William Perl

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William Perl, whose real name was William Mutterperl, was a student at the City College of New York. He was a member of the Steinmetz Club. Perl graduated with a degree in engineering in 1939, and in 1940 began working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at their Langley Army Air Base research facility in Hampton, Virginia. In 1944 Perl transferred to the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory in Cleveland. NACA sent Perl to Columbia University to pursue doctoral studies in Physics.

Following his doctoral work at Columbia, Perl returned to Cleveland to work on a jet propulsion project related to supersonic flight. Perl was nearly given a position with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission when his connection with Barr and Sarant was turned up by a security check.

Perl appeared before the Rosenberg Grand Jury in the summer of 1950, denying any relationship with Julius Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, Max Elitcher, and the Sidoroviches. The FBI suspected Perl of providing information to the Soviets, and he was arrested on March 15, 1951. Evidence that Perl had engaged in espionage activities was mostly circumstantial. In May 1953 a jury found Perl guilty of two counts of perjury for about his relationship with Rosenberg and Sobell. He was acquitted of two other counts. Perl served two concurrent 5 year sentences at the New York House of Detention, maintaining his innocence in any espionage plot.

[edit] Source

Douglas Linder, A Trial Account (2001)