The Rosenberg Espionage Case


Book Description

Discusses the famous espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, covering both the prosecution and defense, the government's pursuit of this couple, and the aftermath of the trial.




Final Verdict


Book Description

The arrest, trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951 mesmerised an America coming to grips with the early Cold War and the anxiety aroused by the Soviet Union's testing of the atomic bomb. However, in 1965, Walter Schneir famously presented evidence that the Rosenbergs were innocent and had been framed by the FBI - a case which was brought into question in 1995 when the FBI released 3000 Soviet intelligence documents. This prompted Schneir to continue his research, which has lead to surprising and revelatory results.




Spies on Trial


Book Description

The spy business often results in a sudden exchange of the dark shadows of the clandestine back room for the bright lights of the open courtroom. The situations that judges and juries face in espionage cases are typically more unusual, complex, and diverse than one might possibly imagine. Cecil C. Kuhne III describes a number of historical, law changing judicial cases, well-publicized criminal trials of those accused of treason against the United States, as well as lawsuits concerning other unusual matters, such as the governmental restrictions on bugging and other surveillance devices that cannot be sold to the general public. The author successfullyexplores well known espionage cases, such as the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell trial of 1951, as well as more recent cases where the courts have dealt with the activities of the National Security Administration (NSA) as they monitor telephone communications in their efforts to apprehend terrorist organizations. Spies on Trial brings the reader fast-paced stories of foreign spies engaged in daring deeds of sleuthing that undoubtedly have more than their fair share of intriguing moments. But nowhere is this suspense more intense than inside the courtroom, where the drama of intense covert activities is fully unfurled, offering fascinating glimpses into this vast and nefarious underground world of international espionage.




Treasonable Doubt


Book Description

Armed with a wealth of new information, Craig examines the controversial 1948 allegations that Communist spies had penetrated the American government, and explores the "ambiguities" that have haunted it for more than half a century.




The Book of Daniel


Book Description

The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia. His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted. Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new life—marriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him. In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different. It is a confession of his most intimate relationships—with his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him. It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents’ innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House. It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniel’s interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks. It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the case—lawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself. It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this country—its sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations. It is The Book of Daniel.




Phantom Spies, Phantom Justice


Book Description

The human cost of the anti-Communist witch-hunt during the McCarthy era is brought to life in Phantom Spies: Phantom Justice - Miriam Moskowitz' personal account of that terrible time. Ms. Moskowitz' was arrested in 1950 and prosecuted for conspiracy to obstruct justice during a grand jury investigation of suspected Soviet espionage. She was sensationally branded by the prosecution and in news stories as part of an atom bomb spy ring. Yet it was a lie. And her prosecutors knew it was a lie. Phantom Spies: Phantom Justice reveals through Ms. Moskowitz' many years of diligent research of court records, FBI documents and other sources that her prosecutors knew she was innocent, and yet kept silent as the lone witness against her repeatedly lied during his testimony. After she was convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice FBI officials and the government's lawyers also remained silent as she was sentenced to two years in federal prison and fined $10,000. Now in her mid-90s, Ms. Moskowitz has lived for 62 years with the false stigma of being a convicted felon and an enemy of the United States. This updated edition includes two new chapters, additional photos, and FBI documents with proof of her innocence that the prosecutors concealed from her lawyers, the trial judge, the jurors, and the appeals court judges who upheld her conviction in 1951. One of the new chapters elaborates on Ms. Moskowitz' experience in prison with Iva Toguri d'Aquino, who was wrongly identified as Tokyo Rose and falsely convicted of treason in 1949. She was granted a full and unconditional pardon in 1976 by President Ford based on newly discovered evidence that the government's two key witnesses committed perjury at the behest of the prosecution. David Alman, co-founder in 1951 of the National Committee to Secure Justice in The Rosenberg Case, and co-author of Exoneration: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell (2010), writes in the Foreword: "A few simple questions may occur to readers after they turn the last page of Phantom Spies: Phantom Justice: How did all this happen? What happened to the Constitution? What happened to the conventional concept of Americanism? Where was our vaunted media? Where were the whistleblowers?" Hans Sherrer, editor and publisher of Justice Denied - the magazine for the wrongly convicted, writes in the Afterword: "Miriam Moskowitz is an innocent person who was caught up in the whirlwind of anti-communist hysteria that prevailed in this country at the time of her trial in 1950. Her book is much more than a personal memoir, it is a valuable well-documented first-hand account that both corrects and contributes to the historical record of the McCarthy era." Barbara Jean Trembley, Curator of Personal Documents for the Iva Ikuko Toguri Estate writes: "Miriam Moskowitz draws back the curtain on a distinct history when justice was obscured by politics and personal agendas. Ms. Moskowitz proves once again the adage that truth gains power over time." Michael Meeropol, older son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg writes about Phantom Spies: Phantom Justice: "Miriam Moskowitz' story about how she became "collateral damage" in the government's pursuit of real and fake spies is a must reading for all who cherish our constitutional form of government. Her survival and personal triumph should be celebrated by us all."




