Word: algerisms
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...Titled The Middle of the Journey, the book described the intellectual torture of a Communist in the process of quitting the party. Reviews which praised its "assurance, literacy and intelligence" aroused the interest of FBI agents investigating Whittaker Chambers' allegations of spying by State Department Official Alger Hiss. Indeed Trilling had shared a class with Chambers when both were Columbia students, and he frankly admitted fictionalizing Chambers' story in his novel. But when Hiss's lawyers asked him to testify against Chambers, he refused...
Whether the Rosenbergs were technically guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage as the government charged, or whether Alger Hiss actually turned over confidential State Department documents to Whitaker Chambers during the late 1930's, may seem to be somewhat particularistic and historically insignificant questions. But if these specific cases can shed light on the entire McCarthy period, if the Freedom of Information Act can help explain the FBI's method of investigation in two cases which contributed so much to the creation of a national anti-communist hysteria, then clearly Weinstein's research and that of Hiss and the Meeropols...
Actually, the FBI never really kept its files entirely secret. For years the bureau granted selective access, showing files that it chose to, withholding documents at whim. In fact, FBI files, even the tightly guarded ones on Alger Hiss, have been floating around in private hands since as long ago as 1945. Apparently they were leaked to favorable parties for potentially helpful political purposes by the bureau itself...
...shown an FBI file naming Hiss as a Soviet agent well before Whitaker Chambers made his charges at a 1948 House Un-American Activities Committee hearing. Therefore, Weinstein says, Nixon knew more than his fellow Congressmen about the brewing case, despite his claim that he first heard the name Alger Hiss from Chambers' mouth. Weinstein also shows through interviews with the principals in the investigation that Nixon was prepared many times to drop the case, and had to be urged to press on by others. So much for the self-satisfied account by Nixon in his Six Crises...
...type of scholarship Weinstein is engaged in, the Meeropols' investigation of their parents' case, Alger Hiss's efforts to prove his innocence, all lead to broad philosophical questions concerning the nature of historical truths. It may well be that both the Rosenbergs and the FBI, both Hiss and Chambers, were lying. It is possible that no party to the cases will be able to maintain that the complete truth rests on its side. It is then that the area of judgmental truth will be entered. Did the Rosenbergs and the FBI have different reasons for lying? What are the distinctions...