Talk:Alger Hiss/Archive 5

Birth Dates Are Incorrect

The bio box with birth dates says Hiss' birthday is November 11, 1904, but it shows his children as "Bosley Hiss (1898-1926)" and "Mary Ann Hiss (c1900-1930)." Shawn D. (talk) 12:07, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I've removed the obviously incorrect "Children" info and the suspect "Parent" info for now. RedSpruce (talk) 13:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Weasel words in use

"Some reliable sources have suggested that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are in the minority of scholarly opinion."

This is clearly a weasel statement. Thus it does not belong. The previous sentence mentions the controversy. This statement following serves one purpose, and one purpose only: to color and characterize the article in favour of Hiss being a spy. The writer probably wanted to imply Hiss's conviction was justified when clearly the evidence did not support it. I personally think he probably was a spy, but I have a big problem with people trying to re-write history, particularly in the case of these witch hunts. If there is so much controversy on this particular statement, then the appropriate way to deal with this is to make a request for comment to the community. I can't imagine this statement will survive this process, none-the-less, if you think it belongs here then feel free to make the request. When I deleted it, I specifically pointed out that this should be the appropriate response, not reverting it. I tried to find the appropriate discussion as suggested on the page. All I found was a jumble of barely cogent arguments and contributing there would come to nothing but a revert war which I assume was what happened previously. It is possible I wasn't able to find the discussion you are referring to. Feel free to provide directions there and I'll look at it, but as it stands, this statement just does not fit wiki criteria. Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.123.66.156 (talk) 04:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

If you will read the archives, you will find that this sentence is a consensus compromise achieved after months and months of arguments, with literally tens of thousands of words exchanged on the talk page by the editors, some of whom have been contributing to the article for years. Have a look

here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Joegoodfriend (talk) 06:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The statement "some reliable sources have suggested that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are in the minority of scholarly opinion" is unnecessary. While it is true that less than 50% of scholarly opinion supports Hiss's being innocent, isn't it enough to simply present the story of his life?Flyte35 (talk) 06:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

My friend, you're preaching to the choir. However, the sentence was arrived at by compromise after a nine month edit war that started in March of '07 and lasted through December. To summarize it as politely as possibly, an editor introduced the edit 'Most scholars have concluded that Hiss was guilty.' The editor would not be dissuaded by myself and others, and the compromise was reached. Have a look at the archives. Joegoodfriend (talk) 15:29, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

The story of his life includes his espionage and the very small and shrinking band of Hiss defenders is given undue weight in my opinion. The compromise stinks, but it's the best that could be achieved given the passions involved. TMLutas (talk) 22:11, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I looked at the archives first to understand why such a silly sentence was in the article. The fact that it's a compromise doesn't make it any less ridiculous, but I guess it's not really worth trying to fix again if it'll trigger a lot of anger.Flyte35 (talk) 04:50, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

That type of silliness is exactly why I suggested submitting it to the community for comment. Under such a process, a consensus with willing editors not invested in this particular article will be reached, and anyone attempting to color the piece with their raging bias will have no option but to accept it. In my opinion it is clearly a weasel statement. They are not allowed on Wiki. Period. The article has done in my opinion a surprisingly excellent and unbiased job of presenting both sides of such a controversial topic. I was expecting a mess after reading this ridiculous statement. The fact that the article manages to rise above such low expectations from the introduction is one reason this statement should be removed. The entire introduction and article are completely colored by this one out of place statement. If Mr. O'Reilly, or Hannity, or Ms. Coulter or whomever it is that insisted on this statement originally, returns to the mix, he/she will have to accept the community consensus, rather than bully others into accepting what is ultimately unacceptable. It is unfortunate you had to devote 9 months of arguing over something as silly as this when there are processes in place to deal with this type of vandalism/bullying.

I just looked at some of the arguments you were good enough to link to (thanks for making that trip through edit-hell a little easier). I wonder if some of the arguing that went on wasn't really semantics. I bring this up in case this type of thing should flare up in the future on this page. It seems to me there are three groups. The left-wingy "he was innocent", the right-wingy "better-dead-than-red, fry him like an egg", and the centrist "present the facts". How then do we reconcile the wingies to the center? The wingies are trying to prove "guilt" or "innocence". First, this is impossible with regard to spying with the current evidence and state of scholarship (or lack there-of) on the topic. Second, with regard to Hiss, guilt or innocence only really applies to what he was charged with, not what he actually may have done. Perhaps then, separating the guilt or innocence terminology from all of the talk about what he really did would lessen the conflict? Saying there is evidence he may have done this, or that, or may have been ALES is one thing. I think the flames ignite easiest when it is presented as "he was guilty because of this evidence he was ALES" or whatever (the same goes for innocence statements). He wasn't guilty if he was ALES, there was no substantive evidence presented that he had done these things at the time, thus the controversy. Remove the word guilt from the equation when talking about anything other than perjury and the specific evidence and the quality of the evidence presented at the time on that topic. It isn't like people won't draw their own conclusions on the topic based on the evidence presented on either side of the "he was a spy" argument. While the rest of the article is pretty good at balancing both sides of the argument, the only place I see remaining problems is the continued implications of guilt or innocence throughout based on the spying assertions. Just my two-cents. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.123.66.156 (talk) 16:47, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

It is not true that weasel words are not allowed, cf Wikipedia:Weasel#Follow_the_spirit.2C_not_the_letter, which is a style guideline rather than a hard and fast rule.John Z (talk) 00:04, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, if you read as far as the "Nutshell" synopsis at the top of the Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words page, you will see "Avoid using phrases such as "some people say" without providing sources." In this case, sources most definitely are provided, so no "weasel words" involved. RedSpruce (talk) 09:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

RfC: Appropriateness of controversial statement in the introduction

Is the statement introduced by "some reliable sources" in the "Introduction" an appropriate Wiki statement?

I think this is clearly a weasel statement. Other editors on this page are loath to remove it because it is the result of a ridiculously long fight with an intransigent editor, who may not even be around to fight with any longer. While no one is involved in a revert war at the moment and this may seem a rather sedate issue to submit for comment because of this, considering the history on this page, I thought this would be the quickest, easiest, and least painful method of fixing this page. Apart from this statement in the introduction, I was shocked to find an article on such a controversial subject with two viewpoints at extreme odds with one another in very good shape. Perhaps the risk of disturbing the calm by opening old wounds is contributing to the unwillingness to make what I think is an otherwise obvious edit. Cheers.

Ah but which way should we tilt after eliminating the weasel words? Should we ignore the decidedly shrinking array of Hiss defenders and pretend that they are still a significant force or should we out and out call Hiss defenders Don Quixotes who just will not give up on their lost cause? It's all well and good to call out weasel word but just pulling the phrase has a POV effect and that's no good either. TMLutas (talk) 22:16, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

I thank the editor for his comments, because they serve as a good demonstration of why the sentence under discussion is in the article. When the facts are presented in a neutral way, Hiss's detractors find themselves unable to provide any real, compelling evidence of his guilt. They are then forced to fall back on their rallying cry, "Everyone knows Hiss is guilty!"

On the other hand, they seem to have been willing to let the compromise stand. Before I'll call for the sentence to go, I'd like to know who's volunteering to lead our side in the next edit war over the issue. Because I've had about enough. Joegoodfriend (talk) 02:30, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I for one think the statement belongs in the article. It's a plain fact that the question of Hiss's guilt or innocence is considered a very important one by most everyone who takes an interest in the case. The vast majority of books about the case are focused largely on this question. Only a tiny number (like White's Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy) take the position of assuming his guilt and going on from there, and even these spend some significant amount of space looking at the evidence and justifying their assumption. It would be an odd omission for a Wikipedia article to avoid this central question. In keeping with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, the article addresses the question in terms of what reliable sources have to say on the question. The current content of the article has been largely stable for about 6 months, and while that isn't proof that it's "right," it's a good reason for thinking carefully before making substantial changes. RedSpruce (talk) 10:14, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

We're in (somewhat violent) agreement on the statement and that it should stay. Of course we disagree significantly on what constitutes evidence of guilt and innocence as well as where and when the courts got things right and wrong. I do take exception on the "everyone knows" characterization. Undue weight is not a fallback position but part and parcel of the normal Wikipedia process of striving for NPOV. I've been on both sides of the fence (supporting majority and minority opinions) so I know how that knife can cut and have a certain measure of sympathy (from a technical perspective) for the Sisyphean task Hiss defenders have at this point. Let's not pretend that measuring which way the collective wind is blowing is some sort of special pleading on the part of those who believe Hiss guilty. It's not. TMLutas (talk) 15:57, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

• I would say remove the line. While it does not look to be in bad faith or overly WP:ORISH it just not look right to me in the lead. I think the lead already leans somewhat toward him being guilty. One problem I have with the line is that a number of older articles are referenced and more recent and ongoing research and evidence seems to play a part in this (I had only the barest knowledge of Hiss before looking at this article). The line is too tentative (weasel) to be in the lead, IMO. I would make it stronger and put it elsewhere in the article. I would probably like to see a short intro to "Later evidence, pro and con" and a line like "Despite this, the number of scholars that assert Hiss' innocence has been shrinking." or some such as part of that intro. --Justallofthem (talk) 17:24, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

The suggestion undoes the spirit of the compromise. The editors have disputed the idea that the number of scholars supporting Hiss has dwindled. If you actually read the source material supporting the sentence, you will see the subjective opinion that historians are moving toward Hiss's guilt, but you won't see evidence to back up that opinion (i.e. a survey of the opinion of historians or something). The compromise sentence at least has the distinction of being indisputable. As for moving it out of the introduction, that sounds great. Joegoodfriend (talk) 18:36, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, I am not aware of the history behind the line and will only give my opinion based on the current state of the article. That said, it would be WP:OR on your part or anyone's here to second-guess the sources in the manner you suggest (trust me, I wish we could - sources rarely get it so wrong as they do in my main area of interest; but we can't). If five sources say "support has dwindled" and zero sources say support has not dwindled (say it, not just omit to say the opposite) then we are more than adequately sourced to say that "support has dwindled" or, more weaselly, "a number of scholars say support has dwindled". I prefer the former but the latter is OK. --Justallofthem (talk) 18:46, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

For whatever reason, the question of whether Hiss was actually guilty seems to be a question of central importance to most who are interested in the case. That's why the statement belongs in the lede, IMO. As it stands, the statement is one of pure and documented fact, as Joegoodfriend points out, so no weaseling or OR is involved: "Some (not "all" or "most" or even "many") reliable sources have suggested that those who believe in Hiss's innocence (the "reliable sources" are saying this, not Wikipedia) are in the minority of scholarly opinion."

Saying something like " "Despite this, the number of scholars that assert Hiss' innocence has been shrinking." would be POV, since the "despite this" suggests that the opinion of these scholars is incorrect, and "shrinking" is problematic, since the time scale isn't specified (over the past 40 years? over the past 6 months?) and supporting "shrinking" with evidence would be difficult. RedSpruce (talk) 21:03, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I knew that my statement was shaky but it was only meant as an example. Those familiar with the sources would craft an accurate assessment. My point simply is that I am not keen on it in the lead but would like to see it elsewhere and more positively worded if warranted. --Justallofthem (talk) 22:58, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I do not agree with the statement saying the "evidence ... remains controversial" and never have. The article in general as it stands right now is POV in terms of the weighting of its material and sources and its use of those sources, a situation exacerbated by no small amount of original research. Likewise the statement saying "some reliable sources" should be replaced with a less misleading statement about the real state of the expert consensus but Redspruce evidently continues to resist any such edit and has refused to agree to arbitration (although he has evidently changed his mind about the merits of arbitration in other circumstances). Britannica says the evidence of Hiss' guilt is "strong". John Ehrman notes that "The basic question — whether Alger Hiss was a spy for the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s — was finally settled during the 1990s". The bipartisan Moynihan Commission concluded that "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled" and Moynihan (D-NY) himself says there is "conclusive evidence of his guilt". Professor Stanley Kutler has observed that "In the end, the publication of the Venona intercepts of wartime Soviet espionage referring to "Ales" settled the matter". Scholar David Oshinsky says that the "vast majority of historians” accept Whittaker Chambers' overall version of events and "[t]o accept the guilt of Alger Hiss is to admit the bitter truth about a small but sinister part of America's "progressive" past". Intelligence expert Thomas Powers notes that "...much additional evidence about Hiss's involvement with the Soviets has turned up since the voluminous and explicit claims by Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley in the 1940s, claims which no serious scholar of the subject any longer dismisses". I could go on, but read for yourself Robert Beisner, Mark Kramer, David Greenberg, Allen Weinstein, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr ("Outside the ranks of Nation readers and a dwindling coterie of academic leftists, there are few people still willing to claim that Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White were not Soviet agents"), Vasili Mitrokhin, Ronald Radosh ("Except for a dwindling group — mostly Nation magazine readers and editors ... the consensus has solidified: Hiss was undoubtedly a Soviet spy"), Sam Tanenhaus, G. Edward White etc. etc. Leftist academic Ellen Schrecker concedes that "There is now too much evidence from too many different sources for anyone but the most die-hard loyalists to argue convincingly for the innocence of Hiss" as does Maurice Isserman ("Let's face it, the debate just ended" (in Isserman's review of Weinstein's Haunted Wood)). Even at the self-described "flagship of the left", Nation contributor Athan Theoharis grants that the "conventional assessment" is that Hiss was "an unreconstructed Soviet spy" and editor Victor Navasky himself allows that he's not with the "consensus historians". If that isn't enough, one could cite the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME, PBS NOVA ("Venona also helps to settle the case of Alger Hiss") etc. Tony Lake had to decline his nomination for CIA Director because he turned himself into a laughingstock by expressing doubts about whether Hiss was a spy.Bdell555 (talk) 00:13, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Wife information labeled as trivia and removed

It read: "That same year, Hiss married Priscilla Harriet Fansler Hobson (1903-?), a Bryn Mawr graduate. She had previously been married to Thayer Hobson (1897-1967)."

It was reverted to: "That same year, Hiss married Priscilla Fansler Hobson, a Bryn Mawr graduate who would later work as a grade school English teacher."

I am not sure what make the top one trivia and the bottom one ok. I think its important to note that she was previously married. Any other opinions? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 16:58, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

References

Although the second version (yours) doesn't contain a great deal more "trivia" than the first, There are two major advantages of the first version over yours. Your version, with its footnote quote, repeats the precise same information twice over. The only non-repeated information is that they met "on a student boat trip to Europe", which is trivia, and that Priscilla Hobson had been previously married. The second advantage of the first version is that the footnote quote contains a grammatically incorrect sentence fragment. RedSpruce (talk) 17:22, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Again your just calling it trivia, what differentiates trivia from useful information. What makes her first husband's name trivia and not useful information? How can people objectively tell the difference? You are deleting it because of the information in the citation footnote quote about the boat trip, is that correct? Or are you objecting to naming her husband? I am not following you. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:35, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

If you'll reread my comment, you'll see that I don't call her first husband's name or the fact that she had been previously married trivia. I just don't think it's very important, since this is an article about Alger Hiss, and Priscilla's first husband did not have any known notable influence on Hiss's life. That small bit of not-very-important information certainly wasn't enough, IMO, to overcome the other flaws in your edit.

