Testimony from Rosenberg brother released in famous spy case. WASHINGTON — The brother of Ethel Rosenberg, who was a star trial witness against his sister and brother-in-law in a sensational Cold War atomic spying case, never implicated his sister in an earlier appearance before a grand jury and said that they had never discussed her role "at all," according to secret court records unsealed Wednesday. The revelation may heighten public suspicion that Ethel Rosenberg was wrongly convicted and executed in an espionage case that captivated the country at the height of the McCarthy-era frenzy about Communist allegiances.
Rosenberg and her husband Julius were put to death in 1953 after being convicted of conspiring to pass secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, though they maintained their innocence until the end. "You change a black-and-white Cold War narrative — framed, or traitors — into a very nuanced, gray area," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which fought for the records. European think tank says Russian brinksmanship at Cold War levels. This photo shows a Russian Tu-95 Tupolev bomber (Reuters/File) A report from a European think tank has identified more than 40 dangerous incidents involving forces from Russia and those of NATO member states over the past eight months. The report, released Monday by the London-based European Leadership Network (ELN), specified three incidents in the past year that could have sparked open conflict between Russia and the West.
"We believe [the incidents] are a very serious development, not necessarily because they indicate a desire on the part of Russia to start a war but because they show a dangerous game of brinkmanship is being played, with the potential for unintended escalation in what is now the most serious security crisis in Europe since the cold war," the report's authors wrote. The 83-year-old accused the West, particularly the United States, of giving in to "triumphalism" after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the communist bloc.
Click for more from the BBC. Reporter's Notebook: At the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 years ago. Now Playing Commemorating 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall It was cold. It was wet. It was amazing. “There is so much here,” one said to me, his family in tow. “This must be a very rich land,” another remarked.
Those of us lucky enough to be assigned the story knew we were covering a big chunk of history. A people who had been kept down and oppressed against their will by a communist Soviet regime were set free overnight. Of course, that was just the beginning of eastern Germany’s long road to normalcy. More than that, it set into motion a chain of events throughout eastern Europe and the former Soviet states that would change the world. The end of the Cold War. And so celebrations like the ones Sunday in Berlin marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall were in order.
That Berlin Wall story was, in fact, my first assignment as a foreign correspondent. Which is a warning that history can often repeat itself. And we’ll be watching. Germany marks 25 years since fall of Berlin Wall. Now Playing Germany celebrates 25 years since the Berlin Wall fell BERLIN – The citizens of Berlin on Sunday released almost 7,000 balloons into the night sky, many carrying messages of hope to mark the 25th anniversary since the fall of the wall that once divided their city.
The symbolic act recalled the giddy night of Nov. 9, 1989, when thousands of people from the communist East streamed through the Berlin Wall to celebrate freedom with their brethren in the West. "For peace and freedom," Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit told a crowd of ten thousands that had gathered at the city's iconic Brandenburg Gate as he gave the signal to release the balloons, which has been placed, illuminated, along a 15-kilometer (9-mile) stretch of the former border.
Earlier he thanked the former leaders of Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union — Lech Walesa, Miklos Nemeth and Mikhail Gorbachev — for having helped set the stage for Germany's peaceful revolution. The history of the Cold War.
Korean War Summary. Atomic Weapons. CIA Main Website. "Walled In!" Germany's inner border.