Last December 26, at the age of one-hundred-one, Morton Sobell died. His name may be unfamiliar today, but the names of his associates are not: he was the co-defendant of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in the 1951 atomic-bomb spy trial. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953, but Sobell lived on, one of the few remaining survivors of the corps of Americans who spied for the Soviet Union. He kept the faith, steadfastly and with gusto, proclaiming his innocence and that of the Rosenbergs until 2008, when he belatedly confessed in public to their conspiracy to commit espionage.
More about: American Jews, Cold War, Communism, History & Ideas, Morton Sobell, Rosenberg Trial, Soviet Union