The Nazi Spy Ring in America


Book Description

In the mid-1930s, just as the United States was embarking on a policy of neutrality, Nazi Germany launched a program of espionage against the unwary nation. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones’s fascinating history provides the first full account of Nazi spies in 1930s America and how they were exposed in a high-profile FBI case that became a national sensation.




The Billion Dollar Spy


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year • Drawing on previously classified CIA documents and on interviews with firsthand participants, The Billion Dollar Spy is a brilliant feat of reporting and a riveting true story of intrigue in the final years of the Cold War. It was the height of the Cold War, and a dangerous time to be stationed in the Soviet Union. One evening, while the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station was filling his gas tank, a stranger approached and dropped a note into the car. The chief, suspicious of a KGB trap, ignored the overture. But the man had made up his mind. His attempts to establish contact with the CIA would be rebuffed four times before he thrust upon them an envelope whose contents would stun U.S. intelligence. In the years that followed, that man, Adolf Tolkachev, became one of the most valuable spies ever for the U.S. But these activities posed an enormous personal threat to Tolkachev and his American handlers. They had clandestine meetings in parks and on street corners, and used spy cameras, props, and private codes, eluding the ever-present KGB in its own backyard—until a shocking betrayal put them all at risk.




True Believer


Book Description

Ana Montes appeared to be a model employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Known to her coworkers as the Queen of Cuba, she was an overachiever who advanced quickly through the ranks of Latin American specialists to become the intelligence community's top analyst on Cuban affairs. But throughout her sixteen-year career at DIA, Montes was sending Castro some of America's most closely guarded secrets and at the same time helping influence what the United States thought it knew about Cuba. When she was finally arrested in September 2001, she became the most senior American intelligence official ever accused of operating as a Cuban spy from within the federal U.S. government. Unrepentant as she serves out her time in a federal prison in Texas, Montes remains the only member of the intelligence community ever convicted of espionage on behalf of the Cuban government. This inside account of the investigation that led to her arrest has been written by Scott W. Carmichael, the DIA's senior counterintelligence investigator who persuaded the FBI to launch an investigation. Although Montes did not fit the FBI's profile of a spy and easily managed to defeat the agency's polygraph exams, Carmichael became suspicious of her activities and with the FBI over a period of several years developed a solid case against her. Here he tells the story of that long and ultimately successful spy hunt. Carmichael reveals the details of their efforts to bring her to justice, offering readers a front-row seat for the first major U.S. espionage case of the twentieth century. She was arrested less than twenty-four hours before learning details of the U.S. plan to invade Afghanistan post-September 11. Motivated by ideology not money, Montes was one of the last "true believers" of the communist era. Because her arrest came just ten days after 9/11, it went largely unnoticed by the American public. This book calls attention to the grave damage Montes inflicted on U.S. security—Carmichael even implicates her in the death of a Green Beret fighting Cuban-backed insurgents in El Salvador—and the damage she would have continued to inflict had she not been caught.




Spycatcher


Book Description