Changes

===''Perjury''===

===''Perjury''===

''American Diplomacy'' reports that "[http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2001_07-09/sempa_chambers/sempa_chambers.html most interested people] were finally persuaded that justice had been done by Allen Weinstein’s painstakingly researched book, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=YRyoAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1 Perjury]'', published in 1978."  ''Library Journal'' agrees, "beginning with Allen Weinstein's ''Perjury'', the scholarly consensus has been that Hiss was guilty."<ref>Edward A. Goedeken, "Social Science" (Review: ''The View From Alger's Window'' by Tony Hiss), ''[http://www.libraryjournal.com/ Library Journal]'', [http://books.google.com/books?id=RBvhAAAAMAAJ Vol. 124] (1999), p. 128</ref> ''American Heritage'' magazine editor Geoffrey C. Ward, (author of Ken Burns' PBS miniseries ''The Civil War'') concurs: "I believe the most dispassionate, step-by-step account of the Hiss case is still Allen Weinstein’s ''Perjury.''"<ref>Geoffrey C. Ward, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=LQUaAAAAYAAJ American originals: the private worlds of some singular men and women]'' (HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), ISBN 0060166940, p. 95</ref> Weinstein, a former [http://www.archives.gov/about/info/archivist-biography.html Archivist of the United States], started his research convinced that Chambers "had falsely accused Hiss of Communist ties and espionage."<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=i6l4AAAAMAAJ Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case]'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), ISBN 0394495462, p. xvii</ref> With Hiss's cooperation and access to his [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,918154,00.html attorneys' files], Weinstein set out "intending to prove Hiss's innocence," writes the former [http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300121988 chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence] at the [[CIA]].<ref>Tennent H. Bagley, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Ng7myCguewAC Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games]'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007) ISBN 0300121989, p. 273</ref> "But he was an honest man and the facts he found convinced him (as they do any reader of his book) that Hiss was guilty." On the basis of information he found in the files of Hiss's own attorneys, Weinstein concluded:

''American Diplomacy'' reports that "[http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2001_07-09/sempa_chambers/sempa_chambers.html most interested people] were finally persuaded that justice had been done by Allen Weinstein’s painstakingly researched book, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=YRyoAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1 Perjury]'', published in 1978."  ''Library Journal'' agrees, "beginning with Allen Weinstein's ''Perjury'', the scholarly consensus has been that Hiss was guilty."<ref>Edward A. Goedeken, "Social Science" (Review: ''The View From Alger's Window'' by Tony Hiss), ''[http://www.libraryjournal.com/ Library Journal]'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=RBvhAAAAMAAJ Vol. 124] (1999), p. 128</ref> ''American Heritage'' magazine editor Geoffrey C. Ward, (author of Ken Burns' PBS miniseries ''The Civil War'') concurs: "I believe the most dispassionate, step-by-step account of the Hiss case is still Allen Weinstein’s ''Perjury.''"<ref>Geoffrey C. Ward, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=LQUaAAAAYAAJ American originals: the private worlds of some singular men and women]'' (HarperCollins Publishers, 1991), ISBN 0060166940, p. 95</ref> Weinstein, a former [http://www.archives.gov/about/info/archivist-biography.html Archivist of the United States], started his research convinced that Chambers "had falsely accused Hiss of Communist ties and espionage."<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=i6l4AAAAMAAJ Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case]'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), ISBN 0394495462, p. xvii</ref> With Hiss's cooperation and access to his [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,918154,00.html attorneys' files], Weinstein set out "intending to prove Hiss's innocence," writes the former [http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300121988 chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence] at the [[CIA]].<ref>Tennent H. Bagley, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Ng7myCguewAC Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games]'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007) ISBN 0300121989, p. 273</ref> "But he was an honest man and the facts he found convinced him (as they do any reader of his book) that Hiss was guilty." On the basis of information he found in the files of Hiss's own attorneys, Weinstein concluded:

{{cquote|the body of available evidence proves that Hiss perjured himself when describing his secret dealings with Chambers, so that the jury in his second trial made no mistake in finding Alger Hiss guilty as charged.<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=i6l4AAAAMAAJ Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case]'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), ISBN 0394495462, p. 513</ref>}}

{{cquote|the body of available evidence proves that Hiss perjured himself when describing his secret dealings with Chambers, so that the jury in his second trial made no mistake in finding Alger Hiss guilty as charged.<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=i6l4AAAAMAAJ Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case]'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), ISBN 0394495462, p. 513</ref>}}

===U.S. Government===

===U.S. Government===

Twenty years after Weinstein's book was published, the bipartisan [[Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy|Moynihan commission]] (which had access to previously-classified [[Venona project|Venona]] decrypts unavailable to Weinstein) went further&mdash;not just on perjury, but on espionage&mdash;the commission's unanimous [http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/ Final Report] finding, "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department [in Soviet espionage] seems settled."<ref>Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, ''Secrecy'' (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1997), [http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf Appendix A - Secrecy: A Brief Account of the American Experience], p. A-37 (PDF p. 39)</ref> The commission's chairman, Senator [[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]], a [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E5DC103EF930A15751C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all liberal Democrat], wrote, "Hiss was indeed a [[USSR|Soviet]] agent and appears to have been regarded by [[Moscow]] as its most important."<ref>Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=FWq-5a5tqH0C Secrecy: The American Experience]'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) ISBN 0300077564, p. 146</ref> "Alger Hiss was eventually convicted of perjury rather than espionage," concurs Michael J. Sulick, former chief of CIA counterintelligence and former director of the National Clandestine Service, "but the declassified VENONA decrypts and documents from the Soviet archives eventually proved without a doubt that Hiss had been a spy."<ref>Michael J. Sulick, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=tUsUAAAAQBAJ Spying In America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War]'' (Georgetown University Press, 2012), ISBN 162616066X, p. 167</ref> A comprehensive [[Department of Defense]] review concludes that Hiss was among the "well-placed Americans" who "gradually drifted into service as Soviet agents," thus beginning "careers as spies for the Soviets."<ref>Katherine L. Herbig and Martin F. Wiskoff, "[http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/reports/tr02-05.pdf Espionage Against the United States by American Citizens]," Defense Personnel Security Research Center (PERSEREC) Technical Report 02-5 (July 2002), p. 4 (PDF p. 25)</ref>

Twenty years after Weinstein's book was published, the bipartisan [[Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy|Moynihan commission]] (which had access to previously-classified [[Venona project|Venona]] decrypts unavailable to Weinstein) went further&mdash;not just on perjury, but on espionage&mdash;the commission's unanimous [http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/ Final Report] finding, "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department [in Soviet espionage] seems settled."<ref>Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, ''Secrecy'' (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1997), [http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf Appendix A - Secrecy: A Brief Account of the American Experience], p. A-37 (PDF p. 39)</ref> The commission's chairman, Senator [[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]], a [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E5DC103EF930A15751C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all liberal Democrat], wrote, "Hiss was indeed a [[USSR|Soviet]] agent and appears to have been regarded by [[Moscow]] as its most important."<ref>Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=FWq-5a5tqH0C Secrecy: The American Experience]'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) ISBN 0300077564, p. 146</ref> "Alger Hiss was eventually convicted of perjury rather than espionage," concurs Michael J. Sulick, former chief of CIA counterintelligence and former director of the National Clandestine Service, "but the declassified VENONA decrypts and documents from the Soviet archives eventually proved without a doubt that Hiss had been a spy."<ref>Michael J. Sulick, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=tUsUAAAAQBAJ Spying In America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War]'' (Georgetown University Press, 2012), ISBN 162616066X, p. 167</ref> A comprehensive [[Department of Defense]] review concludes that Hiss was among the "well-placed Americans" who "gradually drifted into service as Soviet agents," thus beginning "careers as spies for the Soviets."<ref>Katherine L. Herbig and Martin F. Wiskoff, "[http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/reports/tr02-05.pdf Espionage Against the United States by American Citizens]," Defense Personnel Security Research Center (PERSEREC) Technical Report 02-5 (July 2002), p. 4 (PDF p. 25)</ref>

The Moynihan commission added that the [[USSR|Soviet]] agent "Ales" (pronounced "Alles") "could only be Alger Hiss."<ref>Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, ''Secrecy'' (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1997), [http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf Appendix A - Secrecy: A Brief Account of the American Experience], p. A-34 (PDF p. 36)</ref> The FBI had come to the same conclusion 47 years earlier: "It would appear likely that this individual [Ales] is Alger Hiss..."<ref>FBI memo: Belmont to Ladd, May 15, 1950 ([http://education-research.org/PDFs/VENONA.pdf FBI file: Venona]), p. 8 (PDF p. 11); Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=mVpWH51F7toC The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors]'' (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2001) ISBN 0895262258, p. 137</ref> "Venona cables confirmed that Alger Hiss (Ales) of the State Department was a GRU agent," agrees [http://intellit.muskingum.edu/alpha_folder/p_folder/peake.html Hayden Peake], curator of the [[CIA]]’s [https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/historical-intelligence-collection.html Historical Intelligence Collection].<ref>Hayden B. Peake, "[http://web.archive.org/web/20061212003123/http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2000/summer/re2-Su0.htm The Venona Progeny]," ''Naval War College Review'', Vol. 53, no. 3 (Summer 2000) (Archive)</ref> Analysts at the [[National Security Agency]] have also gone on record that [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_hiss.html Ales could only have been Alger Hiss]. John R. Schindler, professor of strategy at the Naval War College and himself a former NSA analyst, agrees, calling this identification "[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page61.html exceptionally solid]" and the evidence "compelling." The [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-War&month=0906&week=b&msg=aCgDqWbKqMTj/XUkqzkSAw&user=&pw= late] [[U.S. Air Force]] historian [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Diplo&month=0906&week=b&msg=nGh672LlDx94PGFwC3UDMw&user=&pw= Eduard Mark] called this conclusion "eminently reasonable," concurring that the evidence showed that "ALES was ''very probably'' Hiss."<ref>Eduard Mark, "[http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a714040012 Who was 'Venona's' 'Ales'? Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case]," ''Intelligence and National Security'' Vol. 18 Issue 3 (Autumn 2003), pp. 54–55, 57–88, 62, 64 (italics in original)</ref> [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no4/article09.html#author1 John Ehrman] of the [[CIA]]'s [https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/intelligence-analysis/index.html Directorate of Intelligence] concludes, "it is clear that [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no4/pdf-files/Ehrman_Alger_Hiss_Again-Web%20(U).pdf Hiss alone remains the best candidate to be ALES]."

