Green saw his role as helping to preserve a free and decent society, in which the essential rights of the individual were balanced against the interests of the state. At one point he was summoned to argue before the Supreme Court in the Rosenberg case, and he had no doubts, having studied the private files and secret reports from the cryptographers, of their guilt. Later he came to believe that he had played a significant role in sending the Rosenbergs to their death; it was a role for which he felt little remorse.
