Robert Coover - Public Burning

I had a call from John Foster Dulles, a very special assistant to Secretary of State Acheson. Dulles said he was at his home in New York and could I come after dinner. When I got there I found Foster and Brother Allen and a foreign service officer. The atmosphere was solemn. Foster Dulles put the situation to me concisely and precisely. He said the American army had been surrounded and a Marine division too. “It is,” said Dulles, “the only army we have. And the question is: shall we ask for terms?” I could hardly believe my ears and that is what I said….

As the brightly badged bailiff enters from the Judge’s chambers and faces the packed courtroom in Foley Square, TIME’S visionary kid brother is declaring: “LIFE sees no choice but to acknowledge the existence of war with Red China and to set about its defeat, in full awareness that this course will probably involve war with the Soviet Union as well!” Work on the H-bomb proceeds feverishly, but there are fears the Russians may have stolen that one before it’s even been invented. Joe McCarthy, the Fighting Marine, demands that General MacArthur, who is widely reported to be “the greatest man alive,” be given the discretionary authority in Asia for “speedy action of the roughest and toughest kind of which we are capable!” The bailiff pounds his knuckled fist on the door three times and calls out: “Everybody please rise!” There’s a scraping of chairs, a scuffling of feet, the Strategic Air Command is put on alert, the Communist program for world domination is released by the House Un-American Activities Committee. A New York Times headline announces: DANGER OF ATOM BOMB ATTACK IS GREATEST IN PERIOD UP TO THIS FALL! The Judge enters — a ripple of surprise: Uncle Sam has chosen for his Easter Trial little Irving Kaufman, the Boy Judge, a stubby Park Avenue Jew and Tammany Hall Democrat who looks a little like a groundhog himself with his plastered-down hair, thick bumpy nose, and damp beady eyes. Old-time court buffs, however, glance at each other and wink knowingly. Not only are they great admirers of the Boy Judge’s fine voice and his activist take-no-shit style of conducting a trial, but they know something most other people in the courtroom don’t: that Irving Kaufman’s own wife is a Rosenberg! They also know that Irving’s an orphan, and though a Jew, a whizkid law-school graduate of Fordham University, the Roman Catholic farm for FBI agents (his classmates called him Pope Kaufman after he aced Christian Doctrine with a 99); that he was once a shrewd prosecutor, one of the original “Foley Squareheads,” an admiring student of the tough-fisted tactics of the Fighting D.A. Tom Dewey, and the first prosecuting attorney in the district to use a wiretap as a weapon in a federal prosecution; and that when his appointment, sponsored by Carmine DeSapio, to become the youngest federal judge in the country was held up eighteen months ago, it was J. Edgar Hoover himself who came to the rescue. He mounts the steps to the bench, dragging his robes behind him, and stands there, peering over the top like Kilroy, while the court clerk announces that the court is now in session: IF SOVIETS START WAR, ATOMIC BOMB ATTACK EXPECTED ON NEW YORK FIRST, says the Journal-American . “All ye having business before this Court, come forward and ye shall be heard!” Julius and Ethel glance at each other, GIs lose another hill in Korea, and East Berlin policemen fire openly on U.S. Army sightseeing buses. The Russians are said to be massing troops on the Manchurian border. “God bless the United States of America!” cries the clerk. “Nobody will have to run if H-bombs start detonating. A big black cloud full of radioactive particles will get you even if…you happen to be browsing around the bottom of an abandoned lead mine!” Behind the Courthouse on Duane Street, the bells of St. Andrew’s Church are striking the half hour. “God bless this Honorable Court!” There are fervent whispers of “Amen!” in the crowded courtroom. The Judge climbs up into the big leather chair and sits down. Schoolchildren scramble under their desks in an atom bomb drill, and an entire Yank company is bogged down in a Korean rice paddy. “The District Attorney moves the case for trial,” says the Prosecutor gravely, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses on his long nose, “and is ready to proceed.” He glances severely at the suspects who sit stiffly in their chairs. ATOM BOMB SHELTERS FOR CITY AT COST OF $450,000,000 URGED.