The Moynihan commission added that the [[USSR|Soviet]] agent "Ales" (pronounced "Alles") "could only be Alger Hiss."<ref>Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, ''Secrecy'' (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1997), [http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf Appendix A - Secrecy: A Brief Account of the American Experience], p. A-34 (PDF p. 36)</ref> The FBI had come to the same conclusion 47 years earlier: "It would appear likely that this individual [Ales] is Alger Hiss..."<ref>FBI memo: Belmont to Ladd, May 15, 1950 ([http://education-research.org/PDFs/VENONA.pdf FBI file: Venona]), p. 8 (PDF p. 11); Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=mVpWH51F7toC The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors]'' (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2001) ISBN 0895262258, p. 137</ref> "Venona cables confirmed that Alger Hiss (Ales) of the State Department was a GRU agent," agrees [http://intellit.muskingum.edu/alpha_folder/p_folder/peake.html Hayden Peake], curator of the [[CIA]]’s [https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/historical-intelligence-collection.html Historical Intelligence Collection].<ref>Hayden B. Peake, "[http://web.archive.org/web/20061212003123/http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2000/summer/re2-Su0.htm The Venona Progeny]," ''Naval War College Review'', Vol. 53, no. 3 (Summer 2000) (Archive)</ref> Analysts at the [[National Security Agency]] have also gone on record that [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_hiss.html Ales could only have been Alger Hiss]. John R. Schindler, professor of strategy at the Naval War College and himself a former NSA analyst, agrees, calling this identification "[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page61.html exceptionally solid]" and the evidence "compelling." The [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-War&month=0906&week=b&msg=aCgDqWbKqMTj/XUkqzkSAw&user=&pw= late] [[U.S. Air Force]] historian [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Diplo&month=0906&week=b&msg=nGh672LlDx94PGFwC3UDMw&user=&pw= Eduard Mark] called this conclusion "eminently reasonable," concurring that the evidence showed that "ALES was ''very probably'' Hiss."<ref>Eduard Mark, "[http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a714040012 Who was 'Venona's' 'Ales'? Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case]," ''Intelligence and National Security'' Vol. 18 Issue 3 (Autumn 2003), pp. 54–55, 57–88, 62, 64 (italics in original)</ref> [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no4/article09.html#author1 John Ehrman] of the [[CIA]]'s [https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/intelligence-analysis/index.html Directorate of Intelligence] concludes, "it is clear that [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol51no4/pdf-files/Ehrman_Alger_Hiss_Again-Web%20(U).pdf Hiss alone remains the best candidate to be ALES]."

===Academic opinions===

===Academic opinions===

"[T]he material we now have from the [[Soviet Union]]," says [http://www.bnc.ox.ac.uk/323/about-brasenose-31/academic-staff-150/professor-vernon-bogdanor-520.html Oxford Professor] Vernon Bogdanor, shows that Hiss "was indeed [http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/harry-truman-president-1945-1953 a Soviet agent]." "Part of Hiss's [[KGB]] file has come out that proves the obvious point he was [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/08/russia.davidsmith guilty as charged]," agrees [http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/cma1001@cam.ac.uk Cambridge University]'s Christopher Andrew, the [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage]. "[C]orroborative evidence now available," according to Andrew and [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/world/europe/23poison.html ex-KGB agent] Vasili Mitrokhin, puts the identification of the Soviet agent "Ales" as Hiss "beyond reasonable doubt."<ref>Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=9TWUAQ7Xof8C The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB]'' (London: Gardners Books, 2000) ISBN 0-14-028487-7, p. 599</ref> "Numerous KGB/[[NKVD]] documents... contain extensive references to Hiss," concurs Mark Kramer, [http://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/research_portal/hpcws.html director of the Project for Cold War Studies] at [[Harvard University]], "either by name or through the codename Ales, which seems to fit [http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/37819.html only Hiss]." According to Harvard historian [http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/plokhii.php Serhii Plokhii], "New evidence from the Soviet archives supports the thesis that Hiss was a Soviet spy at the time of the Yalta Conference."<ref>Serhii Plokhy, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=0wOKfjnXdAUC Yalta: The Price of Peace]'' (Penguin, 2010) ISBN 0670021415, p. xxv</ref> Jonathan Brent, [http://www.yale.edu/annals/Team.htm executive editor of Yale University Press's "Annals of Communism"] (and&mdash;ironically&mdash;[http://www.bard.edu/academics/faculty/faculty.php?action=details&id=1380 holder of the "Alger Hiss" chair] at Bard College), comments, "We're 99 percent certain that [http://www.heymiller.com/2009/06/the-annals-of-jonathan-brent/ Hiss was a spy]."

"[T]he material we now have from the [[Soviet Union]]," says [http://www.bnc.ox.ac.uk/323/about-brasenose-31/academic-staff-150/professor-vernon-bogdanor-520.html Oxford Professor] Vernon Bogdanor, shows that Hiss "was indeed [http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/harry-truman-president-1945-1953 a Soviet agent]." "Part of Hiss's [[KGB]] file has come out that proves the obvious point he was [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/08/russia.davidsmith guilty as charged]," agrees [http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/cma1001@cam.ac.uk Cambridge University]'s Christopher Andrew, the [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage]. "[C]orroborative evidence now available," according to Andrew and [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/world/europe/23poison.html ex-KGB agent] Vasili Mitrokhin, puts the identification of the Soviet agent "Ales" as Hiss "beyond reasonable doubt."<ref>Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=9TWUAQ7Xof8C The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB]'' (London: Gardners Books, 2000) ISBN 0-14-028487-7, p. 599</ref> "Numerous KGB/[[NKVD]] documents... contain extensive references to Hiss," concurs Mark Kramer, [http://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/research_portal/hpcws.html director of the Project for Cold War Studies] at [[Harvard University]], "either by name or through the codename Ales, which seems to fit [http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/37819.html only Hiss]." According to Harvard historian [http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/plokhii.php Serhii Plokhii], "New evidence from the Soviet archives supports the thesis that Hiss was a Soviet spy at the time of the Yalta Conference."<ref>Serhii Plokhy, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=0wOKfjnXdAUC Yalta: The Price of Peace]'' (Penguin, 2010) ISBN 0670021415, p. xxv</ref> Jonathan Brent, [http://www.yale.edu/annals/Team.htm executive editor of Yale University Press's "Annals of Communism"] (and&mdash;ironically&mdash;[http://www.bard.edu/academics/faculty/faculty.php?action=details&id=1380 holder of the "Alger Hiss" chair] at Bard College), comments, "We're 99 percent certain that [http://www.heymiller.com/2009/06/the-annals-of-jonathan-brent/ Hiss was a spy]."

"[R]ecently released evidence in U.S. and Soviet archives, taken together with some previously available testimony of persons connected with Soviet intelligence in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s," writes [http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/faculty.nsf/PrFMPbW/gew University of Virginia Law School Professor] G. Edward White ([https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/alger_hiss.html son-in-law of Hiss's attorney] John F. Davis), "supports Chambers's charges [http://ssrn.com/abstract=311869 against Hiss]." [http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/04/world/arthur-martin-81-british-spy-catcher-who-exposed-blunt.html Soviet espionage expert] Stephen Koch agrees, "I for one have been brought close to certainty, on the basis of archival information, that Chambers was telling the truth."<ref>Stephen Koch, ''[http://www.stephenkoch.net/?page_id=156 Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals]'' (New York: Free Press, 1994) ISBN 0-02-918730-3, p. 326</ref> "We now know," states [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/mi5_ww2_01.shtml intelligence expert] Nigel West, "that Alger Hiss was a spy."<ref>Nigel West, "Venona and Cold War Counterintelligence Methodology," in Loch K. Johnson, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=cg39hcj6AxQC Strategic Intelligence]'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007) ISBN 0275989437, p. 15</ref> "The broad sweep of Chambers' allegations are now beyond doubt," according to Richard Aldrich [http://www.richardaldrich.co.uk/ of the University of London] and David McKnight [http://jmrc.arts.unsw.edu.au/staff/staff.php?first=David&last=McKnight of the University of New South Wales].<ref>David McKnight and Richard J. Aldrich, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=t4DGUfDWKwgC Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War: The Conspiratorial Heritage]'' (Oxford: Routledge, 2002) ISBN 071465163X, p. 128</ref> Hiss not only "had been a communist," concludes historian [http://history.cua.edu/faculty/Kimmage/ Michael Kimmage], but committed "espionage for Stalin's Soviet Union."<ref>Michael Kimmage, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=jAfATcPNOhUC The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism]'' (Harvard University Press, 2009) ISBN 0674032586, pp. 202, 172, 219. Elsewhere Kimmage writes that Hiss "[http://www.rorotoko.com/index.php/article/michael_kimmage_interview_trilling_chambers_anti-communism_conservative_tur/ spied for the Soviet Union]."</ref>

"[R]ecently released evidence in U.S. and Soviet archives, taken together with some previously available testimony of persons connected with Soviet intelligence in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s," writes [http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/faculty.nsf/PrFMPbW/gew University of Virginia Law School Professor] G. Edward White ([https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/alger_hiss.html son-in-law of Hiss's attorney] John F. Davis), "supports Chambers's charges [http://ssrn.com/abstract=311869 against Hiss]." [https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/04/world/arthur-martin-81-british-spy-catcher-who-exposed-blunt.html Soviet espionage expert] Stephen Koch agrees, "I for one have been brought close to certainty, on the basis of archival information, that Chambers was telling the truth."<ref>Stephen Koch, ''[http://www.stephenkoch.net/?page_id=156 Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals]'' (New York: Free Press, 1994) ISBN 0-02-918730-3, p. 326</ref> "We now know," states [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/mi5_ww2_01.shtml intelligence expert] Nigel West, "that Alger Hiss was a spy."<ref>Nigel West, "Venona and Cold War Counterintelligence Methodology," in Loch K. Johnson, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=cg39hcj6AxQC Strategic Intelligence]'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007) ISBN 0275989437, p. 15</ref> "The broad sweep of Chambers' allegations are now beyond doubt," according to Richard Aldrich [http://www.richardaldrich.co.uk/ of the University of London] and David McKnight [http://jmrc.arts.unsw.edu.au/staff/staff.php?first=David&last=McKnight of the University of New South Wales].<ref>David McKnight and Richard J. Aldrich, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=t4DGUfDWKwgC Espionage and the Roots of the Cold War: The Conspiratorial Heritage]'' (Oxford: Routledge, 2002) ISBN 071465163X, p. 128</ref> Hiss not only "had been a communist," concludes historian [http://history.cua.edu/faculty/Kimmage/ Michael Kimmage], but committed "espionage for Stalin's Soviet Union."<ref>Michael Kimmage, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=jAfATcPNOhUC The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism]'' (Harvard University Press, 2009) ISBN 0674032586, pp. 202, 172, 219. Elsewhere Kimmage writes that Hiss "[http://www.rorotoko.com/index.php/article/michael_kimmage_interview_trilling_chambers_anti-communism_conservative_tur/ spied for the Soviet Union]."</ref>

