The case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has for decades served as a cautionary tale told by the Left about Communist hysteria.  Executed as Soviet spies, the popular mythology paints the pair as merely ardent liberals unfairly framed and prosecuted by a paranoid American establishment.  Their family and friends have maintained this position even after the release of the Venona messages made it clear that Julius, at least, operated as a Soviet spy.

Now one of their co-defendants and close friends has finally confirmed what everyone else knew — that Julius Rosenberg spied for the Soviet Union:

Julius and [E]thel Rosenberg were executed 55 years ago, on June 19, 1953. But last week, they were back in the headlines when Morton Sobell, the co-defendant in their famous espionage trial, finally admitted that he and his friend, Julius, had both been Soviet agents.

It was a stunning admission; Sobell, now 91 years old, had adamantly maintained his innocence for more than half a century. After his comments were published, even the Rosenbergs’ children, Robert and Michael Meeropol, were left with little hope to hang on to — and this week, in comments unlike any they’ve made previously, the brothers acknowledged having reached the difficult conclusion that their father was, indeed, a spy. “I don’t have any reason to doubt Morty,” Michael Meeropol told Sam Roberts of the New York Times.

With these latest events, the end has arrived for the legions of the American left wing that have argued relentlessly for more than half a century that the Rosenbergs were victims, framed by a hostile, fear-mongering U.S. government. Since the couple’s trial, the left has portrayed them as martyrs for civil liberties, righteous dissenters whose chief crime was to express their constitutionally protected political beliefs. In the end, the left has argued, the two communists were put to death not for spying but for their unpopular opinions, at a time when the Truman and Eisenhower administrations were seeking to stem opposition to their anti-Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War.

The Meeropols have a better case with their mother, although not to dispute her own work as a Soviet spy.  Ronald Radosh notes that grand-jury testimony unsealed last week shows strong indications that the testimony of Ruth Greenglass — that Ethel had typed the messages Julius sent to his Soviet handlers — was likely concocted.  That had been suspected for decades, and represents a black mark on the prosecutors that handled the case.  The Venona messages indicate that Ethel knew about her husband’s work, but apparently do not indicate how much she participated in it.

Radosh also makes a good point about Joseph McCarthy, the demagogue who exploited the real danger of Soviet espionage for cheap political gain.  It’s true that the danger was real.  It’s equally true that McCarthy  seriously undermined the effort to defend against it by making wild, unsupportable accusations.  He turned the legitimate anti-Communist effort into a farcical witch hunt, and in doing so, made this country much less safe.  Venona gave some on the Right the hugely mistaken idea of attempting to rehabilitate McCarthy.

(An aside: Some Hollywood “historians” make McCarthy the villain not just of his jeremiads against the State Department and the Army, but also against Hollywood.  That’s not accurate.  The effort to root out Communist “sympathizers” in the entertainment industry came from the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC.  Senator McCarthy never sat on this committee, nor did the committee impose the “blacklist”; that came from studio executives, under tremendous political pressure to clean out Communists.)

It’s time for all the myths to end.  The Soviets presented a grave danger to this nation, and the Rosenbergs were a large part of their assault on America.  Their continued enshrinement as martyrs to free political thought insults both history and the intelligence of this nation.