Alger Hiss: A Definitive Discussion

PoliticalChic

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For Leftists, Liberals, Progressives, Communists, Democrats....Alger Hiss remains a hero who was framed by the McCarthy-Whittaker Chambers-conservatives, who pretend that communism is worse than it really is.
Not so.

While the revisionists still claim Hiss was innocent, a thorough reading of the facts prove that, once and for all, Alger Hiss was a spy for the butcher, Joseph Stalin......
....and, the Leftists of all stripes will always champion the enemies of America.





The following is from the CIA analysis of the case of Alger Hiss.




Background:

" In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a self-confessed former communist and Soviet spy, alleged that Alger Hiss, who had been a high-level official in the State Department during the 1930s and 1940s and who had worked closely with Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, had also been a communist and a spy.

After a dramatic series of events and two trials, Hiss was convicted in 1950 of perjury for lying when he denied having passed documents to Chambers in 1938. Hiss served almost four years in a federal prison and for the rest of his life--he died in 1996--denied all of Chambers's charges."

For more than 50 years, intellectuals, journalists, and political figures have bitterly argued over Hiss's guilt or innocence. All the participants have understood that at stake is not only the question of whether Hiss had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice but also fundamental questions about American liberalism,..."





1. "...supporters are claiming vindication of the man at the center of one of the most notorious spy cases in US history. This is a remarkable development, because the case against Hiss has steadily grown more damning and complete as researchers have delved into the files of his lawyers, declassified US intelligence documents, and Soviet-bloc archives.




2. In April 2007, a prominent American historian, Kai Bird, and his Russian collaborator, historian Svetlana Chervonnaya, stepped forward at a conference to claim that the central piece of evidence against Hiss--an intercepted cable in the VENONA series, No. 1822, naming a Soviet asset, ALES--did not refer to Hiss, as the FBI and NSA had judged, but someone else.... however, the Bird-Chervonnaya assertion is built on thin reeds, suppositions, and unsupportable "ifs then thats."


3. The debate ought to have ended after the publication of Allen Weinstein's definitive history of the case, Perjury in 1978, and with the release in the mid-1990s of the VENONA cables in the United States and archival materials in the former East Bloc.

As Thomas Powers, one of the most astute observers of US intelligence affairs, wrote in 2000, the "evidence following the publication of VENONA...is simply overwhelming." By then all but a few determined Hiss supporters concluded that Hiss had been a spy. (Thomas Powers, "The Plot Thickens," New York Review of Books, 11 May 2000,)





4. Discussions of the Hiss case since the late 1990s have focused on VENONA 1822, the message from the NKGB residency in Washington to Moscow on 30 March 1945 that named ... in clear language, lays out four identifying characteristics of ALES:
• He had worked for the GRU (Neighbors) since 1935. [Soviet military intelligence service; the military counterpart of the KGB]
• He led a small group of spies that included his relatives.
• He passed military information and had been at the Yalta Conference (4-11 February 1945).
• Finally, he had gone to Moscow after the conference.


a. .... the cable makes for an easily understood case against Hiss, who appears to fit all the criteria. As a result, public debate has tended to overlook the mountain of other evidence and treat the cable as if it were the only evidence in the case. Hiss's defenders have encouraged this perception and have made determined efforts to break the link between ALES and Hiss.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...l51no4/the-mystery-of-ales.html#pgfId-1052264
 
Well somebody was certainly spying on America.

Leastwise I hope so, given that we executed people for spying.
 
Yup, he was a spy. Nothing new or big there. But the far lefties defended him as fiercely as the far righties defended McCarthy.
 
