Weinstein - Perjury : the Hiss-Chambers case

PRAISE FORPERJURY: THE HISS-CHAMBERS CASE

The definitive account.

Readers Catalog

A historic event.... Stunningly meticulous, a monument to the intellectual ideal of truth stalked to its hiding place.

GEORGE WILL, Newsweek

Lucidly written, impressively researched, closely argued.... The result is formidable.

IRVING HOWE, New York Times Sunday Book Review

So far as any one book can dispel a large historical mystery, this book does it, magnificently.

GARRY WILLS, New York Review of Books

The most exciting piece of history in recent memory.

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY

The most objective and convincing account we have of the most dramatic court case of the century.

ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR

The most dispassionate, step-by-step account of [the case].

GEOFFREY WARD, American Heritage

Devastatingly complete and detailed... an impressively unemotional blockbuster of fact.

ALFRED KAZIN, Esquire

I do not envy Weinsteins critics their task any more than I would want to be a defense counsel who had listened for three days while a professor read Weinsteins book aloud to the jury and who now had to rise for rebuttal.

MURRAY KEMPTON

[Weinstein] has gone as far as any historian could to establish the formal validity of the verdict.... His treatment of the resulting material strikes one as both judicious and properly skeptical; he writes of it with clarity and restraint.... Weinsteins contribution, then, is major and I would say definitive.

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH

Allen Weinstein has come up with the facts... [he] not only amasses new and old evidence, [he] demolishes arguments of government conspiracy.

PETER S. PRESCOTT, Newsweek

Impressive... [Weinstein] makes persuasive use of this material in a narrative that is lucid, dramatic and even handed.

ROBERT KIRSCH, Los Angeles Times Book Review

[A] superb and detailed book.... I do not see how anybody can read Allen Weinsteins book and continue to believe in Algers innocence.... [Weinsteins] obligation was to history. And he has performed it brilliantly.

MERLE MILLER, Washington Post Book World

Meticulous and riveting.... Weinsteins reexamination of the case is intriguing.

JAMES R. SILKENAT, Business Week

Strong unembellished style... Stupendous... Irrefutable.

D. KEITH MANO, National Review

So detailed and so thorough.

VERMONT ROYSTER, Wall Street Journal

Calmly and elegantly reasoned.

MICHAEL LEDEEN, Commentary

An extraordinary job of disentangling the knotted strings of the case.... Weinstein has sorted it out.... [Perjury] should be required reading.

DONALD MORRIS, Houston Post

If Hiss is to be exonerated, Weinsteins almost monumental book will have to be refuted first.

CONGRESSMAN ROBERT F. DRINAN, America

Weinsteins research and presentation are superb

ALYN BRODSKY, Miami Herald

Allen Weinstein has closed the unclosable case. The new evidence is startling. The old evidence is transformed by rigorous scholarship and deep compassion.

CHARLES McCARRY

Authoritative... An objective and compendious treatise.... [Weinstein] has made a powerful contribution to the process of dispassionate historical analysis.

MILTON S. GOULD, New York Law Journal

An engrossing and revealing book about one of the most controversial court cases of modern times... the validity of Professor Weinsteins conclusions are endorsed from both the political right and the political left... fascinating.

ROSCOE DRUMMOND, Christian Science Monitor

PERJURY

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the thirty-first president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs. The views expressed in its publications are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

www.hoover.org

Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 567

Hoover Institution at Leland Stanford Junior University,
Stanford, California 94305-6010

Copyright 1978, 1997, 2013 by Allen Weinstein

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher and copyright holders.

For permission to reuse material from Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (Third Edition), ISBN 978-0-8179-1225-3, please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a not-for-profit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of uses.

Efforts have been made to locate the original sources, determine the current rights holders, and, if needed, obtain reproduction permissions. On verification of any such claims to rights in the articles reproduced in this book, any required corrections or clarifications will be made in subsequent printings/editions.

First edition 1978

Second edition 1997

Third edition 2013

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weinstein, Allen, author.

Perjury : the Hiss-Chambers case / Allen Weinstein. Third edition.

pages cm. (Hoover Institution Press publication ; no. 567)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8179-1225-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8179-1226-0 (e-book)

1. Hiss, Alger. 2. Chambers, Whittaker. 3. CommunismUnited StatesHistory. 4. Subversive activitiesUnited StatesHistory. 5. Trials (Political crimes and offenses)United States. 6. Trials (Perjury)United States. I. Title. II. Series: Hoover Institution Press publication ; 567.

E748.H59W44 2013

364.1'31dc23 2013007993

For Adrienne

with love and gratitude

What pleased me most in this affair, the Assistant [Commissioner] went on, talking slowly, is that it makes such an excellent starting-point for a piece of work which Ive felt must be taken in handthat is, the clearing out of this country of all the foreign political spies, police, and that sort ofofdogs. In my opinion they are a ghastly nuisance; also an element of danger. But we cant very well seek them out individually. The only way is to make their employment unpleasant to their employers. The things becoming indecent. And dangerous, too, for us, here.

Mr. Vladimir stopped again for a moment.

What do you mean?

The prosecution of this Verloc will demonstrate to the public both the danger and the indecency.

Nobody will believe what a man of that sort says, said Mr. Vladimir, contemptuously.

The wealth and precision of detail will carry conviction to the great mass of the public, advanced the Assistant Commissioner gently.

So that is seriously what you mean to do?

Weve got the man; we have no choice.

JOSEPH CONRAD

The Secret Agent

CONTENTS

PART FIVE: CONSEQUENCES