Obviously, it's often not possible to objectively tell the difference between trivia and non-trivia. Sometimes it's a judgement call. That doesn't mean that there's no such thing as trivia, or that anything and everything warrants inclusion in at article, however. RedSpruce (talk) 19:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, these are judgment calls. I'd say in the context of an encyclopedia article on Alger Hiss that the name of his wife's first husband constitutes trivia. Per Merriam-Webster's: trivia: "unimportant matters." In other contexts, Mr. Hobson's name would be more important, thus less trivial. The fact that Hiss's wife was previously married is more significant in this context. I'd say it—like the fact that she was a Bryn Mawr graduate and later a grade school English teacher—falls into that gray area of information that is neither trivial nor essential. Judgment must then be applied to the decision of which and how many of such facts it is useful to include.—DCGeist (talk) 19:23, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Opening sentences

Currently, one would have to read the whole intro to the article--about 270 words--to get some idea of what Hiss is noted for. Good biography articles should tell the reader this in the first sentence or two. The current first sentence of this article is even somewhat misleading, since Hiss is not noted for being a "U.S. lawyer, civil servant, administrator, businessman, author, and lecturer."

Some time ago the article opened with these two sentences:

Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was a U.S. State Department official involved in the establishment of the United Nations. He was accused of being a Soviet spy in 1948 and convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.

I think these two sentences should replace the current first sentence, with the rest of the intro left as-is. Comments? RedSpruce (talk) 22:18, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, good idea. The second sentence says a lot in only 21 words. It will be an accomplishment if the editors can agree on this one. Joegoodfriend (talk) 19:40, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Seconded (or thirded?).Bdell555 (talk) 20:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

I also agree. We can't have an article about Hiss and not note the spy matter within the first two sentences. Noroton (talk) 00:46, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Wife's name

Thayer Hobson's article list's Priscilla's full name as Priscilla Harriet Fansler, I presume Fansler is her maiden name. Did she keep Hobson's name after her divorce? If not, her name should be switched to Fansler in this article to match. TMLutas (talk) 03:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

It was traditional for a divorced woman to keep her ex-husband's last name after her divorce and until she remarried, The switching of her middle name to her maiden last name seems unusual to me, but perhaps that was traditional in some circles. Anyway, I checked the book Perjury, and it refers to her as "Priscilla Fansler Hobson" prior to her marriage to Hiss, and that matches what's in the article. RedSpruce (talk) 11:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, no worries. TMLutas (talk) 14:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

footnote 40 is broken and other problems with the soviet archives

Coming back to visit and glad to see that the article hasn't backslid from where I left it. That being said, there's always room for improvement. Footnote 40 is broken and needs a better URL, enough said.

If one were to be accused as a spy for the DIA, it makes no difference how many times the CIA says, "nobody by that name ever worked here". Similarly, the GRU/KGB divide needs to be explained carefully so that the article isn't setting up straw men in Hiss' favor. If the KGB opens its archives but the GRU's correspondence answering the question of whether Hiss spied for them (see footnote 39) is classified and remains classified to this day, that is a pertinent fact that speaks to the problem. TMLutas (talk) 18:55, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

That is one of the reasons the quote function is so important in the citations. Yahoo doesn't keep AP reports and anyone else posting the same AP report can use their own title. If we had just the first sentence, which is always the same, Google would be able to find it at another place on the web. However, in this case, The Washington Post used the same title for their copy. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:05, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

The URL has been fixed, via the ingenious, amazing, cutting-edge, whooda-thunkit method of searching for the article title and author. No "quote function" was needed, despite RAN's oft-repeated fantasy on this count. RedSpruce (talk) 00:28, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

RfC: Appropriateness of controversial statement in the introduction

This continues the June 2008 discussion.

The last sentence in the introduction currently says "Various reports suggest that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are now in the minority of scholarly opinion." This statement is still weasely as the quoted sources do not clearly support it. I removed it last night, but it was restored within an hour. I have rephrased it to be more objective to "Several journalists and academics [3] believe that only a minority of opinion still thinks Hiss was innocent.". There are still two dead links in the references in [3]. FYI, I was very moved by Orlando Figes´s recent brilliant book The Whisperers, so you can guess what I think of Soviet communism. Alistair99 (talk) 00:04, 9 April 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alistair99 (talk • contribs) 00:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

The long-standing version of the sentence—which happens to be grammatically correct, unlike your proposed substitution—is clearly supported by the six sources referenced in the citation; it has been restored. The dead links have been dealt with (one replaced by a cached link, the other simply eliminated as unnecessary—the reference is to a well-established print publication).—DCGeist (talk) 19:57, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Order of the Red Star

William Bennett claims (America, the Last Best Hope 2007, page 250) that Hiss traveled to Moscow after Yalta and secretly received the Order of the Red Star. The secrecy would seem to imply something.Student7 (talk) 04:02, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

If Hiss actually did secretly receive the Order of the Red Star, both the receipt of the medal and the secrecy would imply something. The same claim was made earlier by Jerrold and Leona Schecter in Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History(Washington: Potomac Books Inc., 2002) ISBN 1574883275. Both of these claims are probably based on information from the Venona project - if so the claim belongs in that section. If there's a source not based on Venona for the claim, it would probably be one which would conclusively prove that Hiss was a Soviet agent, and some scholar would write a book or article about it, and then we would rewrite the Hiss article to say "Hiss was a Soviet spy" rather than "Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy..." CruiserBob (talk) 07:32, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, Bennett did have a footnote for his remark about Hiss. It was Weinstein, Allen and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood:Soviet Espionage In America - the Stalin Era, Random House 1999, page 259. I am just quoting. I know nothing about the book nor the authors nor even whether the book was quoted correctly or not. I do not have access to a copy. Student7 (talk) 15:34, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Questions have surfaced concerning Weinstein's objectivity and truthfullness. With regard to Weinstein's book on the Hiss case, "Perjury," Victor Navasky reported that he wrote to seven of Weinstein's "key sources" and six of the seven "responded that they had been misquoted, quoted out of context, misrepresented, misconstrued, or misunderstood." Weinstein countered that the sources were only recanting their previous statements. One of Weinstein's sources, Samuel Krieger, sued Weinstein for libel in 1979. Weinstein settled out of court by promising to correct future editions of Perjury and paying Krieger an undisclosed sum. Although he has said several times that he would make his files and interview tapes available to other investigators, to date Weinstein has not done so.Blindjustice (talk) 15:29, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Romerstein and Breindel's Venona Secrets claims (p.512) that Hiss was one of "several NKVD agents who served in the United States during the war" who received the Order of the Red Star. Unfortunately, the authors contradict themselves by also claiming that the reason why there is no record of Hiss in KGB/NKVD archives is that (p.140) "Hiss was an agent not of KGB (NKVD) but of military intelligence (GRU)." They can't even keep their accusations straight, much less put some evidence on the table. Joegoodfriend (talk) 19:13, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

The last paragraph of criticism mentions Vassiliev & "The Haunted Wood" - I think there might be something to the claim, but I'm not confident enough in any of the sources to make make an edit myself that says "Hiss was a spy" or "Hiss was falsely accused of being a spy" - the sources are just way too mutually contradictory. If you want to list Bennett or Vassiliev & Weinstein as a reference and put the claim in there, I think you should do it - the information is certainly there and adds yet another pro argument log onto the fire. CruiserBob (talk) 02:52, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Agree. The Bennett quote is derivative and therefore would not qualify. I do not have access to the Vassiliev reference. Student7 (talk) 13:46, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Bennett's claim is ultimately based on Venona, which someone apparently doesn't like. I'm not sure we will again get a peek into KGB files at least for another 50 years - future Russian Freedom of Information! No one will care by then, I suppose. Student7 (talk) 20:31, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

"Spies" Edits

Eroche's recent edits violate a number of wikipedia editing conventions. First of all, an edit has to respect the idea of consensus. An editor cannot make changes to long-standing, agreed upon text without creating a new consensus among the editing community, if a new edit is controversial. Second, an edit cannot make sweeping conclusions regarding a controversial subject and as citation to the conclusions simply cite the boilerplate claims of a single book. Specific, factual, non-subjective evidence from the book must be cited. Third, when challenged about an edit on the talk page of an article, the editor in question cannot simply ignore the challenges and start an edit war. Joegoodfriend (talk) 17:37, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it appears that all of the edits magically disappeared! Here is my question: If there is never any "consensus", then what do we do? Suppose, for example, that one of the people in the "editing community" keeps disagreeing. For example, if they keep ignoring the evidence from the recent KGB archives. Then what happens? What "consensus" are we talking about? What makes the people here better than the academic community that presented the papers at the Wilson center? The barrier set up in joe's comments above is not surmountable. It is too much of a burden to "create a new consensus among the editing community". I am in the editing community, and the stuff written there arguing he was innocent seems false to me. So I'll try one more time by taking "specific factual non-subjective evidence from the book and will cite it. I assume we can work to avoid putting in any opinions providing the opinion is different from the opinion that the issue still is "controversial". Finally, no one has "challenged" the edits, they have simply erased them and then made a bunch of sideways comments. In any case, most of the editing rules you cite are simply made up as a way of thwarting editing you don't like. So, to repeat, I'll try one more time to add factual information from the book and the seminar. So I'm assuming that if factual non-subjective information is added, someone won't come along and just erase it because they don't like it. Also, if you don't mind, I would appreciate it if you would just wait for the edits to see if they match your sanitized criteria before blah-blahing this particular discussion paragraph. Eroche (talk) 01:48, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

If there is never consensus, we compromise. That is how we got the "Various reports suggest that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are now in the minority of scholarly opinion" text. It was the only way to end a year-long edit war started by another editor doing what you are trying to do: change the text to add sweeping conclusions as to Hiss's guilt. Stop telling me Hiss was guilty, present evidence. Joegoodfriend (talk) 03:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I've decided to give up on making any changes to this. Other people can make the needed entries to put in the data from the Vassiliev papers. I don't know enough about how Wikipedia works, or the editing conventions to make the type of useful contribution possible if written by those directly concerned..Eroche (talk) 12:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

DCGeist and Joegoodfriend are Hiss apologists who refuse to acknowledge the fact they are increasingly offside the consensus of professional historians with every passing year. Last year I listed DOZENS of sources indicating that the Hiss case is effectively settled, and that list could now be extended significantly.Bdell555 (talk) 23:50, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

New Book Released Purports to "Prove" Alger Hiss was a Criminal Spy and Liar

It seems the pages of this Wikipedia entry for Alger Hiss are locked, but could someone please update it with the newest information just released in the book by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev. Title: Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America.

(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2009) ISBN: 978-0-300-12390-6

The Hiss case is covered extensively in the Introduction and is the complete focus of Chapter 1.

The evidence there is irrefutable and apart from many other parallel sources and confirmations also covered, includes direct quotations from KGB archives with Alger Hiss named specifically not only by his code name but also by his actual name.

The idea that it is somehow "controversial" that Alger Hiss was a KGB agent who betrayed the United States should be put to rest once and for all. One need only examine the extensive evidence assembled in this book.

I hope this locked page on Wikipedia is not run by the same persons who operate the Alger Hiss web site at New York University because if it is, then this Wikipedia article is biased and can not be trusted to be objective. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eroche (talk • contribs) 02:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

If what you say about the new evidence provided by this book is true, it will be a significant addition to the Hiss story. Why don't you provide us with some quotes or excerpts from the book? Joegoodfriend (talk) 17:55, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's going to be much "new" evidence in this book. My understanding is that it's built on the release of the Weinstein/Vassiliev papers from "The Haunted Wood" published (paperback) in 2000. So any "new" information is going to be at least 10 years old. I'm curious to see if Venona cable #1822 in both English & Russian will be included. As far as I know #1822 is the only Venona cable to be completely released (late 2005). DEddy (talk) 23:32, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

There is a great deal in the new book, and it goes far beyond the Weinstein Vassiliev book Haunted Wood. The documents are being presented May 20 and 21, 2009 at a seminar at the Wilson Center for International Studies in Washington, D.C. The Information is not 10 years old as you say. The book is in the stores now, so why don't you read it. I'll be watching the seminar today and look for relevant quotes. The owner of the NYU Alger Hiss web site is in the meeting and is sure to provoke an argument and discussion. We will see how it goes. Nevertheless, your comment of *nothing new* definitely is wrong. The three authors have correlated numerous sources and made an iron-clad case. If you can read Russian, you can download all of the notebooks yourself, along with the concordance that shows the linkages between code names and actual U.S. persons. Hiss was a spy and a liar. Eroche (talk) 12:01, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

If after all these years/words/gallons of ink H, K & V can produce an "iron-clad case" that will be quite the accomplishment. A thing that always bothers me with Hiss discussions is that since he was in the State Department how could he have known anything of value to the Soviets? State was so irrelevant to FDR's objectives to supply lend-lease & keep the Soviets in the war against Germany (it took us 3 years to get into the war in Europe) that he (FDR) largely went around State. DEddy (talk) 16:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

"The three authors have correlated numerous sources and made an iron-clad case."

Great, then you can settle this Hiss case for us right now. You've read the book, right? Then you don't need quotes from the seminar. Just give us the bullet points of the brand new evidence that shows Hiss was definitely guilty. You've already got the "irrefutable" evidence underlined in your copy of the book, right? So it should be easy for you. Joegoodfriend (talk) 18:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

At the seminar today to discuss the results of the book, there still were arguments. It is probably better to wait for the academic journal articles that summarize these points. These articles will be published in a few months. One problem is that the Alger Hiss apologists are using a legal type standard of "proof beyond any reasonable doubt". The data presented is complex and involves correlation between (at a minimum) the (1) Vassiliev notes, (2) the Venona transcripts, (3) testimony of the FBI investigators of the Hiss case, (4) transcripts of the Grand Jury proceedings, (5) trial testimony, (6) a large set of Hungarian-language documents published in Germany, and (7) several other sources. So it is better to wait until the academic articles are completed. If someone really is interested, then my suggestion is to get the book and read it. Also, the seminar at the Woodrow Wilson Center are online and can be viewed, and all of the Vassiliev notebooks can be downloaded for free.

In terms of the Wikipedia article, we need a re-write to take away the impression that the idea that Hiss was an agent of the GRU still is *controversial*. For some people, the issue will *always* be controversial and never settled. The preponderance of the evidence goes definitively against Hiss.

The comment above that being in the U.S. Department of State is not important is off base and irrelevant. If Hiss was providing information to the GRU then he was a traitor. Information from the U.S. Department of State, particularly from a person who was close to the Secretary of State, would be considered extremely high-level intelligence, and certainly not irrelevant. The statement "State was so irrelevant to FDR's objectives" is not accurate, and actually seems absurd. Eroche (talk) 23:51, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I take it you're not a native Washingtonian, familiar with the normal "intrigues" of day-to-day political maneuvering? Specifically in the context of Soviet relations, FDR did NOT like State. As a legacy from the Allied occupation of Russia post WWI, there was a (now senior by WWII) cadre of State officials who, quite justifiably having seen/experienced the horrors of the Bolshevik revolution up close & personal, were strongly anti-Soviet. In order to accomplish his lend-lease objectives, FDR simply went around State. I have to assume there were many bruised egos in State.

re "giving information to the GRU makes Hiss a traitor." Not necessarily. Given the ways of Washington politics, it is entirely possible that he was "encouraged" to open a communications back channel with the Russians. Remember the TV show "Mission Impossible"? It always opened with a voice over: "And Mr Phelps, if you or anyone on your IM team is caught, the Secretary will deny all knowledge." That's how the game is played. Nothing written down. Plausible deniability & all that.

