Dean Acheson's Alger hiss
BEISNER, ROBERT L.
Dean Acheson's Alger Hiss by Robert L. Beisner Many mysteries remain in the wake of the life and death of Alger Hiss. One is his relationship to Dean Acheson. On January 25, 1950, the day Hiss was...
...Though Acheson himself never flirted with radical doctrines, he was an unapologetic if conservative New Dealer, long comfortable in cosmopolitan settings and discussions...
...Against the wishes of all his advisers, he privately determined to speak out in defense of Hiss, who was sentenced that day to five years in federal prison...
...naked, and ye clothed me...
...For me, there is very little doubt about those standards or those principles...
...Acheson was scheduled to hold a regular press conference on January 25...
...He refused to discuss the matter with his personal assistant, Lucius Battle, or with Paul Nitze or Charles Bohlen...
...Have you any other questions...
...Acheson listened...
...It made no sense that Hiss would engage in such "insane" behavior...
...He deeply despised the right-wingers who crusaded against communism and equated it with American liberalism...
...An aide stood by with a Bible should anyone want to check the reference: Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, some, ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world...
...During Hiss's August 1948 travail before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Ache-son maintained a careful balance, both assisting Hiss and distancing himself from him...
...When the case broke in 1948, Acheson had known Alger Hiss and his brother Donald (a partner at Washington's prestigious Covington & Burling law firm) for many years...
...Nitze recalled, "I went in to see Acheson, but he asked me to leave...
...But he might have felt tolerant toward someone in the 1930s, or during the heyday of the Anglo-American-Soviet World War II alliance, who entertained sympathies for the USSR and the teachings of Karl Marx...
...This could be quite a storm and it could get me in trouble...
...Evidence seemed to be accumulating against him...
...Confirming that he and Hiss had become "friends," he added that his friendship was not easily gained or withdrawn...
...yet the evidence made no sense unless he had...
...Matthew, beginning with verse 34...
...Donnie" was a good friend, but Acheson was not close to Alger either professionally or personally, considering him "stuffy and rigid," as George Ball remembered, and guilty of "lacking a sense of humor...
...Most historians today probably accept Hiss's guilt...
...I just said, I'm not going to run...
...When an outraged Joseph Alsop blustered about writing a column attacking Whittaker Chambers for his accusations against Hiss in 1948, Acheson told him to cool it: "It's always a mistake to write about anything that is sub judice...
...I knew the question was going to be asked...
...I think they were stated for us a very long time ago...
...At his confirmation hearings as secretary of state in January 1949, Acheson stated that everything he knew about Hiss had caused him to discount earlier accusations but—Hiss was then under indictment—he now expressed perplexity...
...I called Chip Bohlen . . . but Acheson refused to see him as well...
...On January 25, 1950, the day Hiss was sentenced to prison for lying about passing secrets to the soviet Union, Harry Truman's secretary of state declared during a press conference: "I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss...
...I was a stranger, and ye took me in...
...I'm going to reply that I will not forsake him...
...Acheson promptly offered his resignation to Truman, who laughed it off...
...It was perfectly obvious," Alsop recalled, "that Dean thought that Hiss was guilty, or had been guilty...
...Alice responded: "What else could you say...
...He should have used duller language...
...I was sick, and ye visited me...
...Go on back and get to work...
...I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink...
...Besides proclaiming that he would not turn his back on Hiss, Acheson responded: "I think every person who has known Alger Hiss or has served with him at any time has upon his conscience the very serious task of deciding what his attitude is and what his conduct should be...
...At breakfast, Acheson told his wife Alice that he knew he would be asked about Hiss at the press conference...
...They were stated," continued this Episcopal bishop's son (a religious skeptic himself), "on the Mount of Olives, and if you are interested in seeing them you will find them in the 25th chapter of the Gospel according to St...
...Perhaps I knocked myself out...
