Customer Reviews

Alger Hiss and the Battle for History

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Having read many books on Alger Hiss, my first reaction to Susan Jacoby's new book on Hiss was to wonder why at this point in time is there the need for yet another treatment of the Hiss case. However, Jacoby has written some outstanding books I have reviewed on Amazon, so I took a chance. It must be made clear at the outset that Jacoby here is not refighting the issue of Hiss's conviction for perjury (with which she agrees) or whether he was a Communist spy (about which she is more skeptical). Rather her goal is to show how the Hiss issue has played a continuing role in American politics since the late 1940's in many unfortunate connections. For example, it has been used by the right she believes to try and conflate liberalism with Communism; to serve as a device for attacking the New Deal and its programs; and for converting once liberal folks like Irving Kristol into the neocons of today. In short, as she puts it, there are ideological fault lines in American thought that directly connect with the Hiss case.

Jacoby traces the case, explores the backgrounds of Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, sets the context by discussing Nixon and McCarthy, and relates Hiss to the postwar "witch hunts" and cold war mentality that kept many Americans on edge throughout the last five decades. Along the way, she throws out some interesting thought provokers: was Hiss just like Daniel Ellsberg?; what actual damage did the supposed Communist spy rings actually inflict?; does Watergate's disgrace of Nixon establish Hiss's innocence?; do recent releases from the Kremlin files exonerate or condemn Hiss? Again and again she returns to the central issue: why has this late 1940's episode played such a continuing role in American politics virtually up to the present? The author has included a helpful chronology, six pages of notes and a selected bibliography. For folks younger than say 40, the Hiss case must seem as relevant to today as wearing a bustle. But Jacoby demonstrates how this strange episode has shaped in part the political environment we confront today.

I found the book to be quite good and some of the reviewers here have completely missed the point, namely this is less a work of historical investigation, and more an interesting analysis of the reactions of both the Right and Left to the affair. The arguments of that time are stated and reassessed, and later the author parallels them to other ideological conflicts of later years. In this regard the book is extremely useful and other readers should ignore the verbose and borderline pompous critiques of some other reviewers. Case studies are intriguing for the ability to spark debate and suggest parallels to other circumstances, which I why I highly recommend the book.

The central question of this book is NOT whether Alger Hiss was guilty - either of espionage for the Soviets in the late 1930s and early 1940s or of perjury in 1948 concerning his relationship with Whittaker Chambers. Rather, the book examines why, over the decades, so many people on both the right and the left have been so exercised and strident over Alger Hiss and his prosecution. "What remains important about the Hiss case today is its ability to strike chords located along ideological fault lines that, in spite of many cultural shifts, extend from the 1930s to the present." By itself, the Hiss case would seem to be a rather minor matter, especially sixty years later. But the "Hiss Affair" (some have hyperbolically argued that it is this country's Dreyfus Affair) has become a lightning rod for larger issues, especially those relating to when, and how far, the government may infringe on individual civil liberties in the name of national security. As Susan Jacoby says early in ALGER HISS AND THE BATTLE FOR HISTORY, "Ask anyone what he or she thinks of HUAC or McCarthy and their effect on civil liberties in the years after the Second World War, and you don't need to ask where he or she stands on the Patriot Act today."

That, of course, is somewhat of a rhetorical overstatement, the sort no sober-minded historian should make but one perhaps acceptable in a work of political analysis. ALGER HISS AND THE BATTLE FOR HISTORY definitely belongs to the latter category and there is a fair amount of similar rhetoric. If you need to know in advance what Jacoby's political orientation is, she admits to being a liberal - though she never was a Hiss supporter or apologist. By and large, however, I found most of her comments and analysis to be more "centrist" or ironically detached in nature than partisan.

Although a history of the Hiss case per se is not its mission, the book perforce covers the case in broad outline, from the HUAC hearings and original prosecutions for perjury, to Hiss's efforts for the remainder of his life to redeem his reputation, to the studies (adverse to Hiss) based on intelligence documents released in the 1990s by Russia and the National Security Agency. Unfortunately, there appear to be a few factual inaccuracies in Jacoby's account, which, though minor, are a little disquieting. As for the analysis, again there a few slips: occasional sloppiness or over-the-top irrelevancies or non sequiturs. (It appears that the book could have benefited from a stronger edit, assuming, wistfully, that there was any meaningful editing at all.)

