Over half a century after the "Red Scare," playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman, whose name is often coupled with her adversary Senator Joe McCarthy, seems to have emerged relatively unscathed in the court of elite progressivist opinion despite the exposure of her manifold fabrications and deceptions. The liar, it appears, is the incarnation of a higher truth. Such is the power of the press and the cultural salience of left-wing attitudes in America. Hellman, a passionate supporter of the Soviet Union even when Stalin's crimes had been widely publicized, was subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee by McCarthy [see...