While that has some face-value plausibility to it, I'd have to wonder if there is any record of Hiss himself ever attempting such an explanation. The idea which you suggest sounds something which Hiss could plausibly write a book about during the 4 decades or so after his case came up. This sounds like the kind of story which would have had a sympathetic readership in some quarters. If Hiss didn't try to claim that he was maintaining a backdoor channel with Russia at FDR's request, then it seems more likely that he was not. That is, if he was maintaining a backdoor channel with Russia and thought he could substantively explain it by saying it was done with FDR's encouragement, he would probably have used this argument sometime between 1950 and 1996. Did he ever? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.69.139.139 (talk) 20:53, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

And once again... WHAT information did Hiss hand over? Do Vassiliev's notes speak to that? DEddy (talk) 13:25, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

There's an excellent new BBC/PBS show "WWII: Behind Closed Doors." It points out that the Soviets lost 16 million civilian dead to repel the Germans. There are also details about FDR working to meet with Stalin alone, explicitly without Churchil. Plus... since we could offer nothing of substance to the Russian war effort other than material supplies, Stalin was extremely suspicious of American/British intentions. From his point of view it was entirely plausible to believe the Allies were holding back waiting for the Germans & Russians to exhaust themselves. In that context--plus one brief tantalizing passage in "Haunted Wood" that mentions in passing an effort by Henry Morgenthau (presumably ok'd if not initiated by FDR) to reach out to Soviet intelligence in July 1941--it would be entirely within the bounds of how FDR operated to encourage people to covertly offer useful information to the Soviets... since that was about all they were going to get from us until our war effort got up to speed. Many, many complexities. DEddy (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:42, 21 May 2009 (UTC).

Whether or not one believes that FDR secretly reached out to Soviet intelligence via Morgenthau is irrelevant to the guilt or innocence of A. Hiss. Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Au contraire. FDR positively loved going around the existing bureaucracy in Washington. He created the OSS as as counter balance to the FBI & existing Army/Navy intelligence agencies. Much organizational jealously which clearly exists to the present. What I'm trying to say here is that assuming FDR understood that the Soviets preferred to get their information via back-channels then that fit perfectly his penchant for "handling" people by privately telling them what they wanted to hear. It would not be a great leap for underlings such as Hiss to notice FDR's style for back-channel communications & try to use it on their own. DEddy (talk) 13:25, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

"One need only examine the extensive evidence assembled in this book." Let me get this straight. You haven't actually read the book?! If Amazon publishes a few glowing reviews of the new book The Moon is Made of Green Cheese, will you, without reading the book, edit the article on Earth's natural satellite to read, "While it is unclear whether the moon is composed primarily of Stilton or Gorgonzola, there is no question that is consists of proteins and fat from milk."? Joegoodfriend (talk) 03:11, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

This comment regarding whether or not the moon is made of cheese is irrelevant to the guilt of A. Hiss. Also whether or not I have read the book (I have of course) also is irrelevant to the guilt of A. Hiss. Both days of the Wilson Center seminar on the Vassiliev notebooks can be viewed online. These seminar have very spirited discussion, including some hard-hitting questions from minority opinion pro-Hiss supporters, and also from supporters of Isidor Feinstein (who changed his name to I.F. Stone). These seminars are well worth watching, along with taking a read of the book, and for those of you who know Russian, you can download the complete Vassiliev notebooks to study. Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

JoeGoodFriend... I think your comment is directed at Eroche & not me, but here's my response. So far I have not read the new HK&V book. I expect I'll get around to reading it, but it's certainly not on my top-ten list yet. I've read their prior works & understand their perspective. Unless they've done an 180 degree about-face, they will be once again taking the position that there was a SUCCESSFUL massive Soviet/Communist espionage effort undermining the American government & way of life. Makes for great headlines, TV drama & "intelligence" agency appropriations, but there is minimal basis in reality.

The book and Venona decrypts also identify the 18-point propaganda campaign launched by the KGB to convince public opinion of the innocence of the Rosenbergs. These points created by the KGB were very effective, and still are repeated even today by persons who cling to the illusion of innocence of these traitors.Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Frankly I'm having a good time with a second read of Richard Gid Powers's Broken

Towards the end of yesterday's Woodrow Wilson seminar someone raised what I see as the essential issue (both 70 years ago & even more-so today with all this computerized noise)... even when there is excellent intelligence, does it successfully get thru the many layers of organizational filters & become actionable knowledge for leaders. Prime example of course being the excellent intelligence collected on German invasion intentions & Stalin's utter refusal to believe it. I would offer the WMD intelligence fiasco as example that this problem is still very much alive today... field intelligence says one thing, but the leaders want to do something else.

This is true, but for the consideration of guilt of A. Hiss is not relevant. Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The State Department in WWII was an excellent example... a cadre of senior (by WWII) Foreign Service Officers had been stationed in Russia during the horrors of the Bolshevik revolution. Roll forward to WWII & these folks were in the "tit for tat" school of diplomacy (e.g. you only give something when you get something). FDR, having a broader view of the situation (e.g. it would be years before the US spun up to fighting ability), wanted to give the Soviets whatever material goods we could, just to keep them in the war. Just remember something between 50 and 60 Russians died for every dead American. Look around you... of the next four people you see, one of them would not exist since their Russian parents died in the war.

Everyone is sorry the Russians bore the brunt of the assault by the Nazi scum, but this is not relevant to the question of the guilt of A. Hiss.Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

You allow no room for the possibility that some folks with foresight understood that there was another European war coming (regardless of our isolationist leanings), that the Russians would be crucial to defeating the Germans & that it just might be useful to feed the Russians back-channel information to encourage them about our often less-than-clear intentions? DEddy (talk) 01:33, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Now just what was the information that Hiss allegedly passed to the Russians? DEddy (talk) 15:21, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

DEddy asks an interesting question. There does not seem to be any evidence except that he was an agent of the GRU. The Russian archives are sealed for 75 years, and may never be opened to find out these details. The evidence that A. Hiss was a traitor and spy does not seem to be based on identification of the information he supposedly handed over, but only on the repeated mentions in the KGB archives of him being an agent. In a court of law, at least in the U.S., this would never be enough evidence to convict because his supporters and apologists could argue that he was listed as an agent but never actually did anything. This sideways argument might be enough to raise doubt in the minds of the jurors. As of today, all we have to go on is the KGB documentation plus the numerous other points raised in the analysis in the Spies book.Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Does the new book offer any wisdom on why Hiss--in the State Department--was being "controlled" (I love that mind control image... like a Harvard Law School graduate is under GRU "control".... right) by Soviet MILITARY intelligence. That just doesn't sit right.

Also... why is the code name for State Department, BANK? Shouldn't that be for Treasury? The code names, at least as presented by the entirely un-identified folks who cracked them tend to have a rather whimsical connection to who the real person was. BANK for State just doesn't fit. DEddy (talk) 01:33, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

My comments are not directed at you, DE. And we know what top secret information Chambers produced in the Pumpkin Papers: The Navy documents that could be developed dealt with such matters as the color to paint government fire extinguishers. No wonders Hiss asked Chambers to hide the film (along with some blank film). Imagine if the Russians had gotten ahold of that stuff! Joegoodfriend (talk) 17:32, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

What Chambers produced in the Pumpkin papers, although interesting, is not relevant to the guilt of A. Hiss.Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I've deleted the latest (poorly styled) anon addition of material from the new Spies and am placing it here until we can get page number verification:

In the 2009 book Spies: the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, (Yale,2009) Vasiliev and co-authors John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr report that Vailiev's research in KGB archives in the early 1990's close the case on Hiss's spying. Hiss is specifically identified by name as an agent in KGB reports as an agent of the sister agency the GRU, while another document lists Hiss by name together with his code name, Jurist.

—DCGeist (talk) 21:55, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I have to jump in here. The contents of Vassiliev's notebooks make it very difficult to believe that Hiss was innocent. In particular, White Notebook #3, page 118 discusses a report from Nigel (Michael Straight) noting that Hiss is "very ideologically progressive." It goes on to mention that Straight's contact does not want to betray any interest in Hiss to Straight, for fear that Straight "will figure out that Hiss is a member of our family." In addition, Black Notebook p. 77 contains a transcription of a memo by A. Gorsky listing failures in the US (1938 - 48). This memo lists Alger Hiss by name as a member of Chambers's group. The code name listed here for Hiss is "Leonard," his code name in 1948. In addition, p. 82 lists "Leonard" as the chief of a main division of the State Department, and notes that he was convicted in the beginning of 1950. Case closed - Hiss was a spy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.59.46.225 (talk) 18:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

The entry anon was mine, but I'm going to leave it to others to make the actual official entry and agree that it is useful to have details of the page numbers, and possibly a summary of the multiple point correlation the authors did proving the guilt of A. Hiss. My suggestion is to wait for the journal articles to be published summarizing the analysis point by point. These articles will be published in only a few months.Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Hiss's code name was Jurist? Huh? DEddy (talk) 01:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected... I've come across a source that says the Vassiliev notes April-May 1936 list "Jurist" as the cover name for Hiss. First time I've seen that claim. One of the accusations I've seen is that when an "agent" has multiple cover names, that proves their importance to the Soviets. Another argument is that the cover names are simply refreshed on an ongoing basis. DEddy (talk) 21:05, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that the code name of Hiss was Als.Eroche (talk) 12:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

If you were at all familiar with the claims of the authors in question, you would know that they are accusing Hiss of having had several different code names, including Ales not Als. Joegoodfriend (talk) 17:37, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Writing in the CIA Library Center for the Study of Intelligence webpage[1] page, author Johh Ehrman notes that during the Cold War there was concern to prevent the emergence of a Dreyfus-like movement that could have potentially united American and foreign intellectuals around the figure of Hiss as an innocent martyr wrongly persecuted, basically for having had leftist friends and liberal ideals in the 1930s (when the Popular Front included progressives of many beliefs including Communists, who had made common cause to together to "prematurely" oppose the menace of Nazism, which at that time was supported by large U.S corporations and mainstream religious orgnanizations). The argument, he maintains, is really about whether Communism in the thirties (when it was not illegal) should be seen as merely another form of dissent (as it was in countries such as France and Italy). Ehrman notes that Anthony Lake, whom President Clinton had nominated as head of the CIA in the 1990s, had to withdraw his nomination because of the furor that ensued after, in an unguarded moment, Lake let slip that the question Hiss's guilt or innocent was inconclusive. Ehrman maintains:

This debate, like the original Hiss controversy, has high stakes. For the left, in particular, vindication of the role of Communism in American life would almost automatically make respectable a host of organizations and movements, such as the nuclear freeze, peace, and antiglobalization groups, now in disrepute. It appears almost inevitable that someday a public figure will make an offhand remark and, like Lake, find himself drawn into this mess as one side tries to use his words to gain a political advantage over the other. John Ehrman, "A Half-Century of Controversy: The Alger Hiss Case".

My impression from his article is that Ehrman believes that if Hiss's innocence were admitted, it would throw many aspects of U.S security policy during the Cold War into doubt. Also revealing is Ehrman's admission that for security reasons it is desirable that the intellectual be divided in order to bring populist movements such as anti-globalization into disrepute. Divide and conquer, in other words. This seems like pertinent information to me -- if someone would like to find a way to add it to the article.71.167.71.129 (talk) 22:21, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The rhetoric around this is that anyone who still has an open mind has a "blind spot" (as Lake was accused of having) or is "in denial", and should be isolated and stigmatized as a "diehard", or a "dead-ender". As the Commentary crowd has it, the "case is closed" and anyone who thinks otherwise has "impossibly" high standards of "innocent until guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt". This is not the language historians use, Legitimate historians respectfully acknowledge the arguments of their opponents and do not indulge in namecalling, rather it is the language of propagandists and political crusaders. Indeed, it appears almost self-defeating.71.167.71.129 (talk) 00:15, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

These are interesting observations. Please become a registered editor and continue to contribute to wikipedia. Joegoodfriend (talk) 05:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

The writer Walter C. Uhler remarks that the authors of Spies undermine their own book why they admit that the word of former professional spies is not to be trusted. (the Cretan paradox?), they conclude:

"Espionage is a secretive business. It is rare that the agents engaged in it or the agencies they serve speak honestly and openly about what they've done because the incentives to lie, dissemble, and continue to deceive are so strong for all concerned" [Spies p. 541]

Vassiliev and Chambers were in fact career spies.173.52.250.241 (talk) 05:01, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

For extra points... who was code name Jurist?

Also... for double extra points, Ales is pronounced close to "Alice", not ales (as in beer). DEddy (talk) 18:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

HCUA vs HUAC?

HCUA... huh? Where did that come from? It's always been HUAC (pronounced "hew ack"). Google produces 22,800 refs for HCUA & 227,000 for HUAC. By your reasoning, IBM would "correctly" be IBMC. Acronyms are a popularity contest, not a correctness contest. DEddy (talk) 21:03, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct. Making the change.—DCGeist (talk) 22:15, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Felon?

Hiss was convicted of perjury which I do not think is a felony (I'm NOT a lawyer). He could not be tried on espionage charges since the statute of limitations had expired. DEddy (talk) 17:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

No, it's a felony - see Perjury.John Z (talk) 17:58, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Is there some POV here?

In the main article I find the statement:

Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American lawyer, civil servant, businessman, author, lecturer, and Soviet spy

Yet later on I see:

Various reports suggest that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are now in the minority of scholarly opinion

If this latter point is true, there would appear to be some doubt. Indeed looking at this talk page the largest section is devoted to a discussion about whether he was or wasn't a spy. However, the first statement is fairly categorical and to my mind somewhat POV to the point of not being correct if the second is true. Since there appears to be much controversy over the point, perhaps we should not be so positive about being a soviet spy.

I have no particular axe to grind here, since I come from the UK and this is of intellectual interest only not explicitly political as it would appear to be in the USA. Which is it? Soarhead77 (talk) 21:08, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

An anon changed the longstanding wording today. Thanks for noticing.John Z (talk) 22:16, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

It looks a lot closer to the truth now! Thanks Soarhead77 (talk) 08:16, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Historians and Hiss: Request for mediation of dispute

A dispute has exited for the past two and one-half years as to whether the lede of this article should (1.) include a statement regarding the opinions of historians on Hiss' guilt or innocence and (2.) exactly how this statement should be written.

More than two years ago, editor Bdell555 suggested in this talk thread that the dispute should be officially mediated. He was right. So let's do it.

I've never submitted a dispute resolution before. Does anyone have any insight on the best way to kick this off? Thanks. Joegoodfriend (talk) 01:42, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Within the next day or two I'll post to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard asking for general comment on the appropriateness of using Navasky (or the Nation) as a source for the conclusion that Hiss' espionage is not certainly or almost certainly established. It would also be appropriate to select the strongest source (or two or three) for a more or less definitive statement that "the Hiss case" is closed or settled for the vast majority of historians and ask for general comment on the appropriateness of using that. The appropriate step after that would be to post to WP:RFC under the "history" and/or "politics" section asking those Wiki users who follow those topics to congregate here so that it is not the same usual suspects. If you think that some other source other than or in addition to Navasky should be cited I would suggest adding that to the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard.

This year's publication of Klehr, Haynes and Vassiliev's book, together with the reviews, comments and responses to it that have appeared in a variety of sources, has led me to conclude that this article's summary of the state of expert thinking on the subject is more untenable and inaccurate than ever.Bdell555 (talk) 04:41, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Um. This is nuts. Historical accuracy is not determined by majority vote.24.105.152.153 (talk) 22:10, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

No, but there is hardly any point in rehashing the same arguments and material with the same people. Although there is some new material I can point to, it is likely going to take some new participants to avoid another edit war.Bdell555 (talk) 03:58, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to Brian for taking on this assignment, I know your time is valuable. Extra credit if you can glean any revelations from the new book Spies. There's been some discussion of this book on this page, unfortunately, no one's had anything significant to say about it because it's clear that no one who's talking about it has actually read it. I'll think about the reliable sources issue, I believe I can suggest three others in line with Navasky.

