The Redhunter and The View From Alger's Window

Dear Eric,

PRINTDISCUSSE-MAILRSSRECOMMEND...SINGLE PAGE

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

These two books share one thing in common. The first, The Redhunter, is a novel whose author says that he bases his assessment of Joe McCarthy on the actual record--and although he puts in conjectural material--he argues (click here to read the interview) that "[e]very line spoken or written by characters in the novel is exactly transcribed as recorded at the time." Thus William F. Buckley Jr. asserts that his novel is true to life "in every conventional way." And although he claims that he writes not to seek a resurrection of old Joe, since he is candid about all of his warts and the eventual damage he did to the anti-Communist cause, Buckley is of course arguing that despite his faults, McCarthy was "the historical vehicle in America ... for an attitude about the Soviet Union I sympathized with." Although he denies writing for the purpose of trying to revive the Senator's reputation, he does acknowledge that could happen. Even if it does not, Buckley hopes that it does denigrate McCarthy's enemies, whom he feels disfigured both McCarthy and the American past.

Tony Hiss bills his memoir, The View From Alger's Window, as a nonfiction account of the father he knew. Yet one must read it, if he is honest, as somewhat of a fairy tale--an exercise in denial by a doting son who hopes that his love and esteem for the old man will be the key that convinces the public at large that his father was innocent, and was falsely accused by Whittaker Chambers of espionage. If Buckley seeks to render a more favorable judgment of Joe McCarthy--the very term McCarthyism is now a synonym for everything ugly in American life--then Tony Hiss seeks nothing less than vindication for Alger Hiss from the judgment of History. How is this noble goal to be achieved? By nothing less than serving as a testament to his father's honor and character, a character that simply makes the commitment of treason to one's country a virtual impossibility. After all, how could a man who writes loving letters to his son from prison, who reads both The New Yorker and the Bible, have been a spy?

Not only does Tony Hiss believe firmly in his father's innocence, he even believes that had he not suffered such great injustice, the country that failed him might have been spared the full force of the Cold War, might have "helped keep McCarthy from gaining a foothold," and, quoting his brother Tim Hobson, " 'maybe we might even have been spared the Korean War or the Vietnam War!' " Not only did Hiss suffer needlessly for his views, but America suffered two wars and a Cold War because Alger Hiss was removed from the scene of political life. I imagine all of this grandiosity is supposed to cause people like me, who believe that the evidence firmly indicates Alger Hiss to have been guilty way beyond any reasonable doubt, to develop great pangs of guilt. Tony Hiss should know that he has not succeeded.

I suspect that those who believe that a learned man who writes home from prison about FDR, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and William Shakespeare could simply not be a spy will see all of this as some kind of evidence. But for those of us who believe that very recent real evidence, from the Venona files to KGB files from 1936 and 1945 given to Allen Weinstein, are in fact the only kind of evidence one can depend upon to decide the question of guilt or innocence, all of what Tony Hiss writes is beside the point. One will look in vain in his book for any serious discussion of this material. In a recent interview in Salon with critic Dan Cryer, Tony Hiss makes it clear that the Venona files' reference to the code-name "ALES" as "probably Alger Hiss," cited by John Haynes and Harvey Klehr in their book Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, is to him unpersuasive, since he believes that "there were plenty of other candidates for being 'ALES.' " No, Tony Hiss is wrong. Just this week Sam Tanenhaus has written a long piece in the current New Republic--yes, I know this is not your favorite journal of opinion--in which he correctly points out that "only one name fits the profile: Alger Hiss."

Let me close by making a point about Bill Buckley's thesis. Buckley, I think, sees Joe McCarthy as having been on the right side of the anti-Communist struggle, even as one who was ahead of his time. So what if Owen Lattimore was never a Soviet agent, not to speak of having been the "top" Soviet agent in America, said by McCarthy to have been "Alger Hiss's boss." He was--and here the evidence is strong--a pro-Soviet fellow traveler. This could easily be discerned from his writing, as well as from evidence later uncovered by Senator Pat McCarran. Buckley sees McCarthy's charge as something of an excusable exaggeration, one that does not matter since Lattimore was, as he says in his interview, "on the other side in the Cold War." But I think it does matter, and in fact, matters a great deal. I look forward to hearing your views.

PRINTE-MAILRECOMMEND...RSS

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

Eric Alterman is a columnist for The Nation and the author of Who Speaks for America? (click here to buy the book). Ronald Radosh is senior research associate at the Center for Communitarian Policy Studies at George Washington University and co-author, with Harvey Klehr, of The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (click here to buy the book). This week they discuss The Redhunter: A Novel Based on the Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy, by William F. Buckley Jr. (click here to buy the book), and The View From Alger's Window: A Son's Memoir, by Tony Hiss (click here to buy the book). Addendum: William Buckley Quotes Himself in Self-Defense

SPONSORED CONTENT