5. Eduard Mark, a historian for the US Air Force, undertook the task of identifying ALES and published his findings in 2003 in Intelligence and National Security. ... When Mark was finished, it was clear that only Hiss met all the criteria-
-(Eduard Mark, "Who was `Venona's' `Ales'? Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case," Intelligence and National Security, 18 (Autumn 2003): 54-55, 57-88, 62, 64 )



a. Mark's work essentially quieted the controversy about ALES's identity. With only Hiss reasonably fitting the criteria of VENONA 1822, the accused spy's defenders largely fell silent on the issue of whether he had committed espionage, and instead fell back to discussions about the degree of harm Hiss and other Soviet spies might have done and whether their importance had been exaggerated by overzealous anticommunists.
( For examples of articles questioning the importance of Hiss and Soviet espionage, see Ellen Schrecker, "McCarthyism: Political Repression and the Fear of Communism," Social Research 71 (Winter 2004): 1041-86; and Schrecker and Isserman, "Papers of a Dangerous Tendency." The Web home for Hiss defenders is http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/
home.html. For the original Russian version of VENONA 1822, see John R. Schindler, "Hiss in VENONA: The Continuing Controversy," Center for Cryptologic History Symposium, 27 October 2005, available at Home Page. johnearlhaynes.org/)




b. Their case became even weaker in 2005, when NSA finally released the original Russian of the ALES cable, which conclusively showed that its English version had been correctly translated.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...l51no4/the-mystery-of-ales.html#pgfId-1052264
 
Of course, the Liberal/Progressive/Democrats have an extreme advantage in owning the education industry...and use same to make certain that succeeding generations see Hiss as benign, and McCarthy as the evil one.



The federally funded “National History Standards” for elementary schools were released in 1994, cemented a revisionist view of American Communism for schoolteachers, as the guide mentions McCarthy over twenty times, while Edison and the Wright Brothers got no mention.

“It …repeatedly condemns McCarthyism as an unmitigated evil…[but] the Hiss-Chambers and Rosenberg cases, the two dominant controversies of the anticommunist era, are described with bland, neutral language crafted to keep from implying guilt while not being quite so foolhardy as to actually assert innocence..’National Standards’…implies that the cases are part and parcel of the McCartyite horror.”
From “In Denial,” by Haynes and Klehr, pg. 151
 
Well, Hiss, a man who spent his life trying to bring American low, is a Hero to the American Left.
 
Well, Hiss, a man who spent his life trying to bring American low, is a Hero to the American Left.

Yes, indeed.....

....and they've tried every possible way to relieve him of guilt.


6. Bird and Chervonnaya ... acknowledged, there had been a Soviet spy at the State Department codenamed ALES, but it was not Hiss. Instead, they argued, it was Wilder Foote. He graduated from Harvard in 1927, began working as a journalist, and in 1931 moved to Vermont, where he bought three local weekly newspapers and became their editor and publisher.... a man of Progressive sympathies--he was a liberal Democrat, admired Franklin Roosevelt and, in the tense times before the United States entered World War II, was an internationalist ...In February 1944, Foote left the Office of War Information to become a special assistant to Stettinius, who was then under secretary of state.


a. Despite their efforts to show that Foote was ALES and spied for the Soviets, Bird and Chervonnaya fail to present that kind of evidence, let alone proof....

John Earl Haynes, the leading historian of Soviet espionage in the United States during that period, has noted that there is "no evidence whatsoever that GRU had any operations in Vermont in the 1930s".... Similarly, notes Haynes, absolutely no evidence has been found in any archive or record of investigations that connects Foote to the Communist Party. To put it simply, there is no reason to believe that Foote could have been "working with the Neighbors continuously since 1935."
( John Earl Haynes, "Ales: Hiss, Foote, Stettinius?" at http:''www.johnearlhaynes.org/)


b. By the end, it is clear that Hiss alone remains the best candidate to be ALES. His espionage career from the mid-1930s has been well documented, and he fits all the other criteria set out by VENONA 1822. As for the 5 March 1945 cable placing ALES in Mexico City, ....

Hiss and Foote had accompanied Secretary Stettinius to Mexico City on 20 February to attend the Inter-American Conference on the Problems of War and Peace. Stettinius almost immediately sent Hiss back to Washington, however, to work on preparations for the upcoming San Francisco conference for the founding of the United Nations.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...l51no4/the-mystery-of-ales.html#pgfId-1052264



All to no avail.

Alger Hiss, hero to the Liberal/Progressive/Democrats was a spy for the regime that killed 20 million of its own citizens.....