Funny thing about history. Arguably, it IS a majority vote. He who controls the past controls the future. Joegoodfriend (talk) 05:57, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Per Brian's suggestion, I have updated the Reliable Sources Noticeboard for sources on Alger Hiss. Joegoodfriend (talk) 05:07, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Joegoodfriend, "Control" is the operative word here. What you are talking about is not history but propaganda. Historical veracity is not about finding absolute truth but about probability. If expressing a degree of doubt is going to lose you your job prospects as in the example of Clinton's failed CIA appointment, mentioned above, I would say that there is no free debate here. Those who insist that the case is closed and that further discussion is impossible themselves admit that the evidence to convict Hiss (if it exists) is not available to the public and will not be for many decades. The are demanding to be taken on faith.162.83.248.10 (talk) 16:18, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi "162+," if you'll look at some of the old discussion threads, you'll see that I have been one of the advocates of refraining from adding subjective conclusions on Hiss' guilt to the article. Please become a registered user of wikipedia so that your thoughts will carry some weight in these discussions, as I am interested in what you have to say on this matter. Joegoodfriend (talk) 20:15, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

• How hard can it be to determine if there's a consensus among historians that Hiss was (or was never) a Soviet spy? patsw (talk) 00:58, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I would assume quite hard. If there are more than 25 professional historians who follow the Hiss case in detail (and there's a LOT of detail) I'd be quite surprised. There's plenty of kibitzers like me & thee with plenty of axes to grind, but we're not professional historians. DEddy (talk) 01:35, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The recent book The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev (Yale, 2010) pretty much settles the question: Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. For those of you who don't want to wade through the entire 704 pages of this tome, The Weekly Standard has a good review of it with ample details about the Hiss question in its May 10 issue (Spies Like Us, The Weekly Standard, vol. 15, no. 32; subscribers only). Lufiend (talk) 15:17, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Haynes and Klehr's previous books, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (2000) and In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage (2003) supposedly "settled the question". They did not. Obviously, their new book can not yet be claimed to have accomplished this. I'm thus reverting your change to the article's lede. I'll leave the addition at the bottom for the moment, but it needs a lot of work. The "ideological blindness" bit is the same old blather. We need to know what if any newly uncovered evidence the book presents, and we need specific page cites for everything. If it does not actually present any newly uncovered evidence, then the book merits only a brief mention, at most.—DCGeist (talk) 16:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

The matter is settled. Hiss was a Soviet spy. The evidence in Haynes and Klehr's book is conclusive, unambiguous, and definitive. Hiss's being a spy is an established fact of history, documented by so many witnesses and printed evidence that any further denial of his having been a spy is an insult to intelligence. Do not revert my edits again or I will report you as a vandal.Lufiend (talk) 14:24, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Lufiend I did make an effort to read "Spies" and nothing jumped off the page as putting the final nail in the Hiss coffin. Could you please cite what specific passages you feel close the case? I do know that H&K's passing mention of Harry Dexter White (FAR higher in the food chain than Hiss)—whom they have proclaimed in their previous works was a significant Soviet spy—is (a) mostly ignored since the Vassiliev references are largely in the tone (from the KGB) of "Do we know who this guy is?", and (b) the specific H&K reference to White is majorly jumbled (specifically the #118 footnote which says: "The "new course" referred to a policy of American accommodation of Soviet foreign policy goals." On balance ALL of the H&K books are a confusing jumble of bits & pieces cleverly woven together into what reads like a coherent whole, and always leading to the implication that Agent X was robbing us blind & the Soviets were laughing all the way to the bank. Example: somehow Haynes is accepted as THE definitive source for agent cover names... yet no where is there any sourcing as to how/why Name A is associated with Person B. Why is this? It's just plain sloppy research. But it does read well if one is interested in the topic. DEddy (talk) 15:15, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Yet another case of the broken record. STOP telling me that Haynes and Klehr have 'settled' the issue. Tell me what new evidence they've uncovered. What documents are they quoting? Where are your quotations from the documents/evidence? Lufiend, have you ever read wikipedia's policies on the prohibition of point of view edits? Or on gaining consensus on controversies? Or on proper citation where edits have been challenged? You can't just provide a single citation to a book and say, "This book contains definitive evidence." Joegoodfriend (talk) 03:22, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Some criticism of Klehr and Haynes added. Joegoodfriend (talk) 03:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Hiss side responds to "Spies"

Jeff Kisseloff, keeper of the Alger Hiss site, has posted a response to HK&V's "Spies" http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/spies2.html DEddy (talk) 17:07, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

The Berle Levine Notes

These notes taken during Whittiker Chambers recounting of many purported spies in the State Department have finally come to light. Hiss's name was not among those Chambers mentioned, apparently. A commenter to Jeff Kisseloff's blog writes:

The following are brief excerpts of sworn testimony, the first by Isaac Don Levine before HUAC on August 18, 1948. The second quote, excerpted from William Reuben’s The Honorable Mr. Nixon, is from Whittaker Chambers’s testimony before the grand jury on October 14, 1948.

MR. LEVINE. After dinner the three of us retired to Mr. Berle’s study. It was a warm evening. We spent some time on the lawn talking. We returned back to the study, and Mr. Berle was making notes. I think probably between a half dozen and 10 sheets of notes were made by Mr. Berle while Mr. Chambers was opening up the insides of the State Department and various other departments in Washington where he had underground contacts who supplied him with documentary and confidential information for transmission to the Soviet Government. The picture which emerged by midnight was quite appalling to me, and I think Mr. Berle was very much shaken by the various names of the Soviet agents that Mr. Chambers disclosed. Mr. Chambers furnished in addition to the names, descriptions and characterizations of the various persons which served to provide a background and give an authentic and authenticating character both to his narrative and to the answers to the questions which Mr. Berle then propounded.

This is what Chambers said as of October 14, [1948] in his sworn testimony before the grand jury, as he was questioned by Thomas Donegan, Special Assistant to the Attorney General:

Q. Mr. Chambers, have you any information or knowledge from the period that you were in Washington in your underground work to the present time of any individuals in the employ of the Government furnishing information to any unauthorized sources? That is a general question and you can treat it in any way you wish. A. I can’t say that I have specific knowledge of the transfer of information. I have knowledge of certain contacts…. Q. What do you mean by contacts? A. I know that various people were in touch with J. Peters or other Communists. Q. In connection with your activities with the Communist Party were you required to or did you obtain any information from any individual or transmit it to J. Peters? A. No, I was not and did not.

At the close of the day, when the prosecutor invited questions from any member of the grand jury panel, this exchange occurred between Chambers and one of the jurors:

Q. Could you give one name of anybody, who, in your opinion, was positively guilty of espionage against the United States? Yes or No. A. Let me think a moment and I will try to answer that. I don’t think so, but I would like to have the opportunity to answer you tomorrow more definitely. Let me think it over overnight.

The following morning, on October 15, the prosecutor referred to the unanswered question and asked if Chambers would “proceed from there.” This exchange followed:

A. All right, I shall. I assume that espionage means in this case the turning over of secret or confidential documents. Q. Or information – oral information. A. Or oral information. I do not believe I do know such a name.

http://02cdc55.netsolhost.com/algerhissblog/?p=121#comments

Josephine Herbst used to recount that during the Hiss trial the FBI came to her and Hiss's lawyers came to her and to both she said if called to testify she would tell the truth. Neither side called her. I assume that what she would have said was that before 1935 it was no shame and certainly no crime to sympathize with Communism, because I came upon a similar statement in Elinor Langer's book, but no one wants to hear that now. The communist party in the USA the early thirties was fighting for what are today considered good causes and which were also good causes at the time, labor unions; civil rights for Jews, African Americans, and women; and anti-fascism. In the 1930s the socialists tended to be tepid, especially on anti-fascism and racial and religious prejudice. This maddening tepidity gave the Communists more prestige at the time as they had a more clearheaded idea of menace of Fascism. As I can see it, Alger Hiss appears to have been pilloried for thought crimes and there is an ongoing coverup of what was indeed a miscarriage of justice in the 1950s trial. A perjury trial, not an espionage trial.99.32.207.240 (talk) 04:00, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

A change to the lede

The next-to-last sentence in the lede currently reads like this:

Although a variety of evidence has been added to the debate since his conviction, the question of Hiss's guilt or innocence remains controversial to some.

I propose to change it as follows:

Although a variety of evidence has been added to the debate since his conviction, including a Soviet telegram confirming that Hiss received a medal for his actions on behalf of the Soviet Union, the question of Hiss's guilt or innocence remains controversial to some.

To me, the cable (telegram) recovered from the Soviets is of immense value in determining whether Hiss was truly a spy. It deserves to be mentioned in the lede. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, upon citing this evidence, stated that the question of whether Hiss was a spy is now settled. It's the magic bullet. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 14:41, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

What is your citation for this telegram? Joegoodfriend (talk) 17:04, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Moynhan's book made the STATEMENT (of Hiss being a spy is settled), but offered no supporting evidence at all. DEddy (talk) 17:39, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Moynihan made the statement in his official capacity as chairman[2] of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy (CPRGS).[3] (He previously served in the United States Senate from 1977 to 2001, serving four six-year terms. Moynihan was one of the most trusted elder statesmen of the latter half of the 20th Century, revered and honored by leaders of both parties.) In the linked "Appendix A" of the CPRGS final report, Moynihan cited the Soviet cable as evidence that Hiss was in fact a spy. Like I said, this is the silver bullet. Let's stop pretending that those who claim Hiss is innocent form anything greater than a small minority opinion. At the Waterboarding article, a small minority's claim that waterboarding is not torture gets the treatment that a small minority deserves. I think we should treat the "Alger Hiss was not a spy" school of thought in precisely the same way. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 00:36, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

The focus of the "Secrecy" book was an examination of the pervasive over-classification of information in government, NOT an in depth analysis of VENONA particulars. Additionally when "Secrecy" was written there had been no release at all of VENONA source materials (the English versions of VENONA cables are obviously not source materials). To the best of my knowledge (it's a huge topic) cable #1822 wasn't released in Russian until approx 2006. As far as I know #1822 is the only cable that has been released in Russian. So I would say that Senator Moynihan's comment was just that, a comment not PROOF. DEddy (talk) 13:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Egad. Your "proof" that Hiss was a spy is cable #1822?[4] An American intel expert suggests that a certain spy is "probably" Hiss, and suddenly we have a smoking gun? You're aware that this cable and the identity of "Ales" is already discussed extensively in the article, right?

Have you read the old talk pages? How many times do we have to have this same conversation?:

Hiss accuser: "The evidence proves Hiss guilty."

Hiss defender: "The 'evidence' you cite is speculative. It doesn't prove anything."

Hiss accuser: "Uh, yeah, well, everybody knows Hiss was guilty."

BORING! Joegoodfriend (talk) 19:19, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying that #1822 is proof. I'm mocking it. The back story (in case you we're there) was there was a flap at a 2005 history symposium where the ENGLISH version of #1822 was presented as final proof of Hiss's guilt. After proclaiming that no originals existed, eventually a Russian version (presumably from the same source, VENONA) was produced. All I'm saying is there are a lot of mirrors in this endless hallway. DEddy (talk) 19:46, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

My comments are not for you, D. :) Joegoodfriend (talk) 19:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Moynihan thinks the cable was conclusive. It wasn't just a "comment." The only reason Alger Hiss didn't go to prison for espionage was that the statute of limitations had expired. Waterboarding demonstrates what we should do with the small minority opinion: publish the large majority opinion as fact in the lede, and then at the end of the article, mention the handful of people who disagree. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 00:39, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Let's publish opinion as fact? I vote no on that one. "Waterboarding is torture" is an objective fact because the legal bodies that define torture consider it to be so. "Hiss was a spy" is not an objective a fact, but a subjective conclusion as he was never found guilty of espionage. As for the repeated claims about "majority opinion" on the Hiss case: (1) show me your survey of experts/academics/whomever that demonstrates that those who believe Hiss guilty are substantially in the majority, (2) the article already has text, (arrived at after a year-long edit war) reflecting that numerous people have claimed (without supporting evidence) that those who believe Hiss innocent are in the minority. Joegoodfriend (talk) 01:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

(As always, could be wrong, but if memory serves me right...) Moynihan never mentioned cable #1822 (that didn't become a major bone of contention until late 2005, close to 10 years after "Secrecy" was published) & never mentions ANY specifics as to why he—or his ghost writer—believes Hiss was guilty. Again, the point of "Secrecy" was not about Hiss who was only mentioned in passing, but the overriding knee-jerk reaction of the Washington bureaucracy to classify anything & everything as TOP SECRET. Moynihan's point was that the way too liberal use of the TOP SECRET stamp offered far too much cover for stupidity & malfeasance... witness Richard Nixon trying to get the CIA to cover for him for Watergate. DEddy (talk) 02:16, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Various reports suggest that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are in the minority of scholarly opinion.

I have no dog in this race as the old saying goes. I was simply reading the article for my own purposes of learning about the history of the case. I'm about as impartial as you can get. But the sentence, "Various reports suggest that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are in the minority of scholarly opinion" uses some sticky language. Even though it provides a plethora of sources [footnote 3] asserting that as fact, not a single one lists evidence outlining anything close to numbers in relation to scholarly opinion one way or the other. With the possible exception of the last source, which is a now a dead link anyway. In other words, you could list a thousand different scholarly sources who all say, "Our view [for or against] is in the scholarly majority" but unless one of them provides a survey or opinion poll with numbers detailing the sentiments of relevant academic scholars, then these sources don't amount to much.

Unless you change the wording of that sentence. At face-value this sentence is a very true statement, (indeed, various people do report that their opinion is in the majority.), but due to its placement in the introduction to the article it misleads the reader into assuming that indeed there is a near-consensus on the matter (The NY Times article referenced itself can only come up with a couple of people to make up their near-consensus). One can take any public figure and write, "Many people have reported that he was a good [or bad] person and that very few thought otherwise" and then provide a hundred opinions to not only support one side but to proclaim themselves in the majority. I say we remove this sentence from the introduction, reword it and place it in another part of the article. Or better yet we could abolish it altogether and find a better use for some of these sources. As is, by the end of the introduction you enter the article convinced one way rather than the other.

All I'm asking is for a fair introduction. The debate plays itself out in the evidence. I don't know about Hiss's guilt or innocence, but I do know tricky language when I see it.Wellesradio (talk) 18:55, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

One more thing. I would edit the article myself, but seeing as it's mildly protected due to vandalism and since I don't know much about this matter to begin with, it would seem suspicious for me to simply come in and delete a sentence that includes so many sources. Besides, I think these sources are an important part of the conversation (even though some of them are merely extensions of an argument "legitimized" because they are published in old media) and should be included in some form or other. I just don't know how I would do that. Hence, someone who knows what they're talking about should. If there is no response, however, I may take it upon myself to remove the sentence. Wellesradio (talk) 19:00, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I largely, but do not entirely agree with your assessment. That dicey language was arrived at through a discussion which I observed, but was not closely engaged in.

I observe that the preceding sentence is also problematic: "Although a variety of evidence has been added to the debate since his conviction, the question of Hiss's guilt or innocence remains controversial to some." The second part of the sentence is a non sequitur (if a "variety of evidence" has accumulated, we should hardly expect that to resolve any controversy—the "although" causes the problem), and "controversial to some" is just silly (those who declare the matter settled are very much part of the controversy). The following sentence can also be improved: surely some of those who believe Hiss "was unjustly convicted on the basis of forged evidence" do have an opinion on his guilt or innocence.

The general point in question does appear to be well-established, however, and is surely significant enough to appear in the lede. I do concur with that consensus view arrived at in the old discussion. The point just needs to be expressed more plainly and directly. A news article in The New York Times constitutes a high-quality, neutral source, and it is not our business to do a head count of named references. The article states that Tony Hiss's website "buck[s] the trend of scholarship on the Hiss case in the 1990's -- a growing consensus that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent."

Thus I propose this:

As various evidence has been added to the debate since Hiss's conviction, the question of his guilt or innocence remains controversial. In the 1990s, according to the New York Times, there developed among scholars a "growing consensus that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent." That judgment aside, some believe that he was unjustly convicted on the basis of forged evidence. Analysis published in 2010 suggests that an agent of the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps penetrated the Hiss defense team and served as its chief investigator.

