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On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were pul lo death in the electric chair. Their crime? Conspiracy. Convicted of providing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, the Roscnbergs were the only people put to dea Ih in the United States for espionage during the Cold War. The Rosenberg case illuminates a highly charged debate on recently declassified U. S. government records that bear on the subject of Cold War espionage - the Venona documents. Using these primary sources to introduce students to the general topic of Cold War espionage, and the specific case of the Rosenbergs, provides a fruitful opportunity to address the interpretive nature of history and the evaluation of evidence, in addition to injecting a compelling drama into our narrative of the Cold War.
Background
One of the most intriguing aspects of the Cold War relationship between the Americans and the Soviets was the development of vast networks of spies and counter spies. Each side used this arena to gathcr information on its opponent, as well as to spread misinformation. Indeed, the United States went through an era of spy hysteria during the McCarthy era, which turned the Cold War inward. Because of the highly secretive nature of espionage, information about it can be difficult to obtain; however, once the Cold War ended and time passed, new secret documents have come to light.
Of this newly accessible information, one of the most illustrative is a series of documents created by the Venona Project. Released to the public in 1995 by the National Security Agency (NSA), Venona was a top-secret effort to intercept and decrypt messages sent by the Soviet government to spies working in the United States in the 19405. Under Venona, American and British cryptologists spent two years breaking the Soviet code, and then used this information to document the activity of Soviet spies within the United States. This project was insmimental in the exposure and arrest of Julius and Ethel Roscnberg.
The story of the Rosenbergs, however, starts with a German-born atomic seien t is t named Klaus Fuchs. In 1949, Fuchs confessed to steal ing atomic secrets and providing them to the Soviet Union. His act of espionage helped the Soviet Union explode its first atomic weapon that...