....and had the same plans for the Untied States.
 
Oh come on now PC, like every other Progressive dictator, Uncle Joe only killed people who needed killing; people who were against the Workers Paradise.
 
Oh come on now PC, like every other Progressive dictator, Uncle Joe only killed people who needed killing; people who were against the Workers Paradise.

Hmmmm......I hadn't looked at it that way....


You may be right.



Do you recall the undercover FDI agent who testified that the WeatherUnderground...Obama's pals.....had plans to kill 25 million Americans after the 'take-over'?

Probably the same views as Uncle Joe....



[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ]Larry Grathwohl on Ayers' plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions - YouTube[/ame]
 
Oh come on now PC, like every other Progressive dictator, Uncle Joe only killed people who needed killing; people who were against the Workers Paradise.

Hmmmm......I hadn't looked at it that way....


You may be right.



Do you recall the undercover FDI agent who testified that the WeatherUnderground...Obama's pals.....had plans to kill 25 million Americans after the 'take-over'?

Probably the same views as Uncle Joe....



[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ]Larry Grathwohl on Ayers' plan for American re-education camps and the need to kill millions - YouTube[/ame]

Id be interested to see what the result of a Joe Stalin/Bill Ayers paternity test would show
 
One should pay careful attention to those who still claim that Hiss was innocent, as they are either poorly educated, or lean in favor of the plans of the communists of Soviet Russia.

Earlier in the thread, one participant proclaimed gleefully that he was glad there were spies operating against the interest of the United States.




7. The [Hiss] case remains too important in American history to be left alone. Arguments about whether the United States or Soviet Union was responsible for the start of the Cold War, debates regarding military and diplomatic strategies, as well as discussions about the role of intelligence and counterintelligence during the era are as vigorous as ever, as are disputes about who can claim credit for the eventual US victory.


For today's left, the inheritors of the Progressive tradition that was driven from national politics by the defeat of Henry Wallace in the 1948 presidential campaign and then often presented as treacherous because of its association with Hiss, proving Hiss's innocence would be a big step toward reclaiming a major role in modern American political life.

For today's conservatives, Hiss is a demonstration that significant internal threats can exist in the United States and, even if communism is gone as a threat, new dangers exist.


a. President George W. Bush's nomination in 2004 of Allen Weinstein, the author of Perjury, to be archivist of the United States, led to an uproar among those still angered by the impact of Weinstein's research and conclusions almost three decades ago.
( “Bush Nominee for Archivist is Criticized for his Secrecy,” New York Times, 20 April 2004: A14; “Bush’s Choice for US Archivist, Known for Book on Alger Hiss, Irks Some Historians,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 April 2004; Jon Wiener, “The Archives and Allen Weinstein,” Nation, 17 May 2004; and “Guarding the Past,” Washington Post, 31 March 2005: C1.)




8. The pro-Hiss view, consistent with Progressive views from the late 1940s through the present, fixed responsibility for the start of the Cold War squarely on the United States, argued that the government greatly exaggerated internal and external dangers, and claimed that the Hiss case started the McCarthy period.


Should this view gain ground in the academy and in popular accounts of the late 1940s and 1950s, debate on current issues will be affected. Intelligence and security agencies may find their analyses of threat under intense suspicion--if the government framed Hiss as a spy and covered it up for six decades, why should Washington's current claims of internal threats be believed?--because of suspicions that old hysterias are returning. That would be a sad and dangerous development."
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...l51no4/the-mystery-of-ales.html#pgfId-1052264


This thread is based on the report of the CIA.

While primarily about Alger Hiss......don't miss the references to the Liberal/Progressives....and the dangers posed by Leftist intentions.


Hiss was a threat to the nation.....McCarthy and Whittaker Chambers, heroes.
 
One should pay careful attention to those who still claim that Hiss was innocent, as they are either poorly educated, or lean in favor of the plans of the communists of Soviet Russia.

Earlier in the thread, one participant proclaimed gleefully that he was glad there were spies operating against the interest of the United States.




