David Greenglass

Because that's relatively easy.

We have acknowledged that from 1941 to early 1945, he was involved in military industrial espionage, which included convincing David Greenglass to be a spy.

Now, for

reference, David Greenglass was Ethel's younger brother.

He and his wife, Ruth Greenglass, testified against your parents in their trial, implicating your parents in a conspiracy to pass nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.

However, specific things of atomic espionage that David and Ruth Greenglass testified to occurred at a time that we now know, and this is not from Venona, this is from KGB files themselves about what my father's interactions with the KGB were.

This is amazing.

This guy was not sloppy.

They were secret members of the Communist Party, I guess certainly on the left.

And most historians now agree that the evidence that Julius Rosenberg was was trying to engage in spying, trying to encourage his brother-in-law, David Greenglass, who had a position working as a machinist at Los Alamos, to pass information about what was going on behind that barbed wire fence in Los Alamos, the secret city.

So some very low-level sketches, technical information about the atomic bomb were passed by Julius.

There was practically no evidence at all that Ethel was involved.

The space is large, so it never feels crowded and the exhibits are so thoughtfully placed.

Let's talk to David in Brooklyn.

Hi, David.

Thank you so much for calling all of it.

You're on the air.

It was really incredible.

Yeah, that's a beautiful, beautiful, in quotations, museum as well.

Thank you for calling, David.

Exactly.

So he turns to his brother-in-law, David Greenglass.

Now, David was Ethel's younger brother.

He was born in 1922, and he was about seven years younger than Ethel.

Oh,

okay.

Yeah, so in July 1944, David Greenglass was assigned

to the Secret Manhattan Project.

The government's case against Ethel leaned on her own brother.

David Greenglass pleaded guilty, received a 15-year sentence, and testified for the prosecution.

And when the prosecutors asked him who had typed up the information, he said, under oath, that his sister did.

The FBI's history of the case still tells it his way.

A week later, on July 23, Francel electrocuted a man named William Draper at Sing Sing, and then he quit.

He was unhappy with the $150, and he was exasperated by the threats against his life.

David Greenglass was released from federal prison on November 16, 1960.

In 2001, he went on 60 Minutes 2 in what CBS called his first and only TV interview and said, "'I don't know who typed it, frankly, and to this day I can't even remember that the typing took place.'" He told the program, "'I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister.'" and he said he slept very well.

Yeah.

So I mean, it was fascinating that, you know, I interviewed David Greenglass who said he fabricated the most incriminating-

The, the typing, right? Yeah

... evidence against his sister, and then Morty admits that he was indeed a spy.

Yeah.

I mean-

And it's like, "Oh, it's David Greenglass." [laughs]

Yeah, right.