==Scholarly consensus==

==Scholarly consensus==

Today, reports [[Oxford University]]'s ''Oxonian Review'', "the Hiss case is one issue upon which [http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/who-killed-alger-hiss/ consensus transcends ideological divides]." After decades of debate, "[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/118 no serious scholar] of the subject any longer dismisses the voluminous and explicit claims by [[Whittaker Chambers]] and [[Elizabeth Bentley]]," writes [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/summer00/art02.html Cold War specialist] Thomas Powers. By 2006, "[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/08/russia.davidsmith most historians] had come to the conclusion that Hiss was probably guilty," agrees Aldrich. "Those who have studied the Hiss case by and large believe that he was guilty of perjury and quite likely also guilty of espionage, that is, of passing government documents to the Soviets," concur Gilbert Geis [http://socialecology.uci.edu/faculty/ggeis of the University of California, Irvine] and Leigh B. Bienen [http://homicide.northwestern.edu/about/LeighBienen/ of Northwestern].<ref>Gilbert Geis and Leigh B. Bienen, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=FPRslbPnMjwC Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to O.J. Simpson]'' (Lebanon, N.H.: UPNE, 1998), ISBN 1555533604, pp. 130-131</ref> [http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~davidgr/ Rutgers historian] David Greenberg refers to "the [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/online-the-hiss-defense-doesn-t-rest.html?pagewanted=all dwindling band] of those who believe in Hiss"; "the majority of modern American historians today and particularly those specializing in domestic Cold War," concludes [http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTk5Y2ZmNTQ3NWUyZGQwMTZhZjQxYTRkZjZhNGNmZDM liberal historian] David Oshinsky, "see evidence pointing overwhelmingly to Hiss being guilty as charged.”<ref>David Oshinsky, "[http://web.archive.org/web/20100604145006/http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/hiss_david_oshinsky.pdf Alger Hiss and History]" (Center for the United States and the Cold War, New York University), April 5, 2007, p. 4 (Archive)</ref>

Today, reports [[Oxford University]]'s ''Oxonian Review'', "the Hiss case is one issue upon which [http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/who-killed-alger-hiss/ consensus transcends ideological divides]." After decades of debate, "[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/118 no serious scholar] of the subject any longer dismisses the voluminous and explicit claims by [[Whittaker Chambers]] and [[Elizabeth Bentley]]," writes [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/summer00/art02.html Cold War specialist] Thomas Powers. By 2006, "[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/08/russia.davidsmith most historians] had come to the conclusion that Hiss was probably guilty," agrees Aldrich. "Those who have studied the Hiss case by and large believe that he was guilty of perjury and quite likely also guilty of espionage, that is, of passing government documents to the Soviets," concur Gilbert Geis [http://socialecology.uci.edu/faculty/ggeis of the University of California, Irvine] and Leigh B. Bienen [http://homicide.northwestern.edu/about/LeighBienen/ of Northwestern].<ref>Gilbert Geis and Leigh B. Bienen, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=FPRslbPnMjwC Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to O.J. Simpson]'' (Lebanon, N.H.: UPNE, 1998), ISBN 1555533604, pp. 130-131</ref> [http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~davidgr/ Rutgers historian] David Greenberg refers to "the [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/online-the-hiss-defense-doesn-t-rest.html?pagewanted=all dwindling band] of those who believe in Hiss"; "the majority of modern American historians today and particularly those specializing in domestic Cold War," concludes [http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTk5Y2ZmNTQ3NWUyZGQwMTZhZjQxYTRkZjZhNGNmZDM liberal historian] David Oshinsky, "see evidence pointing overwhelmingly to Hiss being guilty as charged.”<ref>David Oshinsky, "[http://web.archive.org/web/20100604145006/http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/hiss_david_oshinsky.pdf Alger Hiss and History]" (Center for the United States and the Cold War, New York University), April 5, 2007, p. 4 (Archive)</ref>

"In the end, the publication of the Venona intercepts settled the matter," observes Stanley Kutler [http://www.law.wisc.edu/profiles/sikutler@wisc.edu of the University of Wisconsin Law School]. "[T]o [http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20040806_kutler.html all but the truest of believers], 'Ales' could only be Alger Hiss." The Soviet agent "Ales" is assumed by "[http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html most scholars] to be Alger Hiss," agrees Douglas O. Linder [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/linder.htm of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law]. "For the [http://microformguides.gale.com/Data/Download/9100000C.rtf majority of scholars], the critical ALES transmission puts to rest any doubt about Hiss’s complicity in the Soviet underground," concurs R. Bruce Craig, a [http://www.upei.ca/history/bcraig specialist in Cold War history] and [http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/116899.html author of a forthcoming Hiss biography].

"In the end, the publication of the Venona intercepts settled the matter," observes Stanley Kutler [http://www.law.wisc.edu/profiles/sikutler@wisc.edu of the University of Wisconsin Law School]. "[T]o [http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20040806_kutler.html all but the truest of believers], 'Ales' could only be Alger Hiss." The Soviet agent "Ales" is assumed by "[http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html most scholars] to be Alger Hiss," agrees Douglas O. Linder [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/linder.htm of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law]. "For the [http://microformguides.gale.com/Data/Download/9100000C.rtf majority of scholars], the critical ALES transmission puts to rest any doubt about Hiss’s complicity in the Soviet underground," concurs R. Bruce Craig, a [http://www.upei.ca/history/bcraig specialist in Cold War history] and [http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/116899.html author of a forthcoming Hiss biography].

"Since the publication in 1978 of Allen Weinstein’s definitive ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'', only partisans of the far left have continued to insist that Alger Hiss was innocent,"<ref>Ronald Radosh, "[http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/guilty-man_634890.html Guilty Man: Posterity ponders the Hiss case]," ''The Weekly Standard'', Vol. 17, No. 29 (April 9, 2012)</ref> writes Ronald Radosh, [http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-radosh17-2008sep17,0,864776.story emeritus professor of history at City University of New York], a former leader of the Communist Party youth group.<ref>Radosh was leader of the Madison, Wisconsin, chapter of the Labor Youth League, as the Young Communist League was then known. Ronald Radosh, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=NgGsGwB74WkC Commies: a journey through the old left, the new left and the leftover left]'' (Encounter Books, 2001) ISBN 1893554058, pp. 68-82</ref> Historians John Earl Haynes [http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/10012/haynes.html of the Library of Congress] and Harvey Klehr [https://web.archive.org/web/20111230155845/http://www.polisci.emory.edu/facultypages/klehr.htm of Emory University] sum up:

"Since the publication in 1978 of Allen Weinstein’s definitive ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'', only partisans of the far left have continued to insist that Alger Hiss was innocent,"<ref>Ronald Radosh, "[http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/guilty-man_634890.html Guilty Man: Posterity ponders the Hiss case]," ''The Weekly Standard'', Vol. 17, No. 29 (April 9, 2012)</ref> writes Ronald Radosh, [http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-radosh17-2008sep17,0,864776.story emeritus professor of history at City University of New York], a former leader of the Communist Party youth group.<ref>Radosh was leader of the Madison, Wisconsin, chapter of the Labor Youth League, as the Young Communist League was then known. Ronald Radosh, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=NgGsGwB74WkC Commies: a journey through the old left, the new left and the leftover left]'' (Encounter Books, 2001) ISBN 1893554058, pp. 68-82</ref> Historians John Earl Haynes [http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/10012/haynes.html of the Library of Congress] and Harvey Klehr [https://web.archive.org/web/20111230155845/http://www.polisci.emory.edu/facultypages/klehr.htm of Emory University] sum up:

{{cquote|Any reasonable person will conclude that the new documentation of Hiss’s assistance to Soviet espionage, along with the massive weight of prior accumulated evidence, closes the case. Given the fervour exhibited by his loyalists, it is unlikely that anything will convince the remaining diehards. But to serious students of history, continued claims for Hiss’s innocence are akin to a terminal form of [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6731654.ece ideological blindness].}}

{{cquote|Any reasonable person will conclude that the new documentation of Hiss’s assistance to Soviet espionage, along with the massive weight of prior accumulated evidence, closes the case. Given the fervour exhibited by his loyalists, it is unlikely that anything will convince the remaining diehards. But to serious students of history, continued claims for Hiss’s innocence are akin to a terminal form of [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6731654.ece ideological blindness].}}

Robert J. Goldstein, [http://catalog.oakland.edu/preview_entity.php?catoid=11&ent_oid=231&returnto=494 professor emeritus of Political Science at Michigan's Oakland University], admits that his "political views" are "at odds with" Klehr's, but concedes that Klehr and Haynes "quite reasonably" conclude that Hiss was "[http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/91718.html unquestionably]" an espionage agent. The Hiss case "is a controversy that should have died 30 years ago and hasn't only because of the efforts of [http://hnn.us/articles/106101.html a small, vocal group] that is absolutely convinced that Hiss was an innocent victim," agrees Steven T. Usdin, author of Yale University Press' ''Engineering Communism''.

Robert J. Goldstein, [http://catalog.oakland.edu/preview_entity.php?catoid=11&ent_oid=231&returnto=494 professor emeritus of Political Science at Michigan's Oakland University], admits that his "political views" are "at odds with" Klehr's, but concedes that Klehr and Haynes "quite reasonably" conclude that Hiss was "[http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/91718.html unquestionably]" an espionage agent. The Hiss case "is a controversy that should have died 30 years ago and hasn't only because of the efforts of [http://hnn.us/articles/106101.html a small, vocal group] that is absolutely convinced that Hiss was an innocent victim," agrees Steven T. Usdin, author of Yale University Press' ''Engineering Communism''.

Yeshiva University Professor Ellen Schrecker [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment16.htm defends American Communist spies] as demurring from "[http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/cold-war-without-end.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all traditional forms of patriotism]"<ref>Ellen Schrecker, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=gaZrQgAACAAJ Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America]'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), p. 188</ref> (though critics object that their patriotism was entirely traditional&mdash;toward the Soviet Union);<ref>Like a pair of Soviet [http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/revolut/jb_revolut_hale_1.html Nathan Hale]s, the Rosenbergs, for example, were "loyal unto death [http://www.reason.com/news/show/29095.html to the Soviet Union]." Likewise, when Hitler attacked the USSR in September 1939, the Communist [http://humanevents.com/2008/04/21/newsmaxs-kessler-spreads-nonsense-about-joe-mccarthy/ Lillian Hellman] actually cried out, "[https://reason.com/archives/2000/06/01/hollywoods-missing-movies/print The motherland has been invaded]."</ref> but even she concedes, "There is now [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment15.htm too much evidence from too many different sources] for anyone but the most die-hard loyalists to argue convincingly for the innocence of Hiss." Hiss is "among those whose long-suspected involvement in such Soviet espionage seems to be [http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/reviews/990509.09issermt.html confirmed by the Venona cables]," writes Hamilton College history professor Maurice Isserman, probably the best regarded of the left-wing scholars of Communism. "Let's face it," concludes Isserman, "[http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/cold-war-without-end.html?pagewanted=all the debate just ended]."

Yeshiva University Professor Ellen Schrecker [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment16.htm defends American Communist spies] as demurring from "[https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/cold-war-without-end.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all traditional forms of patriotism]"<ref>Ellen Schrecker, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=gaZrQgAACAAJ Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America]'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), p. 188</ref> (though critics object that their patriotism was entirely traditional&mdash;toward the Soviet Union);<ref>Like a pair of Soviet [http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/revolut/jb_revolut_hale_1.html Nathan Hale]s, the Rosenbergs, for example, were "loyal unto death [http://www.reason.com/news/show/29095.html to the Soviet Union]." Likewise, when Hitler attacked the USSR in September 1939, the Communist [http://humanevents.com/2008/04/21/newsmaxs-kessler-spreads-nonsense-about-joe-mccarthy/ Lillian Hellman] actually cried out, "[https://reason.com/archives/2000/06/01/hollywoods-missing-movies/print The motherland has been invaded]."</ref> but even she concedes, "There is now [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment15.htm too much evidence from too many different sources] for anyone but the most die-hard loyalists to argue convincingly for the innocence of Hiss." Hiss is "among those whose long-suspected involvement in such Soviet espionage seems to be [https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/05/09/reviews/990509.09issermt.html confirmed by the Venona cables]," writes Hamilton College history professor Maurice Isserman, probably the best regarded of the left-wing scholars of Communism. "Let's face it," concludes Isserman, "[https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/cold-war-without-end.html?pagewanted=all the debate just ended]."

