Posted on 12/15/2001 8:01:28 AM PST by blam
The Last Word
Posted Nov. 23, 2001
By Ralph de Toledano
Ever since Whittaker Chambers named Alger Hiss as a key Soviet agent in the State Department, there has been a running battle between the incontrovertible evidence of his guilt and a rolling barrage from people who have come to his defense even as the scope of his activities for the Soviets is increasingly documented.
The standard explanation for this phenomenon has been that defenders of Hiss were tarnished by blind support of the former Soviet Union and fearful of anti-Communists. In addition, it was held, all this was motivated by a belief that the charges against Hiss were a red herring and aimed really at Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrats in general or the New Deal. There is an element of truth in that, but it does not cover all the facts.
As one who can claim, in all modesty, to be among the most informed on the Hiss case, I have continued my research through the years, examining and re-examining what today has been reinforced by the Venona intercepts of communications between the Soviet apparat in the U.S. and the Moscow Center. The mounting evidence has made the defense of Hiss a study in futility. But it has not explained why his defenders continue to argue his innocence.
A statement that Hiss made while in prison, which no one then took seriously, looms large today in understanding the case. "If the old man were alive," he said, "none of this would have happened." Strangely enough, this statement never was repeated by Hiss and was not picked up by his defenders. There is, moreover, strong reason to believe that Hiss was warned not to repeat it. For the "old man" was none other than Roosevelt himself, and to justify Hiss' statement would open up other questions about the record of FDR's administration, which establishment historians would prefer that we forget.
But let's look at the record. In sworn testimony, Ambassador William Bullitt told of having been informed in 1938 by French Premier Édouard Daladier that two men in the U.S. federal government named Hiss were Soviet agents [a reference both to Alger and his brother, Donald]. Bullitt told a Senate committee, after the trial and conviction of Alger Hiss, that he had passed this information on to the State Department at its highest levels. What he did not say, as he confided to me and to Alice Roosevelt Longworth at the time of his testimony, was that he also took this information directly to FDR.
In August 1939, after the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact, Chambers, in a dramatic meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Adolph A. Berle, disclosed that a Soviet espionage cell was operating in the State and Treasury departments that included Hiss and Harry Dexter White, the svengali to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau.
Berle was at the White House the following day to convey this information to FDR. The president coldly told Berle to perform an anatomically impossible act, and both Hiss and White remained at their posts — Hiss rising in the State Department to the critical post of director of the Office of Special Political Affairs and White becoming assistant secretary of the Treasury. Despite these warnings, FDR took Hiss as a top adviser to Yalta at a conference in which the ailing president gave hegemony over Eastern Europe to Josef Stalin. After the Yalta conference, Hiss went on to Moscow to be honored by Foreign Minister V.M. Molotov, a trip approved by FDR.
Much of this pro-Soviet tilt has been carefully brushed aside as the work of Roosevelt intimate Harry Hopkins, who as administrator of Lend-Lease supplied the Soviets with hundreds of pounds of the uranium they needed for making their atom bomb. Hopkins since has been exposed by the Venona intercepts and by the reports of top KGB officials after the collapse of the Soviet Union as an "agent of influence." There is not the slightest doubt that the "old man" was fully aware of what Hiss was up to, and this ties into what we know today about FDR's thinking and operations.
Since the death of Roosevelt, we have learned much through the opening of confidential records and from the words of some who were close to him. FDR was perhaps the greatest politician ever to sit in the Oval Office, but not the most astute. Having double-crossed Winston Churchill, who was not averse at attempting to return the favor, he believed he also could lead Stalin by the nose. That Hiss and others were agents of Stalin did not trouble him. He was smarter than Stalin and he fondly believed that his seeming blindness to Hiss' role would fool and disarm the Kremlin. But Stalin and Hiss knew better, and so did Molotov.
When Hiss was exposed, the great fear of FDR's supporters and champions was that the true story of the relationship would become known, and that is why the wagons were circled. Justice Felix Frankfurter testified for Hiss in the first trial. Berle lied about what Chambers had told him in 1939 and about his own experience with FDR. (That lie was exploded when his notes of the meeting were introduced in evidence in 1950.) Bullitt kept quiet about what he told FDR. Sen. Herbert Lehman (D-N.Y.) knew the score, and his family brokerage firm subsidized a viciously propagandistic book by a British peer to whitewash Hiss. President Harry Truman, though he was fully aware of Hiss' perfidy, dismissed the case as a red herring.
Hiss had a point when he regretted that the "old man" was not around to defend him. That he had been a Soviet spy long before FDR gave his tacit approval made no difference to Roosevelt.
