Witness

Rating:
Summary: "WITNESS" BIRTHED MODERN CONSERVATIVISM By STEVEN TRAVERS
Review: "WITNESS" BY WHITTAKER CHAMBERS WAS ULTIMATE CAUTIONARY TALE,
GAVE BIRTH TO MODERN CONSERVATIVISM
By STEVEN TRAVERS

Modern conservatism began in 1938, when a Communist apparatchuk named Whittaker Chambers broke from Moscow, contacted Federal authorities, and informed them that a rising Democrat star named Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy.

It took a decade for Chambers' accusations to be made public. Chambers most likely would have faded into obscurity, but for a chain of events and a few patriots. FDR did not pay heed to the accusation that Communists had infiltrated his government, but Naval intelligence intercepted word that Joseph Stalin was planning a separate peace with Adolf Hitler. The Navy did not trust the Democrats. They devised the Venona project, intercepting Soviet cables, and discovered that Chambers was right about Hiss. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover refused to go public with Venona (not opened until the 1990s), because the on-going intercepts were too important to be exposed. But he told the right political people. The case went to HUAC, led by the young California Congressman, Richard Nixon. The Left excoriated Chambers. Hoover refused to shed light on Venona, letting the wheels of justice grind on their own terms. Hiss was proven right. Nixon became the first hero of conservatism. McCarthyism followed, and sides were taken.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary
Review: "Witness" has been on my reading list for quite some time. It is after reading Ann Coulter's "Treason", that I decided to read it to get a good understanding of Whittaker Chambers and the Alger Hiss Case. And I ended up doing this on the double: I also read Sam Tanenhaus's biography of Chambers: "Whittaker Chambers."

"Witness" was a moving account of how one person, who endured a disastrous childhood and adolescence in a dysfunctional family, was attracted to the liberal thinking, eagerly sought to become a communist, went through wrenching mental struggles with respect to communist ideology and methodology, eventually broke with the party and its underground apparatus, re-established himself in "respectable" society, and finally made a determination to expose communist infiltration of the U.S. government, culminating in his pivotal role in the trials and conviction of his friend Alger Hiss.

Many people have said this: Whittaker Chambers was a complex person. Indeed he was.

"Witness" was essentially truthful, albeit somewhat self-serving. It was filled with vivid details of Chambers's thought processes and gives a rather nuanced (although far from complete) portrayal of the communists, the "open party" as well as the underground (espionage) apparatus. Except for some minor points, Chambers's account of his life up to that point was fairly independently collaborated by Sam Tanenhaus's biography of Chambers. I say "fairly independently" because Tanenhaus referenced "Witness" quite copiously.

There were so some intentional omissions in "Witness" that are not altogether immaterial, however. Chambers did not disclose in his book that he had strong homosexual tendencies and had engaged in habitual homosexual acts for a period of time, even though he had made testimonial depositions to that effect. In fact, in "Witness", one gets the impression that he regarded his adversaries' insinuation of his homosexuality as a baseless attack. Another omission was that Chambers, in his youth, was apprehended for stealing significant number of books from two libraries, and was barred from them. These issues later emerged as a strike against him during the Hiss trials. A third, perhaps most significant "omission" was that Chambers consistently claimed that the reason he withheld the evidence of espionage was because he wanted to shield Hiss and his family from being prosecuted for that much more serious crime. The truth of the matter is that Chambers was also shielding himself from the same crime. These omissions are quite understandable and it is probably normal for autobiographers to gross over some warts and scars. In my judgment, considering the overall proportionality, they do not impair the value and truthfulness of "Witness."

