The Key West Citizen Newspaper, June 20, 1953, Page 2

EXECUTION OF SPIES WRITES NEW PAGE IN AME Rosenbergs Are First Civilians To Dien U.S. For Espionage By GEORGE CORNELL NEW YORK ® — American his- tory contained a new page today —the first execution by the federal government of a civilian for either Spying or treason. Down through its 177 years, the mation has jailed many branded as traitors. But not until the atomic. spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg walked to the electric chair last night had any civilian citizen ever been put to death for such a cause. “From a_ historical viewpoint,” said Historian Allan Nevins, “this ip a case that will be long re- membered.” Who were the accused betrayers out of America’s past, and what was their fate? Here is a chrono- logical account of some of the not- able cases, beginning with the Rev- olutionary War: Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, second in commang of George Washing- ton’s Continental Army, plotted to aid the British. His punishment: relief from his command. Not un- til later was his full treachery re- vealed. Gen. Benedict Arnold; who made an abortive deal with the British to surrender the fort at West Point, fled to the British side, was paid $18,000, and given a British com- mand. David Bradford, leader of Pennsylvania’s violent 1794 “Whis- key Rebellion” against a federal whiskey tax, escaped capture. Two underlings were sentenced to hang for treason, but were pardoned. Matthew Lyon of Vermont, one of hundreds arrested for sedition under the harsh Alien and Sedi- tion Laws of 1798 to 1800, was elected to Congress as a hero while still in jail, The laws were re- pealed. John. Fries, who in 1799 led a 140-man. uprising againsf a tax on houses in Pennsylvania, was sen- tenced to hang for treason, but was pardoned after popular senti- ment rose for him. Aaron Burr, one-time vice presi- dent who: killed Alexander Hamil- ton in a duel, plotted with Eng- land. and Spain to set up a separ- ate empire in the Southwest. Tried for treason, he was acquitted. Full details of his conspiracy came out years later. In the Mexican War, there was open defiance. Author James Rus- sell Lowell advised soldiers to mutiny rather than fight. Henry ‘Thoreau called for revolution, re- fused to pay taxes, and was jailed. - Thousands of American soldiers joined the Mexican side and fought their own country. Of 80 of these caught, some were executed by a military court. Joseph Smith, leader of the Savagely persecuted Mormons, was charged with treason in both Ili- nois and Missouri, and finally mur- dered by a mob while in jail. John Brown, who led the unsuc- cessful 1859 raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry to cap- ture arms and free slaves, was hanged for treason by the state of Virginia—not the federal govern- ment. After the Civil War, the U. 8. Supreme Court held the entire South guilty of treason, and some 38,000, including Confederate Pres- ident Jefferson Davis, were arrest- ed, but later pardoned. In World War I, sabotage of ships ahd war materials led to the arrest of five Americans for treas- on. None was convicted. In World War Il, 30 German- Americans were indicted for con- spiracy to set up a Nazi-type gov- ernment here, The case, brought under the 1940 Smith Act, dragged out and finally was dismissed. It is the same law under which more than a score of top Commu- nists have been convicted of con- spiring to overthrow the govern- ment by force. They got prison terms. Navy Comdr. John S, Farns- worth, convicted of doing espion- age for Japan in the years im- mediately before World War Il, was sentenced to four to 12 years in: prison. * Max Stephen, a pro-German De- ‘, troit tavern keeper who ran a Nazi Bund meeting hall with a secret rifle range and sheltered escaped Nazi prisoners, was. sentenced to/| ha penal prisonment. Five Americans, for treason in 13. But the convicted of Your Grocer SELLS That Good! courier in the spy ring with the | vents business growth, and hence |“why won't they let me alone? STAR * BRAND AMERICAN COFFEE and CUBAN =——TRY A POUND TODAY—— | doomed his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, | STRONG ARM BRAND COFFEE Triumph Coffee Mill at ALL GROCERS was changed to life im-/ Page 2 THE KEY WEST CITIZEN Saturday, June 2, ‘953 Mother Of Ethel Rosenberg Collapses At News Of Her Daughter’s Death In Chair By MARTIN POST NEW YORK ™ — Flickering candles, age-old symbols of Jew- ish Sabbath piety—and of mourn- ing—cast shadows over the bent form of a bewildered, grieving old woman, The woman, Mrs. Tessie Green- glass, collapsed last night as she learned her daughter, Ethel, and son-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, had been executed a satom spies. A doctor rushed. to her side. The candles’ rays shone dimly through the neat, lace-work cur- tains of Mrs, Greenglass’ humble, Lower East Side tenement home. Heights, another aged mother, Mrs. Sophie Rosenberg, was told that her son had paid the supreme penalty Yor betraying his country. A doctor came here, too, to spend the night with the shaken, 71-year- old woman, In Toms River, N. J., two youngsters, Michael and Robert