Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars
The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy
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Average rating5
15
The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy
Ratings1
Average rating5
For decades, a great number of Americans saw Alger Hiss as an innocent victim of McCarthyism--a distinguished diplomat railroaded by an ambitious Richard Nixon. And even as the case against Hiss grew over time, his dignified demeanor helped create an aura of innocence that outshone the facts in many minds. Now G. Edward White deftly draws together the countless details of Hiss's life--from his upper middle-class childhood in Baltimore and his brilliant success at Harvard to his later career as a self-made martyr to McCarthyism--to paint a fascinating portrait of a man whose life was devoted to perpetuating a lie. White catalogs the evidence that proved Hiss's guilt, from Whittaker Chambers's famous testimony, to copies of State Department documents typed on Hiss's typewriter, to Allen Weinstein's groundbreaking investigation in the 1970s. The author then explores the central conundrums of Hiss's life: Why did this talented lawyer become a Communist and a Soviet spy? Why did he devote so much of his life to an extensive public campaign to deny his espionage? And how, without producing any new evidence, did he convince many people that he was innocent? White offers a compelling analysis of Hiss's behavior in the face of growing evidence of his guilt, revealing how this behavior fit into an ongoing pattern of denial and duplicity in his life. The story of Alger Hiss is in part a reflection of Cold War America--a time of ideological passions, partisan battles, and secret lives. It is also a story that transcends a particular historical era--a story about individuals who choose to engage in espionage for foreign powers and the secret worlds they choose to conceal. In White's skilled hands, the life of Alger Hiss comes to illuminate both of those themes.
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This book is interesting because it starts from the premise that Alger Hiss was indisputably guilty of spying for the Russians. White's interest in establishing Hiss's guilt is secondary to his main objective of discussing why Hiss was a spy and why he spent 50 years pretending to be innocent.
The proposition that Hiss was guilty seems to clear now to be seriously argued by anyone without a vested interest in his innocence. Even at the time, there was too much pointing to Hiss as a spy. Whitaker Chamber's testimony was corroborated by several other former Russian spies, Hiss's testimony was proven to be inferior to that of Chambers, and Hiss never offered a coherent explanation for how documents typed up by a typewriter he used for private communication became part of Chamber's “life preserver” 10 years before. The release of Soviet archival information that identified Hiss by name as running a spy network put an end to any pretext of innocence.
But why did Hiss become a spy. Although he did not come from the highest tier of the upper class as a matter of birth, he used his connections and talents to break into that class. His connections were such that Felix Frankfurter recommended him as a clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Hiss moved from leftwing concerns about agricultural policies to the State Department to being the first Secretary General of the United Nations.
The author, G. Edward White, postulates that Hiss enjoyed the control and power he was able to exercise by keeping his well-groomed public life separated from his life as a Russian spy. He may also have been a pathological altruist who took a great deal of pleasure in presenting himself as the moral paragon. He had a childhood of taking care of family, and he threw himself into the role of the savior of Priscilla, who was a pregnant, divorced single mother. Hiss also had a history of blatant deception, such as when he made plans to secretly marry Priscilla against Holmes' rules for his clerks while claiming not to know those rules.
I am not sure that White answered my question about why Hiss became a traitor, but, ultimately, an answer may never be forthcoming. It may be nothing more than that he was young and he fell into a crowd where such behavior was the trendy thing to do.
PSB