7. The [Hiss] case remains too important in American history to be left alone. Arguments about whether the United States or Soviet Union was responsible for the start of the Cold War, debates regarding military and diplomatic strategies, as well as discussions about the role of intelligence and counterintelligence during the era are as vigorous as ever, as are disputes about who can claim credit for the eventual US victory.


For today's left, the inheritors of the Progressive tradition that was driven from national politics by the defeat of Henry Wallace in the 1948 presidential campaign and then often presented as treacherous because of its association with Hiss, proving Hiss's innocence would be a big step toward reclaiming a major role in modern American political life.

For today's conservatives, Hiss is a demonstration that significant internal threats can exist in the United States and, even if communism is gone as a threat, new dangers exist.


a. President George W. Bush's nomination in 2004 of Allen Weinstein, the author of Perjury, to be archivist of the United States, led to an uproar among those still angered by the impact of Weinstein's research and conclusions almost three decades ago.
( “Bush Nominee for Archivist is Criticized for his Secrecy,” New York Times, 20 April 2004: A14; “Bush’s Choice for US Archivist, Known for Book on Alger Hiss, Irks Some Historians,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 April 2004; Jon Wiener, “The Archives and Allen Weinstein,” Nation, 17 May 2004; and “Guarding the Past,” Washington Post, 31 March 2005: C1.)




8. The pro-Hiss view, consistent with Progressive views from the late 1940s through the present, fixed responsibility for the start of the Cold War squarely on the United States, argued that the government greatly exaggerated internal and external dangers, and claimed that the Hiss case started the McCarthy period.


Should this view gain ground in the academy and in popular accounts of the late 1940s and 1950s, debate on current issues will be affected. Intelligence and security agencies may find their analyses of threat under intense suspicion--if the government framed Hiss as a spy and covered it up for six decades, why should Washington's current claims of internal threats be believed?--because of suspicions that old hysterias are returning. That would be a sad and dangerous development."
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...l51no4/the-mystery-of-ales.html#pgfId-1052264


This thread is based on the report of the CIA.

While primarily about Alger Hiss......don't miss the references to the Liberal/Progressives....and the dangers posed by Leftist intentions.


Hiss was a threat to the nation.....McCarthy and Whittaker Chambers, heroes.

Hard to believe the Soviet Union had spies in America, and is it possible that the US had spies in the Soviet Union? Can it even be possible that other nations had spies in the US or that the US had spies in other nations. This is such a revelation.
 
At first the Progressives like Hiss had to hide and feign conformity and adherence to American values, now they have Obama
 
One should pay careful attention to those who still claim that Hiss was innocent, as they are either poorly educated, or lean in favor of the plans of the communists of Soviet Russia.

Earlier in the thread, one participant proclaimed gleefully that he was glad there were spies operating against the interest of the United States.




7. The [Hiss] case remains too important in American history to be left alone. Arguments about whether the United States or Soviet Union was responsible for the start of the Cold War, debates regarding military and diplomatic strategies, as well as discussions about the role of intelligence and counterintelligence during the era are as vigorous as ever, as are disputes about who can claim credit for the eventual US victory.


For today's left, the inheritors of the Progressive tradition that was driven from national politics by the defeat of Henry Wallace in the 1948 presidential campaign and then often presented as treacherous because of its association with Hiss, proving Hiss's innocence would be a big step toward reclaiming a major role in modern American political life.

For today's conservatives, Hiss is a demonstration that significant internal threats can exist in the United States and, even if communism is gone as a threat, new dangers exist.


a. President George W. Bush's nomination in 2004 of Allen Weinstein, the author of Perjury, to be archivist of the United States, led to an uproar among those still angered by the impact of Weinstein's research and conclusions almost three decades ago.
( “Bush Nominee for Archivist is Criticized for his Secrecy,” New York Times, 20 April 2004: A14; “Bush’s Choice for US Archivist, Known for Book on Alger Hiss, Irks Some Historians,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 30 April 2004; Jon Wiener, “The Archives and Allen Weinstein,” Nation, 17 May 2004; and “Guarding the Past,” Washington Post, 31 March 2005: C1.)




