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Gaps in Narratives of the Hiss Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

David Levin
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Extract

A 1993 article in the washington post about responses to David Brock's The Real Anita Hill argues persuasively that neither the authors nor reviewers of such books are likely to be disinterested. Yet Howard Kurtz oversimplifies when he asks, “Can reviewers fairly evaluate an investigative work that builds its case upon a mountain of disputed facts and assertions? Or must the debate be relegated to a tiny circle of experts, endlessly hashing over arcane details” as in “some modern-day Hiss case?”

The choice need not be so stark. Reviewers cannot evaluate fairly unless they consider details. If they don't read debates of the experts, they may choose to avoid the tedium of complex cases by relying on the reputation of a single expert. That seems to be what two of the best national newspapers have done in recent years about the Alger Hiss case — even while striving to report fairly.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 20 , October 1995 , pp. 257 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

NOTES

1. Kurtz, Howard, “A Revisionist's Nightmare,” Washington Post, 06 10, 1993, sec. D, pp. 1, 10Google Scholar. The book in question is Brock's, DavidThe Real Anita Hill, the Untold Story (New York: Free Press, 1993).Google Scholar

2. Weinstein, Allen, Perjury, the Hiss-Chambers Case (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978).Google Scholar

3. Weinstein, Allen, “Was Alger Hiss Framed?” New York Review of Books 23 (04 1, 1976): 19Google Scholar; New York Times, 02 1, 1976Google Scholar; and Smith, John Chabot, Alger Hiss, the True Story (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976).Google Scholar

4. Irons invoked the Freedom of Information Act. Interview with Peter Irons, Cambridge, Mass., 1976.

5. William Buckley and Richard Pipes expressed their doubts in response to reporters' questions in the original news articles, and Weinstein added an op-ed article for the Washington Post a few days later (October 31, 1992, sec. A, p. 3; and November 4, 1992, sec. A, p. 19). John Lowenthal, a former law professor at Rutgers University, has published several articles on the case and has created a film, The Trials of Alger Hiss (1978).Google Scholar

6. See Levin, David, “Coram Nobis,” Nation 229 (11 17, 1979): 507Google Scholar; Weinstein, , “Was Hiss Framed?” 18Google Scholar; Weinstein, , Perjury, 289Google Scholar; and “The Hiss Case, an Exchange,” New York Review of Books 13 (05 27, 1976): 36Google Scholar. [For the detoxification, see my argument on pp. 264–68.]

7. Amos Perlmutter, in an untitled box below Cohen's, Jacob “The Hiss File: Innocent After All?” National Review 45 (01 18, 1993): 30–31.Google Scholar

8. Levin, David, “Perjury, History, and Unreliable Witnesses,” Virginia Quarterly Review 54 (Autumn 1978): 726.Google Scholar

9. Hiss, Alger, In the Court of Public Opinion (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1957)Google Scholar; Chambers, Whittaker, Witness (New York: Random House, 1952)Google Scholar; Nixon, Richard, Six Crises (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962)Google Scholar; and Levin, David, “In the Court of Historical Criticism,” Virginia Quarterly Review 52 (Winter 1976): 41–78.Google Scholar

10. Levin, , “Unreliable Witnesses,” 726–30Google Scholar; and Levin, , “Coram Nobis,” 507.Google Scholar

11. Sundquist, Eric, “Witness Recalled,” Commentary 88 (12 1988): 58n.Google Scholar

12. In “A Note on Documentation” (Perjury, 591) Weinstein says that “the entire archive used in preparing the book,” approximately “50,000 to 60,000 pages of material,” will be available for inspection “at the Library of Congress and the Harry S. Truman Library.” Navasky and some colleagues, having flown from New York City to Washington, D.C., actually presented themselves at Weinstein's door at the appointed time, a Sunday morning, but were turned away. Weinstein said that he had telegraphed a cancellation to Navasky's office and home in New York on Saturday night, in protest against both what he considered unfair criticisms in the Nation and unreasonable demands concerning the meeting (see Weinstein, 's explanation of the incident in “Allen Weinstein Clarifies,” Encounter 52 [03 1979]: 83–85).Google Scholar

13. See Levin, David, “Hiss Case,” New York Review, 44–46.Google Scholar

14. See Levin, , “Unreliable Witnesses,” 731–32.Google Scholar

15. Levin, , “Hiss Case,” 48Google Scholar:

Hiss, after all, was dealing with well-known lawyers to whom he was accountable.… The defense lawyers certainly would not have stood for suborning or destroying vital evidence in the case, as McLean's willingness to keep the most damaging defense files indicates. Nor, on the other hand, could Alger Hiss have reasonably suggested to his attorneys, without destroying his credibility, that he did not want the typewriter found. He insisted, after all, that he had nothing to hide.

