Morton Sobell
Morton Sobell (born April 11, 1917 in New York ; † December 26, 2018 there ) was a Soviet agent specializing in nuclear technologies.
Life
Sobell trained as an electrical engineer at the City College of New York , where he also met Julius Rosenberg . He became a member of the Young Communist League, a sub-organization of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).
As an electrical engineer he was a. a. worked for General Electric and Electronics Reeves , where he was also involved in assignments for the United States Department of Defense .
In the course of the VENONA project , the American military intelligence service came across him. After the allegations of espionage were brought against him, he and his family fled to Mexico on June 22, 1950; from here he wanted to move to Europe and then on to the Soviet Union. This ultimately failed because he did not have the necessary identification documents. On August 16, 1950, he was on target investigators of the FBI arrested. He was taken to the United States and charged with conspiracy and espionage along with Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The court, presided over by Judge Irving Kaufman, found him guilty of the joint conspiracy with Julius Rosenberg and sentenced him on March 29, 1951 to 30 years in prison, of which he served almost 18 years until 1969 (until 1963 in Alcatraz ).
Even after his release, Sobell maintained his innocence and presented his conviction as a miscarriage of justice . In 1974 he published his biographical work On Doing Time , in which he detailed his experiences in the so-called "Rosenberg Conspiracy".
It wasn't until September 2008, at the age of 91, that he admitted in an interview with the New York Times that he had divulged military secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II .
literature
- Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer and Matthias Uhl : Lexicon of Secret Services in the 20th Century , Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9
Web links
- MORTON SOBELL. Archived from the original on May 24, 1998 ; accessed on July 23, 2018 (English, biography).
Single receipts
- ↑ Michael T. Kaufman, Sam Roberts: Morton Sobell, Last Defendant in Rosenberg Spy Case, Is Dead at 101. In: nytimes.com. The New York Times, January 30, 2019, accessed January 31, 2019 .
- ↑ SAM ROBERTS: Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits to Soviet Spying. September 11, 2008, accessed July 23, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sobell, Morton |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American spy for the Soviet Union |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 11, 1917 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | new York |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 26, 2018 |
| Place of death | new York |