In New York, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has ordered the release of eight more grand jury transcripts from the famous 1951 spy case that led to the conviction of the husband and wife pro-Soviet spy team of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Reuters reports this story as if there is some cloud of doubt still hanging over the Rosenberg's conviction despite that their guilt is no longer debatable. Yet here is Reuters giving cover to those who stubbornly wish to cast doubt on the U.S. prosecution of the Rosenbergs. It also gives Reuters and U.S. detractors the opportunity once again smear America by raising their favorite Cold War boogie man, Joe McCarthy.

Reuters sternly tells us that,

The Rosenbergs were convicted in 1951 of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and executed in 1953. Rosenberg supporters describe the case as a frame-up amid anti-communist McCarthyism hysteria and Cold War fear.

It is amazing to see Reuters use every U.S. bash they could in one little paragraph. The Rosenbergs were victims of a "frame-up" because of "McCarthyism hysteria and Cold War fear." Notice how Reuters seems to forget to mention that there is no longer any doubt that the Rosenbergs were guilty, though?

In the aftermath of the 1951 trial, the Rosenberg's fellow traveling supporters always maintained that Julius and Ethel were innocent and that the era of McCarthyism railroaded these innocents to their execution in 1953. This conception casts the U.S. in the role of evil oppressor and the Soviet spies as victims. Granted, for many years the explicit guilt of the Rosenbergs was in some doubt as U.S. evidence was secreted in the grand jury testimony and other sources remained classified.

However, as time rolled on, the Rosenberg's guilt became steadily more assured as sources began to emerge to convincingly prove that Julius passed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, his wife serving as a willing accomplice. By the 1980s information of the FBI's project Venona emerged in which declassified coded messages from the Soviet Union from the Rosenberg's era proved their guilt. Nikita Krushchev even admitted to their guilt in his posthumous 1990 autobiography.

And yet... Reuters seems to have forgotten this whole history. The fact that the Rosenbergs really were guilty seems to have been ignored in this Reuters story even as the specter of McCarthysim was used to its fullest.

So, why did Reuters leave the real, proven guilt of the Rosenbergs out of this story even as they found ample room to bring up "McCarthyism" and "Cold War fears"? Why else but to continue the myth that the Rosenbergs might have been innocent so that their prosecution and execution can continue to be used as manufactured proof that the U.S. is evil?

Instead of a proper news story, what we end up with here is Reuters once again adding its voice to continued anti-Americanism.

(Photo credit: Virginia Western Community College)