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and the dinner party is bloodied and underneath the table. and the caption reads, they did speak about it. that is very much what was soon to happen with the rosenberg case in this country. and in many ways it was and is like a phenomenon in that at one point we seem to grasp. at another point it floats away. at one point we believe that there is in essence. and then soon in 1995 with the

intercepts, the information that the national security agency was able to decode it becomes presumptively clear that, indeed, a crime in the sense of passing of information was probably committed. but then the question is, of course, consider the source. the united states government, it is not alays to be relied upon in its information. and then the larger question, so what? so what if, in fact, this crime was as its accusers resent -- represent it to have been that way. well, those are some of the questions that we certainly are going to entertain at this point with two people whose story this

is uniquely and supremely, and i would say superbly. as in the years they have expressed points of view poignantly and with so much sapience. and i had a thought and a senior moment here. bear with me. yes. so i should look at my notes. the question, i suppose -- oh, yes. why are we here? [laughter] again, but the fiction in historical fiction and the questions that have been raised about its utility, it's very

similitude, the gaps that it can fill, and how reliably can those gaps be filled? well, those pertinent questions both ivy and michael meeropol will want to respond to with an existential familiarity that none of us here really injuries. and we have, of course, a representation in fiction of their lives, the lives of their parents and all that is supposed to mean. and i know that members of the meeropol family have very, very strong views about the representation. robert, i believe, is very negative about it. you, michael, have found things redemptive in it. i have talked enough. let me turn to ivy's documentary

which i saw last night for the first time. i am still so shaken by it. many thoughts one has of indignation in pain and a gross miscarriage of democracy. you open your documentary with a visit to your parents' grave. it is -- >> he is not gone yet. >> grandparents' grave, forgive me. it is a voyage of discovery. why was it so necessary? i would have thought you would have none so much about your grandparents that it would have been just in the atmosphere so much that you would hardly need to know a great deal more, and yet, indeed, you rediscover

history it seems to me. >> well, it's true. i grew up with the story. it is -- i don't even remember the moment when i learned that this had happened to my father and my uncle and my grandparents. but at the same time i -- the stories were so kind of -- the story was so kind of disconcerting black or white. it was they're either pure innocence martyrs plucked from obscurity from their apartment on the lower east side where they were e stone cold atom bom, didn't love their sons and cared more about the parties. to me both of those stories did not really tell me the story. they did not get the emotional truth that i needed to

understand, and i was also afraid. i was afraid to look at it when i was a child. i think once you hear that your grandparents have been electrocuted and you learn that as a child, you stop asking questions right there for a while. it really was that simple. and as i got older in high school was kind of where i was of little bit -- i was scared to find out more. i also did not know where to look. then i got to college, and i started studying. after studying the case and researching the story. and it was through invitation to an inquest that i've learned so much. but still i had not gotten to who they were as people. i think that had not wanted to approach my father with it as

all either. we were always so wrapped up in the case and trying to prove that they were innocent. we were always being challenged with that question. that is how i would respond. i didn't feel confident enough to look further until i was older. but i do remember when i started reading some of these historical treatments that i called my father from college, and i was so upset. i said we have got to go after him. let's go get the bastard. and dad said, well, what good would that do? and i said just show him how we are. knock on his door and say here we are. what's best thing to me, when i read the book of daniel the first work about about our family story that really hit me on an emotional level. interestingly enough daniel does

the same thing. he goes to get the story. he tries to go and see. >> you are, in fact, the daniel in the book of daniel. i kept thinking, she is not like susan at all. she is daniel. >> hopefully not as creepy, though. >> me neither. >> no. [laughter] >> daniel. michael, in ivy's documentary you say that in a visit to sing sing you asked your parents, did you do it? and of course, they affirmed that they were innocent. it was a extraordinary moment in your life. now the years have passed.

and if you would have put that question to them, if you could f they had not been executed or were released from prison after a clemency for many, many years, what would you think? >> this one it would be a very interesting opportunity. as you know, on september 1 1th, 2008, two things happened in the new york times related to the case. one was we finally got our hands on some grand jury lists. basically the government case. the appeals court said it that testimony is disregarded the convictions do not stand. it is a case of a conspiracy. as you know, it's seriously, people who agree to commit a crime. david reed claimed they agreed to commit a crime with a david

sister. ruth greenglass died last april. so the government ceased their objections. an in the grand jury minutes the centerpiece of the entire case typings, notes, are not there. nothing about typing notes which of course fits in with david greenglass on "60 minutes" saying that no one remembers who did the typing or if anybody did the typing, but the government said, my wife said i did the typing. what was i going to do? one thing i would be able to say. you were engaged in activity.

