Morton Sobell

Morton Sobell ( born April 11, 1917 in New York ) is a former Soviet agent with a focus on nuclear technology.

Life

Sobell graduated at City College of New York his training as an electrical engineer, where he met Julius Rosenberg. He was a member of the Young Communist League, a sub-organization of the Communist Party USA ( CPUSA ).

As an electrical engineer, he was, inter alia, worked for General Electric and Electronics Reeves, where he was also involved in contracts for the Department of Defense of the United States.

In the course of the Venona project him the American military intelligence service was able to track down. After the allegations of espionage were brought against him, he and his family fled on June 22, 1950 for the time being to Mexico. From here, he wanted to Europe and then deposed in the Soviet Union. This ultimately failed because he did not possess the necessary identity papers. On August 16, 1950 he was arrested by objective investigators of the FBI. He was brought to the U.S. and there indicted for conspiracy and espionage together with Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The court chaired by Judge Irving Kaufman found him guilty of conspiracy with common Julius Rosenberg guilty and sentenced him on 29 March 1951 to 30 years imprisonment, of which he had to settle for almost 18 years ( until 1963 in Alcatraz ) until 1969.

After his release claimed Sobell his innocence and put his conviction as a miscarriage of justice dar. this end he published in 1974 his biographical work On Doing Time, in which he detailed his experiences in the so-called " Rosenberg Conspiracy " showed.

It was only in September 2008, at the age of 91, he admitted in an interview with The New York Times that he had divulged military secrets to the Soviet Union during the Second World War.