By Ann W. Parks

Photos courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (www.fbi.gov Famous Cases archive)

When Jennifer Dillard (L’08) first signed up to participate in Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation clinic in the fall of 2007, she thought she’d be working on something like an employment discrimination case — or at least something where the key players were still alive.

Instead, she found herself working on the case that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once called the trial of the twentieth century — the conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for atomic espionage in Cold War America. The petition, filed in January by Georgetown Law Professor David Vladeck on behalf of the National Security Archive and other groups of historians and archivists, sought to unseal the grand jury records relating to the Rosenbergs’ indictment.

“I didn’t think anything specifically related to history would come up in law … so I was very excited when this came up,” Dillard said shortly after the petition was filed — noting that she probably first heard about the case when she was in elementary school. “I remember the Rosenberg case [was taught] as an example of people who were traitors to their country and they gave all this information to the Soviets … my view of the case has certainly changed.”

And now, her views of the case — and the views of many others — may change even more. On July 23, U.S District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered the majority of the Rosenberg grand jury transcripts to be made public, reserving decision on the remainder until later in the year.

“[It] is a critical win for historians, archivists and the public, who have a right to know what evidence led to the 'trial of the Century,’” says Vladeck, who is optimistic that Hellerstein will eventually order the rest of the testimony disclosed. He credits the critical win to the IPR students (now alumni) who participated in the case: Dillard, Joy Welan, Deanna Durrett, Consuelo Kendall, Jonathan Small, Lucy Tufts, Stephanie Wagner, and Emil Bove, all members of Georgetown Law’s class of 2008, who now have a one-of-a-kind item to add to their resumes.

“This case would not have been possible without the hard work of Georgetown students, who were instrumental in gathering the evidence needed to persuade the Court to release these grand jury records,” Vladeck says.

Espionage

Since Dillard’s undergraduate studies at Vanderbilt focused on 20th century American history, she was given a lead role in IPR’s work on the case. After reading everything she could get her hands on about the Rosenbergs, Dillard tracked down historians who were willing to give declarations in the case and worked with the professors to draft those declarations (she also assisted her classmates in interviewing historians and drafting declarations). Dillard drafted the petition and the 50-plus page accompanying memorandum, determining which of the dozens of grand jury witnesses in the case were still living.

“That was an issue in the case; it’s easier to get grand jury records released when more of the grand jury have died,” she says, since grand jury proceedings are, after all, supposed to remain confidential. “There were dozens and dozens of people interviewed by the grand jury, and some of those people are still alive … of course we don’t want to reveal things about people that maybe they don’t want [everyone] to know; on the other hand, it’s been 57 years.”

According to the petition, which drew on the work of historian and University of Prince Edward Island Professor Bruce Craig, intelligence officers learned in the late 1940s that people involved in the Manhattan Project were passing the Soviets top-secret information about the development of the atomic bomb. Confessions by physicist Klaus Fuchs and chemist Harry Gold led authorities to machinist David Greenglass and his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. Greenglass and his wife Ruth claimed that Rosenberg had persuaded Greenglass to engage in espionage and that Ethel Rosenberg was also involved.

The couple was arrested in the summer of 1950. A grand jury, after hearing testimony from dozens of witnesses, handed down a number of indictments charging the couple with various crimes of espionage. Though they pled not guilty at each juncture, the Rosenbergs were convicted following a trial in March 1951 and executed in June 1953 after appeals and requests for clemency were denied. 

Full picture

Joy Welan (L’08) had the job of crafting historian Craig’s 60-page declaration into a form that would be most helpful to the court. “Professor Craig is really such an expert on that era, so his declaration is the one that really laid out the entire historical background and the chronology of events,” she says. “I had to look at it from the perspective of a law clerk or a judge, because they’re probably not going to know that much about the Rosenbergs.”

Welan says the students tried hard not to take a position on the Rosenbergs’ guilt or innocence. As Welan and Dillard both note, some historians have been working on the case for decades — and everyone has a different opinion.

“It’s more about letting the truth out, letting people know the full picture of what happened,” Welan says.

Both Welan, who will start clerking for Judge Judith Bartnoff (LL.M. ’75) on the D.C. Superior Court in September, and Dillard, who will be clerking for Judge Stephen H. Glickman on the D.C. Court of Appeals, are thrilled that a fuller picture of the case will now be revealed.

“It was very gratifying to see our hard work so richly rewarded,” Dillard says. “My experience with the Rosenberg grand jury case showed me, in a very concrete way, that the litigation process can be a strong tool in the fight for government transparency and social justice.”

 

For related story, “Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation petitions court for Rosenberg grand jury records,” please see http://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/webstory/2.4.08.html