News release: “More than 50 years after the historic but controversial execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of atomic espionage, the U.S. government this Thursday, September 11, is expected to make public long shrouded grand jury testimony from its prosecution of the Rosenbergs, which will be the subject of a press briefing on September 11, 2008.

Several noted Cold War scholars will provide expert analysis of the newly public documents at the briefing, organized by the National Security Archive, the independent nongovernmental research institute at George Washington University, which successfully led a coalition of historians in demands that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) unseal Rosenberg trial grand-jury records. The Archive, along with the American Historical Association, the American Society for Legal History, the Organization of American Historians, the Society of American Archivists, and New York Times reporter Sam Roberts, filed a petition in January 2008 seeking the release of grand jury records from the 1951 indictment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, arguing that public interest outweighed privacy and national security concerns.”