Securing justice? The Australian campaign to save the Rosenbergs
2013; Routledge; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14443058.2013.849279
ISSN1835-6419
Autores Tópico(s)European history and politics
Resumo“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs”, recalled Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar. Others recalled this event differently: as legal murder and a flagrant miscarriage of justice. The electrocution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in June 1953, on a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage, was unprecedented in the history of the United States and aroused international outrage. Although there are scattered studies of the worldwide protest movement, none has examined the Australian dimension. This paper, therefore, fills a historiographical gap by exploring the genesis, development, and activities of the Australian campaign to pressure the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to grant clemency to the Rosenbergs. That campaign faced several obstacles: one was the liaison and intelligence sharing between the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and US Consular and Embassy officials in Sydney and Canberra and another was the infiltration of its leadership by an important ASIO operative. Drawing on the extensive papers of the New York-based Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, the article will illuminate the close transnational connection between the Australian and American campaigns and challenge the customary characterisation of the Rosenberg clemency committees as “fronts” for the Communist Party or products of Moscow's machinations.
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