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In his "A Spy Confesses" (Week in Review 9/21), Sam Roberts claims that folks "fiercely loyal to the far left, believed that the Rosenbergs were not guilty ..." I am and have always been, since my stint as a correspondent and editor in Latin America for Time and Newsweek, a "far leftist," and I have never claimed the Rosenbergs were not guilty. Nor have any of my "far leftist" friends. What we always said, and what I repeat to my students every semester, is that "if they were guilty, they are this planet's great heroes." My explanation is quite simple: The US had a first-strike policy, the USSR did not (until Gorbachev). In 1952, the US military, and various intelligence services, calculated that a first strike on all Soviet silos would wipe out all but 6% of Russian atomic missiles (and, we now know, create enough radiation to kill us all). But those six percent would automatically be fired at US cities. The military then calculated what would happen if one made a direct hit on Denver (why they chose Denver and not New York or Washington was never explained). Their finding: 200,000 would die immediately, two million within a month. They concluded that it was not worth it. In other words, I tell my students, you were born and I am alive because the USSR had a deterrent against our "preventive" attack, not the other way around. And if it is true that the Rosenbergs helped the Soviets get that deterrent, they end up among the planet's saviors.
John Gerassi (tgerassi@hotmail.com)
[It will not come as a great surprise to learn that the Times did not allow such thoughts to appear in their exalted pages.]
CorrectionI don't know how it happened, but the address (URL) I sent out for last month's report was incorrect. It should have been: http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer62.htm All previous reports can be found at www.killinghope.org
Notes- Tim Weiner, "Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget" (1990), p.149-50. ©
- Washington Post, November 21, 1971 ©
- Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1988, p.19. For further discussion of this issue, see Russ Bellant, "Old Nazis and the New Right: The Republican Party and Fascists"-, Covert Action Information Bulletin © (Washington, DC), #33, Winter 1990, p.27-31
- New York Times, October 3, 2008 ©
- David Talbot, Salon.com, October 7, 2008 ©
- John Dinges, The Huffington Post, October 24, 2008, based on a declassified US Embassy cable ©
- Washington Post, October 23, 2008 ©
- House Financial Services Committee, July 15, 2003; http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/bank/hba91775.000/hba91775_0f.htm ©
William Blum is the author of:
- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
- Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
- West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
- Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
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