Changes

==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://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> 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>The Rosenbergs, for example, were "loyal unto death [http://www.reason.com/news/show/29095.html to the Soviet Union]."</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. Regarding Hiss, Isserman, probably the best regarded of the left-wing scholars of Communism, concludes: "Let's face it, [http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/cold-war-without-end.html?pagewanted=all the debate just ended]."

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://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> 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>The Rosenbergs, for example, were "loyal unto death [http://www.reason.com/news/show/29095.html to the Soviet Union]."</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]."

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