Where the News Ends

...All the circumstances were calculated to arouse public attention: the prolonged personal duel between Hiss and Whitta-ker Chambers, the elements of conspiracy and foreign espionage, the sensational production of incriminating documents long hidden away...

...Alistair Cooke of the Manchester Guardian had a shrewd insight when he suggested that the intense sympathy of the Hiss partisans was often prompted by the subconscious feeling: "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Hiss has certainly had his full "day in court," with two trials in which expert counsel exploited every available fact for his defense and with a flow of favorable books about his case—Earl Jowitt's, his own and now Fred J. Cook's The Unfinished Story of Alger Hiss (Morrow, $3.50...

...Cook suggests that the documents included material in which a foreign espionage service would not be interested, but this overlooks the well-known method of Soviet espionage: to gather large masses of material with little discrimination...

...Hiss was regarded as a martyr by fellow-travelers and anti-anti-Communists, by those who shook their heads over every defensive step taken by the United States in the cold war...

...we were all old Moscow acquaintances...

...His most palpable hit is the conflict between Chambers's original statements that he broke with Communism in 1937, and his later revision of the date to the spring of 1938...

...For this old battered Woodstock was produced by the Hisses and acknowledged as their own machine...

...Cook is convinced that Hiss was an innocent man, that the witnesses against him were false and the impressive circumstantial evidence— the copies of documents typed on his typewriter, the memoranda in his own handwriting—which Chambers produced was doctored, forged or somehow without significance...

...But there are no new facts in this book which would warrant a revision of the verdict of the second jury...

...There were discrepancies in the testimony on both sides, some of them probably inevitable because of the difficulties of remembering precise details of events that occurred over ten years earlier...

...Cook's work might mislead some who know little about the details of the two trials...

...The United States had experienced two waves of pro-Soviet sympathy—the first a reaction to the Great Depression, the second a product of America's wartime association with the Soviet Union...

...Cook, a skilful advocate, approaches these discrepancies in the spirit of a defense attorney, minimizing those of Hiss and his wife, magnifying those of Chambers and other prosecution witnesses...

...This is the testimony of a former Lithuanian diplomat, now a naturalized American citizen, Henrykas Rabina-vicius...

...Even if it were technically possible to construct a machine which would have all the special quirks and defects which an old typewriter possesses, how could there be any assurance that the Hisses would obligingly pick it up and present it in evidence...

...But who would be likely to know anything about the activities of a Communist underground worker or espionage agent except the limited number of people engaged in similar activities...

...but the verdict of the second jury will also, I believe, be the verdict of history...

...I profoundly regretted this suggestion later when Rabinavicius went to Hiss's attorneys with a story about Mrs...

...The objection is sometimes voiced that those who have testified against Hiss are ex-Communists like Whitta-ker Chambers, Hede Massing and Nathaniel Weyl, the first two of whom are admitted former Soviet agents...

...Cook is no more successful than Hiss's lawyers in explaining away the mass of evidence developed by the prosecution: the favors extended to Chambers (such as the gift of an old car), the degree of intimacy confirmed when Chambers mentioned Hiss's delight in having seen a pro-thonotary warbler (a detail confirmed by Hiss himself), and those very impressive silent witnesses, the documents and the typewriter...

...Massing, who happened to be at Lyons's apartment, that was strongly at variance with my own impression of her that evening as a thoroughly coherent and reliable witness...

...He tried to discredit Hede Massing, self-confessed former Communist spy courier, who had testified that she had engaged in friendly sparring with Hiss as to which spy ring should have prior claim on Noel Field, the former American diplomat who disappeared behind the Iron Curtain...

...As for the typewriter, Cook's attempts to pass it off as a forgery (presumably constructed by the FBI) would hardly pass muster in a Grade B thriller...

...I happen to possess special knowledge of one incident which the author plays up far beyond its deserts...

...It was my wife and I who suggested to Rabinavicius that he come with us to the apartment of Eugene Lyons...

...The State Department documents received from Hiss bore dates early in 1938...