The Redhunter and The View From Alger's Window

Dear Eric,

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Let me get right to the question of espionage. Joe McCarthy's problem, as material Buckley prints in his novel establishes, reveals that McCarthy did not understand the difference between dissent and treason. When the ex-Communist Louis Budenz testified before the Tydings Committee, he did not--and Buckley uses the actual transcript--second McCarthy's testimony about Lattimore having been a Soviet spy.

But there were spies--many of them. You write that "of course the Soviets spied on us" but "we did the same to them. We would have been idiots not to." What exactly are you talking about? In the 1930s and during World War II, Soviet espionage agencies established networks in the United States with the active assistance of hundreds of Americans. Among their willing participants were high-level sources in the White House, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Army, and the OSS. You might ask why there are not thick books about American espionage networks in the U.S.S.R. during the same period. Easy answer. There were none! In the '30s and '40s there were no American spies in the Kremlin, no American sources in the Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, no agents in GOSPLAN, no moles in the NKVD, and no spies in the Red Army. The United States didn't even have a foreign intelligence agency then. When the OSS was created during the war, FDR gave stern orders that it was not to run intelligence operations against the Soviets; there were to be no recruiting agents inside the U.S.S.R. or even among Soviet personnel stationed in the United States. The OSS was only allowed to do analytic work on information collected through normal channels, handed over by a third party, or by passive means such as signals intelligence. When the Finns surrendered and some of their intelligence officers sold the OSS Soviet cipher books in 1944 that they had captured, the White House ordered that the material be returned to the Soviets as a gesture of our goodwill!

Perhaps FDR and his aides were "idiots," to use your term, for this "hands off the Soviets" policy, but its basis was to assure Stalin of our good intentions by refraining from espionage against him. Stalin did not return the courtesy. To Uncle Joe, the wartime alliance was a grand opportunity to aggressively infiltrate the American government and steal every secret they could get their hands on. He also was able to use American Communists in government and the media as a virtual Fifth Column, serving his interests in various other ways than mere spying. Look at the media. The New York Times' first Pulitzer was given to Stalin's favorite journalist, Walter Duranty, for his fraudulent account of the great Soviet famine, which Americans were told never happened. No wonder Americans came to have a favorable image of Soviet Russia.

After World War II, when the damage caused by Soviet espionage finally sank in, the policy was changed. The OSS, which had been dissolved as unneeded in 1945, was reconstituted as the CIA in 1947, and our own intelligence assault on the U.S.S.R. began. But it was, unfortunately, only a catch-up game.

As for the Hiss case, your understanding of it leaves a lot to be desired. You say Chambers "claimed" that Hiss was "passing the Soviets valuable documents at Yalta." Chambers never said any such thing! He said he knew of Hiss' work for the Soviets in the mid-1930s, and while he suspected that Hiss continued to work for them, he had no direct knowledge of this. Do you really think that Chambers got into Hiss' State Department office in 1938, stole documents in Hiss' own handwriting that Chambers produced in 1948, or that he sneaked into Hiss' home and typed other State documents on Hiss' own typewriter? Or do you buy "the FBI forged the machine" thesis? When old records turned up proving that Hiss had turned his car over to the CPUSA through a used car dealer who was a CP member, do you actually believe Hiss' story that he had given the car to Chambers?

Moreover, you seem totally unaware of the new documents Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev received for their book The Haunted Wood, which provide further substantiation for the Venona file: new hard evidence from KGB files that offer further proof that Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent. The Venona message you cite is but one stone making up a virtual mountain of evidence. I'm afraid that you, the journalist (not historian) Victor Navasky, and the historian Ellen Shrecker are like those forlorn Japanese soldiers deep in the jungle of a Pacific isle, who surfaced a few years ago still fighting decades after their own government surrendered. Please. Give it up. Alger Hiss is a lost cause!

I am surprised to hear that you say that the Communist Party was run by a "bunch of dishonest thugs." I'd be interested if you would name them. Perhaps Angela Davis, Herbert Aptheker, Eugene Dennis? I'm also pleased to find you disagree with the scores of New Left historians of American Communism, who for so long have argued that in fact the CP played a great and positive role in America, and were indeed expressing the real interests of American workers.

And yes, McCarthyism did great damage at home---but it was not anything near a "reign of terror." That is what they had during the French Revolution and in Stalin's U.S.S.R. In our country, Carl Bernstein's father lost his job with a Communist-led union, but he went on to make a good living developing a chain of Laundromats. It is hardly what I would call the equivalent of the Gulag. As for Marty Peretz, he can take care of himself. I suspect that he would not print the kind of article you would like to see, because it would be more than foolish. He has a respect for facts and evidence. Besides, that's what The Nation is there for.

Your turn,
Ron

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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

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