16. Ibid.

17. Indeed, a Bokhara rug which Chambers had sworn he had given to Hiss as an expression of gratitude from the USSR was not subpoenaed by the prosecution, and the defense did not volunteer a similar rug from Hiss's household, although the defense claimed that Chambers had sent Hiss the rug as partial payment in kind for the use of Hiss's apartment.

18. See Wiener, Jon, “The Alger Hiss Case, the Archives, and Allen Weinstein,” Perspectives: American Historical Association Newsletter 30 (02 1992), 10–12Google Scholar; and Weiner, , “Compromised Positions,” Lingua Franca 3 (01–02 1993): 41–48.Google Scholar

19. See MS Box 38, folder 5, in Alger Hiss Papers, Harvard Law School Library. I am grateful for the assistance of Ms. Judith W. Mellins, Manuscripts Associate, and Ms. Judy Chernoff.

20. Weinstein, , Perjury, 289, 386, 387.Google Scholar

21. Wills, Garry, “The Honor of Alger Hiss,” New York Review of Books, 04 20, 1978, p. 29Google Scholar; and Howe, Irving, New York Times Book Review, 04 9, 1978, p. 24Google Scholar. Wills calls Weinstein's procedures “impeccably fair.… He is tentative about any charges other than those brought and proved in court.” Surely Weinstein's narratives of the alleged “Woodstock Coverup” and the alleged loan for Chambers's second car (to be discussed below) cannot meet this standard.

22. In an Appendix, “The Double Agent: Horace Schmahl, Mystery Man” (pp. 584–88), Weinstein denies that the FBI accepted Schmal's offer to work for both sides, but here again Weinstein mentions neither McLean's memorandum of December 28th nor the prosecution's possession of it.

23. McLean, Edward C., Letter of 01 30, 1933Google Scholar, December 8, 1948, in Alger Hiss Papers, Harvard Law School Library.

24. See In Re Alger Hiss: Petition for a Writ of Error Nobis, Coram, ed. Tiger, Edith (New York: Hill and Wang, 1979), 45–48.Google Scholar

25. Lowenthal, John, The Trials of Alger Hiss (1978).Google Scholar

26. This unusual phrase has reminded several commentators of Werfel's, Franz novel Class Reunion, translated by Chambers, (New York: Simon and Schuster), 1929.Google Scholar

27. At the beginning and end of the novel, a broken man named Adler is brought before Sebastian, an administrative judge, as defendant in the murder of a prostitute. At the end, Sebastian learns that this defendant is not the classmate about whom the entire story has led him to agonize. Weinstein, too, reports the conclusion inaccurately, but he is right about the mistaken identity. By concentrating on the silences of “lawyers and psychiatrists” about such facts, he avoids treating the striking similarities in language and psychology.

28. “The rank obscenity of cultured women!” Chambers wrote in a letter some weeks after the alleged meeting. “I was more shocked to hear her use such an expression than at the charge” (quoted by Weinstein on page 264, from an undated letter to Meyer Schapiro). Another undated letter to Schapiro describes the final meeting, but neither letter names the recalcitrant couple. Chambers first described the scene to the FBI, and (so far as I know) first named Alger and Priscilla Hiss, in 1945.

The dating of the first letter has been the subject of some interest in the 1970s and 1980s, when some investigators sympathetic to Hiss hoped to be able to prove that Chambers had broken from the movement in 1937 (as he had repeatedly said until he produced the packet of documents and film), before the date of the first “Baltimore document.” Of course, Alger Hiss denies that the meeting ever occurred, and he denies that he was ever one to weep. Weinstein reports those denials in a note, but accepts Chambers's story, as most of the jurors apparently did. The two jurors who appear in John Lowenthal's film expressly rejected Chambers's claim that Hiss was a Communist.

29. Herald, Leon Srabian to Best, Marshall A., 04 3, 1967Google Scholar, quoted with permission from the Harvard Law School Library, from the Papers of Meyer A. Zeligs.

30. Zeligs, Meyer A., Friendship and Fratricide: An Analysis of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss (New York: Viking, 1967), 216Google Scholar. The ellipsis here is in Zeligs's text.

31. Harold Rosenwald was one of Hiss's attorneys and advisers.

32. Sundquist, , “‘Witness’ Recalled,” 58Google Scholar; compare William Buckley, George Will, and Jacob Cohen.

33. Article III, Section 3: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” Neither Chambers nor Hiss levied war against the United States, and the USSR was not an enemy of the United States in the years between 1933 and 1945.

34. Chambers, , letter to William Buckley, quoted in Weinstein, Perjury, 539.Google Scholar

35. Breindel, Eric M., “Alger Hiss: A Glimpse Behind the Mask,” Commentary 86 (11 1988): 55–58.Google Scholar

36. Wills, , “Honor of Alger Hiss,” 30.Google Scholar

37. Hiss, Alger, Recollections of a Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1988), 96, 125.Google Scholar