UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK ------------------------------------------------------------------------ IN RE PETITION OF NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LEGAL HISTORY ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS SOCIETY OF AMERICAN ARCHIVISTS AND SAM ROBERTS FOR ORDER DIRECTING RELEASE OF GRAND JURY MINUTES 08 Civ 6599 AKH ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SECOND SUPPLEMENTAL DECLARATION OF BRUCE CRAIG Ph D Bruce Craig hereby deposes and states as follows 1 I possess a Ph D 1999 in History from the American University Washington D C I am currently affiliated with the department ofhistory at the University of Prince Edward Island Charlottetown Prince Edward Island Canada where I teach American history I also am a Fellow with the Milton F Gregg Centre for War and Society centered out of the University of New Brunswick Fredericton New Brunswick Canada I am immediate past president of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies CASIS I am the author of Treasonable Doubt The Harry Dexter White Spy Case University Press ofKansas 1994 a book dealing with the espionage case of Harry Dexter White a high-ranking Treasury Department official accused of being a Soviet spy at the time as was former State Department official Alger Hiss My biography of Alger Hiss The Lives ofAlger Hiss The Myths the Masks the Man is awaiting publication 2 In 1996 while conducting research for my doctoral dissertation I brought a suit to unseal the grand jury records relating to the Harry Dexter White investigation In re Craig 942 F Supp 88 1 S D N Y 1996 a ff'd 131 F 3d99 2dCir 1997 Afterthecasewas 1 adjudicated I subsequently prepared the key historical declaration in the case to secure access to the minutes and testimony before the grand jury that indicted Alger Hiss In re American Historical Association 49 F Supp 2d 274 S D N Y 1999 subsequent opinion 62 F Supp 2d 1100 S D N Y 1999 In October 1999 the case resulted in the release of roughly 4 800 pages of testimony relating the Hiss perjury case 3 I have written dozens of articles for popular and scholarly periodicals including Unsealing Federal Grand Jury Records The Case of the Harry Dexter White Transcript in The Public Historian vol 20 no 2 Spring 1998 at 45-62 In 1989 my article on the Alger HissWhittaker Chambers controversy titled Politics in the Pumpkin Patch won the G Wesley Johnson award as the best article in The Public Historian Yol 12 no 1 Winter 1989 at 8-24 As noted I have completed a biography of Alger Hiss which makes extensive use of the grand jury records 4 As Executive Director of the National Coalition for History a Washington D C based history and archive advocacy organization I spearheaded the successful effort that resulted in the unsealing of the House Committee on Un-American Activities HUAC records in August 2001 I have serYed on the editorial board of The Public Historian and have chaired or have been a member of various committees for the American Historical Association the Organization of American Historians and the National Council on Public History 5 The prosecution conviction and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was the single most notorious and important case of the Cold War Era The only other case that comes close to possessing similar importance in its historical significance is the Alger Hiss espionage case which at the time was billed by many as the trial of the 201h century However neither 2 Alger Hiss nor his wife Priscilla were accused of passing information of such sensitivity and importance as nuclear secrets in their conspiratorial activities on behalf of the Soviet underground and neither were they executed For the authoritative history of the Hiss case see Allen Weinstein Perjury The Hiss-Chambers Case 3rd ed Stanford University Hoover Institution Press 2013 6 More has been written about the Rosenberg spy ring and about the personal lives of the Rosenberg family than any other espionage ring in American history Their conviction convinced many Americans that Soviet infiltration of American society was peryasive Others however concluded differently - that elected officials were overreacting to the Soviet threat and that government was becoming oppressiYe 7 The story of the search arrest conspiracy trial conviction and execution of Soviet spy Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel for passing stolen allegedly critical information about the development of the atomic bomb from a top secret nuclear facility is the stuff of novels The facts of the case however are no fiction It is undeniable that both Julius and Ethel along with several others were involved in a conspiracy to pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union Their conviction and execution rested in no small measure on the key testimony of a small handful of witnesses Of greatest importance in the prosecution's case was the testimony of Ethel Rosenberg's brother U S army sergeant David Greenglass 8 When this Court ordered the Rosenberg case grand jury testimony of virtually all of the witnesses unsealed on 11 September 2008 David Greenglass and a handful of other living witnesses objected to the release of their testimony and as a consequence their statements were not unsealed see Lee White Federal Court Orders Release of Rosenberg Trial Grand Jury 3 Records Perspectives on History Washington D C American Historical Association September 2008 at 29-30 it became abundantly clear that both David and Ruth Greenglass testified falsely on the witness stand during the trial They did so for obvious reasons to save their lives Ruth's testimony implicated DaYid's sister Ethel in the espionage conspiracy and David's testimony served to corroborate his ife's statements about the Rosenbergs See Ronald Radosh How