"No amount of documentation, including the fact that documents Vassiliev copied unambiguously identify him as a Soviet agent, can persuade these true believers otherwise." [http://www.bu.edu/ir/faculty/bacevich.html Boston University professor] Andrew J. Bacevich concurs, "Diehards will still contend that Hiss was innocent." But, he adds:

"No amount of documentation, including the fact that documents Vassiliev copied unambiguously identify him as a Soviet agent, can persuade these true believers otherwise." [http://www.bu.edu/ir/faculty/bacevich.html Boston University professor] Andrew J. Bacevich concurs, "Diehards will still contend that Hiss was innocent." But, he adds:

==Hiss in the mass media==

==Hiss in the mass media==

So broad is this consensus that it has begun to penetrate even the popular press: By the time he died in 1996, "the front-page obits... in such supposed bastions of the liberal establishment as the ''New York Times'', the ''Washington Post'', and the ''Boston Globe'' were striking in their dispassionate acceptance of [http://www.salon.com/media/media961119.html Hiss's guilt]," observed [http://www.northeastern.edu/journalism/contact/kennedy.html Northeastern University Journalism Professor] Dan Kennedy. Indeed, "[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/books/review/29POWERSL.html?pagewanted=print no serious cold war historian]," reports [http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-is-the-new-york-times-a-liberal-newspaper.html the liberal]<ref>As ''USA Today'' founder Al Neuharth observed in 2000, the ''Times'' had endorsed [http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/big-papers-endorsed-gore/ every Democrat] for president for the previous 40 years (Update: Make that the past [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/timeline/kerry-2004.pdf 52] [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html years]) (Update 2: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/barack-obama-for-president.html?pagewanted=all 56 years]).</ref> ''Times'', now questions "that Hiss lied" (Elsewhere, the ''Times'' reports "the trend of scholarship on the Hiss case in the 1990's -- a [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/online-the-hiss-defense-doesn-t-rest.html growing consensus] that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent"); “[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/05/29/ST2009052902500.html most students of the Hiss case], including many erstwhile defenders, consider him guilty,” agrees the similarly liberal<ref>As ''USA Today'' publisher Al Neuharth observed in 2000, the ''Post'' endorses [http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/big-papers-endorsed-gore/ only Democrats for president] ([http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57584-2004Oct23.html This pattern] has [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603436.html since] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/washington-post-endorsement-four-more-years-for-president-obama/2012/10/25/6ca309a2-1965-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html continued]). ''Washington Post'' ombudsman Debra Howell writes, "the conservatives I know here feel [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/14/AR2008111403057.html so outnumbered] that they don't even want to be quoted by name in a memo."</ref> ''Washington Post'',<ref>Chambers called the ''Post'' "the most implacable of the pro-Hiss newspapers." (Whittaker Chambers, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=HKLbhAG8ma4C Witness]'' (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1987) ISBN 0895267896, p. 710) "The ''Post'' seemed to redouble its pro-Hiss efforts as his innocence became increasingly doubtful." Marvin Olasky, "[http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14220 The Chambers-Hiss case]," ''World Magazine'', July 26, 2008</ref> adding that "the scholarly consensus" is "that Hiss was almost certainly guilty of both perjury and espionage"; the ''Globe'' concludes that Hiss's guilt is a "[http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8396475.html near-certainty]." Even Hiss's hometown newspaper, ''The Baltimore Sun'', where his older brother Bosley had been a reporter, admitted: "[http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-03-09/features/1996069051_1_alger-hiss-hiss-case-perjury Most historians] are convinced of his guilt."

So broad is this consensus that it has begun to penetrate even the popular press: By the time he died in 1996, "the front-page obits... in such supposed bastions of the liberal establishment as the ''New York Times'', the ''Washington Post'', and the ''Boston Globe'' were striking in their dispassionate acceptance of [http://www.salon.com/media/media961119.html Hiss's guilt]," observed [http://www.northeastern.edu/journalism/contact/kennedy.html Northeastern University Journalism Professor] Dan Kennedy. Indeed, "[https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/books/review/29POWERSL.html?pagewanted=print no serious cold war historian]," reports [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-is-the-new-york-times-a-liberal-newspaper.html the liberal]<ref>As ''USA Today'' founder Al Neuharth observed in 2000, the ''Times'' had endorsed [http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/big-papers-endorsed-gore/ every Democrat] for president for the previous 40 years (Update: Make that the past [http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/timeline/kerry-2004.pdf 52] [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/opinion/24fri1.html years]) (Update 2: [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/barack-obama-for-president.html?pagewanted=all 56 years]).</ref> ''Times'', now questions "that Hiss lied" (Elsewhere, the ''Times'' reports "the trend of scholarship on the Hiss case in the 1990's -- a [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/online-the-hiss-defense-doesn-t-rest.html growing consensus] that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent"); “[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/05/29/ST2009052902500.html most students of the Hiss case], including many erstwhile defenders, consider him guilty,” agrees the similarly liberal<ref>As ''USA Today'' publisher Al Neuharth observed in 2000, the ''Post'' endorses [http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/big-papers-endorsed-gore/ only Democrats for president] ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57584-2004Oct23.html This pattern] has [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603436.html since] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/washington-post-endorsement-four-more-years-for-president-obama/2012/10/25/6ca309a2-1965-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html continued]). ''Washington Post'' ombudsman Debra Howell writes, "the conservatives I know here feel [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/14/AR2008111403057.html so outnumbered] that they don't even want to be quoted by name in a memo."</ref> ''Washington Post'',<ref>Chambers called the ''Post'' "the most implacable of the pro-Hiss newspapers." (Whittaker Chambers, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=HKLbhAG8ma4C Witness]'' (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1987) ISBN 0895267896, p. 710) "The ''Post'' seemed to redouble its pro-Hiss efforts as his innocence became increasingly doubtful." Marvin Olasky, "[http://www.worldmag.com/articles/14220 The Chambers-Hiss case]," ''World Magazine'', July 26, 2008</ref> adding that "the scholarly consensus" is "that Hiss was almost certainly guilty of both perjury and espionage"; the ''Globe'' concludes that Hiss's guilt is a "[http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8396475.html near-certainty]." Even Hiss's hometown newspaper, ''The Baltimore Sun'', where his older brother Bosley had been a reporter, admitted: "[http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-03-09/features/1996069051_1_alger-hiss-hiss-case-perjury Most historians] are convinced of his guilt."

===The foreign press on Hiss===

===The foreign press on Hiss===

===Other magazines on Hiss===

===Other magazines on Hiss===

[http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2004-General-Nonfiction Pulitzer prize winning] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/biographies/anne-applebaum.html ''Washington Post'' columnist] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/biographies/anne-applebaum.html Anne Applebaum] writes in the [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53812-2004Jun18.html left-leaning] ''New Republic'', "Alger [http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=e828c17a-787d-4142-af25-b2b4f5cc730d Hiss... spied] for the Soviet Union in the 1940s."<ref>Elsewhere, Applebaum writes that the [[Venona project|Venona]] cables "provided direct evidence that... State Department officer Alger Hiss" was "among the Soviet Union's most valued agents." Anne Applebaum, "[http://www.news.com.au/news/soviet-bears-american-claw/story-fna7dq6e-1225734255620 Soviet bear's American claw]," ''The Australian'', June 12, 2009</ref> The similarly [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=all left-leaning] ''New York Review of Books'' concludes, "The evidence now... is simply overwhelming.... Hiss was one of a number of... converts to communism hurrying about Washington in the 1930s recruiting others to serve 'real, existing Socialism' [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/118 in the Soviet Union]." The (likewise [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/newspapers_fail_to_tap_young_c.html left-leaning]) ''Washington Monthly'' calls the evidence against Hiss "quite devastating," dubbing the [[Venona project|Venona]] decrypts "damning" and "rock-hard evidence" of [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/books/1999/9907.ignatius.spy.html Hiss's guilt].

[http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2004-General-Nonfiction Pulitzer prize winning] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/biographies/anne-applebaum.html ''Washington Post'' columnist] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/biographies/anne-applebaum.html Anne Applebaum] writes in the [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53812-2004Jun18.html left-leaning] ''New Republic'', "Alger [http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=e828c17a-787d-4142-af25-b2b4f5cc730d Hiss... spied] for the Soviet Union in the 1940s."<ref>Elsewhere, Applebaum writes that the [[Venona project|Venona]] cables "provided direct evidence that... State Department officer Alger Hiss" was "among the Soviet Union's most valued agents." Anne Applebaum, "[http://www.news.com.au/news/soviet-bears-american-claw/story-fna7dq6e-1225734255620 Soviet bear's American claw]," ''The Australian'', June 12, 2009</ref> The similarly [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=all left-leaning] ''New York Review of Books'' concludes, "The evidence now... is simply overwhelming.... Hiss was one of a number of... converts to communism hurrying about Washington in the 1930s recruiting others to serve 'real, existing Socialism' [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/118 in the Soviet Union]." The (likewise [http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/03/newspapers_fail_to_tap_young_c.html left-leaning]) ''Washington Monthly'' calls the evidence against Hiss "quite devastating," dubbing the [[Venona project|Venona]] decrypts "damning" and "rock-hard evidence" of [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/books/1999/9907.ignatius.spy.html Hiss's guilt].

===Television on Hiss===

===Television on Hiss===

Even television is starting to notice. ABC, where 2008 presidential campaign contributions went [http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/06/entertainment-divisions-drive.html 98.6% for Obama], quotes a source saying that "newly-declassified U.S. and Soviet intelligence backs longtime allegations" that Hiss was [http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=1213034 a Soviet spy]. Public Broadcasting is subsidized by taxpayers (more than a billion dollars in 2012)<ref>$444 million via CPB, $60 million in direct federal grants and contracts, and $539 million from state and local taxes. [http://www.cpb.org/stations/reports/revenue/2012PublicBroadcastingRevenue.pdf Public Broadcasting Revenue, Fiscal Year 2012], Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Table 1</ref>&mdash;and was caught sharing PBS donor lists [http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/17/us/pbs-stations-shared-donor-lists-with-democrats-stirring-trouble.html?pagewanted=all with Democratic Party fundraisers]&mdash;but its educational program ''Nova'' identifies Hiss as one of "the foremost Americans [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/resources.html spying for the Soviet Union]," referring to him in its Teachers' Guide as one of "the last century's most [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/overviews/2904_venona.html notorious spies]." Even TruTV ([http://www.trutv.com/newname.html formerly Court TV])&mdash;[http://www.muckety.com/Query?SearchResult=6436&SearchResult=5031895&graph=MucketyMap?_r=2D owned by] [http://nypost.com/1999/09/30/ted-confesses-heartbreak-im-too-rich-to-be-no-2/ self-proclaimed "socialist"] [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/54/400list08_Robert-E-Ted-Turner_ETX7.html billionaire] Ted Turner (who says "the [[KGB]] ... was an honorable place to work.... [I]t gave people ... an opportunity to do something [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27983385/page/4/ important and worthwhile]")&mdash;admits: "the bulk of evidence points to Hiss's guilt [https://web.archive.org/web/20091126060054/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/spies/hiss/12.html beyond a reasonable doubt]."