—DCGeist (talk) 19:25, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I've made the change, with a little supplementary copyediting. I think it read smoother and clearer now, and is more plainly verifiable.—DCGeist (talk) 02:01, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I will never forget March 13, 2007. On that day, an editor visited this page, and without asking for any kind of consensus, introduced this edit: "Since the release of new evidence, most scholars believe Hiss was indeed a spy." Link to the edit:[5] When I questioned this edit, he immediately compared me to Holocaust deniers: [6]

Thus began a year long edit war running to tens of thousands of words, including arguments on everything from the difference between objective and subjective conclusions, to consensus, to the value of different kinds of citations, to the meaning of the word "most". If you read the archived discussion pages, you will absolutely not believe the vitriol. The text, "Various reports suggest that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are in the minority of scholarly opinion" was our armistice.

You want to change it? I won't stop you. As a matter of fact, I think the new edit is quite good. But if it starts Hiss War II: The Apocalypse, don't say you weren't warned. Joegoodfriend (talk) 05:31, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

"Analysis 'published' in 2010"

The cited source for this is self-published, and according to WP:Verifiability, "self-published media... are largely not acceptable." An exception is allowed for an "expert", and Stephen Salant is indeed a U of Michigan professor with a PhD. However, Wiki policy states that:

Self-published material may in some circumstances be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so.

The italicized part is boldfaced in the policy (I've boldfaced more). Salant is an economist. How is he an authority on Alger Hiss? Has any of his work on Alger Hiss been published in a referreed academic journal, never mind the work that is cited here? As the policy states, "Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources where available, such as in history..." As an academic, it is not like Salant does not understand how the process of getting published in an academic journal works.

The website hosting Salant's work here is http://quod.lib.umich.edu. Given that it also hosts things like UM Campus Area photos it appears to be a more or less generic UMich website and analogous to a professor's own webpage that isn't subject to the editorial review of peers.

The problem is not solved by also citing a source from 1958 because the claim is that "analysis published in 2010" revealed something new.

The absurd consequence of this is that readers are not advised in the lede of the fact that the release of the VENONA decrypts in the 1990s contributed to the state of expert opinion on the subject of Alger Hiss but they are advised of Salant's "analysis". The VENONA decrypts are widely cited by various experts. Who has cited Salant?Bdell555 (talk) 08:17, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

The "see also" note accompanying the lede is extensive and solid without the Oshinsky addition you desire. And I see no justification for excising the significant points concerning forged evidence and subversion of the defense—extraordinary violations of fundamental American rights and values.—DCGeist (talk) 09:39, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Your response does not address the WP:RS problem with using Salant at all. A straightforward reading of Wikipedia policy suggests that Salant should not be used to source anything in this article, never mind a conclusive statement ("unjustly convicted") in the article introduction, a conclusion at odds with what David Oshinsky describes as the view of "the vast majority of modern American historians today and particularly those specializing in domestic Cold War" And with regards to whether readers should be informed that Oshinsky has made that statement, I remind you that Redspruce, whom you should recall from archived discussion here and his editing history of McCarthyism related articles generally sympathizes with the particular political POV you declare here, "totally agrees" with me that Oshinsky's statement should be included. I might add that the "see also" note is not "extensive and solid" enough if it continues to be challenged, like I see it has been earlier on this Talk page.Bdell555 (talk) 10:27, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Bdell555 re: Salant is an economist. How is he an authority on Alger Hiss? Because he grew up there. Because he knew my father who was a leading unpublished resource on the White-Hiss subject. Just in case you've missed this history thread from the McCarthy era, Harvard pre-Keynesian economists were the primary targets of Chambers-Bentley-McCarthy-Hoover & accusations of policy-subversion. Hiss (a Harvard Law School grad), a relatively minor State Department (read: backwater, FDR did not like the State Department, or visa versa) official just happened to be an unfortunate 2nd choice target. Read the book & follow the footnotes.

If Wikipedia held to those WP:RS rules, where would the material for articles come from? I would assume a HUGE portion of Wiki content is from people who know the topic but have never published. And from the other end... Ann Coulter is published—on this topic too—would you consider her a valid resource? DEddy (talk) 01:59, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

There are many parents who feel they "know the topic" of the MMR vaccine controversy based on their personal experience of what happened to their own children. Call them "unpublished resources." But while huge amounts of material can be found on websites alleging a causal relationship with autism, some of it authored by recognizable names, none of it has been published by authoritative medical journals. In the one exception, the publishing journal later made a full retraction. As it stands now, a very large proportion of this Alger Hiss article is dedicated to airing all of the objections that uncredentialed critics have against the research of credentialed experts. In contrast, I don't see Coulter cited for any of the material in the body of this article, never mind the introduction, and accordingly do not see the relevance of any issues with her reliability.Bdell555 (talk) 01:23, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Self-published? The author is a scholar and a Ph. D. (albeit his expertise is in another field). His work has appropriate citations, and is published under the scholarly aegis of the University of Michigan, one of the finest in the country. Such a work, by a distinguished scholar and amateur historian, would be newsworthy even if "self-published", which it is not. Methinks some people are trying to engage in censorship. http://scholarlypublishing.org/blog/2010/07/13/um-professor-reveals-spy-catcher-in-1950-alger-hiss-case-explore-the-argument-and-the-evidence-in-a-new-digital-archive/

The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library is pleased to announce the publication of Successful Strategic Deception: A Case Study, a digital publication featuring a new analysis of the controversial case against Alger Hiss, a U.S. State Department official suspected of spying for the Soviet Union, and ultimately convicted of perjury in 1950.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.56.162.182 (talk) 06:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I think it is quite telling that Bdell555 is attempting to smear Salant for allegedly being an unreliable source -- and refers dismissively to Salant's exposure of the detective who discovered Hiss's long lost typewriter as someone with a background as an experienced forger of typewriters, in quotes as an "analysis" -- while characteristically ignoring substance of Salant's explosive revelation. This diversionary tactic is in keeping with the bullying tone of those who loudly insist (but cannot prove) that Hiss's alleged guilt is a settled matter. As a matter of fact, Athan Theoharis (in Beyond the Hiss case: the FBI, Congress, and the Cold War [Temple 1982], p. 58), also cites Salant's uncovering in Hiss's FBI file information that the FBI had itself destroyed evidence (a letter and check) pertaining to the case. "Move along folks, there's nothing to see here", is the message. There were also two exchanges of letters between Stephen Salant and Allen Weinstein in the New York Review of Books in the year 1976 that wikipedia readers ought to be appraised of. Thus, far from being someone coming from left field (so to speak) like "a parent who thinks he knows a lot about vaccines" (to paraphrase) Stephen Salant is a significant historical figure in the Hiss story and deserves a place in this narrative. Yet Ann Coulter, on the other hand, who describes herself as a "polemicist" who likes to "stir up the pot" who doesn't "pretend to be impartial or balanced, as broadcasters do", and has no other credentials beyond being a right-wing propagandist, is listed in the bibliography of this article as a source for reading about Hiss, and Bdell555 has no objection, amazing!173.56.162.182 (talk) 15:14, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The editor who, in your view, "dismissively" referred to "Salant's exposure" as "analysis" is, in fact, DCGeist, not Brian Dell since DCGeist is the one who introduced the "analysis" language to the article on August 5. In the interest of keeping on topic, I have raised the issue over at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#scholarlypublishing.org.Bdell555 (talk) 01:02, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Wow! I did not see the Ann Coulter reference in the references. There's absolutely no way anyone can challenge Salant as "not published" when Coulter is used as a reference. "Right-wing propagandist" is way too gentle description of what Coulter writes. DEddy (talk) 16:34, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

What Coulter material is used as a "reference"? Given the difficulty of answering that question absent any inline citations, I've changed "References and Further Reading" to "Further Reading".Bdell555 (talk) 01:02, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

exculpatory evidence

What is the "exculpatory" evidence (revealed post-conviction) that is not just claimed to be exculpatory but generally agreed all around to be exculpatory? The introduction claims that exculpatory evidence has been "exposed", without attribution or qualification. To take an example of the problem I see here, the fact that Hiss is named as Hiss in a VENONA cable is seen by some as exculpatory but others see it as further incriminating (it'd also misleading to imply that the release of the VENONA decrypts in general moved as many observers towards an "innocent" verdict as towards "guilty"). The person(s) alleging exculpatory should accordingly be identified and the argument(s) for their views explained (in other words, the matter should be examined in the body of the article, not presented as undisputed and uncited fact in the introduction). Point to some evidence that Weinstein and/or Klehr and Haynes and/or Tanenhaus and/or any article in a refereed academic journal has also conceded is exculpatory and it may be appropriate for Wikipedia (subject to how trifling it is relative to the amount of new evidence generally agreed to be incriminating) to make such a conclusive statement without acknowledging that the claim is alleged, by who, or under what interpretation. I do not recall any Talk page discussion concerning this addition to the lede. DCGeist's latest edit comment speaks of an absence of evidence to justify including this, but an absence of evidence ought to argue for the exclusion of material, not addition.Bdell555 (talk) 21:26, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, when the contents of the Pumpkin papers were finally revealed as trivial and inconsequential, the American Bar Association readmitted Hiss to the bar, which shows that they did not believe he had been a spy. A., and B., Salant also discovered through the freedom of information act that the FBI had destroyed documents that would have weakened the case for the prosecution. C., Finally, Salant checked up on the background of the detective who "found" the Pumpkin papers that caused Chambers change his former denial that Hiss was a spy into an accusation, and discovered that said detective was a former and became future agent of military intelligence with a background of altering typewriters for the purpose of forging documents. It looks bad for the prosecution team, who included a future president famous for "dirty tricks".

Finally, Hiss has never been indicted for, or convicted of, spying in any court. That he was "guilty" of spying has always been pure speculation and/or insinuation (through such phrases as Bdell555's "post conviction"). Hiss was convicted, not of being a spy, but of having falsely denied that he had previously met Chambers, who, ironically, had been a spy, and thus himself had a very powerful motive to lie and change his story to protect himself. But I find it very difficult to believe that Bdell555 doesn't know all this already, since he is able to read.173.56.162.182 (talk) 00:17, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Do you have a source for the claim that the ABA did not believe he had been a spy? That's an interpretation, and moreover an interpretation of a decision that was made in 1975, before Weinstein published "Perjury", never mind VENONA, Vassiliev's KGB documentation, etc. If you really want to contend that the ABA decision constitutes new exculpatory evidence, then cite it as such for the claim that there is new exculpatory evidence (which moreover in the article edit at issue appears in a context that suggests it is on par with what is widely recognized as newly revealed incriminating evidence). Assuming for the moment that the Pumpkin papers are consequential, the writer above does not identify what the new evidence is that "revealed as trivial and inconsequential" evidence that was formerly thought to be incriminating. How is it that David Oshinsky can maintain that "the vast majority of modern American historians today and particularly those specializing in domestic Cold War accept Chambers’ overall version of events" if there is, in fact, "newly exposed" "exculpatory" "evidence" of such notability as to warrant mention in the article introduction?

As for Slaton, I've already noted that a strict application of Wikipedia's rules on self-published sources would have all the Slaton sourced material in this article deleted. There have been academic journal articles refereed by a Harvard institute and books published by Yale University Press that have called attention to what may be described as incriminating new evidence. To equate this with some internet-published material is misleading. As for what Hiss was convicted of, I'll defer to the response that was given to that point near the end of day 1 at the May 2009 Wilson Center conference, not that the point is relevant to this particular article sentence anyway, which mentions the conviction just for purposes of chronology.Bdell555 (talk) 04:18, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the ABA would restore the license of a spy. Yes, that is my interpretation. As for being published on the internet. Much serious scholarly publishing now takes place on the web, I can assure you. If you think it doesn't, then you don't know what you are talking about. So that line doesn't work and you might as well drop it. As for Weinstein, Tannenhaus, or Klehr, they are not objective, vetted by Harvard or not. They have their opinions and you have yours and Olshinky has his. Other people disagree.173.56.162.182 (talk) 05:20, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Go change WP:RS and WP:V so that it is consistent with these views of yours then. At the moment your views are not consistent with Wikipedia's guidelines, such that it is not just a matter of my opinion vs your opinion.Bdell555 (talk) 23:55, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

That is your interpretation. I say that the Hiss Thought Police are behind the times and need to bone up on scholarly publishing. I personally know scholars who have published or are awaiting publication in peer reviewed venues on the internet -- and furthermore, in the near future most scholarly publication will be via the internet rather than dead trees. (This was the subject of a recent issue of Science Magazine, the publication of the American Institute of Science). I maintain that Salant's article is published by an academic internet publisher, because it is published by an academic internet publisher: namely that of the Scholarly Articles Division of the Library of the University of Michigan. Such an article is not "self-published."

And even if it had been self published. Salant is both a respected academic scholar at a major research university with a long and distinguished record of peer- reviewed publications and a key figure since the 1970s in the Hiss case. He is by no means the equivalent of a parent writing an anti-vaccine screed, no matter what you or any of the other Thought Police try insinuate. Salant himself has said that the evidence he has found via the Freedom of Information Act (evidence whose veracity no one contests) is only circumstantial. But the case against Hiss is also only circumstantial, and that is where matters stand until more is revealed by the various intelligence agencies.173.56.162.182 (talk) 23:10, 6 September 2010 (UTC)173.56.162.182 (talk) 16:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Rhetoricians (i.e., lawyers) seek to impress the judge by calling the greatest number of witnesses before the bench. Historians cultivate detachment: and lay out both sides of the evidence for and against, leaving it for the reader to make up his or her own mind. 173.56.162.182 (talk) 20:17, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Salant has referred not once but three times to the material at issue as being hosted on "my website" (emphasis added). Not that there appears to be much concern about WP:SELFPUB when the material at issue is thought by some editors to serve their purposes. A webpage hosted on http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15 that is written by an author who appears, like you, to be anonymous, is used in an inline citation despite the fact a "N.Y.U. spokesman said... the university asked Tony Hiss to use a different Web address to designate it more clearly as a personal site rather than an academic one. The spokesman, John Beckman, said that the university felt that the old address, www.nyu.edu/hiss, suggested that the site was sponsored by the university" (italics added). This personal website is not just cited for minor claims. This Wikipedia article says that "many of the conclusions reached by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr ... are false." This bold claim is cited to http://homepages.nyu.edu. So according to Wikipedia, a Yale University Press publication written by two PhD specialists in the field has been refuted by what Jeff Kisseloff, who doesn't appear to be any more of a subject authority than I am, has written on a "personal site." Now maybe some guy on the internet could be right, but if we look at the details, which I'll do below, his claims appear highly dubious.Bdell555 (talk) 09:44, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

More rhetoric. You are changing the subject. The University of Michigan site is attested by the University Library as a scholarly publication, not a personal website. As for myself, Bdell, Wikipedia allows for anonymous posting. I don't get what you are aiming at here.173.56.162.182 (talk) 12:22, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Just googling around, I see that Jeff Kisseloff, whom you disparage, has published five books of history. I don't know if he has a Ph.D or not, but he certainly qualifies as a journalist, or does a journalist have to go about in Cap and Gown to be credible to you?173.56.162.182 (talk) 12:31, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Kisseloff's books have been published by Penguin and University of Kentucky Press, certainly more creditable than, say, Regenery, which publishes the ilk of Ann Coulter. It is a calumny to suggest he does not meet the Wikipedia criteria for a reliable source. Wikipedia is a republic of letters not a military dictatorship. Reliable sources cannot be limited to those whom wikipedia-posters-with-military-backgrounds agree with. Do your homework before casting aspersions. It is disgraceful.173.56.162.182 (talk) 12:53, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

trying to have it both ways

According to the article:

Haynes and Klehr never saw, and cannot prove the existence of the documents they claim convict Hiss and others of espionage. Instead, they relied on handwritten notebooks authored by Vassiliev during the time he was given access to the Soviet archives in the 1990s. Vassiliev was never able to explain how he managed, despite being required to leave his files and notebooks in a safe at the KGB press office at the end of each day he was allowed in the archives, to smuggle out the notebooks with his extensive transcriptions of documents.