On the whole, however, I found ALGER HISS AND THE BATTLE FOR HISTORY worthwhile and provocative. In trying to follow partisan politics in the United States, one can easily become engrossed in week-to-week or election-by-election skirmishes and issues. ALGER HISS AND THE BATTLE FOR HISTORY encourages a much broader and longer perspective.

Susan Jacoby's book on the Alger Hiss case might easily be subtitled: Give It a Rest Already. The "It" in question is the tendency among some to make sweeping assumptions about anyone's beliefs or motivations based on whether or not they believe Alger Hiss was a spy or was guilty of perjury or was framed, etc. I've been fascinated by this case since I first saw the great PBS miniseries "Concealed Enemies" in the early 1980s. That fascination has led me to read many books on the topic, some good (Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars), some bad (fratricide) and some genuinely life-changing (Perjury). Jacoby's book is both good and eye-opening; in spots it is genuinely entertaining.

Jacoby is a self-described liberal who has written this book out of frustration at seeing the Hiss case still used as a litmus test of sorts. The liberal point of view has been under represented in this case since Verona so it is good to have another side weigh in. She states up front that she believes Hiss was a spy and she also states that very few liberals have thought Hiss was innocent since Weinstein's book. She also admits to finding Hiss himself to be rather noxious, an impression I share. Jacoby sketches the outlines of the HUAC hearings, the libel trials and Hiss's attempts at rehabilitating his image before addressing how the Hiss case is used today.

Jacoby inadvertently identifies another thing about this case that has got to go. As with so many books on the case, there are more fresh insights offered as to the impact of homosexuality on espionage and the criminal justice system. Long time Hiss aficionados will be familiar with the theory that Whittaker Chambers framed Alger Hiss because Chambers had a homosexual yen for Hiss. The daisy chain gets extended further here when Hiss's stepson publicly regrets that he couldn't' testify for Alger (and thus exonerate him) because he was homosexual and it would have been used against him on the stand. So, to recap, Chambers framed Hiss because he was gay, his stepson Timothy couldn't save Hiss because he was gay, and his son Tony alleges he became gay for a while because he lived for too long with his mother (Hiss's ex-wife Priscilla) who was bitter about the case. What's next? Claims that communism makes you gay? I'm eagerly awaiting the pronouncement that the Soviets weren't so much marching as mincing toward world domination. Can't we please, please dispense with these ridiculous stereotypes, too?

Jacoby does make a few missteps in my mind. I can't agree with her contention that the pursuit of Hiss was grounded in a desire to smear FDR and the New Deal. Maybe that was in the minds of some of the participants but HUAC had been around since World War 1, FDR was dead and the New Deal was old news by 1949. Jacoby also seems to embrace the notion that Hiss engaged in espionage because the Soviet Union was the only country openly opposing Hitler. A "cooler" less impassioned alliance, as she sees it. This theory has been around for a long time and for some reason it seems more palatable to many than the idea that Hiss (or any other American with communist sympathies) might have actually believed in the tenets of communism. Certainly this was the motivation for some but why is that any more plausible than the idea that Hiss thought the misery wrought by the Depression demanded radical change? White makes a convincing case that we can't know why Hiss gave his allegiance to the Soviet Union. Any theory is as plausible as the next.

She gives much credit to Weinstein's book but, weirdly, questions how Weinstein could have started out thinking Hiss guilty of lying to HUAC but innocent of espionage as one would cancel out the other. That's not so irreconcilable to me, in fact, I'll give you a theory straight from that old Hiss standby: "I was gay at the time." Jacoby even goes so far as to imply that Hiss was so cool, patrician and awesome that Chambers must have been attracted to him. Please. For all we know, Chambers' taste ran to tall, blond Tom of Finland types. The most unfortunate misstep is when she snidely follows up Chambers story of his "conversion" from communism after pondering the perfection of his baby daughter's ear with a note that Chambers was still having gay one night stands. Does she really mean to imply that one cannot love one's child or have spiritual beliefs if one is gay? I hope not.

The core of this book however, is Jacoby's call to stop using the Hiss case as it was in the 1950s when it was a "real indicator of which side you were on." Whether you believe that Hiss case was Bambi vs. Stalin (Chambers was the original translator of the Bambi story from German to English) or Harvard vs. Tricky Dick, the fact remains it is history, not current events. For me, the Hiss case is no more an indicator of broader beliefs than the case of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. Historical puzzles, yes; continuing conspiracy? Not so much.

This book is not for everyone. It is definitely not for the beginner. It doesn't offer new information about the case but it does offer a different point of view. For me, that additional point of view makes essential reading for anyone deeply interested in the understanding the Hiss case and it's impact. It isn't likely to settle the debate, just broaden the discussion.

I regret spending $24 on this book-- it's not worth it to read these
empty, vacuous, personal opinions. We care about the Alger Hiss case;
we don't care about your personal opinions even where they are
accessorized with statistical references.

The author dresses up her words to impersonate a scholar, but she is far from
being one. Hoping to make herself look really good, she takes a few cheap
shots at the so-called 'historical amnesia' of Americans. Then, I read
this vacuous posturing in connection with the one definitive, scholarly,
legally grounded, impeccably researched account and critque of Alger Hiss'
life and pyschology, namely Ronald White's "Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars"
which is as authentic as it will get on this topic:

[Trying to provide a critique of White's impeccable analysis of the propensity
for deception already imbedded in Alger's psychology as evidencing by his
lying to his employer regarding the fact that he was to be married]:

She states, and in a kind of low class, kitchen table gossipy talk on page 48:

"I don't know how unusual, or unusually manipulative, it is for any twenty-
five year old to want to have his cake and eat it too when it comes to
fulfilling both his sexual desires and his professional ambitions; it seems
to me quite a stretch from thinking that you can evade a crotchety old
boss's rule against marriage for staffers with thinking you can get away
with being a Communist spy."

THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR EDUCATED DISCOURSE?

For God's sake, a first year law student can make the distinction between
"fulfilling...sexual desires" (which he was free to do; he was marrying a
divorced woman with a child, after all; I think one can reasonably infer that
Priscilla was not playing the virgin with Alger) and fulfilling an explicit
request of the employer to remain unmarried during one's employment.

The issue is not "fulfilling sexual desires" or even marriage, the issue
is how Alger knew about the rule, violated it , covered it up, and then attempted
to maintain his innocence by excusing himself in various slippery ways.

Professor White convincingly analyzes that lie of Alger's to illustrate how
adept and accomplished Alger was at deception; it is a pristine example of
Alger's ability to maintain a fiction and evade responsibility, an act that
he carried on in the national arena for the whole of his life.

This author is adept at one thing: DUMBING THINGS DOWN, exactly what she accuses
the American public and media of. Repulsively, when I opened the book to another
page, I hear her ugly voice taking cheap shots at Diana Trilling and others,
all in the attempt to be clever, writing earlier that everyone during the
relevant times wrote biographies who could start a sentence with a capital
letter and end it with a period. This kind of mentality is not witty, or
enlightening. It is repulsive. By putting others downs she seeks to lift up her
own empty pronouncements.

If you want real, hard evidence, brilliant analysis, undistorted facts, and
an overwhelmingly convincing analaysis of the contradictions of Alger Hiss and
the people and places relevant to his life, read Professor White's book.
Unlike this one, I could not put it down. This one will go down at the
aforesaid page 48 , but it will be in the trash bin where it undoubtedly
belongs.

I love Susan Jacoby, but I find her writing style, albeit technically proficient for sure, boring. Perhaps I shouldn't have read this book as I might be too young to fully appreciate the allure of Hiss the same way Susan Jacoby and contemporaries can. After 'The Age of American Unreason', I was very excited to get into Hiss, but finishing it was more of a labor and less of a love.

This book, although it does provide some new material, only serves to confuse the issue. As far as I am concerned, the material contained in the excellent book, by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, "Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America" (Yup 2009), forever closes the case on Alger Hiss as a proven Soviet spy, insofar as it is based on actual KGB files to which Mr Vassiliev was temporarily given access. Alger Hiss spied first for the GRU, then for the KGB, out of ideological conviction. What we know little about is what Hiss did while he was under GRU control, since the GRU has not, and in all probability will never, open its files to researchers. "Hiss and the GRU" would have been the book to write -if the data was available. All the rest is pussyfooting around the issue.

Ms. Jacoby has here proven not to be an "independent scholar" and there's nothing original about this banal book. She makes sweeping assertions yet provides not one supporting example for any of them. Her previous work has been perhaps rightly praised but this book is a mess, an embarrassment she'll have to atone for.

A few examples of her shoddiness:
pg 6: "At first Chambers denied that he and Hiss had engaged in espionage, but a few months later (after the statute of limitations on espionage had expired), he led HUAC investigators to the microfilm...."

The statute expired years before 1948. It was Hiss's libel suit which prompted Chambers to produce evidence in Nov. 1948.

pg 7: "Hiss never explained exactly why he would lend money, in the depths of the Depression, to someone who was only an acquaintance."

