"Too bad": Woman, 98, loses bid to nix atomic spy case conviction

NEW YORK -- A New York judge has rejected a 98-year-old woman's request to erase her 1950 conviction for conspiracy to obstruct justice in the run-up to the atomic spying trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Manhattan Judge Alvin Hellerstein said Thursday that Miriam Moskowitz's lawyers could not show that newly released records would have changed her trial's result. Moskowitz lives in Washington Township in Bergen County, New Jersey. She served a two-year prison sentence.

She said afterward: "Too bad." She says she's disappointed.

The government says she conspired with two men to lie to a grand jury investigating allegations of atomic espionage.

The Rosenbergs were convicted of passing nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union and were executed in 1953. Since then, decoded Soviet cables have appeared to confirm that Julius Rosenberg was a spy, but doubts have remained about Ethel Rosenberg's involvement.