a, why? i think i know the answer to that. we have had testimony from other individuals who did survive. but what was the basis of what you did at the trial and afterwards? that would be a question my brother would like to ask. i bet ivy would like to ask, too. but you came up with your own set of answers. >> well, yes. i came up with -- i was not looking for an answer to that question, pro se. i think in retrospect a lot of how i approach to making this film had to do with how much i appreciate, especially some of the works around the rosenberg story. i did not want -- i did not

approach it as a journalist. i really wanted to operate on another level. i put myself in the film so that there would be my point of view. i've wanted to find the characters of the story. a budget to find out to people really were. of what to humanize the story. humanizing the history. make people feel something. feel empathy for what happened to our family and feel what it was like to live during that time. a lot of people in my generation immediately say, they are communists. they busted been bad people. they don't even understand where that came from. i wanted to create the atmosphere and many tell the story on many other levels. >> and you do so well. and the cast of characters that

you interview, people who many of them have passed along. we get to them at the right moment. so it gives great texture to the story. at the end of your documentary you go again to the cemetery. the place stones -- on the g ravestones a jewish gesture. and you turn and you say something like, i'm very glad that whatever happened has, at the end of the day, made me very proud of my past. and you agree with your daughter. and when the documentary in did i went back to listen to one of your mother's good friends,

sarah moskowitz. >> miriam. >> miriam moskowitz who was in prison with my grandmother. >> indeed. >> indeed. dñstpñ3ñ

russian allies we should do. and many people did. that is what morton sobell says at the end, doesn't he? i really don't know what julius was up to. he was up to some stuff, but if he buys and he did, so what? reached the same conclusion. the brief that he presented for the case. it would, indeed, have been as service to mankind. i don't know the guilt or the innocence of the rosenbergs, but it would have been a service to mankind if in fact the results

of what they were charged with occurred. >> can i just break in and say this is a beautiful example of life imitating art. because they liked him in the mouth of the character that is not not me. some people thought it wise. when i do it and has called the move again it was coming out. a bunch of for people would say, hey, ivy, i hear timothy hutton is playing your dad a movie. >> he was the current at the time heart throb. >> in their trying to persuade. he said if it was done, and if they had given the russians a

bomb, i would be proud of that. i would not have been angry about that. i'm not necessarily saying that is my view, but there is of you out there, and it has been expressed in a number of different places. their is a man named theodore dore alton hall it turned up in the fbi documents. a science scientists. it turned out he, at the age of 19, agreed to pass atomic secrets to the soviets and succesfully did. he went around to his neighbors . had become friends with and said this is going to come out. you may not want to be my friends anymore.

and one guy said maybe you're the reason i'm here. so there is that view. people can debate and discuss. in the novel he decided to put that two out there. it life imitates art. it is fascinating. one of the reasons i absolutely love the novel despite the fact that there are real liberties taken with the historical record, some of which offended a lot of people. >> you know, when i was making the film there were connections between the book and what i experienced. you know, daniel, for instance, when he is pursuing selling and, she says why are you addressing this up. he has to go there and put himself in front of her to get any attention. the same thing happened.

i started calling his relatives. a deterrent to get in touch with greenglass. he would not talk to me. i also tried to talk to many other relatives. we have many on the rosenberg and greenglass. no one would talk for me, except for one cousin to apologize for everyone else. but it was the same thing. there was a vision that this would be how our family would act even this many years later because i was compounded by it. >> you do remember what i said, right? i don't think you'll make any friends. >> you did. and as i was making the film, one more point i just want to make about making documentaries which in some ways is like writing history, as opposed to writing fiction. i tried to bring elements of what of fiction writer might approach this. and i had major arguments with

some of the producers i was working with the felt that i did not have a film unless i got david greenglass on camera, and a site at the other relative to talk to me, and throughout the process of making the film i came up against this regularly, and i kept saying. the story is still profound. it is almost more profound because it shows just how much it has come down through the generations and affected people, but they don't even want to talk to me, the granddaughter who was alive at the time. it is just an incredible testament, i think, to how deep this man and how terrified every big was. >> well, what an ironic element of the story. your parents, your grandparents conviction was based on the testimony of david greenglass and the bargain that he makes,

and therefore he is out of prison in tenures. and then fast-forward down the decades and we have david greenglass speaking again and saying, well, no, i didn't say anything about the typing. i didn't say anything about the table. in other words, undercutting that decisive testimony. and how do we hear him saying that? because once again his testimony has been purchased by a journalist. so there it is as a professional historian something perhaps so profoundly sad about the drama from beginning to end. it tells you something about the truth, if not the value of it. >> oh, yeah. that is why in my film i feel like i don't actually approache

