Hastily, the Seventh Fleet hightails it out of Pearl Harbor, a trial date is set, troops are rushed to Korea. Greenglass and Gold are lodged together on the eleventh floor of the Tombs prison in New York, where they can help stimulate each other’s recall powers. The Rosenbergs are separated for, obversely, the same reason. An ad appears in The New York Times: “From now on, let us make no mistake about it: the war is on, the chips are down. Those among us who defend Russia or Communism are enemies of freedom and traitors to the United Nations and the United States. American soldiers are dying…every man’s house will be in a target area before this ends!” The Yankee Peddler, turning to meet this new challenge in Asia, is knocked reeling — invading North Koreans cross the 38th Parallel and roll south; Americans land at Inchon, cross the 38th Parallel, and roll north; the Chinese People’s Volunteers cross the Manchurian border and roll south — and by the time the clerk in Room 110 of the Foley Square Courthouse in New York City is ready to step forward on Tuesday morning, March 6, 1951, to call out the case of “the United States versus Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell, et al.,” the whole scene is in great disarray, Uncle Sam doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going, the Mongol hordes of Red China have overrun Tibet as well as Korea and are pressing out in all directions like a bursting waterbag, the Russians are arrogantly lighting up the sky with atomic-bomb tests, the President and his General are at loggerheads, and Nightmare Alley — the escape route out of the Korean hills to the south — is littered with frozen American dead. “We have met the enemy,” cries Uncle Sam, gasping for breath, “and bile me fer a seahorse if I wouldn’t ruther crawl into a nest o’ wildcats, heels foremost, than be cotched alone in the nighttime with one o’ them heathen buggers again!” TIME’S Mother Luce, who, perhaps inspired by the early successes, has been urging her son to push the idea of living with perpetual war as part of the American Way of Life, now writes despondently:
I had a call from John Foster Dulles, a very special assistant to Secretary of State Acheson. Dulles said he was at his home in New York and could I come after dinner. When I got there I found Foster and Brother Allen and a foreign service officer. The atmosphere was solemn. Foster Dulles put the situation to me concisely and precisely. He said the American army had been surrounded and a Marine division too. “It is,” said Dulles, “the only army we have. And the question is: shall we ask for terms?” I could hardly believe my ears and that is what I said….
As the brightly badged bailiff enters from the Judge’s chambers and faces the packed courtroom in Foley Square, TIME’S visionary kid brother is declaring: “LIFE sees no choice but to acknowledge the existence of war with Red China and to set about its defeat, in full awareness that this course will probably involve war with the Soviet Union as well!” Work on the H-bomb proceeds feverishly, but there are fears the Russians may have stolen that one before it’s even been invented. Joe McCarthy, the Fighting Marine, demands that General MacArthur, who is widely reported to be “the greatest man alive,” be given the discretionary authority in Asia for “speedy action of the roughest and toughest kind of which we are capable!” The bailiff pounds his knuckled fist on the door three times and calls out: “Everybody please rise!” There’s a scraping of chairs, a scuffling of feet, the Strategic Air Command is put on alert, the Communist program for world domination is released by the House Un-American Activities Committee. A New York Times headline announces: DANGER OF ATOM BOMB ATTACK IS GREATEST IN PERIOD UP TO THIS FALL! The Judge enters — a ripple of surprise: Uncle Sam has chosen for his Easter Trial little Irving Kaufman, the Boy Judge, a stubby Park Avenue Jew and Tammany Hall Democrat who looks a little like a groundhog himself with his plastered-down hair, thick bumpy nose, and damp beady eyes. Old-time court buffs, however, glance at each other and wink knowingly. Not only are they great admirers of the Boy Judge’s fine voice and his activist take-no-shit style of conducting a trial, but they know something most other people in the courtroom don’t: that Irving Kaufman’s own wife is a Rosenberg! They also know that Irving’s an orphan, and though a Jew, a whizkid law-school graduate of Fordham University, the Roman Catholic farm for FBI agents (his classmates called him Pope Kaufman after he aced Christian Doctrine with a 99); that he was once a shrewd prosecutor, one of the original “Foley Squareheads,” an admiring student of the tough-fisted tactics