Word: weinstein
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...Weinstein on the other hand firmly believes there is no "smoking gun." "It would be a mistake to assume that there exists a single document that will solve either case. The files will clarify, but they will not provide magic answers." That is not to say that Weinstein does not expect to be able to draw conclusions and offer judgments in each of his projected books. In addition to studying the FBI files, he has travelled both in the United States and in Eastern Europe conducting interviews with current and former Soviet agents. He promises to document thoroughly his research...
Much of the legal pressure came not just from the Meeropols' suit, but from a parallel action filed over three years ago by Allen Weinstein, a professor of History at Smith College and visiting fellow at the Law School. Weinstein is using the Freedom of Information Act to sue for the release of the FBI's 53,000 pages of files on the Alger Hiss case as well since he is preparing a book for publication next year to be entitled Alger and Whitaker. He expects to follow that study with a book on the Rosenberg case and anticipates that...
...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 will not simply serve to satisfy a historical curiosity. The means by which the investigative arm of the Justice Department obtained information during this period, certainly one of the darkest in American history, the pressures--personal or political--applied which turned...
...obvious question in these cases, where the courts are compelling an agency to release information which may be damaging to that agency, is whether the FBI could have tampered with the files. Weinstein thinks not. "Obviously we'll never know with absolute certainty but there is a good cross checking system." By this Weinstein means that many copies of these files have already been made and are kept in various governmental agencies. Thus, should the FBI tamper with the files in violation of court orders, it might well create more difficulties for itself than if it released information, some...
...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...