My question is why is this being exclusively used to question Haynes and Klehr, when this objection would equally apply to David Lowenthal? The article contains a fairly large amount of material in the 'Venona and ALES' section cited to a Lowenthal piece where Lowenthal alleges,

...extracts Vassiliev transcribed from KGB files... he had smuggled out of Moscow... call into question evidence earlier adduced against [Hiss].... the 'new' KGB materials Vassiliev provided... refute the identification of Hiss as 'Ales'...

It seems that in 2005 the Vassiliev notes that had been revealed until that point were deemed reliable by the usual suspects because some of them were thought to exonerate Hiss (emphasis on "some", I've noted earlier in the "Jeff Kisseloff" section of this Talk page how Lowenthal's scan of the March 5, 1945 Gorsky cable Lowenthal writes about at length rather conveniently omitted the line that tied both ALES and RUBLE (Glasser) to KARL's (Chambers') GRU group). But then Vassiliev went and published Spies along with Haynes and Klehr in 2009 and the usual suspects changed their tune to say Vassiliev's notes from Soviet archives are unreliable, since now the totality of material Vassiliev has provided from Moscow is more clearly incriminating. I don't see how one can have it both ways here. Either drop the charge against H&K and assume, along with the editor of the Journal of Cold War Studies and most others, that Vassiliev's notes are reliable, OR remove Lowenthal's Vassiliev-notes based (ie Soviet-archives-based) arguments about ALES earlier in the article.Bdell555 (talk) 19:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Brian, you don't even think that documents posted on the internet and available for all to examine are "reliable sources". On the other hand, only the dodgey Vassiliev has seen the Moscow papers, and it is therefore reasonable to ask if they even exist, much less whether they are authoritative. Incidentally, why isn't the Journal of Cold War Studies available on the internet?, since you keep referring to it as the gospel truth. And why doesn't the FBI put its documents about the Hiss trial on the net, as it has does with other prominent cases from 60 years ago? And for that matter, why doesn't Allen Weinstein make himself available to answer questions? Cased closed? Hmm. Who is perpetuating a cover-up here, and why? Inquiring minds want to know.173.77.14.84 (talk) 20:11, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

It is my understanding that Weinstein is in declining health. DEddy (talk) 20:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Last sentence of lede

It clearly does not belong. A statement that the question of Hiss' guilt is controversial is enough. Why use the phrase "unjustly convicted", rather than just mentioning potentially forged evidence anyway? And why even mention something that was just recently hypothesized and clearly does not command the majority of scholarly opinion?

You might as well include a sentence on specific evidence that supports Hiss' guilt, but I don't expect the likes of the people who edit this page to actually agree with that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.13.41.203 (talk) 05:37, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

This is simply silly.

• The lede repeatedly mentions the primary source of specific evidence that supports Hiss's guilt: Whittaker Chambers. The lede also mentions that additional incriminating evidence has been exposed since the conviction.
• It is assumed that legitimate evidence contributes to any criminal conviction. A credible case that there was (a) forged evidence and (b) infiltration of the defense team by a government agent is exceptional and clearly worthy of mention in the lede.—DCGeist (talk) 05:44, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

24.13.41.203, please add new Talk page threads to the BOTTOM of the page in the future. DCGeist, note that Salant's own "digital" publisher admits that "Weinstein’s Perjury is regarded as the definitive history of the Hiss case." Yet in response to the question "Do you agree with Weinstein’s conclusion that the typewriter exhibited at the trials was Hiss’s machine?" Salant says "No". Now what is the general position of third parties with respect to Allen Weinstein versus someone who does not appear to have any credentials at all as a historian? Granted the Nation journalist Victor Navasky thinks Weinstein is a "partisan" who "confuse[d] his beliefs with his data", but Navasky is "now virtually alone in his rejection of the case against Hiss". Garry Wills has said Weinstein is ""impeccably fair" and and Sidney Hook said "the evidence... has been exhaustively and brilliantly evaluated in Mr Weinstein's monumental 1978 study, 'Perjury'" in a Letter to The Economist. More significant yet:

Daniel Aaron, a history professor at Harvard, taught with Weinstein at Smith. He doesn't think Weinstein's politics have ever influenced his approach to history. "He was always a very sound historian," says Aaron, "and always preoccupied with evidence."

- Washington Post

Another significant defection is that of Maurice Isserman, a professor of history at Hamilton College and probably the best regarded of the left-wing scholars of Communism. Referring to Hiss in a review of [Weinstein's] 'The Haunted Wood,' Isserman wrote, 'Let's face it, the debate just ended.'

- The New York Times Magazine

I explicitly acknowledge that the 1999 publication of Allen Weinstein's _The Haunted Wood_ finally convinced me of the guilt of the major communist spies

- Ellen Schrecker, "a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union who undertook the study of McCarthyism precisely because of my opposition to its depredations against freedom of speech"

On top of this, not even Salant contends that Hiss was "unjustly convicted," since he rather says that he "doesn't know" whether Hiss was "guilty". Somehow this doesn't stop DCGeist from asserting that an objection to "unjustly convicted" is "simply silly."Bdell555 (talk) 11:43, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

It is not "simply silly". Salant - and also Anthony Summers - believe it is probable that Army Intelligence had reason to believe that Hiss was, or may have been, a spy, and they may well have shared this opinion with Hoover and Nixon. However, they did not wish to make known their reasons for their belief with the general public -- no doubt they didn't want to reveal to the Soviets that they had decoded the Venona cables. Lacking the requisite evidence to make a case in a court of law, therefore, they decided to "take out" Hiss by framing him.

They appear to think that thus having prevented Hiss, with his benevolent ideas about World Peace, from influencing foreign policy, they have accomplished what they considered a desirable goal (mission accomplished), and anyone who disagrees ought to shut up and move along. "We tried him [i.e., Hiss] in the press" Nixon is quoted remarking on the White House tapes about his role in the Hiss case, "That's the way it's done."

60 years have passed and military intelligence has not opened its files. Perhaps they don't want to reveal the (continuing?) extent of illegal involvement of military intelligence in domestic affairs. Who knows what other "dirty tricks" they may have been involved in besides trying people "in the press" and all that that entails? Placing people, perchance, in key positions in the press in order to try them? -- that is to say, as book editor, columnist, or editorial writer on the staff of the New York Times, perhaps?

In answer to those who say that Harry Dexter White may not have considered himself to be disloyal in talking to the Soviet delegation because he was an internationalist who didn't believe in nationalism ("One World" was the slogan of the Progressive Party) and who thought that we were going to have to peacefully co-exist with the Soviets after the war, your boy Haynes writes that, even if White had not been a spy in the strict sense of the word, if White was an internationalist who believed in peace -- that alone was enough to make him a security risk and disqualify him from a foreign policy position in government, in Haynes opinion.

According to Ann Douglas (who establishes her Cold War bonafides by assenting in the matter of Hiss's guilt), neo-con NY Times staffer Sam Tannenhouse's book about Whittaker Chambers hardly mentions Chambers' involvement the Hiss case at, but is mostly concerned instead with attacking, not Communists, but liberals who favored restraining defense spending, because, in his view, liberals didn't/don't apprehend the true extent of the Soviet (Saddamist/Iranian) threat.

There is a parallel in the Iraq War, where Cheney (Nixon's former staffer) and Blair didn't have actual evidence that Saddam was building WMD's so they trumped up some evidence and committed judicial murder of him, murdered and tortured thousands of Iraqui civilians, and destroyed untold amounts of priceless archeological antiquities. Now they want to do the same in Iran. They imply that anyone who thinks otherwise is marginal or a traitor who ought to shut up and move along or be "tried in the press" -- or worse. Case closed.173.56.196.148 (talk) 14:56, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

re: Daniel Aaron of Harvard (now 98 years old) mentioned above as a Harvard Professor who endorsed Allen Weinstein: Daniel Aaron is one of the founders of American Studies, a field connected to the OSS, according to Slate, as a source of "cultural ambassadors/operatives abroad (not making this up):

The field attracted wide-ranging scholars and writers from a variety of backgrounds; it also attracted the notice of the State Department, as potential source of "cultural ambassadors" abroad. At Harvard, Aaron hobnobbed with his American Civ classmate Charles Olson, a "six-foot-six mailman's son from Gloucester" and future author of the pioneering work of Melville scholarship Call Me Ishmael and the sprawling Maximus poems. Later, Olson, in the sort of double career open to American Studies operatives, worked for the Office of War Information—later folded into the CIA—and then ran the boldly experimental Black Mountain College during the 1950s. . . . During the '50s and '60s, under the auspices of the U.S. Information Agency and various foundations, Aaron taught and lectured in Austria, Finland, Poland, and many other countries. "I went to these places," Aaron writes, "not to 'sell' the USA but to 'explain' it, not to palliate its blemishes but to contextualize them" http://www.slate.com/id/2162541/

24.123.241.190 (talk) 14:22, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

If Weinstein was so reliable why did he get sued and settle with one of the people he interviewed? Five other people he interviewed for Perjury also accused him of also having misrepresented what they said, although they didn't sue. Weinstein also, in 1970, promised in court to make public the contested interview texts and never did so. His own partner Alexander Vassiliev has called him a thief. And Raymond Sokolov in his biography of A.J. Leibling says that Weinstein was a smear artist. What a guy! He seems to have been a garden variety hack of the swiftboating kind we are now much more familiar with on the mass media. Definitive, I think not.173.77.104.33 (talk) 23:50, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Jeff Kisseloff

According to Kisseloff, Haynes and Klehr claim "that Glasser was a member of Whittaker Chambers' Communist underground group." But, according to Kisseloff (and this Wikipedia article), this "was disputed both by Soviet intelligence agent Elizabeth Bentley and by Chambers himself."

Over at http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page63.html, Haynes notes a 5 March 1945 Gorsky cable that says

ALES and RUBLE used to work in 'Karl''s informational group, which was affiliated with the NEIGHBORS. When the connection with 'Karl' was lost, RUBLE backed out...

Haynes then notes that RUBLE was the cover name of an active KGB agent, Harold Glasser and that

Chambers... noted that his cover name [was] 'Karl'. One can also see Chambers identified as 'Karl' in a December 1948 KGB memo... Chambers also wrote of how Harold Glasser had worked for his espionage network in the mid-1930s. And, of course, Chambers dropped out of espionage in 1938 and, as the 5 March cable says, "the connection with 'Karl' was lost"

How does Kisseloff get from Chambers' CONFIRMATION that "Glasser was a member of Whittaker Chambers' Communist underground group" a DENIAL?

As for Bentley, Haynes quotes Bentley's 1945 FBI Deposition as saying that

Victor Perlo told me [Bentley] that Glasser had asked him if he would be able to get back in with the Perlo group. I asked Perlo how Glasser happened to leave the group and he explained that Glasser and one or two others had been taken sometime before by some American... [who I later learned from someone else was] named Hiss and that he was in the U.S. State Department.

Where does Bentley say that Glasser was never a member of Chambers' group? She rather CONFIRMS that Glasser LEFT the Perlo group (to join Hiss and Chambers' group!) and later wanted "to get back in with the Perlo group."

I might add that Svetlana Chervonnaya's webpage on Glasser is consistent with Haynes, not Kisseloff.

The implication here is that Kisseloff should not be cited as proving Haynes' claims "false". It is rather the other way around.

As an aside, I'd call attention to how http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15 deals with this 5 March 1945 Gorsky cable. As Chervonnaya notes at footnote 15, "a part of this sentence was clearly lost..." Which part? The and ‘Ruble’ used to work in ‘Karl’s’ group part. Given that "and 'Ruble' .... Karl's group" is in Russian: и "Рубль" ... группы Карла, even English speakers can see from the top line of the original that David Lowenthal either deliberately or accidently excluded this clause, a clause that says "Hiss [page break] and Glasser used to work in Chambers' group."Bdell555 (talk) 13:45, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Brian Dell states above that Salant's publisher (for this purpose he has ceased from claiming that Salant is "self-published") "admits" that Haynes, et al is "the definitive word" on the Hiss case. However that is not what the interview with Salant on the U Michigan Library site really says, since Dell omits the qualification: i.e., that the book "is widely regarded as" being definitive, not that it is in fact definitive. It doesn't seem very honest. In truth, Mr. Dell's constant "appeals to authority" are so unconvincing I have to wonder if he is deliberately he deliberately trying to undermine his own case? At any rate, internal consistency is not a feature of his argumentation.

Salant himself also answers Dell's objection that a Ph.D. in one field should not write about another field:

http://scholarlypublishing.org/blog/2010/07/14/a-conversation-with-stephen-salant-creator-of-successful-strategic-deception-a-case-study/ Mr. Dell implies that someone without a PhD in a particular discipline should never be allowed to contribute to that field. Fortunately, Mr. Dell’s rules do not prevail in my own discipline (economics). If they did, we would be deprived of the valuable contributions of John Von Neumann, John Nash , and Gerard Debreu (all with mathematics PhDs); Daniel Kahneman (psychology PhD) and Elinor Ostrom (political science PhD). Four of these five individuals received Nobel prizes in economics for their research and the fifth (Von Neumann) died before he could receive one. It is hard to imagine how impoverished my discipline would be without their extraordinary contributions. (And if John Von Neumann had not been permitted to contribute to computer science, the computer on which I am composing this would likely not have been invented).

I would also like to point out that it is my impression the field of American Studies, in which Allen Weinstein was trained, was started with funding by the Pentagon during the Cold War (in conjunction with other "area studies" that it funded for the purpose of national defense) as a way to counter what was then considered the excessively left-leaning tendency of traditional academic departments, such as history and literature, or so I read in a book (Professing Literature: An Institutional History [1987] by Gerald Graff). Thus "American Studies" can be considered a field not so much of scholarship as of anti-Communist propaganda.173.56.162.182 (talk) 06:50, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

May I suggest moving this to a new Talk page section titled Salant or to an old section that deals with Salant? This particular section is titled "Jeff Kisseloff".Bdell555 (talk) 17:29, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Since some editors, namely Brian Dell, object to the use of internet sources, I have now added sources from several published books to the article, sources which I hope also contribute a somewhat broader context as to how historians really view this case. Also, if Dell disagrees about Glasser, then rather than quibbling about Kisselhoff's reliability he should cite chapter and verse of his contrary evidence and post it here. No?173.77.75.158 (talk) 18:59, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe I just did when I started this section.Bdell555 (talk) 08:53, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

If I might make a more general comment here, it would be that I would think some academic sniffiness would serve "the cause." Where is the Glenn Beck crowd? I don't seem them anywhere in evidence in terms of regular editors here (who don't get reverted). It appears that the "conservatives" are over at Conservapedia, since the Alger Hiss article over there has 458 footnotes (Wikipedia, of course, doesn't even provide a link under "Further Reading"). How many times is Ann Coulter cited, who has written a book that touches on the subject of Soviet spies? Zero. A New York Times study has called attention to a study that noted that a higher percentage of Americans believe the moon landings were a hoax than humanities and social sciences professors self-identify as "conservative." I would accordingly think that plumping for ivory tower opinion would be a winning hand, and if not today then how about tomorrow: how would the pumping up of Salant, Kisseloff, and the The Nation cabal help beat back the equivalently credentialed right wing crowd should they ever show up around here?Bdell555 (talk) 23:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Unreliable source?