Rosenberg, aged 10 and 6, played on a farm that has been their home for a year and a half. Michael reportedly learned from a news bulletin, broadcast while he watched a baseball game on television, that his parents were to die before sundown, In Washington, New York and elsewhere, officials and judges maintained a vigil, There was always the possibility, though slim, that the Rosenbergs might have talked at the last moment to save themselves. And in New York's famed Union Square, a throng of more than 5,- 000 demonstrated in the Rosen- bergs’ behalf, acting out to the end a scene that had become al- most commonplace in the two years since the atom spy team was convicted. The rally had been called as a prayer meeting. It was, instead, a shrill denunciation of the death sentence. The demonstration turned into a parade of mourning, but police broke the procession into frag- ments and small groups wandered off, some weeping, some singing sad spirituals. Over their heads a group of peo- ple peered from the window of a building. To Inactive Duty LIEUT. JR, GRADE JOHN H. KEEHAN, DC, USNR, Assistant dental officer, stationed at the Naval Station Dental Clinic since Sept. 1951, returned to inactive. duty June 10, Lt. Keehan, a na- tive of Cincinnati, Ohio will re- turn to his home town where he _ will continue his practice as den- tal surgeon. treason for broadcasting . propa- ganda for the enemy during World War Il, got prison sentences. Ezra Pound, prize-winning poet, tried for treason for his anti-Amer- fcan broadcasts in Italy, was found of unsound mind, and sent to an asylum near Washington, D. C. John David Provoo, former Army sergeant, who switched to the Japanese side after his capture on Corregidor, was sentenced to life in prison for treason. Alger Hiss, former State De- }partment official convicted of } falsely denying he gave secrets to in prison, Philadelphia chemist Harry Gold, who pleaded guilty to being the Rosenbergs, got 30 years. David Greenglass, former Army technician who worked on the atom bomb at Les Alamos, N, M,, and whose testimony of espionage work i drew 30 years. th Coploa, former Department employe twice vieted of stealing secrets for the Russians and sentenced to terms totaling 35 years. later woa a re- versal in one case, and the other is snaried in legal poitts. She is free Jud Justice con. tin bail, newly martied, and heap ibomb at the Monte Bello Islands 27 years « ‘Brevsiys jing howe in Waving American flags the-on- lookers shouted: “Go home, you Communists, go j home, you Communist rats.” Eventually the crowd dispersed, leaving the ground littered with copies of a handbill that asked President Eisenhower for clem- ency. At the 11th hour, another dra- matic scene was enacted in the {guarded chamber of Federal Judge Irving R, Kaufman. A lawyer, like so many before him, appeared before the judge who had presided over the Rosen- berg trial and pronounced sen- tence, and asked for a writ of habeus corpus, And the judge, minutes before the execution, wearily turned the request down, as he and his col- leagues all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court had done so many times before. The execution brought bitter comment from “The National Com- mittee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case,” a group that has sought a new trial for the doomed pair or, failing that, a re- | duction of the death sentence. i Of the Rosenbergs the commit- tee said: : “The very memory of them will | one day cause America to look back with shame on the era of hysteria under which they were tortured and put to death. “Our nation’s security is not greater for it . . . our nation’s conscience is not more serene . . . our nation’s light does not shine brighter.” The committee’s sponsors in- clude some persons prominent in groups cited as subversive by the attorney general, but the commit- tee has said it accepted members as individuals and assumed many were not connected with such or- ganizations. The Rosenberg boys, innocent victims of forces they will not un- derstand for years, were to have been told of their parents’ fate by Bernard Bach, at whose farm they have been staying “‘at an oppor- tune time.” But the older boy, Michael, heard the news bulletin. “That's it, that’s it,” he cried. “Good bye. Goodbye.” President Faces Showdown Today On EPT Question By CHARLES F. BARRETT WASHINGTON (” — President Eisenhower arranged a face-to- face showdown today with Rep. Reed (R-NY), chief congressional foe of the President’s plea to ex- tend the excess profits tax. Under present law, the tax ex- pires in 10 days. Reed is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, the group that normally must start all tax bills through Congress. But so far he has not agreed even to call his committee togeth- er for a vote on the President's proposal, a stern test of Eisen- hower'’s leadership in Congress. Republican congressional leaders have indicated confidence the com- mittee, if called, would vote to bring the bill to the floor, and that Congzess then would enact it. | The President invited Reed to the White House today'in an ef-/| fort to break the roadblock. Informed sources said Eisenhow- er would