Friday, February 1, 2019

Stalinist Spy Does Not Take Secrets to the Grave

Morton Sobell, whose obituary noting his 101 years appeared this week in the New York Times, spied for Stalinist Russia about 70 years ago.

David Greenglass, the brother of Sobell co-defendant Ethel Rosenberg, testified against his sister and brother-in-law.

Sobell maintained his innocence in his memoir On Doing Time, and in 1978 PBS aired the WETA-produced Rosenberg-Sobell Revisited, which argued for the trio's innocence.

As late as 2001, Sobell lamented in the Nation that authors "Take for granted that the National Security Agency has published a true decryption of the Soviet cables" in writing about the Venona intercepts clearly affirming Julius Rosenberg's espionage.

As the New York Times noted in its obit, "He insisted that the secrets he had supplied to the Soviets involved only defensive radar and artillery devices rather than 'stuff that could be used to attack our country.' But many military experts believe that one of the devices he mentioned specifically, the SCR-584 radar, was used against American aircraft in Korea and Vietnam."

Before Sobell betrayed his countrymen, his government erred in allowing its enemies access to its secrets.

Morton Sobell, with Rosenberg son, in 1976..

https://spectator.org/stalinist-spy-does-not-take-secrets-to-the-grave/

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