Why is there a notice questioning the reliability of Jeff Kisselhoff's review in the Nation of "Spies" (now reprinted on his web-site)? Is Kisselhoff not to be considered reliable because he defends Hiss (he is a bonafide historian with lots of published books to his credit), or is it the Nation that is objected to? And if it is the Nation, wasn't this [(the question of whether the Nation is a reliable source) submitted to dispute resolution in the past history of this page? Perhaps it isn't clear on the page that the reference is to his published article?173.77.75.158 (talk) 18:47, 20 September 2010 (UTC)173.77.75.158 (talk) 00:31, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The "review" is not at issue but rather a specific claim (or two) by Kisseloff, and I addressed the problem in its particulars in the above section "Jeff Kisseloff". If Kisseloff's allegations re Chambers and Bentley, which appear in the sentence to which the flag is attached, exist not just at homepages.nyu.edu but on the Nation's website, please point out where on the Nation's website, or which Nation publication, this can be found. What is specifically flagged as unreliable is an uncredentialed WP:SELFPUB source claiming something that is not footnoted to another source and, most importantly, itself dubious because it is a claim of fact ("disputed both by Soviet intelligence agent Elizabeth Bentley and by Chambers") directly and fully disputed by Haynes (Haynes would say "supported" instead of "disputed", the very opposite). Either Haynes (and Chervonnaya, for that matter) is wrong or Kisseloff is wrong, meaning either Hanyes and Chervonnaya should be flagged as unreliable or Kisseloff. Really, Kisseloff's claim ought to simply be deleted, or a substantive reply to the above section provided that explains how Kisseloff has refuted Haynes et al. For what it is worth, I asked Kisseloff what his source was here and he declined to get specific, just saying "FBI files".Bdell555 (talk) 08:40, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it wikipedia is not supposed to prove metaphysical truth. It is more "he said", "she said". Kisselhoff says such and such and Haynes argues the contrary, that much is clear. I will study it further but frankly right now your argument is very murky to me. Are you saying that Kisselhoff's article does not address the question of Glasser's role or testimony one way or the other? That is something that readers can verify. But it sounds like you are also saying that you think Salant is mistaken and therefore unreliable in your opinion. Now, objectively, you must know that both Kisselhoff and Salant meet wikipedia's criteria for reliability. Their books have been published by mainstream publishers and at this point they are also figures of historical importance in their own right (at least Salant is). So that line is invalid for wikipedia purposes and you need to drop it and stop muddying the waters by introducing it. As for the FBI files -- they are not infallible sources of truth but indigested raw material in which there is considerable erroneous information, as everybody knows. I do know I looked everywhere for a book by Kisselhoff called Spies and all I found was the Nation article "Spies", a review by Kisselhoff of Haynes' book that was published in the Nation and re-printed on the NYU website. It would be presumably available at the Nation's internet archives.173.77.75.158 (talk) 16:09, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

On reflection, Brian, I think you may be right that Kisselhoff is mistaken. It does appear that Bentley implicated Glasser (apart from the dispute about whether or not he was Ruble and Hiss was Ales, as Vassiliev and Hanynes contend or whether Bentley was telling the truth) and the paragraph should be ommitted. If anyone can make valid case to restore the paragraph they can do so. Otherwise it is just confusing and certainly weakens the argument the paragraph is trying to make. Googling around, the post war letter to Glasser that surfaced in the 1990s about the Vatican receiving a shipment of gold looted from Jews in Croatia which they used for the Nazi ratline to spirit Nazis to South American is certainly a fascinating sideline, here. But not one that the Hiss page should get into. There are wheels within wheels, as P.G. Wodehouse used to say.173.77.75.158 (talk) 17:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Well the paragraph as it stands now is worse than when I had it flagged for unreliable source, since whereas before when it said "...conclusions reached by Haynes... are false. For example... connection of Hiss with... Glasser", there was at least a citation, namely to Kisseloff, whereas now it is just baldly asserted that Haynes et al have drawn the false conclusion that Hiss was connected to Glasser without any explanation for why that would be false and no citation for who is claiming it is false.Bdell555 (talk) 17:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Um, Brian, you write:

A New York Times study has called attention to a study that noted that a higher percentage of Americans believe the moon landings were a hoax than humanities and social sciences professors self-identify as "conservative."

I checked your link and "moon landings" appears no where in the NYT article you cite. Also, the article is about how younger professors do not identify as either liberal or conservative and not about the rarity of conservative professors per se. A study is mentioned but it was done by Neil Gross at the University of British Columbia and Solon Simmons at George Mason University not by the NYT as you state. A representative sample of links from Conservapedia, cited by you, are of that nature, and, moreover, have either no page number or are to dead links. I could easily provide 400 or more links of that nature "if I abandoned my mind to it"-- in Dr. Johnson's words. If that is the nature of conservative "scholarship" along with their propensity to name-calling it is a good thing there is so little of it in the "ivory tower." 173.77.109.135 (talk) 16:00, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I meant to say a NYT story (not study) called attention to a study that observed a variety of things but of interest to me was that the number of "conservative" professors in the relevant field appears to be lower than the 6% of Americans who believe the moon landings were faked. Given that this is a Talk page, as long I can provide other editors the means to verify the basic empirical facts behind the point I'm trying to make, I reckon references don't have to be MLA citations.Bdell555 (talk) 06:16, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I would offer Haynes, Klehr & Vassiliev's current Spies & VENONA as the bible as an example of shoddy "reference" work. Explicitly: on pg 259-260 they refer to a meeting between Harry Dexter White & a "covert KGB agent." The meeting is described as happening in July 1944. The VENONA cable cable indicates the meeting occurred on 4 August 1944. Two facts: (1) White was running the 700 delegate Bretton Woods Conference for 3 weeks in July, and (2) the "covert" agent was eventually discovered in approx 2000 to have been a Russian banker & delegate to Bretton Woods. Spies goes on to state that the translation (in the VENONA cable, but not Spies) for the Russian novy kurs meant a policy of American accommodation to Russian policies, rather than the phrase being the translation for New Deal. The fact that White was focused on getting the Russians to join the post war IMF/World Bank is entirely ignored. This is a "reliable" source? DEddy (talk) 17:52, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

??? The cable does NOT "indicate the meeting occurred on 4 August 1944." This 4 August dated cable rather says that meeting occurred on 31 July 1944. "Novyi kurs" might have indeed referred to the New Deal. Emphasis on "might". "Might" is, in fact, the very qualifier the VENONA translators used. If this tentative FBI finding should be considered definitive, what you are going to do with the FBI also concluding that ALES was "probably Alger Hiss"? This is a peripheral footnote remark by Haynes et al in any case. As for "the fact that White was focused on..." well, that's part of Chervonnaya's paragraph that tries to excuse White's fraternization with the Soviets by pointing out such things as "he had had only two to four hours of sleep per night". In this same cable White is telling the Soviet "delegate" (if that's in fact all he is) that there wouldn't be any "objections" to Stalin keeping the fruits of his illegal 1939 invasion of Finland and that he'd like to henceforth meet "while driving in his automobile." Sounds clandestine to me, and this doesn't consider White's telling Pravdin in 1945 what the US negotiating strategy re the UN would be and how the Soviets could defeat it. To get back to the topic of Alger Hiss, I nonetheless agree with you about one thing, and that's that it would be far preferable to challenge Haynes with Chervonnaya's research than Kisseloff's. Chervonnaya at least admits that "Venona – has bolstered the early Cold War accusations against White" and that "[f]urther evidence of White’s 'complicity' emerged from ... Vassiliev"Bdell555 (talk) 08:05, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Bdell555 re: 31 July. Good eye. I'd not noticed that before, just the date on the header of the document for 4 August. So Haynes gets a +1 for that. But then A Soviet operative held the first direct covert KGB contact with White in July 1944. Is it accurate to call a Soviet banker an "operative?" In approx. 2000 Koltsov's identity was still unknown. But by the time Spies was written in 2009 or so, Koltsov had been resolved to be NF Chechulin. He is pictured standing one person away from White in a Bretton Woods conference group picture. White stands directly behind Morgenthau. Assuming Haynes is an accurate historian by the writing of Spies he should have more accurately described the White-Koltsov/Chechulin meeting as between White & a Bretton Woods delegate... NOT a Soviet operative. It's little things like that nag at the accumulated narratives of Haynes & Klehr. Unfortunately I do not know enough about the details of the Hiss matter to be quite so picky, but the general presentation of HK&V is always "Guilty until proven innocent." Always unaddressed... WHAT did Hiss actually pass to the Soviets? (if anything) DEddy (talk) 16:18, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

There are 300,000,000 Americans. Six percent of 300,000,000 is 18 million. Therefore 18 million Americans believe that moon landings were a hoax, in the unlikely event Brian's statistic (not from the NYT) is correct. There are 1,700,000 Americans (rounding a bit) over 25 with Ph.D.s including engineers, scientists, and liberal arts professors both conservative and liberal. That is slightly more than one and a half million. Therefore, 16-and-a half or so million more Americans believe that the moon landings were a hoax than all the Ph.D.s in all fields put together of all political persuasions. QED. I invite you to check the stats on Google. What people believe about the moon landings has absolutely nothing to do with the number of liberal or conservative Ph.Ds. or with Alger Hiss.173.52.244.139 (talk) 02:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

"Hiss controversy will continue to be debated"

I should think this would be enough. DCGeist apparently wants "controversy" repeated, with an additional bit from a website that claims Hiss was the victim of some miscarriage of justice, a bit that already gets aired in the body of the article (an airing no referred journal has been inclined to give), and most importantly is off-topic, as even Salant has said "my research concerns the possible role of Army counterintelligence in 'bringing [someone] to justice'", characterizing "the question of whether Hiss committed espionage" as " an entirely different subject." I understand DCGeist does not like removal of the old controversy claim which was outside of quotes. I note that I could just as easily add "was a spy" and provide a dozen or more reliable cites for that, such that there has to be some acknowledgement of a source's place in the totality of sources. As it stands now the words "Hiss controversy" still appears in the introduction, and as the words are coming from a more authoritative source (neither a journalist, Navasky, nor Chervonnaya's arguably self-published website) I would think DCGeist would come to appreciate it, especially when it is the final word when formerly the NY Times statement was the final word. DCGeist may recall his feeling compelled to revert other editors who have come along and edited the "controversy" claim to say, for example, that Navasky says there is a controversy, and surely this latest rendering would be harder to qualify in that way such that DCGeist can expect fewer challenges to having the "controversy" wording appear going forward.

I'd also note on this point that both Eduard Mark and Haynes have described Chervonnaya as an "apologist" for Moscow and/or the USSR, citing what she has written in Russian. If one is going to cite a claim to Chervonnaya, the question arises as to why a claim cannot be similarly cited to Mark or Haynes, that is, without being qualified as a claim that Haynes and his co-writers have made as opposed to a statement of fact. Further, I would think that Haynes would be extended the same right of response that his (typically amateur) critics are very generously extended in this article, especially when even Chervonnaya (and her patrons at The Nation) would concede that Haynes is a "consensus historian". All this to say that putting back "controversy" outside of quotes, in-line attribution, or qualification/criticism when "controversy" is already there at the end of the lede here is asking for a lot.Bdell555 (talk) 17:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Why one cannot cite Haynes? But Haynes is and has been cited over and over. You are just going round and round here. The point about Bentley, Whittaker Chambers, and Vassiev is that they were confessed Communist Party members who themselves were spies with motives to falsely implicate others in order to save themselves. Furthermore they were unstable people and demonstrable liars with substance abuse problems and their stories lack consistency (interesting that both were recent converts to Catholicism). As for Vassiliev, he too was a spy, arguably had mercenary motive, and was found incredible by a British judge and jury. The point is that Haynes relies entirely on these people and Hede Massing. So citing Haynes as the ultimate "authority" who trumps all others is absurd. There simply needs to be corroborating evidence. Haynes also has no doubt that Ruble was Glasser, but this remains to be proved. However, I agree that false is a strong word and invite whoever wrote the passage to straighten it out, otherwise I would suggest replacing "false" with "dubious".173.77.14.84 (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Meant to write Bentley not Messing173.77.14.84 (talk) 19:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Checking further -- it was Massing (a Viennese) and her testimony was ruled out as too trivial and vague by the judge. In any case she too was very inconsistent in the stories she told, though not as batshit as Bentley.173.77.14.84 (talk) 19:59, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Can the article just claim, in the introduction no less, that although there was "controversy" in the past, today it's "case closed" (with a foonote to Haynes et al)? Because that's what DCGeist wants to to with Chervonnaya re there being a current "controversy" (actually, he wants or wanted to use Navasky but I upgraded his cite to Chervonnaya since DocumentsTalk is far more scholarly and less tendentious than The Nation. A good question to ask is what the reaction would be if sources connected to the National Review were as dominant in the footnotes of this article as sources connected to the The Nation currently are). And, no, Haynes does not "rely entirely" on testimony from decades ago. He relies primarily on the VENONA decrypts and Soviet archives which have come to light in the last 15 years, and with respect to VENONA observes the remarkable consistency with which Chambers' and Bentley's testimony fits with VENONA in order to support connecting ALES, RUBLE, and KARL to Hiss, Glasser, and Chambers respectively. ALES received a Soviet medal, something the article does not note, hence the obvious interest amongst the usual suspects to claim ALES is not Hiss.Bdell555 (talk) 20:22, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Can the article just claim, in the introduction no less, that although there was "controversy" in the past, today it's "case closed" (with a foonote to Haynes et al)?

Sorry, Brian, as long as there are people who don't agree that the case is closed (of whom I am one) the case is not closed. The fact is there are only some people who say it is closed and some who say it isn't.173.77.109.135 (talk) 01:28, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

What the "Cold War Studies" people are trying to say is that Hiss was a member of the so-called "Ware Group" before 1935, a group which was involved in discussing the plight of black tenant farmers -- and that this was tantamount to military espionage for GRU. Then we are asked to believe that ten years later he was "Ales" and caused Eastern Europe to be lost to the Soviets (all because of the tenant farmers) because army intelligence considered it a probable scenario. The fact is you read a reputable and authoritative historian like, say, Gerhard Weinberg's (1995) A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521558794) You will find that Roosevelt and Churchill had not choice at Yalta because of the strategic position of the West at the end of the war and not because of people who believed in unions and opposed the poll tax. But the "Cold War Studies" folks don't need no frigging history -- to them it is as clear as day that it was all the fault of a fifth column of peace-loving, hippie, effeminate liberals and New Dealers who wanted black farmers to have rights, perish the thought. Oh, tenant farmers so that's why we lost Hungary and Czechoslovakia, it follows as the night the day. Of course, we know the army never manufactures evidence -- Tonkin, Yellow Cake, Pat Tillman, etc., etc. Never happened. And people like Bentley, Chamberlain, Vassiliev, and Chalabi were always 100% truthful. Move along. Case closed? No. Saying "case closed" is just the same as "trying Hiss in the press' because (in the rationale of Nixon) when you're dealing with an enemy you don't worry about legal niceties. 'That's how it's done".173.77.109.135 (talk) 03:13, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

If readers want an account that is authoritative and not bogus, they should read: Gerhard L. Weinberg, Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders (Cambridge, 2005.