of the Fighting D.A. Tom Dewey, and the first prosecuting attorney in the district to use a wiretap as a weapon in a federal prosecution; and that when his appointment, sponsored by Carmine DeSapio, to become the youngest federal judge in the country was held up eighteen months ago, it was J. Edgar Hoover himself who came to the rescue. He mounts the steps to the bench, dragging his robes behind him, and stands there, peering over the top like Kilroy, while the court clerk announces that the court is now in session: IF SOVIETS START WAR, ATOMIC BOMB ATTACK EXPECTED ON NEW YORK FIRST, says the Journal-American. “All ye having business before this Court, come forward and ye shall be heard!” Julius and Ethel glance at each other, GIs lose another hill in Korea, and East Berlin policemen fire openly on U.S. Army sightseeing buses. The Russians are said to be massing troops on the Manchurian border. “God bless the United States of America!” cries the clerk. “Nobody will have to run if H-bombs start detonating. A big black cloud full of radioactive particles will get you even if…you happen to be browsing around the bottom of an abandoned lead mine!” Behind the Courthouse on Duane Street, the bells of St. Andrew’s Church are striking the half hour. “God bless this Honorable Court!” There are fervent whispers of “Amen!” in the crowded courtroom. The Judge climbs up into the big leather chair and sits down. Schoolchildren scramble under their desks in an atom bomb drill, and an entire Yank company is bogged down in a Korean rice paddy. “The District Attorney moves the case for trial,” says the Prosecutor gravely, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses on his long nose, “and is ready to proceed.” He glances severely at the suspects who sit stiffly in their chairs. ATOM BOMB SHELTERS FOR CITY AT COST OF $450,000,000 URGED.
If the choice of Judge is somewhat unexpected, the choice of Prosecutor is not: though a Tammany Hall ethnic like the Judge, Irving Saypol is not only big in the Boy Scouts, Salvation Army, and Knights of Pythias, he is also, as the National Poet Laureate says: “the nation’s number / one legal hunter of top / communists.” Devious, hardboiled, fast on his feet, he’s a tough man to beat. This, however, is the most critical case of Irving Saypol’s career. American casualties in Korea are approaching the one-hundred-thousand mark when he rises, tall, hard, and graying, to make his opening statement. There are fears of imminent war everywhere in Europe. He shuffles his thick sheaf of papers, smooths down the pocket flap on his double-breasted suit jacket. Irving Saypol is a sonuvabitch at gin rummy, but does he hold the cards? The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives warns that a third world war may be just around the corner. Julius Rosenberg drums on the counsel table with long nervous fingers. President Truman calls on all police officers and citizens to be watchful for spies, saboteurs, and subversive activities. Saypol’s gaggle of assistants and FBI investigators huddle close together, watching their man. TENSION IS GRAVER THAN IN NOVEMBER, MARSHALL’S BELIEF. Ethel Rosenberg edges forward on her chair, little worry lines crossing her face, as she struggles to hear Prosecutor Saypol’s muffled low-key delivery: in soft flat tones he is accusing her of “the most serious crime which can be committed against the people of this country.” Morton Sobell strokes his jaw, licks his lips, wrinkles his nose, confers nervously with his lawyers. David Greenglass and Harry Gold come down from the Tombs and, assisted by David’s wife, Ruth, confess to spying, perjury, conspiracy, and the lot, and then the Greenglasses say the Rosenbergs were behind it all. Twenty other witnesses corroborate minor details of their story — including Liz Bentley the Red Spy Queen, who adds a bit of swish and dash to the proceedings. Julius and Ethel take the stand and say it isn’t so. When they’re asked if they’re Communists, though, they duck behind the Fifth Amendment. Morton Sobell, who has been largely ignored in the testimony, figures they must have forgotten about him and keeps his mouth shut. The members of the jury, mostly accountants and auditors, retire and tote up the witness score: 23 to 2 with 1 abstention. They return with a guilty verdict for all three, and the Judge says: “My own opinion is that your verdict is a correct verdict…. The thought that citizens of our country would lend themselves to destruction of their own country by the most destructive weapon known to man is so shocking that I can’t find words to describe this loathsome offense! God bless you all!” He goes off to the Park Avenue Synagogue to pray and sneak a quick American cheese sandwich. TIME say: