Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Historical Work
Review: This is one the best books ever written about the treason case of Alger Hiss. It is also the one that does the best job of explaining just what Hiss's motives were. According to White, Hiss had an incredible knack for manipulating people and took huge risks and literally thrived on living on the edge. In other words, Hiss's espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union was motivated as much by the thrilling experience of being a spy as much as any ideological sympathies that he may have had for Communism.

This book is recommened reading for everyone with an interest in recent American history.

Rating:
Summary: Just why did Hiss insist on innocence to the end ?
Review: When Alger Hiss was interviewed by the Washington Post in 1986, he answered in the affirmative when asked whether he admired Stalin. "Oh yes. In spite of knowing the extent of his crimes...." G. Edward White reports this incident without comment, as if it were of no import. This light-headedness about Hiss's hard-core Communist commitment makes this important book less useful than it could have been.

The essential work about Alger Hiss, of course, is the book entitled "Perjury" by Allen Weinstein (second edition, 1997). The present volume adds additional details that buttress Weinstein's conclusions that Hiss was guilty of espionage for the Soviets. But White is particularly strong in biographical and psychological details. Hiss is shown to have been a particularly intelligent, well-spoken, urbane, educated, and kind-hearted person. The fact that this man was also a traitor to his country and a persistent, life-long liar about his espionage is treated by White as a psychological puzzle. But White's psychological explanations are not convincing. There are, after all, many well-educated, charming WASP Americans who never become traitors. Why did Hiss ?

Hiss spent many decades of his life insisting that he was "inncocent" and wrongfully convicted. In this campaign he was assisted by The Nation magazine and others with connection to the political Left. For former and continuing Communists especially, it remains an absolute article of faith that both Hiss and the Rosenbergs were "innocent," despite the completely air-tight proof that they were intelligence agents for Stalin. What accounts for this discrepancy between the evidence on the one hand and these persistent, apparently sincere, self-righteous professions of "innocence" ?

In the case of the Rosenbergs, it has been suggested (and unfortunately I cannot remember by whom) that from the point of view of committed, devoted Communists, there was nothing more heroic and moral, and therefore completely innocent, than service to international Communism (in the days when there still was such a thing). So the self-righteousness of Hiss was perfectly sincere. He was innocent in every possible way that makes sense to a Communist. In fact, anyone who doubts this supreme innocence is himself a depraved red-baiter, anti-Communist hysteric, McCarthyite, and so forth.

To White, living in a mental word in which treason and perjury are crimes, Hiss's self-righteousness is a problem to be explained psychologically. But once the nature of Communist devotion is understood, the mystery vanishes.

Rating:
Summary: Just why did Hiss insist on innocence to the end ?
Review: When Alger Hiss was interviewed by the Washington Post in 1986, he answered in the affirmative when asked whether he admired Stalin. "Oh yes. In spite of knowing the extent of his crimes...." G. Edward White reports this incident without comment, as if it were of no import. This light-headedness about Hiss's hard-core Communist commitment makes this important book less useful than it could have been.

The essential work about Alger Hiss, of course, is the book entitled "Perjury" by Allen Weinstein (second edition, 1997). The present volume adds additional details that buttress Weinstein's conclusions that Hiss was guilty of espionage for the Soviets. But White is particularly strong in biographical and psychological details. Hiss is shown to have been a particularly intelligent, well-spoken, urbane, educated, and kind-hearted person. The fact that this man was also a traitor to his country and a persistent, life-long liar about his espionage is treated by White as a psychological puzzle. But White's psychological explanations are not convincing. There are, after all, many well-educated, charming WASP Americans who never become traitors. Why did Hiss ?

Hiss spent many decades of his life insisting that he was "inncocent" and wrongfully convicted. In this campaign he was assisted by The Nation magazine and others with connection to the political Left. For former and continuing Communists especially, it remains an absolute article of faith that both Hiss and the Rosenbergs were "innocent," despite the completely air-tight proof that they were intelligence agents for Stalin. What accounts for this discrepancy between the evidence on the one hand and these persistent, apparently sincere, self-righteous professions of "innocence" ?

In the case of the Rosenbergs, it has been suggested (and unfortunately I cannot remember by whom) that from the point of view of committed, devoted Communists, there was nothing more heroic and moral, and therefore completely innocent, than service to international Communism (in the days when there still was such a thing). So the self-righteousness of Hiss was perfectly sincere. He was innocent in every possible way that makes sense to a Communist. In fact, anyone who doubts this supreme innocence is himself a depraved red-baiter, anti-Communist hysteric, McCarthyite, and so forth.

To White, living in a mental word in which treason and perjury are crimes, Hiss's self-righteousness is a problem to be explained psychologically. But once the nature of Communist devotion is understood, the mystery vanishes.

Rating:
Summary: Just why did Hiss insist on innocence to the end ?
Review: When Alger Hiss was interviewed by the Washington Post in 1986, he answered in the affirmative when asked whether he admired Stalin. "Oh yes. In spite of knowing the extent of his crimes...." G. Edward White reports this incident without comment, as if it were of no import. This light-headedness about Hiss's hard-core Communist commitment makes this important book less useful than it could have been.

The essential work about Alger Hiss, of course, is the book entitled "Perjury" by Allen Weinstein (second edition, 1997). The present volume adds additional details that buttress Weinstein's conclusions that Hiss was guilty of espionage for the Soviets. But White is particularly strong in biographical and psychological details. Hiss is shown to have been a particularly intelligent, well-spoken, urbane, educated, and kind-hearted person. The fact that this man was also a traitor to his country and a persistent, life-long liar about his espionage is treated by White as a psychological puzzle. But White's psychological explanations are not convincing. There are, after all, many well-educated, charming WASP Americans who never become traitors. Why did Hiss ?

Hiss spent many decades of his life insisting that he was "inncocent" and wrongfully convicted. In this campaign he was assisted by The Nation magazine and others with connection to the political Left. For former and continuing Communists especially, it remains an absolute article of faith that both Hiss and the Rosenbergs were "innocent," despite the completely air-tight proof that they were intelligence agents for Stalin. What accounts for this discrepancy between the evidence on the one hand and these persistent, apparently sincere, self-righteous professions of "innocence" ?

In the case of the Rosenbergs, it has been suggested (and unfortunately I cannot remember by whom) that from the point of view of committed, devoted Communists, there was nothing more heroic and moral, and therefore completely innocent, than service to international Communism (in the days when there still was such a thing). So the self-righteousness of Hiss was perfectly sincere. He was innocent in every possible way that makes sense to a Communist. In fact, anyone who doubts this supreme innocence is himself a depraved red-baiter, anti-Communist hysteric, McCarthyite, and so forth.

To White, living in a mental word in which treason and perjury are crimes, Hiss's self-righteousness is a problem to be explained psychologically. But once the nature of Communist devotion is understood, the mystery vanishes.