Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:14:52.458Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Weinstein on Hiss

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
Affiliation:
History at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9JY.He wishes to thank his colleague Owen Dudley Edwards for his critical reading of the original version of this manuscript and for his many helpful suggestions.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Review Essay
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 1979 , pp. 115 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Weinstein, Allen, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (London: Hutchinson, 1978, £9·95)Google Scholar.

2 Even the most scholarly works on these cases have emphasized the persecutory aspects of the American judicial system: Broehl, Wayne C., The Molly Maguires (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David, Henry, The History of the Haymarket Affair (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1936)Google Scholar. For less judicious trial assessments, see Bimba, Anthony, The Molly Maguires: The True Story of Labour's Martyred Pioneers in the Coalfields (New York: International Publishers, 1932)Google Scholar, and Foner, Philip S., The Case of Joe Hill (New York: International Publishers, 1965)Google Scholar, as well as contemporary writings such as those collected in Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology, ed. Kornbluh, Joyce L. (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1964)Google Scholar. Melvyn Dubofsky presented a sober synopsis of the hagiography on “ martyr ” Hill, Joe in We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1969), p. 312Google Scholar. The Thoreau quotation is from page 54 of Vann Woodward, C.'s The Burden of Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1960)Google Scholar, which contains his instructive essay, “ John Brown's Private War.”

3 On 5 June 1886 the leading American philosophical anarchist wrote to his chief disciple: “ I don't doubt that the police have manufactured evidence, but … the finding of dynamite in [August] Spies' desk was not manufactured, and I know it.” Benjamin R. Tucker to Joseph Labadie, Joseph Ishill Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

4 Smith, John Chabot, Alger Hiss: The True Story (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976, $15.00)Google Scholar.

5 Zeligs, , Friendship and Fratricide, p. 432Google Scholar; Compton to Jeffreys-Jones, 21 July 1978, concerning proposed Zeligs and Compton, Ordeals of Loyalty and Betrayal: Hiss, Chambers, Nixon; Hayden, Sterling, Wanderer (London: Longmans, Green, 1964)Google Scholar.

6 Caute, David, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (London: Secker and Warburg, 1978, £9·95), pp. 58, 59, 113Google Scholar.

7 “ Spies, Guerrillas and Violent Fanatics ” (London, c. 1971–1972). Summary of collective findings kindly supplied by Lily Pincus of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London.

8 “ Allen Weinstein Cross-Examined ” (interview by Jill Macklin and Nancy Whitin circulated as a flyer in the History Book Club Review of June 1978); Lowenfish, Lee Elihu, “ The Odd Couple Revisited and Other Re-evaluations of American Communism and anti-Communism,” Minnesota Review, new series 10, Fall 1978Google Scholar (kindly supplied by its author at the instigation of Alger Hiss); Lowenfish to Jeffreys-Jones, 27 Oct. 1978; Weinstein, , “The Alger Hiss Case Revisited,” American Scholar, 41 (Winter, 1971–1972)Google Scholar.

9 In re Alger Hiss: Petition for a Writ of Error Coram Nobis (27 July 1978), copy kindly supplied by John S. H. Major, University of Hull.

10 Perjury, pp. 243–45; Smith, , Alger Hiss, pp. 339–46Google Scholar.

11 “ Memorandum for the President ” (by White, 19 July 1940) and “ Re conservation of oil ” (conversation involving White and Morgenthau and referring to a meeting at the British Embassy between Morgenthau Lothian, and others: 19 July 1940), under cover of a note to Harold Ickes in Morgenthau's handwriting, dated 6 June 1941 and designated “ very confidential information,” in Henry Morgenthau “ diaries ” and papers, 284, 120–22, 201–225, in Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York (copies supplied through the kindness of the Library's Director, William R. Emerson).

12 Weinstein, , “ The Symbolism of Subversion: Notes on Some Cold War Icons,” Journal of American Studies, 6 (08 1972), 177CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Elstein, David, “ How They Made Sure Alger Hiss Was Guilty,” New Statesman (27 10 1978), p. 538Google Scholar; and see the discussion of Exhibit 43 below.

14 de Toledano, Ralph and Lasky, Victor, Seeds of Treason: The Strange Case of Alger Hiss (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1950), p. vGoogle Scholar.

15 Will, , “ The Myth of Alger Hiss,” Newsweek (20 03 1978), p. 96Google Scholar. For a list of favourable reviews, see Navasky, Victor, “ Allen Weinstein's ‘Perjury’: The Case Not Proved Against Alger Hiss,” Nation, 226 (8 04 1978), 393Google Scholar.

16 Alger Hiss praised what he regarded as the authoritative research and writing of the following: William Reuben (writing for Nation); Elstein, David (review for the New Statesman of 27 10 1978)Google Scholar; and David Levin of the University of Virginia (a review in the Virginia Quarterly). For a typical British review, see Strafford, Peter, “ A Formidable Case,” The Times, 13 07 1978Google Scholar.

17 Navasky, “ Allen Weinstein's ‘Perjury’,” p. 396. See also Jacobs, Eric's challenge of another Weinstein “ interview ” in Encounter, 52 (03, 1979), 81Google Scholar.

18 Hiss to Jeffreys-Jones, 23 Oct. 1978.

19 Weinstein tried to follow through a theory that Schmahl had been privy to a plan to frame Hiss concocted by William J. (“ Wild Bill ”) Donovan, whose motive would presumably have been to strike back at President Harry Truman, who had disbanded Donovan's wartime Office of Strategic Services. But Weinstein could not identify a chief informant concerning the theory, known as “ the G2 man.” In fact, this phrase would describe not a specific individual, but any agent from military intelligence, known as “ G2 ” as in “ deuxième bureau.” No doubt military intelligence would have harboured many a wartime grievance against the empire-building Donovan and the OSS, and some of its agents might have been commensurately subjective, so Weinstein is very probably correct in dismissing the Donovan theory as just another fantasy. Perjury, p. 587.

20 According to Hiss's informal legal adviser Stephen Jones, in Jones to Hiss, 27 Aug. 1978 (a five-page analysis of the coram nobis petition, Xerox copy volunteered for the information of the author and dispatched courtesy of Jones & Gungall, attorneys and counselors at law, Enid, Oklahoma).

21 On page 19 of the coram nobis petition, it is stated: “ In many cases documents have been heavily censored and in others documents have been refused in their entirety because of a claim that they were not required to be produced under the [Freedom of Information] Act.”