If the choice of Judge is somewhat unexpected, the choice of Prosecutor is not: though a Tammany Hall ethnic like the Judge, Irving Saypol is not only big in the Boy Scouts, Salvation Army, and Knights of Pythias, he is also, as the National Poet Laureate says: “the nation’s number / one legal hunter of top / communists.” Devious, hardboiled, fast on his feet, he’s a tough man to beat. This, however, is the most critical case of Irving Saypol’s career. American casualties in Korea are approaching the one-hundred-thousand mark when he rises, tall, hard, and graying, to make his opening statement. There are fears of imminent war everywhere in Europe. He shuffles his thick sheaf of papers, smooths down the pocket flap on his double-breasted suit jacket. Irving Saypol is a sonuvabitch at gin rummy, but does he hold the cards? The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives warns that a third world war may be just around the corner. Julius Rosenberg drums on the counsel table with long nervous fingers. President Truman calls on all police officers and citizens to be watchful for spies, saboteurs, and subversive activities. Saypol’s gaggle of assistants and FBI investigators huddle close together, watching their man. TENSION IS GRAVER THAN IN NOVEMBER, MARSHALL’S BELIEF. Ethel Rosenberg edges forward on her chair, little worry lines crossing her face, as she struggles to hear Prosecutor Saypol’s muffled low-key delivery: in soft flat tones he is accusing her of “the most serious crime which can be committed against the people of this country.” Morton Sobell strokes his jaw, licks his lips, wrinkles his nose, confers nervously with his lawyers. David Greenglass and Harry Gold come down from the Tombs and, assisted by David’s wife, Ruth, confess to spying, perjury, conspiracy, and the lot, and then the Greenglasses say the Rosenbergs were behind it all. Twenty other witnesses corroborate minor details of their story — including Liz Bentley the Red Spy Queen, who adds a bit of swish and dash to the proceedings. Julius and Ethel take the stand and say it isn’t so. When they’re asked if they’re Communists, though, they duck behind the Fifth Amendment. Morton Sobell, who has been largely ignored in the testimony, figures they must have forgotten about him and keeps his mouth shut. The members of the jury, mostly accountants and auditors, retire and tote up the witness score: 23 to 2 with 1 abstention. They return with a guilty verdict for all three, and the Judge says: “My own opinion is that your verdict is a correct verdict…. The thought that citizens of our country would lend themselves to destruction of their own country by the most destructive weapon known to man is so shocking that I can’t find words to describe this loathsome offense! God bless you all!” He goes off to the Park Avenue Synagogue to pray and sneak a quick American cheese sandwich. TIME say:

it

was a

sickening and

to americans almost

incredible history of men

so fanatical that they would destroy

their own countries & col

leagues to serve a

treacherous

utopi

a

The Free Nations of the World, bracing for the holocaust, are fragmented and exhausted. Even sturdy little Judge Kaufman seems suddenly drawn and haggard, aged past his years, as he emerges from the synagogue, mounts the three steps to the bench, and in a hoarse faint voice charged with repugnance and something bordering on panic, tells the packed galleries: “These defendants made a choice of devoting themselves to the Russian ideology of denial of God, denial of the sanctity of the individual, and aggression against free men everywhere! I feel that I must pass such sentence upon the principals in this diabolical conspiracy to destroy a God-fearing nation, which will demonstrate with finality that this nation’s security must remain inviolate!” This is true; the nation assents: “Wickedness must be humbled and left without remnant!” The tumult of the cries of the common people resounds in the Courthouse at Foley Square. “No survivor shall remain of the Sons of Darkness!” Julius sways slowly back and forth on the balls of his feet; Ethel’s right hand is clasped in a white-knuckled grip on the chair before her. It is High Noon, and the bells of St. Andrew’s are tolling deep vibrating peals, as Judge Irving Kaufman turns to the atom spies standing mutely before him. “Plain, deliberate, contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed!” the Boy Judge rasps grimly, stretching forward so as to be able to see over the top of the high bench, and shouting now over the clanging bells: