WE KNOW HE'S GUILTY, WHY DID HIS DUPES BELIEVE HIM?

Unmasking Alger Hiss: a Review of Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy (Ronald Radosh, 3/17/04, Hudson Institute)

What White accomplishes in this innovative and brilliant new book is not yet another attempt to show Hiss's guilt, but rather an examination of how Hiss managed to be both a gifted Soviet agent and "a successful publicizer of his innocence," able to convince so many people. Why, White asks, was Hiss seen as a sympathetic figure by so many who should have known better—and why did they ignore irrefutable evidence in order to go on believing him?

White starts from the premise that Hiss was both a dedicated Communist party member and an agent of Soviet military intelligence from 1934 to 1946, and then asks why Hiss lied about this so blatantly, for so long, and even enlisted friends and family in the lie. He had other options. He could—as his wife desired—have faded into the woodwork and led a private life. He could have admitted his guilt and sought to excuse his actions with the "idealistic" reasons that he thought at the time justified the betrayal of his own country—the rationale used today by left-wing historians to exonerate the Rosenbergs.

Instead, Hiss pursued a consistent path of categorically dissociating himself from the slightest connection with Communism, developing what White calls a false narrative that he would relate for the rest of his life. He was, he claimed, simply a loyal New Dealer and devotee of international peace, a man who was therefore accused by the New Deal's right-wing enemies for their own partisan purposes. He characterized those who accused him as liars and himself as their innocent and unwilling victim. Hiss's chosen narrative was nothing but a spy's cover story, repeated ad infinitum until many opinion makers chose to believe him. [...]

Hiss had a fanatical dedication to vindicating his reputation. One of the major themes of White's psychological portrait is of how Hiss brought his son Tony, who had been estranged from him since childhood, into active participation in his fraudulent effort. He mended his fences with Tony in adulthood, and gained the loyalty of a family member who would carry on the effort to vindicate him even after his death. In effect, he betrayed the trust of loyal friends and family members, including his own son, to pursue the goal of helping the Soviet Union.

What helped Hiss most was the changing moral and political climate. When he was imprisoned, most Americans undoubtedly believed in his guilt. But he maintained his charade long enough for the 1960s and Vietnam to come along and produce a new national climate, one in which many Americans came to believe the worst about their government—that, for example, the Justice Department and FBI would fabricate evidence to convict an innocent person. This skeptical climate enabled Hiss to gain near-vindication, as White puts it, "without his producing a shred of credible new evidence." His tale of partisan right-wingers and government officials orchestrating a frame-up won him fresh supporters among the emerging New Left.

Didn't help that one of the men who brought him down, Richard Nixon, self-destructed in the 70s.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 19, 2004 6:07 PM