Word: hissing
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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...
...Freedom of Information suits filed by Weinstein, by Hiss and by Michael and Robert Meeropol, serve a contemporary political purpose, in addition to fulfilling the demands of history. As Weinstein says, the real issue in the suits became a question of whether the Justice Department could control the FBI. Long after Elliot Richardson '41, as a Watergate-shuffle Attorney General, had promised that these specific files would be made completely public, the FBI was still holding out. The bureau presented irrelevant national security arguments, released completely blue-pencilled 17-page reports, claimed a lack of manpower for copying the documents...
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...
...press on the Rosenberg question, Allen Weinstein is apparently going to be one of the "liberals" Michael Meeropol criticized. Weinstein has said in the past of the Rosenbergs, "I tend to think they were Soviet agents, but of a more minor sort than the government claimed." As for Hiss, Weinstein has given no concrete indication of the stance he will take. But in an Esquire Magazine article this month, he did accuse former President Nixon of deliberately lying about and distorting his own personal role in the Hiss case. Weinstein demonstrates that Nixon had been shown an FBI file naming...
...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...