greenglass. i end up, not to give too much away, but i drive by his house. i see this small place that looks like any other house in the part of new york. i'm not going to say where. there is nothing particularly striking about it. again, it's just humanizes that he is -- i grew up feeling he wasn't a real person. he was not a real person. to just drive by his house allowed me to let go of that and see him as a person, not that i empathize with him, but it is very freeing to be able to do that. >> i think since we are talking about historical fiction's i might want to share with you one little discrepancy between the facts and the novel, "the book

of daniel." and then state that i am not so sure it matters. it might matter. some people are really offended by it and others are not. there is a rally early in the novel and in the film. the lawyer brings the children to a rather large and raucous rally in defense of the isaacsons where the chant is freedom, freedom, freedom. by the way, that chance never was made at rosenberg rallies. it is always, there is grave doubt. there should be clemency. that is a minor thing. the major thing is that children are displayed. they are lifted over the crowd and brought on stage and terrified. in that movie the little one, susan, runs to her brother. they stand there while the deafening noise. now, in the book daniel who is the narrator remembers. >> they get carried over the

crowd. >> right. but up over the crowd and passed because the crowd is so solid. the important things are, to actually get to the stage. in the real world the people who were taking care of did everything they could to keep us away from rallies. at one rally i, sort of pain in ass eight-year-old dragged my brother on stage. and so the next rally went to they absolutely ordered as beforehand to sit quietly. you do not move. you do not call attention to yourself. they were desperately trying to protect us from what was going on. now, what is the significance of this? what he's doing in the novel is he's talking about that manipulative nature. and as a historian and as a student i am willing to concede that there was plenty of manipulative approaches that went on in lots of political

movements, including the old left. and there were some significant manipulation in the reel rosenberg case. i was given a piece of paper with words on it and asked to copy them. there were a letter to dwight eisenhower asking for my parents clemency referring to a guy in czechoslovakia, an american named otis who had been freed because his wife for to the president of czechoslovakia. police that my mommy and daddy out of jail. that was manipulative. it might have been better if they had drawn me out to write my own thing, but the point he is making is that political movements often ignore individuals and often engage in manipulation. it's just the way he chose to dramatize it, which is very dramatic and, you know, pretty

disgusting didn't happen. in the real world it didn't happen. i'm not so sure it matters. it is a detail. that is an interesting detail. >> i think it works, and that's what matters. it makes you feel something. it is okay that it makes you maybe feel angry at the old left. i think that is okay. >> what about the real world manipulation? i wondered if there were times when you wondered or have wondered if the legal representation of your parents was all that it should and could have been? in my own du bois biography i mention the people who were involved with your parents case. and i got occasionally a suggestion that the party might

have chosen a better representative. he was a fine man, but his resources were really quite limited for american cases. one wonders how to explain that. there were other cases he had deep pockets for. >> i know a story in that makes the analogy. the communist party made a choice not to defend spy cases just like the naacp makes a decision not to defend rape cases. therefore they stood away from it. and so bloch, the man who my father met was basically alone with is very young and brilliant

assistant. and that was it. they didn't have access to scientists. they did not have access to anything. so the biggest mistake, of course, was to accept the major fraud of the case, namely that david greenglass by drawing some diagrams could give away the secret of the atom bomb. and as my brother says in the film, that is why we are talking about it. we aren't talking about it because somebody was convicted of espionage. we are talking about it because two people killed for allegedly stealing the secret of the atom bomb and placing our nation's very survival in jeopardy. and if we talk about fiction and history, what is fascinating is that in a lot of the history and the journalists totally gets wrong. in a case where we were engaging in a lawsuit a judge who is writing an opinion describe the case as a conviction for treason. .. @ú they

were convicted of aiding and ally in war time. treason is impossible, but treason is the word the judge use in sentencing.

it is unbelievable. >> so many people get that wrong which is frustrating for me. making this film in some ways, correcting the record, the best way i could. people say rich a guilty? what do you think? with a guilty or innocent? i say think about who they were as people, and when you cumin is the story and think about who they were as people and what have they gone down in history for doing? they died because people think they stole the secret of the atom bomb. it is not too find a point but it is really true, that gets complete the looked over. >> what did you find that stunned your father? what did you find in your documentary? watch his of -- as you come home from footage of choosing, how

did you find this and why did you do this? must have been quite interesting to educate your father. >> yes. he was a reluctant participant at first. when he saw wasn't going to give up, he acquiesced. i think one of thing that surprised me is how much was known about you. for me, the story that means the most to me is what happened to my dad, not what happened -- >> it is certainly about your grandparents. one of the poignant revelations, the gentleman in california is not much longer to be with us, and he said i am only here because of the courage of your parents, he reveals the fbi gave

your parents a list of 25 names of people and all they had to do was recognize one name on that list and the nature of the outcome would have been quite different. they refuse to. this is extraordinary coverage. he says to you i am not here because of them. they were so solid. >> that did surprise me. >> it seems to me to move away from that 1917 treason lot unawr which they were wrongly convicted is important, it is about people who are true to their values. that is a transcendent point. >> that is why i place it where i did. for me that is the crux of it.

they refused to name names. it wasn't as simple as they said we did something, let us go. >> the term that was used is fully cooperate. >> you didn't even know harry was still around or what his story would be. i had never heard of him before i started doing this research. >> when they refused to do, many americans, academics, had to do, you had to name names, sign loyalty oaths to teach in the california system, it is still required. and it is all part of this story, the way in which a democracy produces fundamental values, thinking it is in peril and actually imperiling itself. >> i'm going to make an assertion, that is what we have

the question period for. i think the united states government did more harm to the united states by what happened, wasn't just my parents but a lot of people, than any of the espionage that occurred during world war ii did to the united states. that is an assertion that historians can argue about as well as political and legal historians. >> that is a wonderful summation. would you like to say something? and i can see the expressions of the audience. >> we did like to have some reactions. >> how would i end this? i guess -- the seminar booklet i read, valerie martin says in her piece can and i'm a huge fan of

hers, she says something about how she writes history to be free of it and that is exactly why i made my film. it has haunted me for many years. i made the film and i feel free of it. it will always be part of my life. but i got it out of my system and was able to find a way to tell the story and understand it on an emotional level, and hope that i got -- enabled audiences to do the same. >> i invite us all to incorporate it in our own system this sunday when it will show. >> it will show at 8:00 at the tropic cinema tomorrow night, sunday night. and we will be there if you want to have another crack at us. >> we should turn to you for your questions.

you have a microphone. >> you were so engaged in the process for your whole life, why were you resistant to making the film? >> that is a great question. since my brother and i were so engaged in this entire study and process why was i resistant for making this film -- i can't help who i am. but ivy meeropol, we didn't want her career to be defined as the granddaughter of julius and ethel rosenberg. when she got interested in her 20s, we said do some stuff, right some screen plays, read some articles, have a job, to us when you have done some things so that you don't become in danger of becoming a one trick pony and she didn't do it in her

majority. so we were enthusiastic participants. all members of the family, my wife and i, brother and sister-in-law and others, it was the right time for. i hope you agree with me. >> i also think he was worried about me. it was a very hard thing to do. i was upset all the time, it is cathartic and catharsis is not fun when you are going through it. so that as part of it. you were protecting me from having to deal with all these difficult questions. >> that is why in your 30s -- >> yes, it was definitely better. i needed some maturity to do a good job. >> i have a painful question. is it true that your father save your mother by saying yes, i did

it? >> it is great that you asked that question because our son asked the same question in the documentary. i don't know the answer to that. what the government wanted was more than yes. the government wanted here is ten other people. you have to understand that it was a very close call. they had to go to the most extraordinary lengths of fixing the supreme court to killed them, because on june 17th, 1953, there was a stay of execution that would have delayed everything for six to nine months and then the korean war was over, chief justice vinson was dead, and who knows what would have happened? the state department was constantly telling the government that this was hurting our image in western europe. a wonderful memorandum from a man who became the secretary of

treasury, douglas dillon, who said if you think this is communists only, you are wrong. the entire population of france disappears with what we are doing. my father would say to is sister who i interviewed, i think we just make it. they didn't know until the last day that they weren't going to make it. the effort to say, as my son suggested, i did it, but my wife didn't, you can't just say that. you have to sell these other people did it too. >> she wouldn't have wanted him to do that. >> i have a question, did he consult with you in the process? was it a complete surprise? >> complete surprise.

it has explicitly said, he did no research, some of the things that were parallel, like my wife is blonde, is not relevant. he said it is a work of imagination. >> this is a controversial question. i grew up in brownsville in brooklyn, one of my earliest memories is standing on top of the roof at 5:30 and watching the miles and miles of lines of people paying respects to your parents, and it was a commonly held notion when i grew up that if their last name had been jones for smith, they would never have been executed.

do you think anti-semitism has a place in their execution? >> in a very weird way, there is a judge version, the prosecutor, roy cullen as well, the judge wanted to prove that jews were as patriotic as anybody else. right after the sentence there was only a handful of objections, some of it was in the conservative jewish press, that said the judge should have disabused himself of the jewish context. after the sense, they had a field day, jews being the other,

it created more anti-semitism. >> many years ago i had read the book of daniel and was greatly moved by it. as picasso had said, art is a lie that makes us see the truth better because from that very introduction to that piece of fiction that use a has hit some of the fine points, went on to think and research and be introduced to a subject that i never might have followed more thoroughly and i am very thankful both of you are here today. >> thank you.