Because Crosley asked him for the money, small amounts, and times were hard. Why suspect wrong of a man for small favors, for generosity?

pg 10-11: Hiss and Dreyfus cases. Actually, the Hiss case IS the American Dreyfus case because of the almost universal attitude of accepting the jury verdict (tainted by gross prosecutorial misconduct as proven by FOIA releases) and the subsequent verdicts of "opinion trustees" such as Jacoby.

pg 18: "Hobson, after delivering a pained account of his inability to testify at his stepfather's trials because he was gay and his secret would have been exposed...."

Tim Hobson was 22 in November 1948 when Alger told his attorney William Marbury about Tim's homosexuality, which he was sure HUAC knew of and would use against him. Alger and Priscilla Hiss didn't want Tim involved but Tim was willing if not eager to help Alger even if it meant exposure.

pg 20: "I should say for the record that I believe Hiss was guilty of both perjury and spying, but I find evidence of the latter persuasive...."

This is just pretentious. She hasn't seen much evidence obviously. Did she read the trial transcript? HUAC testimony? Grand jury records? Hiss defense files? She admits not being able to follow Weinstein's Perjury. Did she even read Witness? Doesn't appear she did much research at all.

pg 22: More pretensions: "But even if I had never read a word of the dozens of doorstop-weight books written about the case...."
She would have been convinced by Alger's 1988 memoir that he was a "master of what might charitably be called selective memory." But where are the examples of this selectivity? All writing is selective anyway.

pg 25: "Indeed, the conspicuous trait uniting Hiss's dogged ex post facto bloodhounds with his die-hard defenders is the need to be 100 percent right in order to vindicate not only their verdict on American history but the government policies they espouse today."

Just who is she talking about here? Who are the die-hard defenders? The Nation magazine? Who else? She doesn't say.

pg 25: "Once a naive liberal, always a naive liberal. On the left, the reluctance to let go of the Hiss case also has a pedigree extending from the 1930s...."

Do these liberals even exist? WHO are they?

pg 40: "Indeed, when Chambers privately told Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle in 1939 that Hiss, among other State Department officials, was a member of the Communist Party, Berle was not alarmed enough to launch a serious investigation. To the political right, Berle's failure to follow up on Chambers's charges is a significant and ominous indicator of the Roosevelt administration's leftist sympathies."

Berle in fact did follow up, as he claimed at great length before HUAC on August 30, 1948 and later before the grand jury, and even in his published diary. Berle was a Republican with unquestioned anticommunist bona fides who was unlikely to do Hiss any favors.

pg 62: Alger was not 5 when his father committed suicide, only 2 and some months. Her comments about the suicide are pointless.

pg 64: "Hiss does not even mention any of the people in the IJA by name...."

Sure he does, Lee Pressman for one.

pg 92: "Chambers said he feared that the documents Hiss had turned over to Soviet agents would now wind up in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. But Berle, as we know, did not follow up...."

This is just not true at all. Chambers never said that.Chambers never admitted to espionage to anyone until November 1948, nine years after his meeting with Berle. He himself admits in his autobiography Witness that espionage was not talked about with Berle, and Berle certainly denied that Chambers said anything about espionage. However, it was Isaac Don Levine who insisted that Chambers go to the authorities (Berle) (against his will almost) because he thought Chambers knew more than he had let on prior to the Nazi-Soviet pact, and Levine was worried that the Soviet spy network in the U.S. would turn over information to the Nazis. But Chambers told Berle nothing about spies or spying, recounting stories to Berle that he said he had only heard about and was not directly involved in. He offered Berle no documentation and did not want to go to the FBI with his story.

pg 95: "Chambers provided no details of spy operations; indeed, he initially testified that the Ware group of which he and Hiss were both members...."

Chambers purported to be only a courier, not a member of the Ware group. But he did write in Witness that he was with Ware when he first met Hiss. Initially, on August 3, 1948, when asked by HUAC a question about Harold Ware, Chambers testified that he "never knew him." No one ever questioned him about this testimony and he of course later made Ware a central character in his alleged underground life.

pg 97: "Hiss's denial [before HUAC, Aug. 5] was frontpage news throughout the country. What followed, in swift succession, was the first face-to-face confrontation between the two men...."

