When I think about victims of the Espionage Act, my thoughts immediately go to Ethel Rosenberg, convicted not, as many believe, for treason, but of being engaged in a conspiracy to commit “espionage ” The case against Ethel was thin and manufactured. Even J. Edgar Hoover opposed her execution, which was in the hands of Federal Judge Irving Kaufman, a close friend of her tormentor and prosecutor Roy Cohn.  In condemning the couple to death, Kaufman bizarrely  blamed them for starting the Korean War, a judgement so irrational it alone should have been grounds for reversal. It was later revealed that over the course of the trial and again before imposing the death penalty, Kaufman had engaged in secret and grossly unethical communications with Cohn, conversations which sealed Ethel’s fate. Her electrocution was nothing short of judicial murder. More

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