On August 3, 1948, Time magazine editor Whittaker Chambers made a stunning allegation before the House Un-American Activities Committee: Alger Hiss, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former high-ranking State Department official, had served with him in the Communist underground. Hiss's defense was the most gripping story of its day, and the question of his guilt has remained an American enigma. Now, historian Allen Weinstein finally solves, once and for all, one of the great American mysteries. Weinstein also, for the first time ever, draws upon previously inaccessible information from Soviet archives. The result is an extraordinary book that leaves anyone who reads it with one inescapable conclusion: Alger Hiss was guilty.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In this updated version of the landmark book on one of the truest contenders for the title of "trial of the century," historian Allen Weinstein shows beyond all reasonable doubt that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. The book is meticulously detailed and sharply persuasive. Its cast of intriguing characters include Hiss, who maintained his innocence until his death in 1996, and his accuser Whittaker Chambers, a pair who became respective icons for left- and right-wing politics in America during the Cold War years. J. Edgar Hoover and a young Richard Nixon also play key roles. The best quality of Perjury, however, is the uncommon clarity of Weinstein's prose. The very first paragraph neatly sums up the controversial case:
Once upon a time, when the Cold War was young, a senior editor of Time accused the president of the Carnegie Foundation of having been a Soviet agent. The Time editor made his charge stick, aided by an obscure young Congressman from the House Committee on Un-American Activities, a tough federal prosecutor, and the director the FBI. As a result, the Endowment president spent forty-four months in jail and became a cause celebre; the magazine editor resigned and died a decade later, still obsessed with the case; the prosecutor became a federal judge; the director of the FBI lived to guard the republic against real or imagined enemies for another twenty-five years; and the young Congressman left obscurity behind to become the thirty-seventh President of the United States.--John J. Miller
About the Author
Allen Weinstein is the president and CEO of the Center for Democracy. A historian by training (with professorships at Smith, Georgetown, and Boston University), he is based in Washington, D.C.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Definitive Judgement on a Long Running Controversy.,
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This review is from: Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (Paperback)
In 1948, lawyer Alger Hiss made what was arguably the biggest mistake of his life: he sued Whittaker Chambers. Chambers had publicly accused Hiss of having been a Communist Party member, Soviet spy, and agent of influence. Unfortunately for Hiss, Chambers had saved some of the material Hiss passed him for transmission to Soviet Military Intelligence. Alger Hiss ended up in prison, was disbarred, and spent the rest of his life trying to convince people a fantastic conspiracy had framed him.
In 1971, Hiss made a mistake almost as large: he let an honest man look at his defense files. Historian Allen Weinstein had previously believed that Hiss was innocent. But when he read what Hiss's lawyers said in private, and what FBI agents had written J. Edgar Hoover, he found there was no reasonable doubt possible anymore. Hiss had spied for the Soviets, and Chambers had usually told the truth to the best of his ability. Chambers had sometimes lied, but only when he attempted to minimize Hiss's guilt -- and his own, for Chambers had secrets about himself to protect, and a well founded fear of being the messenger killed for bearing bad news. PERJURY is a fascinating account of two complex men, best friends who became mortal enemies when one split with Stalinism, and the other remained faithful. The lives of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers would have been interesting even if they had never met or publicly clashed. Their long duel caught them in "A tragedy of History," as Chambers put it. PERJURY tells that story better than anyone before or since. It's a masterpiece of historical detective work. When it was published originally, all but the die hard apologists for Stalinism conceded Hiss's guilt. The new edition has recently released material from the National Security Agency's Venona decryptions, and the KGB's Moscow files that destroy even the unreasonable doubts. My highest recommendation.
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Masterpiece of American Historical Writing,
By
This review is from: Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (Paperback)
This is one of *the* books that made me want to become a historian. It's a miracle of research and writing. Weinstein started out as a left-wing partisan who wanted to prove Hiss innocent, and he received blessings from the man himself. But as he dug deeper and deeper, the professor discovered the remains of the secret world of Soviet espionage in America, and became convinced that Hiss was guilty. And he proves it in a tour-de-force of historical analysis: I would go so far as to say their is really no reasonable doubt left. This new edition contains the evidence of the recently declassified "Venona" Soviet documents that were decoded by the CIA at the time. One can argue about the wisdom of keeping such damning evidence secret for so long, but their release now puts the last nail in the coffin of the ill-considered faith of those who still, after everything, mock Whittaker Chambers. The writing of this book affected Weinstein so much he left academia to set up a foundation to help the U.S. goverment build democracy around the world. He recently wrote a sequel, "The Haunted Wood", about the history of Soviet espionage in the U.S. during the '30's and '40's.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Truth Ignored,
By
This review is from: Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (Paperback)
This is the most thorough and comprehensive piece of investigative journalism ever published. Weinstein treats the case like an onion, he peels off one layer, then another, then another.... His treatment of when the Hiss typewriter was manufactured would fill a small book in itself. The same is also true of the transfer of Hiss's car to the communist party, the Soviet gift of a carpet to Hiss, the dating of Chambers' microfilm, and so on.
So why didn't Weinstein go on to become another Bob Woodward? Probably because his conclusion that Hiss was, in fact, a communist spy was unacceptable to so many people at that time. This was a great injustice to a man who told the truth and was himself suprised that the facts so heavily vindicated Chambers. With the publication of Sam Tanenhaus's "Whittaker Chambers: a biography," the truth of Weinstein's conclusion has now been, finally, accepted by most people-even on the left. But why Tanenhaus's book, which contains hardly anything new, should have changed anybody's view seems odd. I suspect that with the passage of time, Tanenhaus's softer tone, and Hiss's death, many Hiss supporters felt the time had come to concede an unpleasant truth.
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