GUILT BY INNUENDO
Strum, Philippa
BOOKS GUILT BY INNUENDO PHILIPPA STRUM Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Cote ALLEN WEENSTEIN Knopf, $15 [674 pp] After reading what has been hailed by its publisher as the "monumental and...
...The "but" appears even though another member of the FPA, according to Weinstein, was Charles Yost, later President Nixon's Ambassador to the United Nations, and scarcely a likely participant in a subversive organization...
...The Freedom of Information Act gave Weinstein access to formerly classified FBI, OSS, CIA, State Department, and Justice Department files, and (he belief that he planned to exonerate Hiss brought him the cooperation of Hiss, his friends, and bis attorneys...
...In 1938, after he defected, Chambers wrote about Bykov as a Russian "who spoke hardly a word of English...
...Perjury in whose apartment Hiss's meeting with Massing supposedly took place, and who was in a Hungarian prison during the Hiss trial, wrote after his release that the meeting had never occurred and that Massing's account was an "outrageous lie" and a "complete un-' truth...
...Now one finds a "however" rather a "but": "Field said nothing, however, about the exact nature of bis...
...In order to prove its likelihood, Weinstein recounts a similar meeting Chambers arranged for Julian Wadleigh, who later admitted turning documents over to Chambers...
...Buried in the footnotes on page 615 is Weinstein's explanation: perhaps "Bykov was attempting a crude disguise to prevent future identification...
...Weinstein's book is replete with similarly meaningless "buts...
...The number of documents read and people interviewed by Weinstein is overwhelming...
...Although Weinstein does not consider this discrepancy sufficient to raise doubts about Chambers's story, he does recognize it as presenting a bit of a problem—especially as William Crane and Maxim Lieber (whose meeting are also introduced to give credence to Chambers's story) agreed that Bykov had both arms...
...Why Bykov felt he needed a disguise only before Wadleigh is unexplained, as is the question of why he chose to hide his arm but not his face or his name...
...One knows beyond any doubt, however, that AHen Weinstein has not produced a responsible work of scholarship...
...The accuracy of Weinstein's "facts'* cannot possibly be assessed by anyone who has not replicated all of his work...
...Another point against Hiss is the repeated rumors in Washington that he was involved with the Communists...
...Hie book abounds with many other examples of sloppy scholarship, guilt by innuendo, and the utilization of "but" to introduce wholly irrelevant "evidence...
...The speculation is unfortunately based on no evidence whatsoever that the Hisses needed respite or found themselves encumbered by the demands of "bourgeois super-respectability...
...It seems improbable that the two families became close during the months that both men . . . were evaluating their careers—'Field having resigned from State only four months before Hiss joined the Department— without discussing the dilemma that led Field to forsake Washington for Geneva...
...Hiss denied that he had ever met Massing...
...There is no evidence other than Chambers's testimony that the meeting ever took place...
...Throughout the book, in fact, they appear as rather contented with their pre-1948 existences...
...When (he woman asked Hede Massing, later revealed as a secret agent for the Russians, about Hiss, Massing described her own espionage activities and "mentioned Hiss as being connected with this apparatus...
...Consider, for example, a key meeting allegedly arranged early in 1937 by Chambers for Hiss and Colonel Boris Bykov, described as the "chief agent for Russian military intelligence in the United States during the late 1930's...
...Weinstein's reaction to Hiss's denial it to write, "But he was an active participant in...
...A major question is why the fastidious Hiss would have maintained a friendship with the somewhat repulsive Chambers...
...The official supposedly remarked, "There are some who say Alger is a Communist...
...The Washington conversational level must have suffered...
...Weinstein portrays a strange world in which all spies but Hiss announced their criminal activities to their friends...
...A peace activist, described by Weinstein as being surprised to hear that her 1946 application for a U.N...
...Perhaps his evidence lies in the contention that "Field debated these 7 July 1978: 442 contradictions for himself...
...During the alleged Hiss meeting, Weinstein notes, Chambers had to translate from the German, as Bykov "spoke little English...
...at a time when his friends included Alger Hiss...
...Weinstein speculates that "Chambers spoke as a representative of world revolution, offering...
...The "dual life" appears again when Weinstein discusses the Hiss-Field relationship...
...The answer is that "the conflict bet ween, governmental responsibilities and evolving radical beliefs affected both men...
...His stated that Field was at some of the meetings of that highly suspicious Foreign Policy Association, and that is apparently enough for Weinstein...
...The "however" remains, although Weinstein acknowledges elsewhere that "the degree of intimacy developed between the Hisses and the Fields remains uncertain...
...an informal group which called itself the Foreign Policy Association...
...Why, especially as it is not known with any certainty that the families did become close, is it "improbable" that a spy would withhold from an acquaintance the information that he had committed espionage...
...Apparently, for the Hisses, he also offered some respite from the bourgeois super-respectability demanded of them by their backgrounds, their public associations, and their secret ideological commitments...
...It is unclear how Weinstein knows that Hiss was so affected...
...in fact, he had not even jotned the State Department at the time of his alleged meeting with her...
...Why, if he believed the rumor, did the official later testify as a character witness for Hiss (especially as Weinstein makes no allegation that the official was himself subversive...
...Field is reported to have turned down "a pivotal post at the State Department's German desk" because he was under pressure to steal documents and was making "an apparent effort to resolve what he himself had called a 'dual life.'" The Hisses and the Fields apparently did see each other before Field fled from the country, and Weinstein says of the meetings...
...Oddly enough, Wadleigh described Bykov as "speaking English Veii' hut 'with a distinct Russian accent...
...Even if all of his information is correct, however, the conclusions drawn from k range from the highly speculative to the bizarre, and the entire book'is therefore rendered suspect...
...the fascination of dual lives as romantic conspirators...
...As someone who was ten years old when Hiss was tried, this reviewer was looking forward to finding out whether or not he was really guilty...
...All the mote pity, then, that the resultant material has been so badly used...
...Weinstein's book holds no answer...
...BOOKS GUILT BY INNUENDO PHILIPPA STRUM Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Cote ALLEN WEENSTEIN Knopf, $15 [674 pp] After reading what has been hailed by its publisher as the "monumental and long-awaited book that tells the full story of the Hiss-Chambers case," one still does not know whether Alger Hiss was guilty of perjury...
...Note the "but...
...Professors of philosophy undoubtedly have a name for this kind of illogic...
...post was being held up at Hiss's State Department desk, for she considered him a friend, mentioned the matter to another State official...
...Hiss's closest associates . . . included Lee Pressman, Nathan Witt, and John Abt [all identified by Weinstein as Communists], all of whom presumably shared Field's dilemma...
...But there is more, for while Colonel Bykov unquestionably enjoyed the constant possession of two arms, Wadleigh described him as having no right arm...
...One subsequently discovers that Noel Field, the agent How can we explain the link between Chambers and the Hisses, a couple .', . . reserved in their private relationships . . .? Whatever personal attraction Chambers may have held for the Hisses, it could not have come from his physical presence: perpetually disheveled, unkempt . . . But Chambers spoke as a representative of world revolution, offering to a select handful of rising New Deal bureaucrats, and at remarkably little cost in time or energy, the fascination of dual lives as romantic conspirators...
...Weinstein's "proof that Hiss lied is no more than proof by innuendo...
...Why a relatively innocent question led a spy to blurt out an incriminating tale of espionage is unexplained...
...relationship with the Hisses...
...How, then, does Wadleigh's meeting with an Englishspeaking Russian lend credence to Chambers's account of the Hiss meeting...
Vol. 105 • July 1978 • No. 13