make a direct, personal appeal to the committee chairman to convene his committee for a vote on the issue. There was no indication whether Reed would yield. Reed, oldest Re- publican in continuous service in| the House, has never said he wou'd refuse to bring the tax ex-/ tension to a vote. Nor has he said | when or whether he would do so. | GCP leaders apparently . have made little headway in their ef-| forts to persuade the determined | New Yorker. Eisenhower urged a six-months | extension of the unpopular tax in }a special message and means committee conclided bearings one week ago today. Reed has insisted the tax pre-| revenue, which wouid be raised by letting it die on schedule, LARGEST ATOM BOMB LONDON @—The Daily Express | said today that Britain will explode ithe world’s biggest atem bemb early next year. The Ministry of Detense, which handies Britain's atomie program. refused to com } ment on the story | The newspaper declared the test homed be staged at Woomera rocket i range in the vast Australian desert. | Britain exploded ber first atom Australia late last year. JET THESE EIGHT JET ACES of the Korean war discuss tactics in Las Vegas, Nev. where they met to the clothing drive for Korean to r.) are: Lt. Ivan C. Kincheloe ACES AID KOREAN ORPH ee jet aid Standing (1. Jr. 24, of Cassop- olis, Mich., credited with 6 MIG kills and 7 damaged; Col. George E. Jones, 35, of Vero Beach, Fla.,6% MIG kills; Lt, James H, Kasler, 27, of Indianapolis, Ind.,| liam T. Whisner, 30, RICAN HISTORY ANS’ CLOTHES DRIVE of Shreveport, La., 5% MIG 5 MIG kills and 2 damaged; Maj. Frederick C. Blesse, kills. The aces are stationed at the Nellis Air Base. Bloch Blasts President For Rosenberg Fate Attorney Is Bitter At Losing Three- Year Fight For Lives Of Spies By ED CREAGH WASHINGTON (# — “And so,” said the voice on the hotel room radio, “Julius and Ethel Rosen- berg are dead.” “And so,” rasped the furious man in the tan suit, slouched in a chair across the room, ‘‘Ameri- ca is shamed forever!” Lawyer Emanuel Bloch had just heard the news — the young cou- ple he defended in three years of legal maneuvering, with seven ap- peals to the Supreme Court, had died in the electric chair as spies who conspired to slip atomic se- crets to the Russians. Bloch took it bitterly, defiantly. He vowed that ‘we’? — and he didn’t explain who ‘‘we’? were — would drive from power those who failed to halt*the electrocution. He mentioned two names: President Eisenhower and “Atty. Gen Brown- ell. F A few blocks away, in Lafayette Square across from the White House, a growing crowd in the sultry June evening reacted differ- ently. Cheers rang out and auto horns blared as the time of the Rosen- bergs’ electrocution arrived. There was one demonstration at the ap- pointed hour, another when word came over portable radios that the sentences actually had been car- ried out. Past the White House, in a seem- ingly endless stream, crawled car after car. In the park across Penn- sylvania Avenue police estimated 7,000 persons gathered. And across the street from them, in front of the White House itself, some 400 men and women trudged back and forth, bearing dispirited- ly the clemency pleading signs that have grown familiar. Some of the pickets burst into tears once the news flashes | made the rounds. A brief protest demonstration followed. Then the pickets neatly stacked their signs at the foot of a tree that grows. through the pavement, and silently marched away. Earlier, police had some trouble keeping anti-Rosenberg demonstra- tors away from Bloch when he appeared at the White House dur- ing the last hours before execu- } tion time. Eisenhower already had made a final refusal to intervene. But Bloch went to the White |House anyway, bearing a letter | Divorce By Mail ° DETROIT W—Fifty years ago ¢ to Congres | Charles Stickle left his home in/ | Russia, was sentenced to five years | more than a month ago. The ways New York beca e, he said, his tT and refused e elsewhere. Stickle says wife took in a ro to make him m Now $4 and spry Tm an olf man and I want to die in peace.” Detroit police located Stickle a! Tequest of a daughter. Mrs. Paul Luning of East Elmburs N. She explained mother, also & from father since whether he ix sti e Sgt. Gerald Caller found je alone in a neal apartment “I was fed up.” Stickle said of bis departure 52 years ago “I gota divorce by mail in Texas i don't want to see way of the Mrs. Rosenberg wrote from the death house. The letter begged the President to consult Mrs. Eisen- hower and, by staying the execu- tions, prevent the “destruction of a small unoffending Jewish fami- ly.” The Rosenbergs were the par- ents of two young boys. In the confusion around the main gate, Bloch forgot to leave the letter. He went back a minute later and gave it to the guards. Then, having ‘ost his final ap- peal to the Supreme Court and his last minute efforts to get a stay from several individual justices, a took a taxi back to his ho- tel. “That ends it,” he said. House announced Eisenhower had read the letter, but still declined to intervene. Reporters found Bloch in his ho- tel room with three others. 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