Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars
The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
For decades, a great number of Americans saw Alger Hiss as an innocent victim of McCarthyism--a distinguished diplomat railroaded by an ambitious Richard Nixon. And even as the case against Hiss grew over time, his dignified demeanor helped create an aura of innocence that outshone the facts in many minds.
Now G. Edward White deftly draws together the countless details of Hiss's life--from his upper middle-class childhood in Baltimore and his brilliant success at Harvard to his later career as a self-made martyr to McCarthyism--to paint a fascinating portrait of a man whose life was devoted to perpetuating a lie. White catalogs the evidence that proved Hiss's guilt, from Whittaker Chambers's famous testimony, to copies of State Department documents typed on Hiss's typewriter, to Allen Weinstein's groundbreaking investigation in the 1970s. The author then explores the central conundrums of Hiss's life: Why did this talented lawyer become a Communist and a Soviet spy? Why did he devote so much of his life to an extensive public campaign to deny his espionage? And how, without producing any new evidence, did he convince many people that he was innocent? White offers a compelling analysis of Hiss's behavior in the face of growing evidence of his guilt, revealing how this behavior fit into an ongoing pattern of denial and duplicity in his life.
The story of Alger Hiss is in part a reflection of Cold War America--a time of ideological passions, partisan battles, and secret lives. It is also a story that transcends a particular historical era--a story about individuals who choose to engage in espionage for foreign powers and the secret worlds they choose to conceal. In White's skilled hands, the life of Alger Hiss comes to illuminate both of those themes.
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White (Oliver Wendell Holmes: Sage of the Supreme Court) is the son-in-law of John F. Davis, who served as Alger Hiss's counsel during a 1948 appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Nevertheless, White, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, cuts Hiss little slack, portraying him as that perhaps most base of creatures: an unrepentant and lifelong liar. As White clearly shows, Hiss not only lived a lie as a State Department official in the secret employ of the Soviets, but also thereafter, through decades of denial in the face of ever-mounting evidence. White contends that, as the years rolled on, Hiss found his raison d' tre in the useless charade of seeking vindication. White argues that had Hiss not maintained his innocence, "he would have been just one other undercover agent who had lied, betrayed his country, and gotten caught." In other words he would have been a mediocrity: an idea his wunderkind ego could not tolerate. But through persistent denial and by encouraging unwitting supporters to champion his cause Hiss was able to convince himself that the jig was not up, since his deceits continued to be believed in eloquently vocal quarters. Indeed, White writes that Hiss "tailor to suit the changing tastes of an elite segment of public opinion, from whom all of the information and perceptions about Hiss originated." But now, he notes, even that elite sees the light, and Hiss stands convicted once more. With its incisive analysis and readability, this is a worthwhile addition to the vast Hiss literature.