...Almost exactly a year later, Hiss was convicted in his second trial (the first ended in a hung jury...
...In his memoirs, Acheson wrote that "many students had been attracted by communist doctrines" in the depression-ridden thirties, and that "some of these [people] had found their way into the Government...
...Such assaults greatly reduced Acheson's ability to conduct foreign policy in his remaining years in office...
...That must be done by each person in the light of his own standards and his own principles...
...Acheson's undersecretary, James Webb, carefully reviewed with him what he should say if asked about the decision by reporters...
...The accused received unpaid help from Covington & Burling on his testimony and perhaps advice from Acheson himself on selecting an attorney, but Acheson, by then a private citizen, refused to appear with Hiss before the committee, though he had conspicuously represented another accused spy, Lauchlin Currie...
...A few newspapers praised his charity, but the New York Times's James Reston wrote that Acheson seemed "to lack the gift absolutely essential in a Secretary of State, of foreseeing how his remarks will look in tomorrow morning's newspapers...
...He called this rightist effusion "The Attack of the Primitives" in his memoirs...
...the mystery of what Acheson truly believed remains...
...Arriving in New York on a flight from a Bermuda vacation, he remarked: "The Supreme Court is the highest court and if it acts, that disposes of the matter...
...Had the accusations against Hiss originated with someone Acheson respected, rather than the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee, he might have reacted differently...
...Don't think this is a light matter," Acheson went on...
...The question came quickly...
...Robert L. Beisner is professor of history at American University...
...Alluding to his own presence at the funeral of Kansas City boss James Pendergast, the president replied: "If you think that a person who walked behind the casket of an old friend who was a convicted criminal would have had you do anything else, you're mistaken in me...
...His friends represented a wide spectrum of professions and points of view...
...Perhaps it would have been better if I had said, 'I haven't anything to say about it.' I suppose in a way an element of pride entered into this...
...He was already trimming his sails at the time the Supreme Court turned down Hiss's appeal in March 1951...
...Webb preferred a "no comment," at most something like, "This disposes of the case...
...And I knew the press was going to believe I'd run...
...I'm going to let you have it right on the jaw...
...He had been "a little grandiloquent," he told CBS broadcaster Eric Sevareid many years later...
...In the face of unremitting criticism, however, a month later Acheson read a prepared statement before a Senate committee: "I will accept the humiliation of stating what should be obvious, that I did not and do not condone in any way the offenses charged [against Hiss], whether committed by a friend or by a total stranger, and that I would never knowingly tolerate any disloyal person in the Department of State...
...What did Acheson think...
...During the Cold War he would have profoundly disapproved of any "friend" who became a Soviet agent, purloining government documents, microfilming them, and passing them along to code-named intermediaries to ship to Moscow...
...When his wife asked whether he was sure he was right, Acheson replied: "It is what I have to do...
...Though no one ever again asked him about Hiss in a press conference, powerful attacks came immediately...
...Yet Acheson must have suspected that charges against Hiss would stick, for as undersecretary of state in 1945 and 1946 he helped insulate Hiss from sensitive discussions in the department...
...These are the bare "facts...
...Subsequently, Acheson apologized to State Department colleagues for a self-indulgence that caused grief to all of them...
...I was in prison, and ye came unto me...
...From the fall of 1945 onward, Acheson was privy to mounting evidence that Hiss was a spy, information he may have discounted, aware as he was that J. Edgar Hoover was making bizarre charges that he too (and John J. McCloy, Henry Wallace, and other estimables) were part of "an enormous Soviet espionage ring in Washington...
...Acheson's apparently quixotic loyalty to the former State Department official provoked vociferous denunciation: Republican Senator William E. Jenner of Indiana attacked the Truman administration as a "military dictatorship, run by [that] Communist-appeasing, Communist-protecting betrayer of America, Secretary of State Dean Acheson...
...For I was an hungered and ye gave me meat...
Vol. 2 • December 1996 • No. 12