>> a couple years ago, my wife and i went to moscow, and someone had a range for us to see the kgb museum in moscow. as we went through the museum, we started to ask questions. they were quite open. this one guy took us through. one of the questions we asked was what about your trial, what about your people, were they guilty? the rosenbergs, were they guilty? and the guys said he was and she wasn't. i thought that was rather interesting that he said anything at all. i was wondering whether you made any effort to get opinions from that country. >> great question. you helped me. one of your friends was working for john kerry. >> oh, yes. >> i lived in massachusetts, i am a red sox fan.

old brooklyn dodgers fan just like my parents, yankee-hater which is why i was married in boston. ivy meeropol has me on the film angrily watching -- >> a moment of levity. >> we went to senator john kerry and asked that the files of the soviet secret service whenever they were called, this was after the soviet union had dissolved, it was now the russian federation and we had john kerry send a letter, we actually thought we might be able to do it because the general had done something similar in another case, he examine their files and came to the conclusion that alger hiss was not a soviet espionage agent. so we hoped they would respond, but times had changed, so the response was we are not going to

release any materials, and we think this is what most security agencies do, it is like they want to justify refusing to release the files. that was as far as we got. now kgb agents are telling war stories. there were interviews. >> particularly soft? >> there was a book written about theodore allen called bombshell were the authors interviewed the woman who was a courier, and a woman named laura the common. another example of life imitating art, daniel has the idea of another couple disappeared after all and rochelle isaacsson were killed, there was another couple who had disappeared after julius and ethel rosenberg were arrested. the movie pack of lies, why they titled this pack of lies, the krogers were caught in britain,

traded for some western spy and ended up dying in moscow having lived lives as successful, retired espionage agents, and those people interviewed both of them as well. only individuals, the files of the kgb, except for a few people who bought their way in, to write a boat called the haunted would, they're not open to general people. if we had hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy from them, they might be interested. >> mr. haynes has great access to those files off. >> as does everybody else. >> i can remember when i was a lot younger than i am now. when we had the radio in those days, and i was at home and

great deal with a young child, i had the radio on all day because mccarthy was pontificating, just seemed like a perfectly horrible person, but it also seemed there was a great hysteria in the country because he was getting people so upset and excited. my question to you is, do you think part of problem, the trial of your parents and so forth, had to do with maturity getting everyone so hysterical? >> yes, but it was also one of the causes because once the conviction occurred there was evidence that this fifth column had face their nation's survival in jeopardy. would immediately started to happen was anyone -- anytime someone came before the house un-american activities committee instead of being only half are you a communist, are you a spy for?

the hole deco was, by being a communist, and had a proclivity to being a spy. some did and some didn't. many didn't. >> i would like to exercise my prerogative as the convening of this panel, because i would like to move to a portion of your documentary that we have scarcely touched upon, that is the happy times of the ivy meeropol period. it is particularly salient in my life because one of my memories is of someone very close to w. e. b. dubois, remembering the christmas party after which both robert and michael rosenberg were brought happy day in the w. e. b. dubois household in brooklyn heights, in the town house they had purchased from

arthur miller. and from that christmas party, you went home with them to your new life come and you had and have had a wonderful postrosenberg file life from that point on. >> that is where a head doctor will get things wrong. it is so screwed up. it is pretty boring. we had great lives. as you can see, we have great kids, we have so much -- two beautiful grand kids. my brother just got his first grand kid, great professional lives, married once, stayed

married. >> when i made the film, of the reactions i get all the time is when they meet you after the film, he seems like such a happy person, such a good guy, why isn't he an ax murderer? what is his secret? we are more miserable than you. it goes on and on. that section of the film was so important for me, they save your lives. >> thank you all. >> better organized -- what is important -- [applause] >> this concludes book tv's limited pierre of the key west and mary seminar. the workshop program is designed

to provide riders at all stages of development of various opportunities to explore the craft of writing. each workshop is limited to between eight and 12 participants to ensure individual attention.