It’s going to be illuminating to see what comes of the disclosure of the records of the grand jury that handed up the espionage charges that eventually led Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. The decision to release the records was made after America voiced no objection to a request from historians, archivists, and a journalist, Samuel Roberts of the New York Times. It will be an educational moment at a time when our country is again in a life-and-death, twilight struggle with an ideological foe.

The Rosenbergs are remembered for stealing what has been called “the secret of the atomic bomb.” A wire from historian Ronald Radosh, co-author of “The Rosenberg File” and a contributing editor of the Sun, reminds us that it is widely acknowledged that the atomic material given to the Soviets by Julius Rosenberg’s brother-in-law, David Greenglass, served only as confirmation to the Russians of the much more accurate information they had received from atomic scientists Klaus Fuchs and Theodore Hall.

Nevertheless, evidence appearing after the 1995 release of de-crypted Soviet cables disclosed that the Soviet network set up by Julius Rosenberg had stolen major top secret classified military information and had successfully given these to the Soviet Union. Even so, a dwindling group of leftists has been campaigning to exonerate the Rosenbergs, whom they insist were framed in a witch-hunt during the years when the Truman administration was hewing a hard line in the Cold War.

Some have argued that Ethel Rosenberg was arrested merely as a lever to force her husband to admit his guilt and provide more information on the Soviet network he ran. Yet the intercepts of Soviet cables released in 1995 have shown that Ethel Rosenberg knew about her husband’s espionage activity, was an accessory to his action, and willingly helped to recruit new spies for the Soviets — hardly the traditional uninvolved housewife her defenders made her out to be.

What then is apt to come from the sealed grand jury records? Mr. Radosh writes to us that one name to look out for is William Perl, a scientist who is now deceased but who once handed over to the Kremlin the design for the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, the plane the Soviets copied for the MIG fighter planes used in the Korean War. The science writer Steve Usdin has pointed out that other material Perl handed over “helped communist troops in North Korea fight the American military to a standoff.” Perl was indicted and convicted on a perjury charge for denying that he even knew the Rosenbergs.

Another grand jury witness to watch for is the historian James Weinstein, also now deceased. When, years after the events, he was interviewed by Mr. Radosh, he quickly grasped from the questions that the FBI knew that an automobile he had lent while a student at Cornell in 1948 and 1949 was used to drive Rosenberg around Ithaca, New York, where Rosenberg was trying to find information about atomic research carried out at the University. This lead Weinstein to revise his view and conclude that Rosenberg, whom he once drove home to New York City, was a genuine Soviet agent.

It will also be interesting to see how the prosecutors and grand jury used information given the government by Jerome Tartakow. FBI files released in 1978 showed him to be the key secret informant in the case; he had befriended Rosenberg immediately after his arrest, when he had been made Rosenberg’s cellmate. Rosenberg spilled the beans to Tartakow, bragging of his Soviet espionage and telling him details that confirmed what the FBI had pieced together about the persons the bureau suspected of working with Rosenberg. When the Grand Jury records are released, it will allow us to fill in holes and perhaps disclose what more prosecutors had and could have used at the trial, but chose not to.

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Most of all, though, the release of these records keeps alive a story for our own time. Our country, after all, is again in a struggle against an enemy that, motivated by ideology and a desire for conquest, seeks to penetrate our defenses at every opportunity. It is an enemy that, though not in control of a major empire like the Soviet Union, is out to obtain a new generation of atomic secrets. Like the communists of yore, it maintains a network of agents in our country, tries to use our own institutions against us, and works to gain access to our universities and scientific programs. This does not mean that we have to abandon our system of civil liberties, presumption of innocence, and common decency. But it is a time when we can all use a reminder of the fact that spies exist and can do catastrophic damage. And that sometimes the front line in a war is inside the secret proceedings of a grand jury composed of ordinary men and women interrupting a busy week to do their civic duty.