Atomic spy David Greenglass of Rosenberg spying case dies at 92

David Greenglass, who rose to infamy for his role in the most explosive atomic spying case of the Cold War and gave testimony that sent his brother-in-law and sister Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair, has died at 92. Greenglass – who admitted decades after the trial that he lied on the stand about his own sister – died in New York City on July 1, according to the Rosenbergs’ sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol. The Rosenbergs were convicted in 1951 of conspiring to steal secrets about the atomic bomb for the Soviet Union and were executed at New York’s Sing Sing prison, insisting to the very end that they were innocent.

As a spy who turned his family in … I don’t care. I sleep well.

David Greenglass in a 2001 interview

Greenglass testified for the government that he had given the Rosenbergs research data obtained through his wartime job as an Army machinist at Los Alamos, New Mexico, the headquarters of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. He told of seeing his older sister transcribing the information on a portable typewriter at the Rosenbergs’ New York apartment in 1945. That testimony proved crucial in convicting Ethel along with her husband. Greenglass himself served 10 years of a 15-year sentence for espionage. After his release, he lived with his family in anonymity as controversy over the Rosenberg case rose and ebbed over the decades. Greenglass remained estranged for the rest of his life from the Rosenbergs’ sons, who were 6 and 10 when their parents were executed.

[David and Ruth Greenglass] pinned what they did on our parents – a calculated ploy to save themselves by fingering our parents as the scapegoats the government demanded.

Michael and Robert Meeropol, sons of the Rosenbergs

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