"Based on his unrivalled knowledge of the war-time policies of the main belligerent leaders of World War II as well as on newly published material, Professor Weinberg has combined scholarship with imagination in reconstructing their individual visions of the post-war world. The result is a book, written for a wide circle of readers, that throws new light on unfinished debates about the chief winners and losers of a truly global war." Zara Steiner, Emeritus Fellow, New Hall, Cambridge University

"Weinberg, the leading American scholar of World War II, presents a masterful overview of the postwar hopes and aspirations of the major leaders of history's greatest conflict. The scale of the fighting and the level of destruction made it impossible to wage that war for the purpose of restoring the status quo. Highlights among the eight leaders Weinberg profiles include Hitleras brutally dystopian visions, Stalinas aggressive imperialism, Charles de Gaulleas hopes of France restored to great-power status, and Winston Churchill's image of the British Empire as a force for peace and stability . Weinberg, however, credits Franklin D. Roosevelt with the most comprehensive, most generous vision of the postwar world. The US and the UN may not have succeeded entirely in implementing FDR's belief in international organization --but they came close enough to avert further comprehensive catastrophes. " Prof. Dennis Showalter, Colorado College

"Visions of Victory is a beautifully written and wide- ranging synthesis of a large and burgeoning literature...It is a masterpiece of historical writing that should be read by anyone interested in the origins of the world in which we live." Financial Times, Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University

Truth is the daughter of time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.109.135 (talk) 03:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

This is getting off topic, but I'd ask if "strategic" imperatives or what have you would also excuse FDR's suppression of the Earle report which would have revealed, in 1944, the truth about who killed more than 20000 Polish officers at Katyn. I originally came to this Wikipedia article after reading John Wheeler-Bennett's 1974 tome The Semblance Of Peace : The Political Settlement After The Second World War, where he noted that at Potsdam, when the issue of how far west Polish administration should extend was discussed, the Anglo-Americans initially managed to get both the Soviet and Polish representatives to concede a frontier along the historic Lusatian border with Silesia at the Oder-Bóbr-Kwisa rivers instead of the Oder-Neisse. But the next day the State Dept stunned the British by saying the US would give up the concession that Stalin had just given them the day before. This prevailed with the result that even more Germans were expelled from their homeland, an expulsion that was on such a scale that Anglo-American occupation authorities who had to deal with the flood of German refugees into their zone pleaded with their superiors to pressure the Poles to slow down the expulsions. As I recall, Wheeler-Bennett footnoted this anecdote from the Potsdam negotiations with an aside about how some had alleged that FDR's administration was shot through with Communist spies. Curious, I looked further into the subject of Soviet espionage in the US in the 30s and early 40s.Bdell555 (talk) 08:48, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I would ask you, Brian, why you give bogus citations like the one to the NYT above, and, when it is pointed out, instead of acknowledging it, you change the subject? Do you have any explanation for your actions? Is it something that you stand by? You must see that it simply doesn't say what you claim it says by any remote stretch of the imagination -- and even if it did would be absurd. There are probably more people that believe -- or say they believe -- that men didn't land on the moon, than there are college professors of any kind, liberal or conservative, because there are more ignorant people than people with advanced degrees and always have been. The real question is why conservatives are so reluctant to engage in the activity of scholarship as it is understood by scholars -- which involves providing accurate citations, and acknowledging and dealing with the objections and arguments of your critics in an above-board manner.

I think you would have to take up the question of the Earle report with Gerhard Weinberg, whom your beloved Conservapedia calls the very best historian of World War II and who has won prizes as a military historian. As for Wheeler-Bennett's sentence "Some have alleged that FDR's administration was shot through... " , this is not a statement with strong explanatory power, but simply states an incontrovertable fact that some, such as yourself, for example, do allege this. (Note, FDR also suppressed the news of the Warsaw Ghetto and the gas chambers, among much else, and one might well ask why he did this. However, he was also known not to be sympathetic to Communism, he denounced tyrannical regimes, including that of Stalin on numerous occasions, and he did not think highly of the State Department, either. One might also ask why the Swiss kept the Jewish gold and art treasures and why the Catholic Church helped high ranking Nazis to escape to South America.). If you want to look at another highly regarded history of Yalta there is also http://www.amazon.com/Yalta-1945-Europe-America-Crossroads/dp/0521856779/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285566686&sr=1-1 And if you haven't read the two books above by Weinberg already mentioned, I suggest you do so. All these mainstream works explain what happened at Yalta without resorting to "Stabbed in the back" speculation. Occam's Razor applies here. 75.34.208.199 (talk) 16:47, 27 September 2010 (UTC)173.52.244.139 (talk) 00:32, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

More on Roosevelt and the fog of war -- Claude Lanzmann, director of the film Shoah interviewed Jan Karski, the celebrated “courier from Warsaw” who carried the terrible news about the Warsaw Ghetto and the camps to the Allied Powers.

Earlier this year [2010] the Franco-German cable channel Arte broadcast the nine-hour Shoah and on March 17, a new film of some fifty minutes, Le Rapport Karski, also by Lanzmann . . . . The film consists of a second interview he conducted with Karski that did not appear in Shoah. In it the agent [Karski] confirms that Roosevelt didn’t ask “any specific questions about the Jews”, but that he gave him the names of several officials and dignitaries he was to meet in Washington, including the Justice of the Supreme Court Felix Frankfurter who, when told by Karski what was happening in Poland, replied “I am unable to believe you.” He also reveals that he [Karski] was in awe of the President – I was totally overwhelmed”. It makes for fascinating viewing and confirms the courage of the man whom Roosevelt greeted with the words, “Mr. Karski, I know about you.” ⎯"Mr. Karski, the hero and the myths", Times of London Literary Supplement (Oct. 8, 2010)

[Karski had escaped Katyn fortuitously by having been handed over to the Germans (from who he also managed to escape, after having undergone severe torture). It took a long time – until the late fifties for people to be able to assimilate and believe the information about atrocities of Hitler and Stalin. During the 1950s the topic of the holocaust was virtually taboo, the rationale being that the Germans were now our friends in the fight against the USSR and people should just get over it. American Jews, still subject to discrimination in housing and education, and anxious for their relative to be accepted here as refugees and for recognition of Israel kept a low profile and their mouths shut.]173.77.106.73 (talk) 18:54, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I am in the process of reading Fraser J. Harbutt's book on Yalta, and, according to him, military historians have never believed that Yalta had much to do with the post-war division of Europe. That actually was agreed on much earlier. Harbutt shows that Churchill and Eden knew the truth about Katyn in 1943 (and possibly earlier), when a report about it came out accusing the Russians and the Polish exiles were in an uproar. "There is no use digging about the graves of Katyn," Churchill wrote to Eden in 1943. They knew about it but since 1941 had promised Stalin that they would return to the pre-World War 1 Russian imperial borders, or at least led him to believe it was in the cards, in a desperate attempt to keep him from making a separate peace with Germany. The fact is that Britain was not interested in Northern and Central Europe and was willing to let it be a Soviet sphere of influence as long as Britain retained its interest in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Iran, the gateways to the British Empire. The United States did not come into it. The US was hostile to Britain, focussed on the Pacific war, and uninterested in European politics; they wanted, not hegemony at that point (it was on the British Empire, not the US one that the sun never set), but a promise that Stalin would support the United Nations, and self-determination for small countries, which Churchill, as guardian of the British Empire, opposed. In Tehran in 1944, FDR promised Stalin a Second Front, without consulting Britain. That was when Churchill, spontaneously, out of pique and in order to keep Stalin on his side, "betrayed" Poland, whose interests he had gone into the Tehran conference promising to protect, saying "those people [the Poles] are never satisfied, anyway." Alger Hiss at Yalta had absolutely nothing to do with all this, despite what was written about it later. The Poles are a tragic people who have had very bad luck. That's for sure.173.77.13.94 (talk) 23:16, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Alger Hiss article

This article is one of the reasons Wikipedia is widely considered an ultimately unreliable source of information. From start to finish, the entire piece reads as if it were written by verbal contortionists straining mightily, in George Orwell's words, "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

— C.W. Crouch, An occasional Wikipedia user —Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.231.152.58 (talk) 03:14, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

I have recently touched it up, with the intention of clarifying it and making it more encyclopedic in tone. Some key facts still seem to be missing here, however: The mention of the obscure warbler that convinced the jury that Chambers really had known the bird-watching Hiss, for example.

Other missing info includes:

The fact that Vassiliev brought a libel suit in England against Hiss defender John Lowenthal and not only lost in front of a jury but also was reprimanded by the judge for trying to exert "a chilling effect" on scholarship.

The fact that Victor Navatsky interviewed people that Weinstein had interviewed and a substantial number claimed to have been drastically misquoted, and one of them even subsequently sued Weinstein, who settled the case out of court.

The fact that the KBG reportedly received a cash donation from Vassiliev's publisher, Random House, to set up a pension fund for retired KBG agents after the fall of the USSR (would Vassiliev had gotten such a pension?) If true, this might have affected the candor of General Dmitry Antonovich Volkogonov in appearing to retract his earlier exoneration of Hiss (as former head of the KBG would Volgonov have also received a "pension" from Random House?).

The fact that Vassiliev and Weinstein have now quarreled (are they suing each other, too?)

The fact that George McGovern (also a historian) weighed in in the 1990s with the opinion that Hiss was probably railroaded.

The fact that in the early 1990s Anthony Lake was denied confirmation as head of the CIA when he suggested that the Hiss case might still be unsettled, which shows that a chilling effect is already in operation, if a person's career can be derailed for expressing honest doubt. Have any of those who claim Hiss was a spy ever weighed in on Stephen Salant's FOIA research? I couldn't find any evidence of this.173.56.166.84 (talk) 00:11, 18 October 2010 (UTC)173.56.166.84 (talk)(was it really a "pension" and did it really come from Random House?)

Bluntly put, this article is a joke - Most Wikipedia matters with vocal constituencies are getting like this

Several years ago, I posted changes, together with the citation, that put to bed the idea that Alger Hiss was not a spy. In "The Sword And The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive And The Secret History Of The Kgb" it was revealed that Alger Hiss had been a formal spy. End of story. Now, I see that that has been removed. And it has been replaced with references to instances when formal requests were made and responded to. These references are ridiculous. They are more meaningless as formal denials by the CIA. Mitrokhin was he chief archivist for the KGB. He brought the copied documents.

I and most others who have real knowledge about these matters, people who are not members of the "axe to grind" crowds, don't have time to fix things over and over. The result is that Wikipedia is becoming more revisionist than old Soviet History Books.

You can tell Jimmy Wales that this is why I am not going to give money to Wikipedia. This needs to be fixed, and in this respect, Wikipedia is moving farther and farther toward miserable failure. It is worse because young people mostly go to Wikipedia for information. They have no idea how completely wrong what they are reading actually is.

           69.108.3.197 (talk) 01:10, 19 November 2010 (UTC)BPH

Agreed. The article does not need to be locked, as now, it needs to be scrapped. --173.79.116.9 (talk) 02:59, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, not scrapped perhaps. But it is a sad day when Conservapedia has a more reliable article than Wikipedia.71.126.186.190 (talk) 19:39, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"Bluntly put, this article is a joke" Actually the joke is anonymous contributors who are supposedly going to wow us with their superiority, but who aren't even aware that new talk threads go at the end of this page, not the beginning.

"I and most others who have real knowledge about these matters...don't have time to fix things over and over." So you have time to contribute your criticism, but no time to do any actual research and contribute to the article? How convenient. Joegoodfriend (talk) 18:32, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Seriously Mr. anonymous URL? You offer nothing about the TOPIC? You can only snark about location? Yeah, I put this at the top for a GOOD REASON! The article is junk because it specifically removed the primary source that closed the Alger Hiss case. So I WANTED ONE OF YOU GENIUSES to NOTICE IT! Yeah, you noticed it. But you are so incapable of functioning in English that you STILL COULDN'T FIX IT! Either that or you are so emotionally immature that you are all sulking now, and you are going to show me by refusing to make the fix. Grow up. Yeah, I know that half of you "editors" are still in primary or secondary school. 69.229.121.134 (talk) 19:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)BPH

Yes, all you people who puff up your ideas about yourselves by calling yourselves "editors" - I am not going to go back in and install the reference again, cut the article length in half, and then come back and see it has all been removed by some anonymous person for god only knows what reason. That battle is for YOU all to do. YOU have the time. I don't. 69.229.121.134 (talk) 19:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)BPH

It seems "Joegoodfriend" is unable to find THE NAME OF THE BOOK to that was posted! It's in the FIRST SENTENCE! This sort juvenile drivel from "editors" is why Wikipedia is turning into junk. You seriously call yourselves "editors" but you can't comprehend English to so much as find a BOOK TITLE in the first sentence of a paragraph. 69.229.121.134 (talk) 19:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)BPH

It's a joke. A complete joke. It's not just this article - it's the whole wikipedia so-called "system". Sorry Jimmy, but your encyclopedia has to grow up now or it is going to end in well deserved ignominy. 69.229.121.134 (talk) 19:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)BPH

What, only four insulting responses? I was expecting more than that. As the Sex Pistols would say, "It's another swindle!" Joegoodfriend (talk) 03:11, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Hahahahahahahahaha. The comment about it being a sad day when Conservapedia has a more reliable article than Wikipedia, as if Wikipedia is not hopelessly riddled with insanely biased entries, is fuc*ing hilarious, to say the least. Good lord, there is hardly a single entry on a prominent left-wing figure that is not sanitized to a laughable degree. That the authors of this entry seem to be trying to make it look as if the jury is still out regarding Hiss's guilt tells you all you need to know about this supposed encyclopedia. Who wrote this entry, Victor Navasky?

Poetry

Where is the attribution that Chambers published poetry under the name Crosley? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.238.59.183 (talk) 03:35, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Answer: Thy Neighbor's Wife by Gay Talese, (New York: Harper Perennial Book, 2009) p. 102. In fact, publisher Samuel Roth submitted a sworn affidavit to Hiss's defense team that Chambers had submitted poetry to him under the name of Crosely. But Hiss's lawyers declined to put Roth on the stand because he had been jailed on multiple occasions for publishing or sending through the mail obscene material.173.77.99.104 (talk) 06:21, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Chambers admitted to Hiss's lawyers that he had used the name Crosley as a pen name. He had published erotic poetry in his own name with Roth before. According to Tony Hiss, Crosley represented himself to Alger Hiss as a freelance writer who was working on a book about the Nye Committee in which Hiss had played a role. This was the reason why Hiss was so generous to him. All this information is available on the web and is not controversial.173.77.99.104 (talk) 06:58, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Hissites

DC Geist states that the term "Hissite" does not appear in John V. Fleming's The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War. However, the opening sentence of Fleming's discussion of the revelations of the Nixon tapes (page 292, beginning of the last paragraph), states:

Page 292 …case, one of which [of the tapes], produced in exultation by the Hissites

Fleming's designation "Hissites" for those who believe that Nixon said "we made a typewriter in the Hiss case" is clearly derogatory. Fleming, a Nixon defender, then attempts to show at some length that the tape is "garbled" and that Nixon didn't say "we made a typewriter' but "[...?] piper". That is Fleming's opinion, and he might equally be called a "Nixonite". See http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Communist-Manifestos-Four-Books-Shaped/dp/0393069257/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309544229&sr=1-1#reader_0393069257 It is not unreasonable to point out to the reader that Fleming uses partisan terminology. For this reason, I recommend that DC Geist's erroneous correction be reverted or re-written.173.77.99.104 (talk) 18:44, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

173 is correct. Google Books, which I was employing, misses "Hissite," but Amazon Search Inside catches it. Having discovered that, on initial appraisal, I didn't think it all that informative to include Fleming's reference to "Hissite" in our article, but on further consideration, 173's observation that it "is not unreasonable to point out to the reader that Fleming uses partisan terminology" is well-taken. I have no problem if 173 or anyone else wants to reinsert the properly contextualized mention of "Hissite."—DCGeist (talk) 19:09, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I tried to fix this. I've come to agree, after checking a few more sources, that DC Geist is correct that taking about "Hissites" probably is just confusing. In any case, other writers have "We got a typewriter" not "we made a typewriter". In fact Fleming's book itself doesn't really add anything to the article, though the disagreements over Nixon's words are interesting. Hiss and his supporters really did seize on Nixon's words, which were subsequently changed to something that made little sense, "We got Piper"??! Unless Nixon was going to say that "We got Piper to employ Horace Schmall to find the typewriter," which seems a little far-fetched! 173.77.99.104 (talk) 02:03, 3 July 2011 (UTC)