David Greeng ass helped Break Up a Soviet Spy Ring That Was Plotting New Perfidy The New York Sun 15 October 2014 see also Robert D McFadden David Greeng ass Brother Who Doomed Ethel Rosenberg Dies at 92 New York Times at AI October 14 2014 9 Based on the contents ofthe Rosenberg grand jury release it is evident that Ruth Greenglass's grand jury testimony was clearly at odds with her trial testimony Historian Ron Radosh summarizes the inconsistency Testifying before the Grand Jury on August 3 1950 Ruth told the jurors that when David was home on furlough in late December 1944 he had informed Julius that he had consented to gather information from the Manhattan Project She then told him what David had conveyed to her about the physical set up at Los Alamos and the scientists who were working there Didn't you write down on a piece of paper Prosecutor Myles Lane asked Yes Ruth answered I wrote that down on a piece of paper and Julius took it with him Lane asked In longhand Ruth's answer Yes Yet at the Rosenberg trial Ruth testified precisely the opposite that Ethel told JRuth she always typed Julius's material Radosh How Rosenberg's In-Law Helped Seal Their Fate The New York Sun September 12 2008 10 Ruth Greenglass's grand jury testimony is corroborated in a secret Soviet decryptone of the famous VENONA decrypts that was released in 1995 by the National Security 4 Agency and the FBI In an 8 January KGB message a SoYiet agent reported to superiors that Greenglass has confirmed his agreement to help us and had turned over a hand-written plan of the lay-out of Camp 2 at Los Alamos and facts known to him about the work and the personnel ld SeYeral conclusions become evident a the paper that Ruth handed to Julius was handwritten and not typed b that any typing by Ethel probably never took place and c that Ruth's trial testimony implicating Ethel Rosenberg was inconsistent with her grand jury testimony These facts have led many historians to conclude that Ethel did not play a significant role in this critical aspect of the atomic conspiracy that ultimately led to her conviction and execution 11 It took a half century after his sister's Ethel's execution before her brother David Greenglass finally admitted that he had lied on the witness stand to save his wife from prosecution when he gave corroborating testimony in support of his wife's account What he testified to during the trial kept Ruth Greenglass from being prosecuted and imprisoned As a result she was able to remain free to raise their children Ruth's testimony also proved especially important in the sentencing phase of the trial as it in part is what Judge Irving R Kaufman cited as the justification for sentencing Ethel Rosenberg to death 12 Though we know that false testimony was given as a consequence of the Greenglass' s plea bargain what we do not know is what did David Greenglass testify to about the material he passed to Julius when he appeared before the grand jury Did Greenglass claim he passed handwritten verses typed information In other words at that stage of the espionage investigation was his testimony confirmatory or revelatory regarding his wife's testimony 5 13 In a June 12 1979 interview with historian Ronald Radosh Greenglass could not recall exactly what he had testified to before the grand jury he could remember only that it was either my wife or my sister and that to save Ruth the couple had to bring Ethel Rosenberg into the conspiracy alleged by the prosecution See Supplemental Declaration of Ronald Radosh at 3 14 Greenglass's admission about testifying falsely during the Rosenberg's trial gave rise to allegations of misconduct by U S Department of Justice prosecutors It therefore becomes of key interest to know what actions by the FBI and or the prosecution gave rise to plea bargain in the first place Greenglass claimed that when he was first interrogated by the FBI he agreed to cooperate fully on the condition that the government promise not to prosecute his wife Was such a promise by the FBI readily agreed to by the prosecution early on or was the promise initially dismissed by the prosecution only to be restored after uttering a threat to indict Greenglass's wife unless he agreed to testify against Ethel Rosenberg Circumstances suggest that was the case as Greenglass claimed that he changed his testimony against Ethel late in the trial and only after being pressured to do so by prosecutor Roy Cohn 15 Given Greenglass's more recent revelations about Cohn's actions it would be useful to know whether Greenglass was correct in his more recent recollections or whether the plea bargain arrangement was actually struck earlier perhaps before or during the grand jury investigation Regardless of any promises made by the FBI exactly when were promises made by the prosecution Was there any on-the-record exchange during Greenglass's grand jury appearance that sheds light on the development of the plea bargain By the time ofhis grand jury appearance had the government already persuaded or pressured Greenglass into associating his sister with the Julius Rosenberg's underground network Given the moral dilemma Greenglass 6 faced - betraying a blood relative in order to protect his immediate family -- what did he tell the grand jury about his wife's complicity if anything 16 A related question that may be revealed by the release of David Greenglass's grand jury testimony is whether there any evidence in his testimony pointing to prosecutorial misconduct on the part of lead prosecutor Irving H Saypol or his assistant Roy Cohn Only the release of David Greenglass' s grand jury testimony can shed light on this and other key questions that the existent historical record has yet to definitely answer 17 Historians most familiar with the Rosenberg case rightfully argue that Greenglass' s grand jury testimony may