The Whittaker Chambers Haters (Book Review)

Real Clear Books ^ | June 13, 2013 | By Mark Judge

[Brad from Tennessee]

We can start with the spoiler. At the end of his newly released and massive revised edition of Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, Allen Weinstein makes the following observation: "As for the conspiracy theories themselves, we may expect that newer and perhaps more ingenious defenses of [Alger] Hiss may emerge, if only because none of the theories raised during the past six decades has proved persuasive. There has yet to appear, however, from any source, a coherent body of evidence that seriously undermines the credibility of the evidence against Alger Hiss."

There will never be produced such a body of evidence, because Alger Hiss was guilty. The relevant questions today are what his guilt means. On that score, conservatives as well as liberals may have something to learn.

The story is famous and well known to some, but increasingly forgotten by too many Americans. On August 3, 1948, a Time magazine editor and former communist spy named Whittaker Chambers came to Washington, D.C. On that day Chambers testified that Alger Hiss, a former high ranking State Department official and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was a Communist and Soviet agent who had passed secrets to Moscow.

Hiss denied the charge and sued Chambers for libel. The resulting trials and media circus became a sensation in America. At the time and for decades afterwards, the left argued that Alger Hiss was innocent. However, in the last few decades documents released from KGB files have proven that Hiss was in fact a Soviet agent. . .

[madmominct]

I read it a couple of years ago - wonderful book- beautifully written and eye-opening in terms of how long the Communist Left has been trying to infiltrate and undermine this government. Looks like they’ve finally succeeded. Hiss would be proud about now,

[rlmorel]

Agreed. My heart is heavy, though. Joseph McCarthy purchased this country some extra decades with his life, but...I fear it is all for naught.

The enemy is inside the gates. One only has to look with astonishment at the current administration, and who it is composed of.

It makes me ashamed.

[Chode]

Amen...

[Misterioso]

For the latest, and best, on this be sure to read American Betrayal by Diana West.

[Yardstick]

I'll tell you another good book, if you were moved by Witness, is David Horowitz's Radical Son. Even better than that is his Politics of Bad Faith which was released around the same time and is basically an abridged distillation of Radical Son. That book is so powerful that I still have visual memories of sitting there reading it and being affected by it. It's similar to Witness in that it's written by someone who deeply understands, and to a substantial degree sympathizes with, the left's moral passions. He includes letters that he exchanged with his soon-to-be ex leftist friends around the time he was leaving the fold. They are the highlight of the book in my opinion -- very moving and very illuminating.

[thecodont]

Thanks for your post.

I came to fully understand, as one only can when seeing something in reality, just how the media operates. And Whittaker Chambers was a full on victim, persecuted by them. For that, I will never, ever forgive them or take them seriously, ever again. I have often heard that once you see something, you cannot “unsee” it. It is true. I refuse to even watch television or read newspapers. It is all complete crap, being spoon fed in formulations they want us to eat and digest. And I am not participating.

People think "The Daily Show" is a news digest.

[BerryDingle]

I came around to Witness by way of Ann Coulter, oddly enough. It was her book “Treason” that made me curious about Joseph McCarthy and “McCarthyism”. The more I learned on my own, and the less I leaned on what I had been taught in school and told by the media, the more angry I became I came to understand that Joseph McCarthy was an American hero. He was slandered and defamed by the same type of people who practice the same types of tactics on their enemies today. I was one of those people who unthinkingly believed about McCarthy what my teachers taught me in school, and what I saw in the newpapers, magazines and on television.

Same here, but being younger, all I recalled about McCarthy was some of the media couldn't stop replaying on TV. FDR was considered a war hero of sorts and what Ann said got to my attention quickly. Chambers stood at FDR's desk and told him Hiss wan an agent and FDR told him to "go" perform a sexual act upon himself anatomically nearly impossible.

[Liberty Valance]

bttt

[rlmorel]

Yep. I read that too, and it was a REAL eye-opener. The communists amongst us, the red-diaper babies...

When David Horowitz talks about liberals...I listen. Closely.

Because he knows of what he speaks.

[rlmorel]

I detest FDR. That SOB did more damage to this country than nearly any other president, and going against Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama, that is saying a lot.

One only has to look at his “Second Bill of Rights” he proposed in 1944 to know exactly what his end game was. It was a liberal utopia.

[rlmorel]

Heh, I know the conversation you were referring to, but it wasn’t Chambers, though...it was Adolph Berle

[rlmorel]

Thanks...I had checked on Audible.com for it a while back, but they didn’t (and still don’t) offer it.

I cannot read much anymore, my eyes can’t take more than about ten minutes before I have to put the book down, but...thank GOD for audiobooks!

I used to read like a fiend, but I just can’t. I have two pairs of bifocals with four different strengths, but none of them work.

Sigh.

[Pelham]

I wonder how many at FR have read Whitaker Chamber’s ‘Witness’, one of the great books from the cold war?

I suppose that the ‘long, twilight struggle’ is now forgotten except by ‘Boomers who grew up with it.

[Pelham]

“Part of the pathos of his book is that he wasn’t fully convinced that our side would win.”

And Obama turned Chambers into a prophet.

[Pelham]

I wouldn’t exactly call McCarthy a hero. He was a politician who sought to capitalize on the revelations of Whittaker Chambers and another ex-Communist spy named Elizabeth Bentley. Chambers and Bentley brought to light Communist penetration of the American government. McCarthy tried to use it for his own benefit.

If he had been more careful in his accusations he might have survived the attacks from the Left. But he wasn’t careful and he made irresponsible accusations like accusing Eisenhower’s WWII boss, General George Marshall, of being a Communist dupe. This earned him some powerful enemies who weren’t going to put up with his nonsense. And when McCarthy decided to hold an investigation of the Army Signal Corp they took the opportunity to take McCarthy apart.

[blam]

"Everyone should read Witness, by Whittaker Chambers. Everyone. This is one of the most important books and beautifully written books of the 20th century. An eye-opening, haunting memoir."

I agree.

It has got to be in the top ten of all books ever written.

Sadly, the communists won after all. It will take a revolution to clean out the government.

[bonfire]

I have gifted almost every person in my family with this book. My son is reading it next.

I keep telling them, if you don’t have the time or inclination to read the book, PLEASE read the “Letter to My Children”. The letter itself is worth the price of the book and hopefully the reader will want to know MORE.

[blam]

McCarthy's biggest failing was the fact that he was an alcoholic.

Most of his accusations were spot on.

[bonfire]

Wonderful post. I feel the same about the Letter. I sobbed all the way through it and have since read it countless times. I guess we can’t post it here then?

[bonfire]

This is my favorite quote:

“For men who could not see that what they firmly believed was liberalism added up to socialism could scarcely be expected to see what added up to Communism.” Whittaker Chambers