To get the whole story, however, the reader is strongly recommended to also read Tanenhaus's book. Besides putting Chambers life story in a more neutral footing, with warts and all, Tanenhaus's book also gave a much more detailed version of the proceedings of the Hiss trials, as well as some interesting facets of Chambers's life after the Hiss conviction, in particular the writing and publication of "Witness", his friendship with William Buckley, Jr., and the gradual, mellowing shift of his political thinking in his last years away from the extreme right. Also, Tanenhaus's book added some new material, which surfaced years later, that tend to put Alger Hiss's guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Back to Chambers's "Witness", it is a captivating story written with a superb writing style and a perfect mastery of the English language. And because of the unusually variegated life Chambers had lived, which touched many big events and big names in mid-century American history and with the backdrop of the epic ideological debate, it is hard to overstate the stylistic and substantive values of this book.

Rating:
Summary: History through the Witness
Review: "Witness" has been on my reading list for quite some time. It is after reading Ann Coulter's "Treason", that I decided to read it to get a good understanding of Whittaker Chambers and the Alger Hiss Case. And I ended up doing this on the double: I also read Sam Tanenhaus's biography of Chambers: "Whittaker Chambers."

"Witness" was a moving account of how one person, who endured a disastrous childhood and adolescence in a dysfunctional family, was attracted to the liberal thinking, eagerly sought to become a communist, went through wrenching mental struggles with respect to communist ideology and methodology, eventually broke with the party and its underground apparatus, re-established himself in "respectable" society, and finally made a determination to expose communist infiltration of the U.S. government, culminating in his pivotal role in the trials and conviction of his friend Alger Hiss.

Many people have said this: Whittaker Chambers was a complex person. Indeed he was.

"Witness" was essentially truthful, albeit somewhat self-serving. It was filled with vivid details of Chambers's thought processes and gives a rather nuanced (although far from complete) portrayal of the communists, the "open party" as well as the underground (espionage) apparatus. Except for some minor points, Chambers's account of his life up to that point was fairly independently collaborated by Sam Tanenhaus's biography of Chambers. I say "fairly independently" because Tanenhaus referenced "Witness" quite copiously.

There were so some intentional omissions in "Witness" that are not altogether immaterial, however. Chambers did not disclose in his book that he had strong homosexual tendencies and had engaged in habitual homosexual acts for a period of time, even though he had made testimonial depositions to that effect. In fact, in "Witness", one gets the impression that he regarded his adversaries' insinuation of his homosexuality as a baseless attack. Another omission was that Chambers, in his youth, was apprehended for stealing significant number of books from two libraries, and was barred from them. These issues later emerged as a strike against him during the Hiss trials. A third, perhaps most significant "omission" was that Chambers consistently claimed that the reason he withheld the evidence of espionage was because he wanted to shield Hiss and his family from being prosecuted for that much more serious crime. The truth of the matter is that Chambers was also shielding himself from the same crime. These omissions are quite understandable and it is probably normal for autobiographers to gross over some warts and scars. In my judgment, considering the overall proportionality, they do not impair the value and truthfulness of "Witness."

To get the whole story, however, the reader is strongly recommended to also read Tanenhaus's book. Besides putting Chambers life story in a more neutral footing, with warts and all, Tanenhaus's book also gave a much more detailed version of the proceedings of the Hiss trials, as well as some interesting facets of Chambers's life after the Hiss conviction, in particular the writing and publication of "Witness", his friendship with William Buckley, Jr., and the gradual, mellowing shift of his political thinking in his last years away from the extreme right. Also, Tanenhaus's book added some new material, which surfaced years later, that tend to put Alger Hiss's guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Back to Chambers's "Witness", it is a captivating story written with a superb writing style and a perfect mastery of the English language. And because of the unusually variegated life Chambers had lived, which touched many big events and big names in mid-century American history and with the backdrop of the epic ideological debate, it is hard to overstate the stylistic and substantive values of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Critical Views of "Witness"
Review: "A Long Work of Fiction" is the title of the review of "Witness" by Nixon's Watergate defense attorney Charles Alan Wright, an eminent constitutional scholar who believed Alger Hiss innocent. (Saturday Review of Literature, May 24, 1952)

"Just from a literary point of view, it is ghastly twaddle -- huge stretches of overwritten, self-important, desperately self-inflating swill." Such was "Witness" to the columnist Molly Ivins. (The Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 22, 1966)...

