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In the closing decades of the 20th century, several proposed explanations were put forward for why humanity has not yet found evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the cosmos.

New York, New York, the “city that never Sleeps,” has given us two Presidents, Eggs Benedict, potato chips, Robert De Niro, Saturday Night Live, and Scrabble. Two of New York City’s boroughs have also been home to three of the most controversial and infamous criminal defendants in American history: Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Though their convictions were handed down decades ago, Hauptmann from the Bronx, and the Rosenbergs from Knickerbocker Village in Manhattan, remain causes célèbres around the globe. With passionate proponents around the world still proclaiming their innocence, a skeptical examination of the evidence for the guilt of both Hauptmann and the Rosenbergs is warranted. 

Bruno Richard Hauptmann The Crime 

On the night of March 1, 1932, 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped from his nursery window on the second floor of the Lindbergh home near Hopewell, NJ.1 The kidnapper(s) left a poorly written ransom note demanding $50,000 (over $1 Million in today’s money).2 The note to the Lindbergh’s also contained a code: two interlocking circles resembling a Venn diagram with three small holes punched through them.3 At least two sets of differing footprints were found at the crime site, as were a ¾” chisel,4 and the home-built ladder used to climb to the nursery window.5 During the next three months, 13 more notes bearing the code symbols were delivered and the ransom was raised to $70,000.

The kidnapping of the world-famous son of “Lucky Lindy” (solo pilot of the first nonstop airline flight across the Atlantic Ocean, New York to Paris) made international headlines. A retired school teacher and, by all accounts, a self-aggrandizing publicity-seeker6 named John F. Condon, published a letter in the Bronx Home News offering to serve as a liaison between the Lindberghs and the kidnapper(s).7 On March 8, seven days after the child was taken, and one day following the publication of his offer, Condon received a letter, bearing the code, accepting his offer to be an intermediary.8

Condon was instructed by the kidnapper(s) to place an ad in the New York American using the name “Jafsie” (a play on his initials), indicating that the ransom money was ready. Condon did so and, on March 12, he received another code-bearing letter from a cab driver instructing him to meet the kidnappers at Woodlawn, a Bronx cemetery.9 Condon went alone. There he met a man with a German accent identified as “John,” who asked for the money, which Condon refused to provide until he’d seen the baby. The mysterious man expressed fear that he “might burn” if the baby was dead and told Condon he would provide proof of the child in the toddler’s sleeping suit.10 Condon soon received the child’s sleeping suit in the mail and continued to communicate through advertisements until a meeting was arranged to exchange the ransom. $70,000 in unmarked gold certificate U.S. paper money were placed in two packages, their serial numbers having been recorded. (The fact that the ransom was paid in gold certificates would later become significant). 

On April 2, 1932, Charles Lindbergh rode with Condon11 to another Bronx cemetery, St. Raymond’s,12 where they heard a man call out, “Hey doctor!” Condon went toward the voice while Lindbergh waited in the car. Condon convinced the kidnapper he only had $50,000 of the ransom money. The kidnapper accepted the sum and gave Condon another note filled with misspellings asserting that the child was safe aboard a boat named “Nelly,” harbored off the Massachusetts coast.13The kidnapper took the money and Condon returned to the car where Lindbergh was waiting. An exhaustive search failed to find the boat. On May 12, 1932, the body of the child was found close to Lindbergh’s home from which he was taken.14 Over the next two years, 296 of the gold certificates the Lindberghs used to pay the ransom turned up in circulation. 

Earlier that year, Roosevelt’s Gold Reserve Act of 1934 mandated that all gold and gold certificate currency be surrendered and vested in the sole title of the United States Department of the Treasury. In other words, The Gold Reserve Act prohibited private ownership of monetary gold. On September 15, 1934, a gas station attendant in the Bronx wrote down the license plate number of a man who had paid him with one of the gold standard-backed certificates. The authorities traced the plate to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German-born American carpenter.15 A search of Hauptmann’s garage found $14,600 of the ransom money. Hauptmann provided an explanation and an alibi: He was working the night of the kidnapping at a hotel and a former business partner named Isidor Fitch left the money with him.16 Fitch, who owed him money, had since returned to his native Germany and died on March 29, 1934. Initially, Condon was unwilling to identify Hauptmann conclusively from a police lineup, later changing his mind and acknowledging that Hauptmann was indeed “Cemetery John.”17Hauptmann was charged with extortion and murder and pled not guilty. The trial was a media circus, with famed journalist H.L. Mencken labeling it “the greatest story since the resurrection.”18