Even television is starting to notice. ABC, where 2008 presidential campaign contributions went [http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/06/entertainment-divisions-drive.html 98.6% for Obama], quotes a source saying that "newly-declassified U.S. and Soviet intelligence backs longtime allegations" that Hiss was [http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=1213034 a Soviet spy]. Public Broadcasting is subsidized by taxpayers (more than a billion dollars in 2012)<ref>$444 million via CPB, $60 million in direct federal grants and contracts, and $539 million from state and local taxes. [http://www.cpb.org/stations/reports/revenue/2012PublicBroadcastingRevenue.pdf Public Broadcasting Revenue, Fiscal Year 2012], Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Table 1</ref>&mdash;and was caught sharing PBS donor lists [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/17/us/pbs-stations-shared-donor-lists-with-democrats-stirring-trouble.html?pagewanted=all with Democratic Party fundraisers]&mdash;but its educational program ''Nova'' identifies Hiss as one of "the foremost Americans [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/resources.html spying for the Soviet Union]," referring to him in its Teachers' Guide as one of "the last century's most [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/overviews/2904_venona.html notorious spies]." Even TruTV ([http://www.trutv.com/newname.html formerly Court TV])&mdash;[http://www.muckety.com/Query?SearchResult=6436&SearchResult=5031895&graph=MucketyMap?_r=2D owned by] [http://nypost.com/1999/09/30/ted-confesses-heartbreak-im-too-rich-to-be-no-2/ self-proclaimed "socialist"] [http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/54/400list08_Robert-E-Ted-Turner_ETX7.html billionaire] Ted Turner (who says "the [[KGB]] ... was an honorable place to work.... [I]t gave people ... an opportunity to do something [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27983385/page/4/ important and worthwhile]")&mdash;admits: "the bulk of evidence points to Hiss's guilt [https://web.archive.org/web/20091126060054/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/spies/hiss/12.html beyond a reasonable doubt]."

===Online media on Hiss===

===Online media on Hiss===

Not even the online media are immune. Jacob Heilbrunn (a columnist at the [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/08/AR2007070801213.html "pugnatiously liberal]" Huffington Post), writing at Truthdig.com ("A [[Progressive]] Journal of News and Opinion"), admits, "the evidence that Hiss was innocent of serving as a Soviet spy is sparse. It requires contortions to suggest that he was not and to explain away the evidence suggesting that [http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/print/20090320_jacob_heilbrunn_on_alger_hiss/ he was]." By the time Hiss died, "[http://www.salon.com/media/media961119.html just about everyone] conceded that he was guilty," reported Salon.com. Weinstein's ''Perjury'' "had convinced even pro-Hiss liberals" that he "had indeed been a Communist and a spy for the Soviet Union." The [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/salo-j29.shtml left-liberal] "webzine" added that [[Venona project|Venona]] "showed Hiss was almost certainly a Soviet agent.... Hiss's defenders have dwindled to a small handful of true believers." Slate.com (where [http://www.slate.com/id/2203052/ more than 96%] of staff and contributors supported [[Barack Obama]]) admits that "Today, [http://www.slate.com/id/1007346/pagenum/all/ most people] who think about Hiss at all, even on the left, tend to think that Hiss was guilty," and refers to "the [http://www.slate.com/id/2170415 consensus] in the reality-based community that&mdash;back in the '30s and '40s&mdash;one-time State Department luminary Hiss had probably been guilty of ''some'' collaboration with the Soviets." Elsewhere, it warns, "Heads up: ''Alger [http://www.slate.com/id/2203909/ Hiss was guilty]''," (Italics in original) concluding, "if we paleo-libs continue in our ancient rancors, we'll start looking like those [http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/05/13/ronald_reagan/ troglodytes who still plump for Alger Hiss's innocence]."

Not even the online media are immune. Jacob Heilbrunn (a columnist at the [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/08/AR2007070801213.html "pugnatiously liberal]" Huffington Post), writing at Truthdig.com ("A [[Progressive]] Journal of News and Opinion"), admits, "the evidence that Hiss was innocent of serving as a Soviet spy is sparse. It requires contortions to suggest that he was not and to explain away the evidence suggesting that [http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/print/20090320_jacob_heilbrunn_on_alger_hiss/ he was]." By the time Hiss died, "[http://www.salon.com/media/media961119.html just about everyone] conceded that he was guilty," reported Salon.com. Weinstein's ''Perjury'' "had convinced even pro-Hiss liberals" that he "had indeed been a Communist and a spy for the Soviet Union." The [http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jun2001/salo-j29.shtml left-liberal] "webzine" added that [[Venona project|Venona]] "showed Hiss was almost certainly a Soviet agent.... Hiss's defenders have dwindled to a small handful of true believers." Slate.com (where [http://www.slate.com/id/2203052/ more than 96%] of staff and contributors supported [[Barack Obama]]) admits that "Today, [http://www.slate.com/id/1007346/pagenum/all/ most people] who think about Hiss at all, even on the left, tend to think that Hiss was guilty," and refers to "the [http://www.slate.com/id/2170415 consensus] in the reality-based community that&mdash;back in the '30s and '40s&mdash;one-time State Department luminary Hiss had probably been guilty of ''some'' collaboration with the Soviets." Elsewhere, it warns, "Heads up: ''Alger [http://www.slate.com/id/2203909/ Hiss was guilty]''," (Italics in original) concluding, "if we paleo-libs continue in our ancient rancors, we'll start looking like those [http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/05/13/ronald_reagan/ troglodytes who still plump for Alger Hiss's innocence]."

==Liberal/left-wing opinion on Hiss==

==Liberal/left-wing opinion on Hiss==

Even on the left, few authorities disagree. By the late 1970s, even "[http://www.observer.com/2009/books/cold-war-character-still-hot most anti-Communist liberals] became convinced that Hiss had lied to HUAC, and spied for the Soviet Union when he worked for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the State Department in the 1930s and ’40s," writes Cornell University professor (and Huffington Post [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-c-altschuler contributor]) Glenn C. Altschuler. "My own sense of things was that Hiss had been a [Communist] party member in the Thirties and did give Soviet agents documents," wrote the [[Harvard University|Harvard]] historian, [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] administration official and [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/washington/01schlesinger.html "unabashedly liberal partisan"] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,<ref>Schlesinger wrote in 1946 that "the faults and injustices in our present system" in the U.S. "make even freedom-loving Americans look wistfully at Russia." (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "The United States Communist Party&mdash;Small But Tightly Disciplined, It Strives with Fanatic Zeal to Promote the Aims of Russia," ''Life'', July 29, 1946, excerpted in Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, [http://ia700406.us.archive.org/31/items/scopeofsovietact4345unit/scopeofsovietact4345unit_bw.pdf Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, Part 43] [Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1957], p. 3022 [PDF p. 26]) Fifty-four years later, Schlesinger, it was written, "equates [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,59746,00.html capitalism with sexism and racism]."</ref> who concluded of Hiss, "I believe him to be guilty."<ref>Arthur Schlesinger, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=LLyNX6hMDCIC A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950]'' (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000) ISBN 0618219250, pp. 497-498</ref> Schlesinger's Harvard colleague, the [[socialist]]<ref>"Galbraith called for a ''[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E5DE113FF932A35756C0A9609C8B63&pagewanted=all new socialism]''." Cf. chapter XXVII, "The Socialist Imperative," in John Kenneth Galbraith, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=toztAAAAMAAJ Economics and the Public Purpose]'' (New American Library, 1975), pp. 263-269</ref> [[John Kenneth Galbraith]], likewise blandly accepted "the fact that... Hiss purloined documents."<ref>John Kenneth Galbraith, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=YoXZWqBIIE8C The Great Crash, 1929]'' (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), ISBN 0547248164, p. 165</ref> Thomas Reed, Secretary of the Air Force in the [[Jimmy Carter|Carter]] administration, writes, "The Venona transcripts, released in 1997 and identifying Hiss via his code name Ales, and the postwar testimony of defecting Soviet code clerk Igor Gouzenko, remove any doubt about Hiss’s guilt."<ref>Thomas Reed, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=69Vvboox1JcC At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War]'' (New York: Random House, Inc., 2005) ISBN 0891418377, pp. 9-10</ref> Berkeley professor J. Bradford DeLong, a former [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]] administration official and [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0307&week=d&msg=%2B1j5choBov/tLTieEa%2B0UA&user=&pw= professed "social democrat,"] writes, "Was Alger Hiss at some time a spy for the Soviet Union? [http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/kai_bird_thinks.html Probably]."<ref>DeLong elaborates: "I think that Hiss was guilty.... I think Hiss is more likely than not to be guilty of espionage. I even think that there is clear and convincing evidence that [http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001822.html Hiss was guilty]."</ref> Another [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]] official, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake ("[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1727695,00.html top foreign policy adviser] to [[Barack Obama]]"), actually went so far as [http://web.archive.org/web/20120317083025/http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/fedagencies/february97/lake_2-27a.html to retract] a statement&mdash;made in the wake of Hiss's death&mdash;suggesting that the evidence against Hiss was [http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/17/opinion/the-dossier-on-anthony-lake.html less than conclusive]. Even the prominent Democratic Socialist Irving Howe [http://writ.news.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20040806_kutler.html declared Hiss guilty]. [http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2006/12/no_atheists_still_need_apply.html Professed atheist] [http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2008/02/wanted_more_hope_and_charity_l.html Obama supporter] Susan Jacoby writes, "I believe Hiss was guilty of both perjury and spying."<ref>Susan Jacoby, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=nLU0z6PlTHAC Alger Hiss and the Battle for History]'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009) ISBN 0300121334, pp. 20-21. Jacoby, who calls herself "an [http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1242 unabashed liberal and proud of it]," avers, however, that she is "only 98 or 99 percent convinced of Hiss's guilt." Her residual one to two percent doubt, suggests [[Whittaker Chambers]]' grandson, may be due to her refusal to read the new book, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=qCAVQ_cdomcC  Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America]''. "According to ''Spies'' co-author Harvey Klehr," writes Chambers, "Yale's editor Jonathan Brent offered her access to the book's new findings. Apparently, Ms. Jacoby [http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/22/equally-erring-about-hiss/?page=2 took a pass]." As Jacoby admits, "It has always been difficult for liberals to look objectively at evidence pointing to [http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-jacoby22-2009mar22,0,7648164.story Hiss's guilt]."</ref> Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Hiss's ''alma mater'', Harvard Law School, Cass Sunstein, former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, agrees, "Most of those who have carefully studied the case, and who have explored evidence emerging long after the trial itself, have concluded that Chambers was telling the truth and that [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/how-the-alger-hiss-case-explains-the-tea-party.html Hiss did indeed perjure himself]." Even [http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/reagan-appointee-and-recent-mccain-adviser-charles-fried-supports-obama Obama supporter] Charles Fried, another professor at Harvard Law School (and former Justice of the court that granted Hiss's petition for readmittance to the Massachusetts Bar), writes, "it is now clear to [http://www.amacad.org/publications/bulletin/winter2006/Winter2006Bulletin.pdf all but the most obdurate] that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent."

Even on the left, few authorities disagree. By the late 1970s, even "[http://www.observer.com/2009/books/cold-war-character-still-hot most anti-Communist liberals] became convinced that Hiss had lied to HUAC, and spied for the Soviet Union when he worked for the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the State Department in the 1930s and ’40s," writes Cornell University professor (and Huffington Post [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-c-altschuler contributor]) Glenn C. Altschuler. "My own sense of things was that Hiss had been a [Communist] party member in the Thirties and did give Soviet agents documents," wrote the [[Harvard University|Harvard]] historian, [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] administration official and [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/washington/01schlesinger.html "unabashedly liberal partisan"] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,<ref>Schlesinger wrote in 1946 that "the faults and injustices in our present system" in the U.S. "make even freedom-loving Americans look wistfully at Russia." (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "The United States Communist Party&mdash;Small But Tightly Disciplined, It Strives with Fanatic Zeal to Promote the Aims of Russia," ''Life'', July 29, 1946, excerpted in Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, [http://ia700406.us.archive.org/31/items/scopeofsovietact4345unit/scopeofsovietact4345unit_bw.pdf Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, Part 43] [Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1957], p. 3022 [PDF p. 26]) Fifty-four years later, Schlesinger, it was written, "equates [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,59746,00.html capitalism with sexism and racism]."</ref> who concluded of Hiss, "I believe him to be guilty."<ref>Arthur Schlesinger, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=LLyNX6hMDCIC A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950]'' (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000) ISBN 0618219250, pp. 497-498</ref> Schlesinger's Harvard colleague, the [[socialist]]<ref>"Galbraith called for a ''[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E5DE113FF932A35756C0A9609C8B63&pagewanted=all new socialism]''." Cf. chapter XXVII, "The Socialist Imperative," in John Kenneth Galbraith, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=toztAAAAMAAJ Economics and the Public Purpose]'' (New American Library, 1975), pp. 263-269</ref> [[John Kenneth Galbraith]], likewise blandly accepted "the fact that... Hiss purloined documents."<ref>John Kenneth Galbraith, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=YoXZWqBIIE8C The Great Crash, 1929]'' (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), ISBN 0547248164, p. 165</ref> Thomas Reed, Secretary of the Air Force in the [[Jimmy Carter|Carter]] administration, writes, "The Venona transcripts, released in 1997 and identifying Hiss via his code name Ales, and the postwar testimony of defecting Soviet code clerk Igor Gouzenko, remove any doubt about Hiss’s guilt."<ref>Thomas Reed, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=69Vvboox1JcC At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War]'' (New York: Random House, Inc., 2005) ISBN 0891418377, pp. 9-10</ref> Berkeley professor J. Bradford DeLong, a former [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]] administration official and [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0307&week=d&msg=%2B1j5choBov/tLTieEa%2B0UA&user=&pw= professed "social democrat,"] writes, "Was Alger Hiss at some time a spy for the Soviet Union? [http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/04/kai_bird_thinks.html Probably]."<ref>DeLong elaborates: "I think that Hiss was guilty.... I think Hiss is more likely than not to be guilty of espionage. I even think that there is clear and convincing evidence that [http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/001822.html Hiss was guilty]."</ref> Another [[Bill Clinton|Clinton]] official, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake ("[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1727695,00.html top foreign policy adviser] to [[Barack Obama]]"), actually went so far as [http://web.archive.org/web/20120317083025/http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/fedagencies/february97/lake_2-27a.html to retract] a statement&mdash;made in the wake of Hiss's death&mdash;suggesting that the evidence against Hiss was [https://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/17/opinion/the-dossier-on-anthony-lake.html less than conclusive]. Even the prominent Democratic Socialist Irving Howe [http://writ.news.findlaw.com/books/reviews/20040806_kutler.html declared Hiss guilty]. [http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2006/12/no_atheists_still_need_apply.html Professed atheist] [http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2008/02/wanted_more_hope_and_charity_l.html Obama supporter] Susan Jacoby writes, "I believe Hiss was guilty of both perjury and spying."<ref>Susan Jacoby, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=nLU0z6PlTHAC Alger Hiss and the Battle for History]'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009) ISBN 0300121334, pp. 20-21. Jacoby, who calls herself "an [http://www.q-and-a.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1242 unabashed liberal and proud of it]," avers, however, that she is "only 98 or 99 percent convinced of Hiss's guilt." Her residual one to two percent doubt, suggests [[Whittaker Chambers]]' grandson, may be due to her refusal to read the new book, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=qCAVQ_cdomcC  Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America]''. "According to ''Spies'' co-author Harvey Klehr," writes Chambers, "Yale's editor Jonathan Brent offered her access to the book's new findings. Apparently, Ms. Jacoby [http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/22/equally-erring-about-hiss/?page=2 took a pass]." As Jacoby admits, "It has always been difficult for liberals to look objectively at evidence pointing to [http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-jacoby22-2009mar22,0,7648164.story Hiss's guilt]."</ref> Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Hiss's ''alma mater'', Harvard Law School, Cass Sunstein, former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, agrees, "Most of those who have carefully studied the case, and who have explored evidence emerging long after the trial itself, have concluded that Chambers was telling the truth and that [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/how-the-alger-hiss-case-explains-the-tea-party.html Hiss did indeed perjure himself]." Even [http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-plank/reagan-appointee-and-recent-mccain-adviser-charles-fried-supports-obama Obama supporter] Charles Fried, another professor at Harvard Law School (and former Justice of the court that granted Hiss's petition for readmittance to the Massachusetts Bar), writes, "it is now clear to [http://www.amacad.org/publications/bulletin/winter2006/Winter2006Bulletin.pdf all but the most obdurate] that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent."

===''The Nation''===

===''The Nation''===

The lone holdout has been ''[http://www.thenation.com/ The Nation]'', a magazine that "identified itself as solidly pro-Hiss in the 1950s."<ref>G. Edward White, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=FvR4HBTiYzAC Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy]'' (Oxford University Press, 2005) ISBN 0195182553, p. 133.</ref> The late [http://www.ericbreindel.org/about_eric.html Eric Breindel] tagged it "America's leading forum for Alger Hiss apologia";<ref>Eric Breindel, "Goodies from the Venona files: Hiss’ Guilt," ''The New Republic'', April 15, 1996, reprinted in the [http://fdsys.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-1996-04-18/html/CREC-1996-04-18-pt1-PgH3640.htm Congressional Record, Vol. 142, No. 50 (Thursday, April 18, 1996)], p. H3645</ref> [[William F. Buckley]] commented in 1978 that the magazine "has been clinging to the notion of Hiss's innocence over the years with the forlorn adamance of the last survivors of [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19780518&id=s88VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9xEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2592,3623339 the Flat Earth Society]." ''The Nation'' "embraced a [http://gladlylernegladlyteche.blogspot.com/2009/06/of-columns-communists-and-comoes.html prejudiced view] of the Hiss-Chambers affair in 1948," writes [http://english.princeton.edu/component/option,com_faculty/Itemid,99999999/facultyid,11/func,fullview/lang,en/ Princeton Emeritus Professor] John V. Fleming, "and has been unable to wriggle free even yet."<ref>The magazine's defense of Hiss has tended to ignore the facts and focus on questions of "taste" ("If one has any interest in [http://spectator.org/archives/2008/04/22/the-alger-hiss-democrats our national taste] it is impossible to refrain from asking how American jurors could be persuaded to give credence to such a man as Chambers in preference to such a man as Hiss").</ref> Today, according to Slate.com, it is "pretty much the last general-interest magazine in America that [http://web.archive.org/web/20110220084832/http://www.slate.com/id/1007346/pagenum/all/ remains committed] to the idea of Hiss's innocence." Nowadays, outside "the ranks of [http://hnn.us/articles/816.html ''Nation'' readers] and a dwindling coterie of academic leftists, there are few people still willing to claim that Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White were not Soviet agents," writes Klehr. Radosh agrees, "Except for a dwindling group—mostly [http://hfm.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=3256 ''Nation'' magazine readers] and editors …. the consensus has solidified: Hiss was undoubtedly a Soviet spy."

The lone holdout has been ''[http://www.thenation.com/ The Nation]'', a magazine that "identified itself as solidly pro-Hiss in the 1950s."<ref>G. Edward White, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=FvR4HBTiYzAC Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy]'' (Oxford University Press, 2005) ISBN 0195182553, p. 133.</ref> The late [http://www.ericbreindel.org/about_eric.html Eric Breindel] tagged it "America's leading forum for Alger Hiss apologia";<ref>Eric Breindel, "Goodies from the Venona files: Hiss’ Guilt," ''The New Republic'', April 15, 1996, reprinted in the [http://fdsys.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-1996-04-18/html/CREC-1996-04-18-pt1-PgH3640.htm Congressional Record, Vol. 142, No. 50 (Thursday, April 18, 1996)], p. H3645</ref> [[William F. Buckley]] commented in 1978 that the magazine "has been clinging to the notion of Hiss's innocence over the years with the forlorn adamance of the last survivors of [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19780518&id=s88VAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9xEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2592,3623339 the Flat Earth Society]." ''The Nation'' "embraced a [http://gladlylernegladlyteche.blogspot.com/2009/06/of-columns-communists-and-comoes.html prejudiced view] of the Hiss-Chambers affair in 1948," writes [http://english.princeton.edu/component/option,com_faculty/Itemid,99999999/facultyid,11/func,fullview/lang,en/ Princeton Emeritus Professor] John V. Fleming, "and has been unable to wriggle free even yet."<ref>The magazine's defense of Hiss has tended to ignore the facts and focus on questions of "taste" ("If one has any interest in [http://spectator.org/archives/2008/04/22/the-alger-hiss-democrats our national taste] it is impossible to refrain from asking how American jurors could be persuaded to give credence to such a man as Chambers in preference to such a man as Hiss").</ref> Today, according to Slate.com, it is "pretty much the last general-interest magazine in America that [http://web.archive.org/web/20110220084832/http://www.slate.com/id/1007346/pagenum/all/ remains committed] to the idea of Hiss's innocence." Nowadays, outside "the ranks of [http://hnn.us/articles/816.html ''Nation'' readers] and a dwindling coterie of academic leftists, there are few people still willing to claim that Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White were not Soviet agents," writes Klehr. Radosh agrees, "Except for a dwindling group—mostly [http://hfm.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=3256 ''Nation'' magazine readers] and editors …. the consensus has solidified: Hiss was undoubtedly a Soviet spy."

