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SCHENECTADY
Ex-GE worker admits he was a spy
Sobell involved in Rosenberg case
BY BOB CONNER Gazette Reporter

    A former Schenectady man involved in the most famous espionage case of the 20th century has for the first time acknowledged giving military information to the Soviet Union, according to Thursday’s New York Times.
    Morton Sobell was convicted in 1951 along with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He was asked by a Times interviewer whether, as an electrical engineer, he passed secrets during World War II, when the United States and Soviet Union were allies fighting against Nazi Germany.
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that,” the Times article quoted him as replying. “I never thought of it as that in those terms. ... What I did was simply defensive, an aircraft gun.” He also said he passed on information to the Soviets about the SCR 584 radar, which, according to the Times, “is believed by military experts to have been used against American aircraft in Korea and Vietnam.”
    At the time, Sobell was living in an apartment at 411 Division St. in Schenectady, and worked as an electrical engineer for General Electric Co. According to Times and Gazette news clips, he worked at GE from 1942 until 1947, in the marine and aeronautical engineering section. He married and became a stepfather in 1945, and he and his wife were described by neighbors as keeping to themselves, often going away on weekends.
    Sobell served 18 years in prison after his conviction, and had maintained his innocence. After his release, he published a prison memoir, “On Doing Time,” and spoke at gatherings of peace advocates.
    Both Rosenbergs were executed in 1953.
    Advocates for the Rosenbergs kept their cause alive for many years, maintaining that they were unjustly convicted. While historians now generally accept that Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet spy, the culpability of Ethel Rosenberg is still debated, including by Sobell in the Times article.
    “She knew what he was doing,” the Times quoted him as saying, “but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius’s wife.” The article quoted Sobell as saying “I was taken in” by communist ideology.
    Sobell could not be reached for comment Friday. GE did not return a call for comment.
    George W. Hobbs Jr., of Syracuse, said his late father worked with Sobell at GE in the 1940s.
    “I remember him telling me,” Hobbs said about his father in an e-mail, “that Sobell wasn’t a particularly likable guy so he didn’t have many friends. Sobell was around his age and had kids the same age as his. My dad felt bad when he went off to prison (Leavenworth, originally). When he got out and was hawking his book, he came to discuss it where we lived. My dad never went to see him.”
    Helen Quirini, who worked for GE in Schenectady for 39 years from 1941 and was a union activist, said she did not know Sobell. Ed Bloch, another former GE union activist, also did not know him.
    Quirini said, however, that she continues to question the guilt of Ethel Rosenberg, and said GE took advantage of the McCarthyite political climate of the times to attack the union.
    “I never was a communist,” she said, “but I was an officer in a union that was red-baited.” Seven GE Schenectady employees, she said, “were fired for taking the Fifth Amendment” when they refused to answer investigators’ questions.
    GE did get rid of the United Electrical Workers union at the Schenectady plant in the early 1950s. Bloch, who was an official with that union, said GE cited the alleged communist ties of four UE members. He continued to work for UE representing GE workers in Washington County. Quirini was active both with UE and the successor union at the Schenectady plant, the IUE.
    Both she and Bloch remain active campaigners. Quirini’s main focus is boosting GE pensions, and Bloch, who twice ran for Congress as a Democrat, is involved with religious and veterans’ issues.