Hauptmann was found guilty and sentenced to death, with most of the public convinced of his guilt.19After the Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey unanimously affirmed Hauptmann’s conviction, he was executed on April 3, 1936. Hauptmann died protesting his innocence, even though a newspaper offered him $75,000 (far more than the ransom money) to name his accomplices.20

The Conspiracies 

Though the Lindbergh kidnapping is approaching its 100th anniversary and all the principal participants are long dead, The State of New Jersey v. Bruno Richard Hauptmann has evolved in much of the public imagination into a tragic miscarriage of justice. Since his execution in 1936, books, articles, documentaries, plays, websites, and movies have examined Hauptmann’s role in the crime, the majority of them wondering if Hauptmann was, in fact, wrongly convicted.21

For years, conspiracies have run the gamut from the probable (Hauptmann had accomplices)22 to the possible (Violet Sharpe, a domestic servant of the Lindberghs, was somehow involved)23 to the preposterous (Charles Lindbergh had his own disabled son murdered).24 A few highlights: 

• In 1976, author Antony Scaduto capitalized on these conspiracies with the publication of Scapegoat: The Lonesome Death of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Scaduto purported to “set the record straight after some forty years of distortion…”25
• In a 1980 episode of In Search Of…, Scaduto claimed to have found “startling new evidence that exonerates Hauptmann.”26 All expert testimony, eyewitness testimony, and physical and forensic evidence, he claimed, were manufactured by the police to frame Hauptmann. Scaduto goes even further, asserting that the body found on May 12, 1932, was not that of the Lindbergh baby, and the only way to identify the badly decomposed body was by the number of his teeth.27
• In 1981, Hauptmann’s widow Anna began a series of lawsuits against her husband’s prosecutor, David Wilentz, echoing conspiratorial claims of new evidence that exonerated her husband alongside charges of fraud and witness suppression.28
• In 1985, Ludovic Kennedy published The Airman and The Carpenter: The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. He posited that Hauptmann did not commit the crime and was wrongfully convicted and executed.29
• In a 1996 HBO movie, Crime of the Century, Stephen Rea portrayed Hauptmann as an innocent victim railroaded for a crime he did not commit.30
• In 2012, Robert Zorn published Cemetery John: The Undiscovered Mastermind Behind the Lindbergh Kidnapping, in which he makes the case that Hauptmann’s accomplice was a fellow German immigrant named John Knoll.31 Zorn’s thesis notes Knoll’s resemblance to the police sketch provided by Condon, traces of meat found on some of the ransom money (Knoll having worked at a deli), updated handwriting analysis of the ransom notes,32 and Knoll’s trip to Germany on a luxury liner during the trial, only returning after Hauptmann’s conviction.33
• In 2020, Lise Pearlman released The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1: The Man Who Got Away, which suggests Lindbergh himself, a vocal eugenics supporter and Nazi sympathizer, may have orchestrated the kidnapping and death of his own son.34

The Evidence 

Pay attention only to Hauptmann-was-innocent proponents and a pattern emerges: Desperate to satisfy a public hungry to assign blame, authorities deliberately conspired to frame Hauptmann for the crime. Lacking hard evidence, the prosecution exploited the anti-German atmosphere of the time by portraying Hauptmann as part of the the growing German menace, and a gross miscarriage of justice.35 Authorities coerced Condon into identifying Hauptmann as Cemetery John,36 and Hauptmann was forced to misspell the same words on writing samples that were misspelled on the ransom notes.37

It takes an extraordinary leap of faith to believe Hauptmann was uninvolved in the crime and preposterous to argue that he was “framed.”

The evidence reveals a much harsher reality: It may well be that Hauptmann had accomplices (the government certainly thought he did),38 but it takes an extraordinary leap of faith to believe Hauptmann was uninvolved in the crime and preposterous to argue that he was “framed.” Many of these conspiratorial claims mislead by omission, while others are demonstrably false. For example, when initially interviewed by the police, Hauptmann lied twice, saying the only gold certificates he had were the ones in his wallet,39 and he was working as a carpenter at a hotel the day of the kidnapping,40 driving his wife home at about 9:00 p.m. that night.41

About one-third of the ransom money was found hidden in Hauptmann’s garage.42 Upon checking the hotel employment records, it was discovered that Hauptmann had not started working there until 20 days after the crime, and quit the day the ransom was delivered.43 (Scaduto omits this entirely.44) The summer after the ransom was paid, Hauptmann (an unemployed carpenter at the height of the Great Depression) came into enough money to fund four family trips to California, Florida, and Maine, and finance trips to Europe for his wife and several friends.45 