8. The pro-Hiss view, consistent with Progressive views from the late 1940s through the present, fixed responsibility for the start of the Cold War squarely on the United States, argued that the government greatly exaggerated internal and external dangers, and claimed that the Hiss case started the McCarthy period.


Should this view gain ground in the academy and in popular accounts of the late 1940s and 1950s, debate on current issues will be affected. Intelligence and security agencies may find their analyses of threat under intense suspicion--if the government framed Hiss as a spy and covered it up for six decades, why should Washington's current claims of internal threats be believed?--because of suspicions that old hysterias are returning. That would be a sad and dangerous development."
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-...l51no4/the-mystery-of-ales.html#pgfId-1052264


This thread is based on the report of the CIA.

While primarily about Alger Hiss......don't miss the references to the Liberal/Progressives....and the dangers posed by Leftist intentions.


Hiss was a threat to the nation.....McCarthy and Whittaker Chambers, heroes.

Hard to believe the Soviet Union had spies in America, and is it possible that the US had spies in the Soviet Union? Can it even be possible that other nations had spies in the US or that the US had spies in other nations. This is such a revelation.



You're a moron.



The major player in the Alger Hiss saga was fellow Communist, Whitaker Chambers. In his book, Witness, Chambers explains is disillusionment as follows. In 1938, he determined not only to break with the Communist Party, but to inform on the Party when he could. The reason was that he was informed that Stalin was making efforts to align with Hitler, in 1939, and “from any human point of view, the pact was evil.”

As Hitler marched into Poland, Chambers arranged a private meeting with Adolf Berle, President Roosevelt’s assistant Sec’y of State. Chambers detailed the Communist espionage network, naming at least two dozen Soviet spies in Roosevelt’s administration, including Alger Hiss. Berle reported this to Roosevelt, who laughed, and told Berle to go f--- himself. (Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy: Reexaming the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator, p. 60)

No action was taken, and in fact, Roosevelt promoted Hiss. Almost a decade later, Chambers was called before the HUAC and named Hiss as a Soviet agent. Hiss sued Chambers, at which time Chambers presented “… four notes in Alger Hiss's handwriting, sixty-five typewritten copies of State Department documents and five strips of microfilm, some of which contained photographs of State Department documents. The press came to call these the "Pumpkin Papers"(Whittaker Chambers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

And, of course, all doubt was removed in 1995, when the Venona Soviet cables were decrypted.


Joseph Stalin murdered some 20 million of his own citizens.
And you pretend you can find some sort of moral equivalence.


You're beyond moronic.....you're an imbecile.
 
An oxymoron PC.

The old Ian Richardson and Anthony Hopkins BBC TV movie on Guy Burgess was on tv today, and I forgot to tivo this morning.



What a truly senseless post.

You remind me of one of those guys in pajama bottoms, doing the Thorazine shuffle in the supermarket at 3 am, muttering "They ain't got no Yoohoo...and Mayor Koch...he don't care."


That was you...wasn't it.
 
At first the Progressives like Hiss had to hide and feign conformity and adherence to American values, now they have Obama



I have to admit to being astounded at the depth of ignorance and ability to make judgment from the previous two posters.

Heather Mac Donald wrote something that applies:
In François Rabelais’s exuberant Gargantua stories from the 1530s, the giant Gargantua sends off his son to study in Paris, joyfully conjuring up the languages—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldean, and Arabic—that he expects him to master, as well as the vast range of history, law, natural history, and philosophy.
“In short,” he concludes, “let me find you a perfect abyss of knowledge.”

I believe I've found 'em, too.
 
January 21, 1950
Alger Hiss convicted on two counts of perjury for denying charges of espionage.



Proven guilty, jailed for 44 months for perjury (the statute of limitations had run out on espionage), Alger Hiss, traitorous agent of Soviet espionage, the American left views Hiss as a hero.

After leaving prison, he spoke at Princeton and was given a standing ovation.

Bard College actually has the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies
(http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2008/12/alger-hiss-chair-at-bard-college.html)

In 1972, Massachusetts readmitted him to the bar.



Liberals would never turn their backs on a man who spied for Stalin against America.
 
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