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| Vlad praises Soviet atomic spies |
| 2012-02-23 |
| Vladimir Putin praised Cold War-era Soviet spies on Thursday for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets so that United States would not be the world's sole atomic power. "You know, when the States already had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels," Putin said, according to state-run Itar-Tass. "The were carrying the information away not on microfilm but literally in suitcases. Suitcases!" From wikipedia: Judge Irving Kaufman, in his statement sentencing the Rosenbergs to death: "I consider your crime worse than murder... I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-Bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country. No one can say that we do not live in a constant state of tension. We have evidence of your treachery all around us every day for the civilian defense activities throughout the nation are aimed at preparing us for an atom bomb attack." Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, investigated how much the Soviet spy ring helped the USSR to build their bomb. In 1945, Moynihan found, physicist Hans Bethe estimated that the Soviets would be able to build their own bomb in five years. “Thanks to information provided by their agents,” Moynihan concluded in his book Secrecy, they did it in four. That was the edge that espionage gave them: one year.” |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #3 My now-elderly Mother used to tell me she had met the Rosenbergs in Illinois as a young college student from post-WW2 Guam, back in the very early 1950's. Mom met the Rosenbergs, I Osama. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-02-23 22:06 |
| #2 I agree, some of the worst traitors probably retired on US pensions & died of old age, their names known only to God and the KGB. It is worth remembering what happened. Krushchev's autobiography did name the Rosenbergs specifically, when he said Stalin & Molotov both gave them personal credit. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2012-02-23 15:44 |
| #1 I noted that he was very careful to not name those traitorous scientists, as people like the Rosenbergs still have defenders who swear they were innocent, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Some of the traitors might not even be publicly known today. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2012-02-23 09:26 |