The physical evidence found on Hauptmann’s property wasn’t limited to the ransom money, either. Hauptmann’s tools matched the marks on the ladder. Dr. Condon’s address and phone number were found scrawled in a closet alongside the serial numbers of gold certificates.46 When asked for an explanation on the witness stand, Hauptmann admitted that he must have written Condon’s contact information in his closet because, in his words, “I must have read it in the paper about the story. I was a little bit interested and keep a little bit record of it, and maybe I was just on the closet, and was reading the paper and put it down the address.”47

There were eyewitnesses as well. The cab driver, Joseph Perrone, pinpointed Hauptmann as the man who gave him written instructions for Condon.48, 49 After deliberation, Condon testified that it was indeed Hauptmann whom he met at the cemetery,50 and Lindbergh himself testified it was Hauptmann’s voice he heard yelling, “Hey doctor!”51 Forensic evidence also implicates Hauptmann. Contrary to Scaduto’s claims, the autopsy of the victim was conducted with fidelity by Dr. Charles Mitchell, a veteran coroner, who easily identified the child by his (clearly recognizable) face. Lindbergh confirmed the body was that of his son.52, 53 Forensic experts54 then and now confirm a board from the ladder came from Hauptmann’s own attic.55 Scaduto notes that Hauptmann’s fingerprints did not match those found on the ransom note.56 This is true, but only because nofingerprints were found at the scene.57

At least 21 handwriting experts examined Hauptmann’s notebooks, and private letters in addition to the samples Hauptmann wrote for the police, all of whom concluded Hauptmann wrote the ransom notes during the trial.58 All of Anna Hauptmann’s lawsuits against the government through the early 1980s were dismissed for lack of evidence.59 As recently as 2003, a police archivist named Mark Fazini found a handwritten, anonymous note in German confessing to the crime.60 This would seem to exonerate Hauptmann unless one considers the note was debunked61 and was only one of dozens of similar confessions.62

Through the years, at least 16 different people have claimed to be the actual Lindbergh baby, including an African American woman from Trenton, NJ.63 Establishing the Lindbergh baby survived and grew up under an assumed name would absolutely exonerate Hauptmann, but no substantive evidence for any one of these claims has ever been provided.64, 65, 66 Even more damning is Hauptmann’s modus operandi. His widow, Anna, gave multiple interviews in which she asserted Richard was telling the truth67 and could never commit such a crime.68, 69 In fact, Hauptmann had an extensive criminal record. While in Germany, for example, he’d been convicted of robbery at gunpoint and even burglarized a home while using a ladder.70

Why didn’t Hauptmann name his accomplices and save himself, then? According to criminal profiler John Douglas, it isn’t unusual for the condemned to maintain innocence in order to spare their surviving family members public shame.71 Hauptmann also believed he would be spared the electric chair, as the governor of New Jersey publicly expressed doubts about Hauptmann’s role in the crime.72

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, separated by heavy wire screen as they leave U.S. Court House after being found guilty by jury. (Credit: Roger Higgins, New York World-Telegram and Sun Collection / Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Digital ID cph 3c17772) Julius & Ethel Rosenberg The Crime 

In January of 1950, a physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project named Klaus Fuchs was arrested in Great Britain for passing top-secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.73 Fuchs admitted the crime and fingered a Swiss chemist named Harry Gold as the courier between himself and the Soviets. Gold was arrested and identified others in the espionage ring, including a machinist at Los Alamos, David Greenglass,74 who first denied the charges, and then, in June of 1950, named his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, as the one who convinced him to spy for the Russians.75 Julius Rosenberg was living with his wife Ethel and two children in Knickerbocker Village, a housing development located near the Manhattan Bridge.76 Julius was arrested and flatly denied any involvement.77

A grand jury convened in August 1950 to investigate the spy ring, one of the witnesses being Julius Rosenberg’s wife, Ethel. Following her testimony in which she invoked her right not to incriminate herself, Ethel was charged with conspiracy to commit espionage alongside Julius and another defendant, Morton Sobell.78

At their trial, Greenglass testified that Julius had orchestrated the espionage at his home in January 1945. Julius went into his kitchen with Ruth (David’s wife) and Ethel, and cut a side panel of a Jell-O box into two irregular parts. He passed one piece to Ruth, asserting that the spy contacting her and David at Los Alamos would identify themselves with the other half.79 Ruth testified that Ethel solicited her to approach David to spy and typed the notes David brought back to New York with him. Greenglass confirmed his wife’s testimony, further implicating Ethel by testifying she typed the notes containing nuclear secrets, which were turned over to Harry Gold. Both Rosenbergs denied any involvement whatsoever in espionage and refused to answer questions about their Communist party membership.80

Evidence shows Julius approached Soviet intelligence agents before Hitler invaded Russia at a time when the Nazi leader and Stalin were collaborating under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The accused were found guilty in March 1953. Greenglass was sentenced to 15 years (a lighter sentence because he’d agreed to turn state’s evidence), Sobell received 30 years, and the Rosenbergs were sentenced to die in the electric chair.81 Despite pleas for clemency by notables, including Pope Pius XII, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Einstein,82 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went to their deaths maintaining their innocence.83 At the time of their conviction and execution, and for many years afterward, many Americans believed the United States executed two innocent people.84

The Conspiracies 

As in the Hauptmann case, Rosenberg v. United States: 346 U.S. 273 lives on. In 1971, novelist E.L. Doctorow published The Book of Daniel, a fictionalized account of the case.85 A film adaptation (Daniel) followed in 1983.86 Bob Dylan recorded “Julius and Ethel” in 198387 and Meryl Streep portrayed Ethel’s ghost haunting her prosecutor Roy Cohn in the movie Angels in America in 2003. If anything, the Rosenberg case has only gained prominence in the last quarter century. In 2001, a New York Times reporter named Sam Roberts tracked down David Greenglass (who testified against the Rosenbergs), who was living under an assumed name. In the extensive interviews for The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case, Greenglass admitted he’d lied on the witness stand about Ethel typing the letters of instruction from Julius to the Soviets.88

In 2004, Ivy Meeropol, granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, released the documentary Heir to an Execution, in which she incorporates archival footage with interviews of her family members and the other alleged conspirators.89

In 2008, Michael and Robbie Meeropol (the Rosenbergs’ surviving children, who had been adopted into the Meeropol family) unsuccessfully petitioned President Obama to exonerate their mother using their uncle David Greenglass’ confession.90, 91 Recently, in 2021, Anne Sebbe published Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy, in which she argued for Ethel’s innocence. 

The Evidence 

Rosenberg defenders often note outside factors that led to their convictions: Jurist prejudice, antisemitism, Cold War hysteria, and (in Ethel’s case) misogyny have been named as the reasons for their convictions and executions.92, 93 Another common argument is that the Rosenbergs assisted a World War II ally, not an enemy, therefore they should not have been tried and convicted for treason.94

The facts of the case tell a different story. The Rosenbergs were charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, not treason.95 Evidence shows Julius approached Soviet intelligence96 agents before Hitler invaded Russia at a time when the Nazi leader and Stalin were collaborating under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.97 In 1995, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) released translations of Soviet cables decrypted in the 1940s. Called VENONA, it ran from 1943 to 1980 and identified hundreds of Soviet agents in America and other Western countries.98 The cables identify Julius as the head of a vast spy ring, assigning him two code names, “liberal”99 and “antenna.” In 2008, co-defendant Morton Sobell affirmed he and Julius were spies but the information passed was useless.100

In 2009, Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer and defector to Great Britain, released his notes taken during his service in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which debunk Sobell’s claim that minimizes Julius’ activities. Not only did Julius orchestrate the theft of top-secret information from Los Alamos, he also recruited a man named Russell Alton McNutt (son and brother of members of the Communist Party of the United States)101 to obtain information from a uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge, TN. 

Sensationalism and conspiratorial thinking keep the cases of Bruno Richard Hauptmann and the Rosenbergs thriving as cottage industries. 

When the VENONA transcripts were released, the narrative for innocence shifted from “the Rosenbergs were innocent” to “Julius Rosenberg was guilty, but Ethel was innocent.”102 What of Ethel’s guilt, then? At their trial, prosecutor Irving Saypol established Ethel’s guilt in his summation by stating, “Mrs. Rosenberg struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country in the interests of the Soviets.”103 In 2001, Greenglass admitted he likely perjured himself by testifying Ethel typed Julius’ instructions104 and, indeed the Vassiliev notes seem to confirm this.105 Sobell’s 2008 admission notes that Ethel Rosenberg knew of her husband’s activities but did not actively spy herself.106

Despite the commonly-held belief that Ethel Rosenberg is not mentioned in the VENONA Project,107in fact, she is. The Soviet spy cables describe Ethel as “…well devoted politically (who)108 knows her husband’s work and the role of ‘Twain’ and ‘Callistratus.’ (code names of Soviet agents).”109 If the only evidence against Ethel were the false testimony of Greenglass and her sole mention in the VENONA cables, a reasonable case might be made for doubt. Unfortunately for proponents of her innocence, substantive evidence has since come forth that makes it clear Ethel not only knew of her husband’s illegal activities but actively participated in spying alongside him.110

Through Vasiliev’s leak, we know that Ruth testified truthfully when she claimed Ethel solicited her to persuade David Greenglass to spy.111 A letter written to Moscow by Julius Rosenberg himself substantiates this.112 Vasiliev’s notes reveal Ethel met with at least three of the KGB officers with whom Julius was spying.113 Why did Greenglass perjure himself in front of the grand jury and later at his trial, then? Simply, he was attempting to protect his sister and hoped the government would leave her out of the indictment charging Julius. In the same transcripts before the grand jury, Greenglass implicates Ethel by testifying she was present at a meeting between Julius and Ann Sidorovich, one of the couriers for the spy ring.114

Why didn’t they save themselves by naming others, then? As noted, the Vasiliev leak makes clear the spy ring Julius orchestrated was far more expansive in scope than was revealed to the public. Julius and Ethel most likely did not reveal names because they (correctly) believed the FBI had yet to identify them and those individuals could continue spying for the Soviets after their own deaths.115

♦ ♦ ♦

Sensationalism and conspiratorial thinking keep the cases of Bruno Richard Hauptmann and the Rosenbergs thriving as cottage industries. In truth, the evidence for Hauptmann’s involvement in the Lindbergh Kidnapping remains exceptionally strong, as does the case for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s guilt in conspiring to commit espionage. Even though books propounding conspiracy theories exonerating them sell—and sell well—the full weight of evidence shows, beyond any reasonable doubt, NYC’s most controversial defendants to have been guilty of the crimes for which they were charged.

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If you’re getting weary of the endless but necessary attacks on Nicholas Kristof for his misleading and almost antisemitic column about Israel’s “policy” of sexually assaulting Palestinian prisoners, Roy K. Altman has written in the Free Press the definitive critique of Kristof’s column—that is, until investigations by Israel reveal more information.

Wikipedia identifies Altman as “a Venezuelan-American lawyer and jurist who serves as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida” and also identifies him as Jewish.

You can read Altman’s column by clicking below—if you subscribe to the Free Press.

The “miscarriage of journalism” is, overall, the promulgation of “fake news” by Kristof: accusations that are improperly vetted (if at all), which come from questionable sources, and which are contradicted by existing Israeli policy and behavior. Altman’s thesis is that this kind of journalism subverts the “marketplace of opinions” that, it’s been said, is necessary for the American public to judge what is true. Excerpts from Altman and others are indented; prose that is flush left is mine:

. . . we entrust our fellow Americans with the power to make these choices because we believe that a virtuous people will be equipped to make the right choices—principally because we assume that our citizens will be prepared to discern truth from fiction. And we feel comfortable in that assumption because we’ve devised a system of laws—based on evidence, burdens of proof, and a time-tested set of rules—to help us assess the veracity of contested claims. In this way, the jury system isn’t simply a means of ensuring fair trials. Rather, it’s a way of training free citizens to make difficult decisions for themselves.

Today, this whole system is being undermined by the proliferation of false information—especially on the internet. But it’s one thing to have our geopolitical and ideological enemies—whether China, Russia, or the Muslim Brotherhood—pushing unverified claims about our closest allies into our cell phones. It’s another thing entirely for The New York Times, a supposed “paper of record,” and one of its Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists to offer a story that—in its disregard of basic evidence-gathering norms, its unwillingness to investigate the opposing side’s position, and its inversion of common sense—violates the fundamental rules of fairness and due process that have, for centuries, served as the bulwark of our democracy.

In his explosive essay, Kristof accused Israel of using sexual violence against detained Palestinian prisoners as a kind of “standard operating procedure.” Kristof’s claim is thus not merely that a few rogue Israeli prison guards sometimes behave illegally—as happens in all Western democracies, including our own. It is, instead, that the Israeli government has implemented a systemic policy of deploying sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners on a massive scale.

Altman also faults the timing of the column, which came out the evening before the Civil Commission’s issued its 298-page report on sexual violence against Israelis on October 7, 2023. The Israeli Foreign Ministry says that the Commission offered this report to the paper but the paper wasn’t interested.  The paper denies this, so for the time being we have a “he said/she said” situation. Regardless, Altman avers that the “psychological doctrine of primacy” argues that “a fact finder is often most persuaded by the story he hears first”, implying that Kristof, regardless of the deficiencies of his piece, should at least have held off publishing it until the Civil Commission’s report came out.  We won’t go further into this issue, as Altman finds three major faults with the column:

On the merits, Kristof’s article violates three central precepts of our legal system: It disregards basic rules of evidence gathering; it refuses to investigate the opposing side’s views; and it ignores logic and common sense.

Within this list of three there are buried two other sub-lists, which makes the piece a bit confusing. But Altman’s claims and his accusations of Kristof are pretty clear.  I’ll number the main claims as 1, 2, and 3, with sub-lists given letters as well as numbers.

1.) The column is unfair by making uncheckable claims.  

Let’s start with fairness. One of the fundamental rules of our justice system is that a man should be permitted to confront his accuser. Whether in civil or criminal cases, we have for hundreds of years rejected the English Star Chamber’s technique of allowing anonymous witnesses to advance salacious claims in secret. This principle is so essential to any basic system of fairness that it appears repeatedly throughout our laws—from the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause and its guarantee of public trials to our hearsay rules, which preclude out-of-court statements the accused never had an opportunity to cross-examine. But Kristof’s article relies mostly on anonymous sources whose credibility—much less their political or ideological affiliations—cannot be tested and thus cannot be known.

Here we have four sub-points that expand on this claim:

Kristof justifies his reliance on anonymity by suggesting that his sources would face retribution, either from Israeli authorities or from their own communities, if they came forward. But there are at least four major problems with this excuse.

1a. There is no evidence of retribution against prisoners who claimed to be sexually assaulted, and some claims changed over time:

Kristof provides no evidence of any similar retribution against one of the men he spoke with who has publicly accused Israeli guards of sexual assault. For months now, Sami al-Sai has repeatedly and publicly claimed, including to major news outlets like NPR and the Times, that he was sexually assaulted while in Israeli detention. There are real problems with al-Sai’s claims. For one thing, soon after his detention, he filed a petition with the Israeli Supreme Court, arguing that he was wrongly detained and asking for his immediate release. In that petition, he complained about the quality of the food he was given and said that he was treated badly,but he notably never mentioned any of the sex allegations he’s now advancing.

. . . But the point here is that, far from suffering any retribution for complaining about his detention, al-Sai was later freed, and Kristof never suggests that he’s since been subject to any form of punishment.

1b. Israel has in place an often-used system for registering and adjudicating prisoner’s complains about mistreatment

Two,any cursory review of Israeli legal databases would reveal that Israeli prisons allow Palestinian prisoners to file complaints about the conditions of their confinement—and that these complaints do get filed. Indeed, since 2023, Israel has received 182 such complaints filed by Israel Prison Service detainees from the Gaza Strip. . . But the point is that Kristof offers not a single shred of evidence that any of the Palestinian prisoners who filed complaints has ever been subjected to retribution—much less that this speculation about retribution has ever been a feature of the Israeli prison system.

1c. Kristof’s insistence on anonymity makes his allegations uncheckable. 

Kristof’s reliance on anonymity ensures that no one—most especially the Israelis—can ever prove him wrong. That’s because he not only tells us very little about the accusers, he tells us nothing about the offenses. No locations. No dates. No perpetrators. Israeli prisons, like many of our own, are often videotaped, and those recordings are reviewed not just by prison guards but by prison officials and lawyers. If Kristof had conducted anything resembling a fair analysis, we would have expected him to have asked to review some of this footage. But there’s no indication that he ever did. Nor can anyone else do so now because Kristof gave us no details to check against his claims.

1d. The accused has a right to the details of accusations, which gives them a chance to defend themselves. “The accused” here include onot just IDF soldiers and prison officials, but Israel itself, which is threatening to sue the paper.

Four, we should acknowledge that it’s always hard for victims of sexual assault to advance their claims publicly. But any system committed to basic fairness recognizes that the accuser’s preference for anonymity must bend to the accused’s right to confront the claims against him. And that’s not just because we want to allow the accused to test the reliability of the accuser’s claims. It’s also because we presume that the mere act of declaring something publicly itself evinces some degree of credibility.

Kristof fails to mention, for example, that Euro-Med, one of his principal sources, is  an organization with known ties to Hamas and has made false claims about Israel before, including the blood libel that Israel harvests organs of prisoners.

On to the second major point:

********

2.) Kristof failed to investigate “the opposing side’s position”, including systemic aspects of Israeli law that would make widespread abuse improbable.  Again Altman breaks this down into a sublist of three items:

2a. Kristof doesn’t mention Israeli laws prohibiting sexual abuse of prisoners. 

First, in advancing his claim that Israel permits or encourages sexual abuse of detainees as a matter of state policy, Kristof fails even to mention that sexual offenses are strictly prohibited under Israel’s penal code. Indeed, the Israeli legal system imposes enhanced penalties when sexual offenses, including by security personnel, are motivated by race, skin color, or national origin. And Israeli military forces are bound by a host of additional directives, which further protect prisoners from state-sponsored violence, including sexual violence.

