October 15, 1957
ROSENBERGS AND SPUTNIK: Washington, 12 – Last night the district attorney Miles Lane announced that secret information regarding the American plan for a satellite to orbit the Earth had been sent to the Soviet Union in 1947 by Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953. According to Lane, the Rosenbergs had succeeded in passing on to Russian spies the mathematical solution to the problem of atomic energy regarding its use by the US Air Force. It would not be surprising, he added, if in the not-so-distant future Russia announced that it had perfected an atomic engine suitable for an aircraft, missile or space satellite. Lane said that the Rosenbergs had passed on to the Russian spies the secret of the mechanism for dropping the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, as well as the complete design of the Los Alamos atomic installations in New Mexico. Lane added that the launch of the Sputnik last week had been no surprise, as FBI investigations showed that before 1951 Julius Rosenberg had known the secrets that US scientists had been working on.