====George Soros/The Nation Institute====

====George Soros/The Nation Institute====

=====Tony Hiss=====

=====Tony Hiss=====

The first, called [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/ "The Alger Hiss Story: Search for the Truth"] was created in 2001 "[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/aboutus.html with grants from... the Nation Institute]."  The site was started by Hiss's son Tony, a visiting scholar at New York University. "The basic question&mdash;whether Alger Hiss was a spy for the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s&mdash;was finally settled during the 1990s," writes Ehrman. "Today, only a small band of true believers, [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/alger_hiss.html headed by Hiss’s son], still tries to argue his innocence." [http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/1983 Pulitzer Prize–winning] author Ted Morgan concurs: "One example of a dupe is Tony Hiss, who has made a career out of filial piety and continues to proclaim the innocence of his father in the face of irrefutable evidence."<ref>Ted Morgan, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=4ijWhgff9XEC&source=gbs_navlinks_s Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America]'' (New York: Random House, Inc., 2004, ISBN 081297302X), p. 635, n. 199</ref>

The first, called [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/ "The Alger Hiss Story: Search for the Truth"] was created in 2001 "[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/aboutus.html with grants from... the Nation Institute]."  The site was started by Hiss's son Tony, a visiting scholar at New York University. "The basic question&mdash;whether Alger Hiss was a spy for the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s&mdash;was finally settled during the 1990s," writes Ehrman. "Today, only a small band of true believers, [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/alger_hiss.html headed by Hiss’s son], still tries to argue his innocence." [http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/1983 Pulitzer Prize–winning] author Ted Morgan concurs: "One example of a dupe is Tony Hiss, who has made a career out of filial piety and continues to proclaim the innocence of his father in the face of irrefutable evidence."<ref>Ted Morgan, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=4ijWhgff9XEC&source=gbs_navlinks_s Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America]'' (New York: Random House, Inc., 2004, ISBN 081297302X), p. 635, n. 199</ref>

After Hiss ''fils'' originally set up this site on an NYU server, the university requested that he move it elsewhere "to designate it more clearly as a [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/online-the-hiss-defense-doesn-t-rest.html?pagewanted=all personal site] rather than an academic one." The Web site is run [http://www.slate.com/id/1007346/pagenum/all/ out of the home] of "Web master" Jeff Kisseloff, former [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/navobit.html aide to Alger Hiss] and [http://www.thenation.com/authors/jeff-kisseloff archivist] of ''The Nation''.

After Hiss ''fils'' originally set up this site on an NYU server, the university requested that he move it elsewhere "to designate it more clearly as a [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/online-the-hiss-defense-doesn-t-rest.html?pagewanted=all personal site] rather than an academic one." The Web site is run [http://www.slate.com/id/1007346/pagenum/all/ out of the home] of "Web master" Jeff Kisseloff, former [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/navobit.html aide to Alger Hiss] and [http://www.thenation.com/authors/jeff-kisseloff archivist] of ''The Nation''.

Although the site is [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/images/logo2.gif blazoned] "Search for the Truth," [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/aboutus.html buried] within is the admission that its real purpose is to present only "the case for the defense," not both sides. Linder warns that "the site maintains a [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss_links.html decidedly sympathetic] view of Hiss." Cornell Law Library agrees, "The site has a [http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/insiteasp/archive/insite277.html noticeable editorial bias] in favor of Hiss." ''New York Times Book Review'' editor Sam Tanenhaus concurs, "It's a [http://www.slate.com/id/1007346/pagenum/all/ blatantly pro-Hiss] operation whose agenda is to advocate his innocence." Greenberg concludes, "I don't think anyone is going to treat this site as the repository of truth, except for those who have [http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/online-the-hiss-defense-doesn-t-rest.html?pagewanted=all already made up their minds] that Hiss was innocent." Under the snarky headline “[http://sullivanarchives.theatlantic.com/index.php.dish_inc-archives.2001_03_01_dish_archive.html#2902598 FLAT EARTH WATCH],” [http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/11/barack-obama-for-president/209143/ Obama-booster] Andrew Sullivan says the site is dedicated to “the greatest fantasy on the web”&mdash;“the proposition that Alger Hiss was innocent.”

Although the site is [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/images/logo2.gif blazoned] "Search for the Truth," [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/aboutus.html buried] within is the admission that its real purpose is to present only "the case for the defense," not both sides. Linder warns that "the site maintains a [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss_links.html decidedly sympathetic] view of Hiss." Cornell Law Library agrees, "The site has a [http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/insiteasp/archive/insite277.html noticeable editorial bias] in favor of Hiss." ''New York Times Book Review'' editor Sam Tanenhaus concurs, "It's a [http://www.slate.com/id/1007346/pagenum/all/ blatantly pro-Hiss] operation whose agenda is to advocate his innocence." Greenberg concludes, "I don't think anyone is going to treat this site as the repository of truth, except for those who have [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/16/technology/online-the-hiss-defense-doesn-t-rest.html?pagewanted=all already made up their minds] that Hiss was innocent." Under the snarky headline “[http://sullivanarchives.theatlantic.com/index.php.dish_inc-archives.2001_03_01_dish_archive.html#2902598 FLAT EARTH WATCH],” [https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2008/11/barack-obama-for-president/209143/ Obama-booster] Andrew Sullivan says the site is dedicated to “the greatest fantasy on the web”&mdash;“the proposition that Alger Hiss was innocent.”

The site devotes its resources to projects such as hyping the “[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/court.html  long-awaited]” book, ''The Crimes of Alger Hiss'' (formerly known as ''[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/navasky.html Richard Nixon and the Frameup of Alger Hiss]''), by the late William Reuben, a [http://www.thenation.com/archive/passings-0 professional Hiss partisan] who once admitted that “if he had heard that on his deathbed Hiss had confessed to being a Communist and Soviet agent, he ‘wouldn’t believe it.’”<ref>G. Edward White, [http://books.google.com/books?id=FvR4HBTiYzAC Alger Hiss's Looking-glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy] (Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0195182553, pp. 207-208</ref> Reuben previously wrote a book called ''The Atom Spy Hoax'', similarly arguing that [[Julius Rosenberg|the Rosenbergs]] were framed.<ref>According to Reuben, the Rosenberg case was "an out-and-out political frame-up" (Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=QpKjGSHAcaYC The Rosenberg File]'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) ISBN 0300072058, p. 324), "a vast conspiratorial hoax.... [T]he accused spies...have all been 'framed'..." (Harold Green, "Books," ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=eAkAAAAAMBAJ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists]'', Vol. 8, No. 11 [October 1955], pp. 309-310)  

The site devotes its resources to projects such as hyping the “[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/court.html  long-awaited]” book, ''The Crimes of Alger Hiss'' (formerly known as ''[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/navasky.html Richard Nixon and the Frameup of Alger Hiss]''), by the late William Reuben, a [http://www.thenation.com/archive/passings-0 professional Hiss partisan] who once admitted that “if he had heard that on his deathbed Hiss had confessed to being a Communist and Soviet agent, he ‘wouldn’t believe it.’”<ref>G. Edward White, [https://books.google.com/books?id=FvR4HBTiYzAC Alger Hiss's Looking-glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy] (Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0195182553, pp. 207-208</ref> Reuben previously wrote a book called ''The Atom Spy Hoax'', similarly arguing that [[Julius Rosenberg|the Rosenbergs]] were framed.<ref>According to Reuben, the Rosenberg case was "an out-and-out political frame-up" (Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=QpKjGSHAcaYC The Rosenberg File]'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) ISBN 0300072058, p. 324), "a vast conspiratorial hoax.... [T]he accused spies...have all been 'framed'..." (Harold Green, "Books," ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=eAkAAAAAMBAJ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists]'', Vol. 8, No. 11 [October 1955], pp. 309-310)  

“Today, with the number of Rosenberg defenders steadily shrinking, let’s stipulate: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/books/review/Roberts-t.html?pagewanted=all Julius was a Soviet spy],” comments the ''New York Times.'' After more than half a century of denial, Rosenberg trial co-defendant Morton Sobell “dramatically reversed himself” in 2008, admitting “for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.” He also [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html?pagewanted=all implicated Rosenberg] in a conspiracy to deliver classified  information to the Soviets. Even the Rosenbergs' sons have now “admitted to a painful conclusion: that [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/nyregion/17rosenbergs.html?pagewanted=all their father was a spy].”

“Today, with the number of Rosenberg defenders steadily shrinking, let’s stipulate: [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/books/review/Roberts-t.html?pagewanted=all Julius was a Soviet spy],” comments the ''New York Times.'' After more than half a century of denial, Rosenberg trial co-defendant Morton Sobell “dramatically reversed himself” in 2008, admitting “for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.” He also [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html?pagewanted=all implicated Rosenberg] in a conspiracy to deliver classified  information to the Soviets. Even the Rosenbergs' sons have now “admitted to a painful conclusion: that [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/nyregion/17rosenbergs.html?pagewanted=all their father was a spy].”

While conceding that Julius was a Soviet agent, some on the left claimed that Ethel was innocent. But [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/21sep_recruitment_by_rosenbergs.pdf Venona 1340] New York to Moscow 21 September 1944, made public in 1995, revealed that Ethel was, like Julius, guilty as charged, of conspiracy to commit espionage. This coded Soviet message recorded Ethel's active involvement in Soviet recruitment: “LIBERAL [Julius Rosenberg] recommended the wife of his wife's brother, Ruth GREENGLASS.... She is 21 years old, a TOWNSWOMAN [U.S. citizen], a GYMNAST [“Probably a member of the Young Communist League”] since 1942.... LIBERAL and his wife recommend her as an intelligent and clever girl.

While conceding that Julius was a Soviet agent, some on the left claimed that Ethel was innocent. But [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/21sep_recruitment_by_rosenbergs.pdf Venona 1340] New York to Moscow 21 September 1944, made public in 1995, revealed that Ethel was, like Julius, guilty as charged, of conspiracy to commit espionage. This coded Soviet message recorded Ethel's active involvement in Soviet recruitment: “LIBERAL [Julius Rosenberg] recommended the wife of his wife's brother, Ruth GREENGLASS.... She is 21 years old, a TOWNSWOMAN [U.S. citizen], a GYMNAST [“Probably a member of the Young Communist League”] since 1942.... LIBERAL and his wife recommend her as an intelligent and clever girl.