Altman implies that Kristof was trying to hide this fact.  Well, yes, probably, but shouldn’t we know that this conduct is against the law? What’s worse is that Kristof also fails to mention that similar Palestinian prisoners’ allegations of abuse have led to serious prison sentences for over a dozen Israeli abusers.

2b. Kristof fails to mention that there’s a special unit of Israeli police designed to investigate claims of prison misconduct. 

Kristof likewise fails to disclose that there’s an elite unit in Israel’s police force, called Lahav 433, tasked with investigating misconduct by the Israeli Prison Service. Now, it’s entirely possible that Israel created this unit inside what’s known as the “Israeli FBI” and filled it with elite servicemembers who do nothing but sit in an office all day, twiddling their thumbs and happily allowing misconduct to go unchecked. The far more plausible inference, I submit, is that Israel didn’t create this elite investigative unit simply to do nothing. But the point is that we don’t know—and cannot know—the answers to any of these questions from Kristof’s “opinion” piece because he never bothered to mention this unit, never thought to interview its members, and never investigated the extent to which it actually enforces Israeli law.

Well, the existence of such a unit doesn’t prove that there wasn’t misconduct, but it does show that there were quite a few deterrents to misconduct.

2c.  A quote from a former Prime Minister of Israel was presented, but a later clarification of that quote by the PM was ignored. Perhaps worse than the two omissions above is Kristof’s shoddy (indeed, slimy) treatment of a comment by a former Israeli Prime Minister. Here’s what Kristof said.

To try to make sense of what I found, I called up Ehud Olmert, who was Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009. Olmert told me he didn’t know much about sexual violence against Palestinians but was not surprised by the accounts I had heard.

“Do I believe it happens?” he asked. “Definitely.”

“There are war crimes committed every day in the territories,” he added.

Of all people to ask! Olmert had been convicted of corruption and bribery as Israel’s finance minister and served 16 months of a 27-month prison sentence. Kristof doesn’t mention this, and Kristof might have added, post facto, this clarification by Olmert:

Olmert clarified, in a statement to The New York Times and obtained by The Free Press, that “Mr. Kristof’s article includes claims of extraordinary gravity: that Israeli authorities have directed the rape of children, that dogs have been used as instruments of sexual assault, that systematic sexual torture is state policy. I did not validate these claims.”

Surely this should have been an addendum to Kristof’s piece. It wasn’t, The NYT hasn’t responded directly to this clarification save to say that Olmert’s statement was tape-recorded and presented accurately “in context”. But when when Olmert later denied that he was not validating claims of sexual abuse, that was no deemed worthy of a mention or correction by the NYT.

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3.) The “dog rape” claims is pure blood libel, in line with previous anti-Israel claims. (And there’s no evidence for it. Indeed, many have deemed the “trained dog rape scenario” to be impossible (I’m not ruling it out with complete certainty, and it will surely need investigating. But I do find it stupid.)

Which brings us to Kristof’s final departure from our fundamental precepts: his lack of common sense. The most salacious claim in Kristof’s piece is the allegation that Israel is now systematically training dogs to rape Arab Muslim men. This claim used to live only on the fringes of the wildest internet conspiracy theories. In 2010, there was a spate of shark attacks in the Red Sea, situated between Israel and Egypt. For whatever reason, most (if not all) of these attacks occurred on the Egyptian side of the border. I happened to be in Israel that summer and heard an Egyptian minister wondering whether the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, was systematically training sharks to eat only Arab flesh. My father and I, hearing this over the radio in a cab, laughed at the absurdity of the claim.

What we’ve seen over the last few years is that wild and illogical conspiracy theories that used to reside only on the internet and in the anti-Israel Arab street now circulate in the mainstream media, brought there by irresponsible journalists who flout evidentiary standards, ignore basic notions of fairness, and disregard common sense and the truth. What kind of a society will we be if we don’t reverse this disturbing erosion in our ability to tell truth from falsehood?

Altman’s claims add up to a serious indictment of Kristof’s column, which, though presented as an op-ed piece, could easily have run as a news piece, but the paper was apparently too lazy to check its claims. To me, the most serious accusations are twofold: the failure of Kristof to document the accusations so they could be checked, even making the complainers anonymous; and also Kristof’s failure to mention the anti-Israel jostpru of some of the individuals and organizations (especially Euro-Med) making the claims.  It is a one-sided column, even for Kristof, who in the past hasn’t done due diligence in checking claims.

The more I think about this, the more I think Kristof should be fired, as the op-ed is a serious lapse in standards, even for an op-ed. If op-ed editor James Bennet could be fired (as he was) for allowing Senator Tom Cotton to write an op-ed arguing that the military might be used to quell post-George Floyd riots, surely Kristof should also be forced to resign. After all, Cotton was just giving an opinion that didn’t rest on facts, while Kristof made many allegations that he didn’t bother to either qualify or investigate.

