AN OPEN LETTER TO DANIEL G. MARSHALL

                             MM      by Irwin Edelman



       You and I, Mr. Marshall, have been and are in close, freindly contact,
  In writing this, I am fully conscious that you are acting as my attorney in
  that infamous vagrancy case, noisily drummed by the nation's press in an
  attempt to justify the murder or the Rosenbergs.  I am addressing you thus,
  in public, because Rosenberg Defense Committee publicity, listing you as its
  speaker, must have raised questions in the minds of thousands.  And Open
  Letter, inviting an Open Reply, is my way of urging that you clarify those
  thousands.
            
        In that noble effort last June, when you and Fyke Farmer carried to
  Washington my petition in behalf of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, almost.
  snatching them from death, you faced the ugly sabotage of the Rosenberg
  Defense  Committee.  Collecting thousands of dollars in Los Angeles alone,
  its contemptible leadership refused to provide you and Mr. Farmer with as
  much as the transportation costs for the effort which shook the nation and
  the world.  Only after the Rosenbergs were dead, did Joseph Brainin and
  David and Emily Alman remind themselves to phone you at Hotel Tudor in New
  York and offer you the funds to go home with.

        The Brainins and Almans and their local equivalents have now appointed
  themselves to leadership of the effort to free Morton Sobell. The liberation
  of Sobell,  The liberation of Sobell, being insoparably linked with the
  vindication of the Rosenbergs, a movement to free him must be started as
  quickly as possible.  But it would be childish to trust the sabotours of
  the Rosenberg defense with the conduct of a movement to liberate Sobell.
  The only liberating they can effectively do is to liberate the public from
  cold cash.

        There is need for a national movement to free Sobell.  But it must be
  not a movement which forms itself in the dark.  It must be formed by the
  democratic process, in the course of a well-pubicized conference, after a
  full and free discussion taking in the facts of the Rosenberg case and the
  experience painfully gained in the Rosenberg defense.  You know very well,
  Mr. Marshall, that t he Committee leaders will let Sobell rot in Alcatraz
  rather than bring out certain ungly facts in the conduct of the Rosenberg
  defense.

        On the 17th of June, while you were in Washington, Dorothy Marshall was
  invited but declined to chair a Rosenberg defense rally in Channing Hall,
  Unitarian Church.  On July 16, you, Mr. Marshall, were invited but declined
  to address a Rosenberg Dedication Meeting held in Park Manor.  In both of 
  those instances, it was clear to those in the know that this was not be-
  cause the Marshalls were losing interest in the Rosenbergs, but because they
  would not associate themselves publicly with those under whose auspicos
  these meetings were being run.

         Your speeches will, no doubt, shed light on aspects of the case where
  today there reigns confusion.  But your presence is bound to give a false
  sence of security to many who would otherwise have legitimate misgivings.
  Under the circumstances, I think you owe it to the friends of t he Rosenbergs
  and Sobell and to yourself, to clarify your position.

				Irwin Edelman			Box 2505
								L.A. 53. Calif.