Rating:
Summary: One of the 25 most important conservative books
Review: A master of English prose, Chambers was a senior editor of Time magazine until he resigned, in 1948, to testify against a man he once considered his friend, Alger Hiss. Chambers testified that several years earlier, before World War II, he had been a member of the Communist Party of the United States, and that through the Party he had met Hiss, a fellow Party member and a State Department employee. What's more, Chambers charged that Hiss routinely delivered to him secret U.S. government papers to be given to the Soviets.

        At the time of Chambers' testimony, Hiss was president of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Chambers' charges shocked the liberal establishment. Hiss denied ever being a Communist and denied even knowing Whittaker Chambers. He made these denials in the wrong place, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Thanks in part to the efforts of a congressman from California named Richard Nixon, Hiss was eventually convicted of perjuring himself in his testimony before the House committee and went to jail.

        Witness, Chambers' account of his ordeal, is powerful, wrenching book. Any conservative who reads the first section, Letter to My Children, should become a Chambers admirer for life.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for students of post-war American politics
Review: As a college student in the mid-70s who considered himself a socialist -- and who had teachers who also considered themselves socialists -- I was exposed to only one opinion of Whittaker Chambers.

Luckily for me, reality soon interfered with my socialist tendencies. Not so luckily, I never learned more about the Chambers-Hiss case until about a year ago, when I read "Whittaker Chambers" by Sam Tanenhaus. More recently I read "Witness" and was even more impressed by Chambers the man than when I read the Tanenhaus book.

The Chambers-Hiss case established the fault lines which still dominate American political discourse. The episode was also a precursor to the politics of personal destruction that continue to this day.

Any serious observer of postwar American politics and history should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Master of Deceit
Review: At first W. Chambers claimed that Alger Hiss and others were secret Communists whose purpose was to influence policy (from 1939 to November 1948). After being sued for slander Chambers produced 69 documents to support his claim of spying. Chambers earlier stated he was a Communist until "1935", or "early 1937", or "the end of 1937", or "the spring of 1937". The documents were dated between January 5 and April 1 of 1938. Chambers then changed his story to leaving on April 15, 1938. You can judge his veracity by this. Note his memory of wallpaper patterns!

The original State Department files were rated "classified" to "secret". Most consisted of trade agreements, which were of commercial, not political, importance. When Chambers learned that Alger Hiss could not type, he then claimed Priscilla did it! (Did writer and translator Chambers ASSUME that other men had this skill?) The most telling fact about these documents is that most had never been routed through sections where either Alger or Donald Hiss had worked! This discrepancy has never been explained. When the contents of the three rolls of microfilm were released in 1975, they were found to be Navy Dept instructions on how to use life rafts, fire extinguishers, and chest parachutes. Where did they come from?

The biggest lie of all is Chamber's claim that the stored documents were a "life preserver". Because they had no value without his testimony to corroborate them! He should have seen a lawyer, made a notarized statement, and left immortal testimony. But then it couldn't be changed to explain new facts.

Rating:
Summary: Crisp, articulate analysis of Communism and its ambitions.
Review: Best read ever. The candid explanation of communism and its attraction to dedicated humanitarians was a fascinating instruction. The most articulate analysis ever written of one man's personal, intellectual and spiritual odyssey.

Rating:
Summary: Waste of time
Review: Chambers is not a conservative. He is a collectivist who switched from an atheist collectivist philosophy to a mystical Christian collectivist philosophy. He has done more damage to the philosophies of the right than any socialist could hope. If you want to read something by a real conservative read Ayn Rand. If you are reading Chambers you might as well read Marx. At the core they are the same.

Rating:
Summary: A Window Into the Struggle of the 20th Century
Review: Chambers tells of his experience as a Communist spy in the United States without skirting the conclusion that was obvious to him later in life, that Soviet communism was an evil that must be defeated. It was a long read but well worth the effort.