But of course Kristof is a golden boy for the NYT, and the his column buttresses the NYT’s well known stance against Israel. The NYT is standing behind his column (it has no public editor), and don’t expect it to fact-check his claims. That will be up to Israel.

No quantum gravity. The wrong peak in the wave function. Boltzmann Babies. Roger Penrose pointing out that the arrow of time was smuggled in through the back door. The no-boundary proposal is beautiful. It is also possibly wrong in many specific ways.

Scientists spent decades chasing signs of a mysterious new force hidden inside the muon, one of nature’s strangest particles. But after years of supercomputer calculations, researchers discovered the apparent anomaly was likely a calculation error — and the Standard Model still reigns supreme.

This is the last full batch of photos I have save a few singletons and doubletons. But I ain’t too proud to beg. . .

Today we have some lovely photos by Ephraim Heller on, of all things, herring. Ephraim’s captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) spend most of the year dispersed across the open North Pacific, but each spring they converge on Sitka Sound to spawn. The 2026 spawning biomass was estimated at roughly 233,000 tons of mature herring. This attracts commercial fishermen, fishing birds, Steller sea lions, gray whales, humpback whales, and. . . me. My last post featured humpback whales.

Today’s post features the mayhem taking place off the coast of Sitka on the opening day of commercial herring season. The fishing boats employ purse netting, a form of seine netting, in which a school of fish are surrounded by a net which is pulled tight around them. As the net closes and the herring are forced to the surface, a buffet is created for glaucous-winged gulls (Larus glaucescens) and bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).

A commercial fishing boat hauling in a seine net filled with Pacific herring:

The herring are forced to the surface by the seine:

Glaucous-winged gulls at the buffet:

It was impressive to watch the gulls catch a herring, quickly reposition the squirming fish in their bills, and swallow them in flight in a matter of seconds:

Such speed seems necessary because kleptoparasites abound:

Now for the bald eagles:

Air traffic control is kept busy:

If wind-assisted cargo ships chose routes based entirely on where the winds are better, their fuel use could be cut in half or even completely eliminated

Colossal Biosciences, the company that says it resurrected the dire wolf, now says it has developed artificial eggshells so it can replicate the huge eggs of the moa. Independent experts say this isn't nearly enough to bring back these giant birds

Another attempt to demonstrate that the fiction of acupuncture is based in reality. This time it is the interstitium. Nope.

The post Lipstick on Fengxi first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

An exotic new molecule is shaped like a butterfly, complete with "wings" made from electrons. The discovery could provide a gateway to completely new parts of the quantum realm

Robots are becoming more a part of our lives every year, and worries about a robot army rising up have long plagued the technology. But columnist Annalee Newitz talks to nanobot researchers and finds out the real robot army could be a welcome solution to medical or environmental problems

A round-up of plausible-sounding myths about the Moon, most of which you've probably heard, and some of which you might believe.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You’re doing some late afternoon work on the habitat as part of humanity’s first exoplanet settlement, but the sun is going down so you’re trying to speed things up. Just as the light dims, everything suddenly starts getting brighter. You look up and see the sun starting to rise again, except it’s your second sun. You kick yourself for not checking the daily sunrise and sunset logs, but you’re happy you get to put in a bit more work before you eat dinner.

Black holes crashing together may be revealing clues about dark matter hidden across the universe. Physicists created a new model predicting how dark matter could subtly distort gravitational waves produced during black hole mergers. When they tested the method on real LIGO data, one signal stood out as potentially carrying a dark matter imprint.

Black holes crashing together may be revealing clues about dark matter hidden across the universe. Physicists created a new model predicting how dark matter could subtly distort gravitational waves produced during black hole mergers. When they tested the method on real LIGO data, one signal stood out as potentially carrying a dark matter imprint.

Physicists may have uncovered a surprising new clue that string theory—the idea that the universe is built from unimaginably tiny vibrating strings—could be more than just a mathematical fantasy. Instead of assuming strings existed from the start, researchers began with a few simple rules about how particles behave at extreme energies and discovered that the equations naturally produced the telltale fingerprints of string theory all on their own.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now aiming for an earlier launch in September 2026. Designed to explore dark matter, dark energy, and distant exoplanets, the telescope will capture massive, ultra-detailed surveys of the cosmos using infrared vision. Scientists expect Roman to uncover hundreds of millions of galaxies and possibly even entirely new cosmic phenomena. Its enormous data archive could reshape astronomy for decades.