The day before Hiss testified his photograph was on the front pages also. What followed was not quite so swift. It was 12 days later that Nixon arranged a first confrontation between Hiss and Chambers, a lot of time to manipulate opinion, to stage manage events, to leak to the press. When Nathan Silvermaster, accused by Elizabeth Bentley of supplying her with information she relayed to the Russians, testified before HUAC on August 4, Bentley was in the hearing room on the spot to confront him. With Hiss (and Harry Dexter White, former Assistant Sec. of Treasury, also falsely accused by Chambers and Bentley) there was a lot of political mileage for the Republicans in delay, and suspicion.

pg 100: "On November 17 Chambers led congressional investigators... to the pumpkin patch"

A revealing (of poor research) error. And she says little if anything about the libel suit which ignited the Hiss case as we know it today. (Well, obviously most of us don't know it very well today.)

pg 101: "Also in November, Chambers turned over stacks of typed copies...."

How many stacks can you make from 65 sheets of onion skin paper? The actual count of copies he turned over.

pg 104: "Hiss's story about having forgotten that he once knew a man named George Crosley...."

Hiss did not forget that he once knew Crosley. He couldn't recognize Chambers as Crosley (from photographs) because Chambers had put on 50 pounds and had his blackened and broken teeth fixed -- the feature Hiss remembered most distinctly about Crosley/Chambers.

pg 106: "... because the drama [of the Aug. 17 private confrontation] took place before the statute of limitations on espionage expired and Chambers revealed his evidentiary ace in the pumpkin patch."

The statute of limitations had nothing to do with it at this point.

pg 109: "and that it probably would have been just as easy, had the government been so inclined, to produce a psychiatrist who would testify that Alger Hiss was a psychopathic personality."

What a stupid remark. On what basis would the psychologist make his testimony? Moreover, there were TWO doctors who testified for the defense that Chambers's actions and writings revealed pathological behavior, especially his lying and accusing. They were cross-examined and mocked by the prosecutor but the prosecution brought forth no experts of their own.

pg 120: "John Foster Dulles ... had supported Hiss's selection as president of the Carnegie...."

Dulles, a conservative Republican, more than supported Hiss, he personally chose and offered him the position. Earlier, in 1944, Hiss convinced FDR, along with Sec. of State Stettenius, much against FDR's instincts, to select Dulles as a delegate to the UN, to show that the UN was truly bipartisan and because Dulles was the foreign policy adviser to two potential presidents, Dewey and Vandenberg. Hiss was not a partisan.

pg 146: "I would be extremely surprised if the Hiss case meant anything at all to the majority of the students, born after 1945, who occupied college buildings and shut down campuses between 1967 and 1971."

What happened to all those "passionate" political and intellectual heirs Jacoby told us about earlier in her narrative? She undermines the major theme of her book with that statement.

pg 163: "Navasky managed to find a number of flaws in Weinstein's scholarship [in his book Perjury] -- particularly regarding the Woodstock typewriter...."

Victor Navasky (of The Nation) most particularly objected to Weinstein's misuse and misquoting of important sources, one of whom sued Weinstein and won a settlement.

pg 165: "To consider the case debatable today is to place oneself outside mainstream scholarly and political discourse."

So what's the point of her book? The Battle is over before it begins. Besides, there is no mainsteam scholarly and political discourse on the Hiss-Chambers case anymore, only blowhard bullies like Jacoby who wish to cut off debate with insults.

pg 184: "Hiss ... made written requests to several Russian officials that he be allowed to search for evidence that he was 'never a paid, contracted agent for the Soviet Union.' This was a carefully constructed phrase."

John Lowenthal made it clear to Russian official Volkogonov, whom he interviewed, that he wanted to know if Hiss had been a paid or an UNPAID agent, an agent in ANY form. Hiss was not an agent according to the archives which were available, some archives were not open for inspection. However, Julius Kobyakov, the Russian offical who actually checked the KGB archives, later said Hiss had never been an agent of any sort. The GRU archives were off limits to Kobyakov but he was informed by his colleagues there that Hiss had not been an agent for military intelligence either. There was no "carefully constructed phrase" except in Jacoby's imagination.

pg 217: "Once a man tells the kind of lie that Hiss told, even if he was no longer a Communist at the time he told the first lie, how can he ever change his story?"

Chambers changed his story many times in important respects, including lying repeatedly under oath to grand juries and congressional committees. Yet his story is almost universally accepted as fundamentally true.

The Hiss-Chambers affair is complex enough for those few of us who have carefully studied it for decades, but the story has become so ossified in mythology and preconceived notions and political pretensions that almost everyone feels free to just tee off on the subject. Jacoby should have known better. At least Allen Weinstein performed REAL work, though his interpretations of the Hiss-Chambers case fly in the face of the mass of facts he trowels out on the pages like so much cement.