Others connected with ''The Nation'' are more candid: Max Holland, a [http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=34303 contributing editor at the ''Nation''], writes that "Alger Hiss has been proven to be the 'Ales'

Others connected with ''The Nation'' are more candid: Max Holland, a [http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=34303 contributing editor at the ''Nation''], writes that "Alger Hiss has been proven to be the 'Ales'

code-named in the Venona intercepts."<ref>Max Holland, "[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2009.11.3.144 I. F. Stone: Encounters with Soviet Intelligence]," ''The Journal of Cold War Studies'', Vol. 11, Issue 3 (Summer 2009) p. 164, fn. 61</ref> Former [http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8013479.html Harvard Law professor] and [http://www.thenation.com/node/22680 ''Nation'' contributor] Susan Estrich (author of ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=WA5XUA4v-roC The Case for Hillary Clinton]'') admits that "liberal efforts over the years to champion the Rosenbergs, or Alger Hiss, as something other than Communists [http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=17066 were misguided]." Cold War scholars have now "[http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=if_stone_journalist_and_spy nailed Alger Hiss]," agrees ''Nation'' [http://www.thenation.com/authors/todd-gitlin contributor] [[Todd Gitlin]] "&mdash;a nailing long overdue on the left." [http://www.thenation.com/authors/jim-sleeper ''Nation'' contributor] Jim Sleeper, posting on the [http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2009/07/more-on-the-tabloidization-of-tpm.html liberal] Talking Points Memo blog, concurs, "it's obvious now that many leftists" defended Hiss "long beyond the point where it made political, moral, or even [http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/29/an_imperturbably_valiant_lawyer/ simple cognitive sense]." "Vociferously atheistic," self-styled "radical" Christopher Hitchens&mdash;one of the "25 [http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/22/influential-media-obama-oped-cx_tv_ee_hra_0122liberal.html most influential liberals] in the U.S. media" (and [http://www.thenation.com/authors/christopher-hitchens long-time columnist] for ''The Nation'')&mdash;calls the myth of Hiss's innocence "one of the most persistent (and [http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/36492.html repelling) myths] of the [[fellow traveller|fellow-traveling]] Left."<ref>"[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/nyregion/15donohue.html Militant atheist]" Hitchens writes of once quipping to the hostess of a dinner party he attended with Alger Hiss, "Why don't we secure the doors and say: 'Look, Alger, it's just us. Come on. You're among friends. Tell us why you really did it.'" (Christopher Hitchens, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=RBGmrDnBs8UC Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere]'' [London: Verso, 2000] ISBN 1859847862, pp. 105-106) Hitchens (who says he is considering writing a book called ''Guilty as Hell: A Short History of the American Left'') suggests that  the answer is, "because he thought he was [http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/2932161.html onto a winner]."</ref>

code-named in the Venona intercepts."<ref>Max Holland, "[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/jcws.2009.11.3.144 I. F. Stone: Encounters with Soviet Intelligence]," ''The Journal of Cold War Studies'', Vol. 11, Issue 3 (Summer 2009) p. 164, fn. 61</ref> Former [http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8013479.html Harvard Law professor] and [http://www.thenation.com/node/22680 ''Nation'' contributor] Susan Estrich (author of ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=WA5XUA4v-roC The Case for Hillary Clinton]'') admits that "liberal efforts over the years to champion the Rosenbergs, or Alger Hiss, as something other than Communists [http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=17066 were misguided]." Cold War scholars have now "[http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=if_stone_journalist_and_spy nailed Alger Hiss]," agrees ''Nation'' [http://www.thenation.com/authors/todd-gitlin contributor] [[Todd Gitlin]] "&mdash;a nailing long overdue on the left." [http://www.thenation.com/authors/jim-sleeper ''Nation'' contributor] Jim Sleeper, posting on the [http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2009/07/more-on-the-tabloidization-of-tpm.html liberal] Talking Points Memo blog, concurs, "it's obvious now that many leftists" defended Hiss "long beyond the point where it made political, moral, or even [http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/29/an_imperturbably_valiant_lawyer/ simple cognitive sense]." "Vociferously atheistic," self-styled "radical" Christopher Hitchens&mdash;one of the "25 [http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/22/influential-media-obama-oped-cx_tv_ee_hra_0122liberal.html most influential liberals] in the U.S. media" (and [http://www.thenation.com/authors/christopher-hitchens long-time columnist] for ''The Nation'')&mdash;calls the myth of Hiss's innocence "one of the most persistent (and [http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/36492.html repelling) myths] of the [[fellow traveller|fellow-traveling]] Left."<ref>"[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/nyregion/15donohue.html Militant atheist]" Hitchens writes of once quipping to the hostess of a dinner party he attended with Alger Hiss, "Why don't we secure the doors and say: 'Look, Alger, it's just us. Come on. You're among friends. Tell us why you really did it.'" (Christopher Hitchens, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=RBGmrDnBs8UC Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere]'' [London: Verso, 2000] ISBN 1859847862, pp. 105-106) Hitchens (who says he is considering writing a book called ''Guilty as Hell: A Short History of the American Left'') suggests that  the answer is, "because he thought he was [http://www.hoover.org/multimedia/uk/2932161.html onto a winner]."</ref>

=====Victor Navasky=====

=====Victor Navasky=====

According to Ehrman, Victor Navasky, [http://www.thenation.com/authors/victor-navasky long-time publisher of ''The Nation''], is "now [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no5/html/v44i5a01p.htm virtually alone] in his rejection of the case against Hiss." As editor, one thing Navasky "would not permit" in ''The Nation'', writes Powers, was any "public admission that it was [[Whittaker Chambers]] who told the truth and Alger [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/books/review/29POWERSL.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print Hiss who lied]." Morgan calls Navasky a "prime example of an opportunist," who "wrote that the ''Venona'' transcripts were forgeries. One of his friends described him as being 'frozen into false positions.'"<ref>Ted Morgan, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=4ijWhgff9XEC&source=gbs_navlinks_s Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America]'' (New York: Random House, Inc., 2004) ISBN 081297302X), p. 635, n. 199</ref>

According to Ehrman, Victor Navasky, [http://www.thenation.com/authors/victor-navasky long-time publisher of ''The Nation''], is "now [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no5/html/v44i5a01p.htm virtually alone] in his rejection of the case against Hiss." As editor, one thing Navasky "would not permit" in ''The Nation'', writes Powers, was any "public admission that it was [[Whittaker Chambers]] who told the truth and Alger [https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/books/review/29POWERSL.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print Hiss who lied]." Morgan calls Navasky a "prime example of an opportunist," who "wrote that the ''Venona'' transcripts were forgeries. One of his friends described him as being 'frozen into false positions.'"<ref>Ted Morgan, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=4ijWhgff9XEC&source=gbs_navlinks_s Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America]'' (New York: Random House, Inc., 2004) ISBN 081297302X), p. 635, n. 199</ref>

"Hiss’s defenders stubbornly tried to rebut each revelation," recounts Ehrman, "but eventually they [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no5/html/v44i5a01p.htm were overwhelmed]." [http://www.thenation.com/authors/nicholas-von-hoffman ''Nation'' contributor] Nicholas von Hoffman,<ref>Von Hoffman wrote prophetically in 1995 of the need to "make liberalism respectable" to what he called "[http://www.thenation.com/print/article/calling-air-america the impressionable, feckless, white-collar American masses]" in order to "put a lefty in the White House."</ref> a [http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/-Organized--crime-6271 protégé of Saul Alinsky], is "[http://www.thenation.com/article/cold-war-ghosts?page=full anything but a right-winger]," admits Navasky, but even he concedes, "The sum and substance of this growing body of material is that Alger Hiss, a darling of the establishment, was guilty."<ref>Nicholas Von Hoffman, "Was McCarthy right about the left?" ''The Washington Post'', April 14, 1996, p. C1</ref> "[E]ven many on the left&mdash;including younger historians such as Rick Perlstein"<ref>Perlstein, a [http://www.thenation.com/authors/rick-perlstein ''Nation'' contributor], writes that [[Richard Nixon|Nixon]] had Hiss "nailed dead to rights," even before "[[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]] produced clinching evidence" in the form of the pumpkin papers. Rick Perlstein, Introduction, in Rick Perlstein, ed., ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=wFRSat2M0YEC Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents]'' (Princeton University Press, 2008) ISBN 0691136998, pp. xxv-xxvi</ref> have become convinced that "Hiss was guilty," observes Slate.com, "although [http://www.slate.com/id/2170415/ old-school loyalists like Navasky] remained skeptical."

"Hiss’s defenders stubbornly tried to rebut each revelation," recounts Ehrman, "but eventually they [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol44no5/html/v44i5a01p.htm were overwhelmed]." [http://www.thenation.com/authors/nicholas-von-hoffman ''Nation'' contributor] Nicholas von Hoffman,<ref>Von Hoffman wrote prophetically in 1995 of the need to "make liberalism respectable" to what he called "[http://www.thenation.com/print/article/calling-air-america the impressionable, feckless, white-collar American masses]" in order to "put a lefty in the White House."</ref> a [http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/-Organized--crime-6271 protégé of Saul Alinsky], is "[http://www.thenation.com/article/cold-war-ghosts?page=full anything but a right-winger]," admits Navasky, but even he concedes, "The sum and substance of this growing body of material is that Alger Hiss, a darling of the establishment, was guilty."<ref>Nicholas Von Hoffman, "Was McCarthy right about the left?" ''The Washington Post'', April 14, 1996, p. C1</ref> "[E]ven many on the left&mdash;including younger historians such as Rick Perlstein"<ref>Perlstein, a [http://www.thenation.com/authors/rick-perlstein ''Nation'' contributor], writes that [[Richard Nixon|Nixon]] had Hiss "nailed dead to rights," even before "[[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]] produced clinching evidence" in the form of the pumpkin papers. Rick Perlstein, Introduction, in Rick Perlstein, ed., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=wFRSat2M0YEC Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents]'' (Princeton University Press, 2008) ISBN 0691136998, pp. xxv-xxvi</ref> have become convinced that "Hiss was guilty," observes Slate.com, "although [http://www.slate.com/id/2170415/ old-school loyalists like Navasky] remained skeptical."

But even Navasky (once dubbed "[http://www.tnr.com/article/red-dusk the cheerleader] of the 'everybody was innocent' school") has now retreated, claiming "[http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/37819.html my point is not guilt or innocence]." Today, "instead of forcefully arguing that Hiss wasn't guilty as he once did, Navasky," now [http://www.cjr.org/about_us/masthead.php chairman] of the ''Columbia Journalism Review'', "acknowledges that [http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/cold-war-without-end.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all Hiss wasn't telling the truth] when he testified that he didn't know Whittaker Chambers." Nevertheless, in reference to the activities of people "in US left circles.... many of whom were Marxists, some of whom were Communists, some of whom were critical of US government policy," during this era, argues Navasky, the word "espionage" is "out of context." He prefers to characterize their activities as "exchanges of information" that happened to be in "[http://www.thenation.com/article/cold-war-ghosts?page=full violation of the law]." (As critics have noted, such "exchanges" only went [http://reason.com/archives/2004/04/01/fools-for-communism/print one way].) Finally, Navasky asked, "Espionage, is it so bad?"<ref>Joyce Milton, "[http://business.highbeam.com/4776/article-1G1-18807177/old-left-fort-mcnair-postcard The Old Left: Fort McNair Postcard]," ''The New Republic'', November 4, 1997</ref>

But even Navasky (once dubbed "[http://www.tnr.com/article/red-dusk the cheerleader] of the 'everybody was innocent' school") has now retreated, claiming "[http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/37819.html my point is not guilt or innocence]." Today, "instead of forcefully arguing that Hiss wasn't guilty as he once did, Navasky," now [http://www.cjr.org/about_us/masthead.php chairman] of the ''Columbia Journalism Review'', "acknowledges that [https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/cold-war-without-end.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all Hiss wasn't telling the truth] when he testified that he didn't know Whittaker Chambers." Nevertheless, in reference to the activities of people "in US left circles.... many of whom were Marxists, some of whom were Communists, some of whom were critical of US government policy," during this era, argues Navasky, the word "espionage" is "out of context." He prefers to characterize their activities as "exchanges of information" that happened to be in "[http://www.thenation.com/article/cold-war-ghosts?page=full violation of the law]." (As critics have noted, such "exchanges" only went [http://reason.com/archives/2004/04/01/fools-for-communism/print one way].) Finally, Navasky asked, "Espionage, is it so bad?"<ref>Joyce Milton, "[http://business.highbeam.com/4776/article-1G1-18807177/old-left-fort-mcnair-postcard The Old Left: Fort McNair Postcard]," ''The New Republic'', November 4, 1997</ref>

====''The Nation'' on consensus====

====''The Nation'' on consensus====