOL: This particular memo is kind of like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle that 48 00:04:47,600 --> 00:04:51,300 my brother and I have been putting together for 50 years. We filed our first Freedom of 49 00:04:53,400 --> 00:04:57,000 Information Act lawsuit in the mid-1970s, and one of the first set of documents we got were 50 00:04:59,833 --> 00:05:04,833 Justice Department and FBI documents saying the case against Ethel Rosenberg was weak, 51 00:05:07,100 --> 00:05:10,500 but we should arrest her so we can use her as a, quote, lever to force her husband to cooperate. 52 00:05:12,533 --> 00:05:17,266 Then we find out that at the trial, the only people who testified against my mother, 53 00:05:19,200 --> 00:05:22,700 David and Ruth Greenglass, gave oral testimony. There's no physical evidence, 54 00:05:24,433 --> 00:05:27,300 and it turns out that they swore the opposite before the grand jury. 55 00:05:27,300 --> 00:05:31,733 David Greenglass said he never even talked to my mother about spying. 56 00:05:31,733 --> 00:05:36,733 So we know that the only evidence presented against her was by proven perjurers. Now that 57 00:05:40,200 --> 00:05:45,200 said Judge Coffman, in sentencing her to death, said she was a full-fledged participant in this 58 00:05:48,066 --> 00:05:53,066 crime. And yet a mother of two young children ends up executed for something that she didn't do. 59 00:05:55,733 --> 00:05:57,600 JOHN YANG: Mother of two young children. You and your brother 60 00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:01,966 were quite young when your parents were arrested. What are your memories? 61 00:06:01,966 --> 00:06:05,466 ROBERT MEEROPOL: Well, you know, I was three at the time of my parents arrest, 62 00:06:05,466 --> 00:06:10,466 so I don't really have many specific memories of that. Most of my memories come from visiting them 63 00:06:12,766 --> 00:06:16,700 in prison. And they were kind of calm affairs. They weren't, what, hysterical. They wanted me to 64 00:06:20,533 --> 00:06:25,533 think things were normal and I wanted them to be normal. So they fooled me and I was easy to fool. 65 00:06:27,300 --> 00:06:29,533 JOHN YANG: What would a presidential apology mean to you and your brother? 66 00:06:29,533 --> 00:06:34,533 ROBERT MEEROPOL: It would mean a tremendous amount. It's not only a personal thing for 67 00:06:36,566 --> 00:06:40,066 us. People could understand why the children of people convicted of this kind of crime 68 00:06:43,200 --> 00:06:48,200 would try to clear their names for personal reasons. But this is more than personal. 69 00:06:50,900 --> 00:06:55,900 The reason this travesty occurred and my mother was wrongfully executed was 70 00:06:58,033 --> 00:07:01,000 because of the politicization of the Justice Department and the American judicial system 71 00:07:03,466 --> 00:07:08,466 during the Great Red Scare of the early 1950s. We now face a very similar situation where the 72 00:07:12,200 --> 00:07:17,200 Justice Department and the rule of law are under threat. So this couldn't be more timely to show 73 00:07:20,066 --> 00:07:25,066 how the judicial process can be abused. It will help to prevent it from happening in the future. 74 00:07:28,266 --> 00:07:32,300 JOHN YANG: Robert Meeropol, one of the sons of Ethel Rosenberg. Thank you very much. 75 00:07:32,300 --> 00:07:33,333 ROBERT MEEROPOL: Thank you.