The book(s) on the Venona project are interesting. There is also a Venona web site. Venona
Thanks. I 've read all the books already. Was Robert Oppenheimer (Father of the atom bomb) a Soviet Spy?
Oh brother! Are they ever still with us today!!!
People, that too many other people think are supposed to know what they are saying and doing, are ignorant and naive, beyond belief.
That's why, rather than lining up under the banner of "Compassionate Conservative," I prefer to label myself a "Considerate Conservative!"
Not really well, Blam. Having just tried to ignore my 60th trip around the sun, I was pretty young and haven't studied the history of Hiss, very much. I just realized that in my lifetime, we've gone from "Tora! Tora! Tora!" to "Tora Bora!"
FDR "allowed" the former, but WJC "allowed" the later of even greater magnitude. It destroyed the mystique of invulnerability we've enjoyed since TR walked softly and deployed the naval "Big Stick!"
The naive media types will never pull the covers of "domestic enemies" and thus, as our electeds take their oaths and swear to protect the Constitution "from ALL ENEMIES, foreign AND DOMESTIC," we should all remember the lame closing statement of lawyer Welch, as he asked Joe MaCarthy... "I have one last question for you Senator... have you no shame?"
THAT, I DO REMEMBER!!! (and no, I'm not a Bircher! just a "considerate conservative!")
After being appointed as SecDef by Clinton, Les Aspin held a press conference to further the claims of innocence of several named in the Venona Files. Knowing why Aspin did this would be interesting.
Probably not.
J. Edgar Hoover had him under 24/7 surveilance for the entire time of the Manhattan Project. The Greenglass- Rosenberg Ring was the principle conduit from the American side.
Far more damaging was Claus Fuchs, British subject, son of a Lutheran minister, who was a physicist at the Project. He turned over mountains of material, including reactor design, and the daily yields of U-235 and Plutonium from the early production lines (400mg and 800 mg, respectively). He was not caught until he returned to England, where he served a prison sentence for espionage, and upon release, emigrated to the Soviet Union.
BTW, the Russians were tipped off at the very beginning by our own attempts at secrecy. In the late '30s, they submitted a series of papers for publication in Western Physics journals. When the last two submitted were not even acknowledged, the political officers at the respective research institutions notified the Kremlin. Stalin then targeted the Manhattan Engineering District, as it was then called.
The old man... FDR, or Joseph Stalin?
FDR.
[/joke]
Oppie's ambivalence came into full view in his dispute with Dr. Edward Teller over whether the hydrogen bomb should be developed. Teller took the research forward over Oppie's protests and refusal to participate.
It should also be mentioned that the media were as solidly left-wing then as now. They helped crucify Whittaker Chambers and argued forcefully that Hiss was innocent. A lot of Hiss's media sympathy came from Nixon's role in the matter. The Left -- and the media, if there's a distinction -- hated Nixon worse than anyone and they finally got him. I've never been able to figure out why since most of the evil agencies (EPA, etc.) that plague us today were created on Nixon's watch. One would think the liberals would love him.
I've always believed that the, so-called, "New Deal" was just a fancier way of selling Socialism....
The truly sad part was high number of Americans that bought into it.
It was just another false hope that any Republican could do anything to appease these earth worshipping, militant, fanatical pagan groups and make peace with them. They are just as militant and mystical in their religious zeal and phony sense of moral superiority as the Bin Laden terrorists!
The political reality is... even if Abe Lincoln, the first Republican President were alive today and returned to the Presidency, his advisors would become convinced they have to find a way to appease the "EnvironMental Commune"(yes commune, not community) since they cannot marginalize them anymore. They have become too rich, influencial and POWERFUL!!!
People like Freepers, or conservatives in general, will not pay the long-term political price of consistently pursuing long-term goals and objectives to eventually prevail, in the legislatures, in the courts, or in the executive branches of the States, or the Nation!
We all are working so hard to try to survive the over-burdening of the private sector with heavy-handed regulation and taxation, that we don't have time or the money to become the inexorable "winners" that they have! Plus, we can't even begin to agree on our goals, or the means of achieving them.
Why? Because we love "Individualism" and they love "Collectivism!" Plus they consistently "hate" what they oppose and we don't!!!
Excuse me?
You know I was speaking in general terms and certainly not refering to YOU, anymore than I was referring to myself!
You'll notice that even though I failed to say "most Freepers," I DID say... "most conservatives!" You have to take a dutchman for what he means, not what he says!(grin)
Many of them have risked an uncertain future to the same extent as you and I have. They really believe, just as strongly as you, what they mistakenly believe. They, like the terrorists, are destructive, rather than constructive and they are just as committed to the destruction of the USA and all that it has stood for!
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