Word: weinstein
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...controversy flared anew when Allen Weinstein, a respected historian from Smith College who had tended to believe Hiss innocent, did a complete turnabout. After examining 15,376 pages of FBI files that he had pried loose in a Freedom of Information suit last year and additional papers that Hiss instructed his lawyers to make available, Weinstein declared: "Hiss has been lying about his relations with Chambers for nearly 30 years . . . Others who once believed in Alger Hiss may now be persuaded that he stole the documents in question and that Whittaker Chambers told the truth...
...Weinstein, who has been writing a book on the Hiss case, found that evidence given to him by defense lawyers was more damaging to Hiss than the FBI files. The professor published his conclusions in the current New York Review of Books, in which he reviews Alger Hiss: The True Story, a strong defense of Hiss by John Chabot Smith, a former reporter who also had access to the Hiss defense files. Smith's book on Hiss deals largely with conspiracy theories. He argues implausibly that Chambers was not an ex-Communist but a Walter Mitty-type dreamer...
...basis of the defense attorneys' files, Weinstein argues that...
...defense's basic problem," Weinstein concludes, "was in keeping the Government and the public from learning about the conclusions of its own experts, which it successfully managed to do at the trial...
...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...