Were Julius and Ethel Rosenberg really guilty?
It’s hard to say. Roy Cohn, the 24 year old hotshot cross examiner for the prosecution later turned out to be one of the most unethical, ambitious attorneys ever produced by an American law school. In 1978 he said, in answer to a friend’s question at the Wall Street Journal, that at the time he really didn’t care if they were guilty or not, only that he won the case. David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg’s brother who gave testimony that was most responsible for the Rosenbergs’ conviction and execution, later said that he perjured himself under threat from the prosecutor’s office. Soon after the trial, Cohn became Chief Counsel for Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in what later became notorious as the Communist Witch Hunts of the early 50s. McCarthy later died in a mental institution in 1957 while suffering from the effects of chronic alcoholism. Cohn died of HIV/AIDS in 1986 after a 30-year career defending top mafia figures. A month before he died, a five-judge panel of the Appellate D
