Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. Even Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and Pope Pius XII pleaded for their lives.

This episode draws on declassified Venona cables, KGB archives, and once-sealed testimony to separate Julius's real spying from the fabricated evidence used to send Ethel to the electric chair.

• Julius recruiting engineers and passing radar and jet secrets
• David Greenglass's Los Alamos sketches and the atomic charge
• Using Ethel as a lever to pressure Julius into confessing
• The eleventh-hour typewriter story Greenglass later recanted
• What Venona and KGB files revealed about Ethel's limited role