The first witness for the prosecution was brought forward.

Max Elitcher had provided practically the entire case the US goverment had to bring against Morton Sobell when he described his 1948 midnight car trip with the former. His account served as much of the evidence against Julius Rosenberg.

The next witness was 29-year-old David Greenglass. Greenglass was questioned by Saypol's voluble assistant, Roy Cohn. He testified to his passing sketches of a high explosive lends mold; after which he was temporarily replaced on the stand by Walter Koski, an Atomic Energy Commission physicist, who explained to the jury the potential significance of Greenglass's sketches to another party interested in developing an atomic bomb. After this intermission, Greenglass then returned to the stand.

"He provided detailed and incriminating accounts of Rosenberg's espionage acitivities, such as burning important notes in a frying pan, cutting a Jell-O box in 2 for use as a recognition signal, meetings in cars on dark streets, offering Greenglass money and a plan for getting safely behind the Iron Curtain as the FBI started to close in on the spies." (Doug Linder, Rosenberg Trial, http://www.law.umkc.edu/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_ACCT.HTM)

The third witness came David Greenglass's wife, Ruth Greenglass. Ruth claimed Julius asked her to inquire of her husband - who was recently stationed in Los Alamos, to whether he would be willing to provide information on the progress of the Manhattan Project. She said Juilus instructed her on where and when to meet a courier in Albuquerque, and how a man (Harry Gold) showed up at their apartment doorstep with a Jell-O box cover in hand. Ruth added that Ethel spent an evening in January 1945 typing David's handwritten notes from Los Alamos. However, very little of the prosecution testimony incriminated Julius Rosenberg's wife Ethel.

The Witness Box - Harry Gold, Elizabeth Bentley and Ben Schneider (Part II)

Harry Gold claimed he have never seen nor known Rosenberg. At the present, Gold was already facing a thirty-year sentence for espionage for his role in the Fuchs matter. Thus, he had nothing to gain or lose by testifying for the prosecution. Gold told of his meetings with Anatoli Yakovlev, the head of the Russian UN delegation and the KGB's chief of US spy operations. Gold described a meeting in 1945 at Manhattan bar when Yakovlev gave him a piece of onionskin paper with "Greenglass" and and Albuquerque address typed on it (where the Greenglasses lived). He was instructed to travel to New Mexico, locate the apartment and announce to the person who opened the door - "I come from Julius". However, in earlier statements to the FBI, Gold had remembered the recognition signal as "I come from Ben.")

Gold testfied that Greenglass gave him handwritten notes and sketches which Yakovlev later described as "extremely excellent and very valuable".

The next person at the witness box was to be Elizabeth Bentley, nicknamed "The Red Spy Queen" by the press. She was an ex-Soviet spy and ex-lover of the Soviet's chief US spy, who turned informer in 1945 and began writing books about her undercover exploits. Bentley said she acted as middleman between Rosenberg and Jacob Golos, chief of the KGB's American operations until his death in 1943. She told the jury that she received early morning telephone calls on 5 or 6 occasions from someone who identified himself as "Julius" (Bentley had never actually met Rosenberg), who asked her to alert Golos of his need to talk.

After Elizabeth Bentley, Ben Schneider took his position at the witness box. He was a photographer who operated a small photo shop near the courthouse. Schneider testified that the Rosenbergs visited his studio on a Saturday in June 1950- to request 3 dozen passport photos. The photographer said he could remember the visit rather distinctly because of the unusually large order and the unusually unruly young Rosenbergs. He testified that Rosenberg told him he needed the photos because his family was planning to go to France, where they had inherited some property. Later, it was revealed that the FBI learnt of Schneider through a jailhouse informer named Jerome Tartakow. The latter had been Julius' chess partner and confidant since his incarceration eight months before trial.