result in a wellspring of surprises First we know that originally Greenglass did not name Ethel and Julius by name as co-conspirators A central question then is exactly when did he first name them Was it during the grand jury investigation And when he testified before the grand jury did he continue to remain closed lipped about their activities or did he in essence turn state's evidence during his interrogation In other words during questioning was he a cooperative or a hostile witness 18 Second when he testified before the grand jury what secret information did Greenglass admit to passing to the Rosenbergs about the Manhattan Project As was evidenced by comparing his wife's grand jury with the trial record was his grand jury testimony also at odds with what was revealed publicly during the trial 19 Third we know that Greenglass gave the Soviets much information about the development of America's nuclear bomb program But as a result of the research work by historian Steve Usdin and others it is now known that the Rosenberg spy apparatus also engaged in industrial espionage - non-atomic military technology actually appears to have been a central 7 if not the main focus of Julius Rosenberg's activities See Steven Usdin ENGINEERING COMl tUNISM HOW TWO At 1ERICANS SPIED FOR STALIN AND FOUNDED THE SO 'IET SILICON VALLEY Yale University Press 2005 Did David Greenglass talk about other espionage activity that he was engaged in when he appeared before the grand jury Only Greenglass's grand jury testimony can shine additional light on this significant but often ignored aspect of the activities of the Rosenberg spy ring 20 Fourth were some of Greenglass's admissions relating to the bomb of such a potentially detrimental magnitude to the continuing integrity of the American nuclear bomb program that certain facts were not publicly acknowledged in the interest of national security 21 Fifth was Greenglass asked questions relating to possible espionage activities in the years following the end of World War II 22 Sixth did Greenglass admit to other actions on behalf of the KGB that he was not prosecuted for - for example did he recruit others to engage in espionage 23 Seventh did Greenglass's testimony provide American intelligence analysts with additional names for investigation For instance it is known that AI Sarant and Joel Barr were involved in industrial espionage with Julius Rosenberg but they defected to the Soviet Union before the FBI was able to question them Were their activities or those or others i e Vivian Glassman Max Finestone Stanley Robert Rich Russell and Waldo McNutt and or Nathan Sussman mentioned or discussed before the grand jury by Greenglass Was he able to provide details about the identity and actions of additional Soviet agents or their American sources 24 Eighth what did Greenglass tell the jurors about his various meetings with Harry Gold a Soviet go-between Gold had visited Greenglass in New Mexico to carry back atomic 8 secrets he is also the individual who identified Greenglass for the FBI as the source of atomic bomb information at Los Alamos Of particular interest would be Greenglass' s statements to the grand jury about when Gold had come to his apartment ith the famous half of a Jello box used as a recognition code Did Greenglass remember or say to the jury that Gold said I come from Julius as he testified at trial or did he use another name 25 Ninth why did Greenglass object to the release ofhis grand jury testimony when virtually all the other relevant testimony relating to the Rosenberg trial was unsealed back in 2008 Is it that Greenglass simply and understandably did not want to reopen past wounds Is it that Greenglass wanted to avoid having to make additional public comment about his role in the case and the execution of his sister Or as some suspect did Greenglass object because he knew there was incriminating testimony in the grand jury record that he did not want to see released 26 A tenth and final question pertains to the actions statements and attitudes of the grand jurors One of the revealing aspects of the previously released Rosenberg grand jury witness testimony is that this particular grand jury was actively engaged and outspoken when posing questions to witnesses Several of the grand jury members demonstrated hostility toward certain witnesses who appeared uncooperative Others seemed to be horrified that David Greenglass would actually testify against his own blood relative To what degree did his filial loyalty or lack thereof color the attitudes and actions of the grand jury What was the interplay between Greenglass and the jurors Was Greenglass viewed with hostility or did he garner sympathy on the part of the members of the grand jury These are important questions in their o n right and only release ofhis grand jury testimony can answer them 9 27 As was argued in 2008 by the largest membership organizations that represent the professional American historical community the testimony of David Greenglass must be unsealed in order for there to be a full accounting of the most important espionage trial in American history In their 2008 declarations several historians pointed out that In light of the meager evidence linking Ethel Rosenberg to the atom bomb conspiracy and because the available historical evidence suggests that at first government prosecutors were pessimistic about the prospects of conviction testimony of the Greenglasses is particularly important in fact they are of central importance See e g Declaration of Bruce Craig at 52-53 see also Declarations of Sam Roberts at 2-9 and Ronald Radosh 2-3 The time has come to write the final chapter of the Rosenberg case Pursuant to 28 U S C § 1746 I hereby declare under the penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct Executed on this rr9ay ofNo ber 2014 10