February 27, 2004
NOT A FACTUAL ASSESSMENT?:
An Impenetrable Lie: a review of Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars by G. Edward White (MAX FRANKEL, February 29, 2004, NYT Times Book Review)
If you are too young to care much about Alger Hiss, move on. Turn away also if you recall the case and still believe Hiss never fed secrets to Soviet agents. But if you accept Hiss's guilt, as most historians now do, you will profit from G. Edward White's supplementary speculations about why, after prison, that serene and charming man sacrificed his marriage, exploited a son's love and abused the trust of fervent supporters to wage a 42-year struggle for a vindication that could never be honestly gained.White is a legal scholar at the University of Virginia, but in ''Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars'' he is not just parsing legal evidence. Inspired by a chance family connection to Hiss, he felt a need to ruminate on two enduring mysteries: why Hiss persisted in his lying and why he managed to fool so many Americans for so long. White's answers, in a useful supplement to the vast Hiss literature, are plausible but beyond proof.
We will need novelists to recreate the angry idealism of the Depression years that led so many Americans to feel a kinship with Communists. A decade later, in the alarming first years of the cold war, even inoffensive ''fellow travelers'' came to be viciously hunted as traitors, and so the successful prosecution of Hiss greatly fanned the hysteria. In the ensuing partisan wars, believing Hiss guilty or innocent was likely to depend more on a cultural choice than a factual assessment.
Amazing--they still can't accept that the fact is that he was guilty. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 27, 2004 09:04 PM
They never will, Orrin. To accept that he was guilty would require them to reassess their entire world-view, and that's too frightening for them. Easier and more reassuring for them to live in their fantasy world.
Posted by: Joe at February 27, 2004 09:33 PMAlger Hiss, the Baltimore Brahmin turned traitor, had many reasons to deny. First, the arrogance
of his noblesse oblige, made him believe he was
the only enlightened one, the contradictions of
his behavior, only to considered by crude rea-
ctionaries (Does this remind of anyone in particular)His actual allegiances were success
fully covered up; only some nobody like Crosley/
Chambers could call him out (he didn't know about
the Venona intercepts)Later in life, he might
have realized how his work on the Nye Commission
(The '30s version of the Church hearings; stoked
the venomous isolationism that kept us out of war
"'Inoffensive' fellow travelers" ?
This review is incoherent.
Let's review the bidding. The reviewer concedes that Hiss:
-- sacrificed his marraige
-- exploited his son's love
-- abused the trust of fervent supporters
-- is guilty of espionage (at least as judged by 'most' historians)
Then suggests that we need a novelist to sort things out.
How about a jury of his peers?
Oh, almost forgot, he had one of those. On perjury charges (given that the statute of limitations had run on his espionage).
And I'm supposed to feel guilty that he wasn't executed?
Considering the review's author is the former managing editor of The New York Times, just to get this much of a concession out of him means Frankel will be facing months, if not years, or hectoring and intellectual put-downs at Upper West Side coctail parties (though, like Abe Rosenthal before him, there may be some evidence that getting out from under full-time pressure of the Times' cultural biases allows former top news executives like Frankel to slowly regain their senses and move towards more rational thought over a long period of time. However, I'm still doubtful that theory is going to apply to Howell Raines...)
Posted by: John at February 28, 2004 10:00 AM