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Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy
For decades, a great number of Americans saw Alger Hiss as an innocent victim of McCarthyism--a distinguished diplomat railroaded by an ambitious Richard Nixon. And even as the case against Hiss grew over time, his dignified demeanor helped create an aura of innocence that outshone the facts in many minds.
Now G. Edward White deftly draws together the countless details of Hiss's life--from his upper middle-class childhood in Baltimore and his brilliant success at Harvard to his later career as a self-made martyr to McCarthyism--to paint a fascinating portrait of a man whose life was devoted to perpetuating a lie. White catalogs the evidence that proved Hiss's guilt, from Whittaker Chambers's famous testimony, to copies of State Department documents typed on Hiss's typewriter, to Allen Weinstein's groundbreaking investigation in the 1970s. The author then explores the central conundrums of Hiss's Why did this talented lawyer become a Communist and a Soviet spy? Why did he devote so much of his life to an extensive public campaign to deny his espionage? And how, without producing any new evidence, did he convince many people that he was innocent? White offers a compelling analysis of Hiss's behavior in the face of growing evidence of his guilt, revealing how this behavior fit
into an ongoing pattern of denial and duplicity in his life.
The story of Alger Hiss is in part a reflection of Cold War America--a time of ideological passions, partisan battles, and secret lives. It is also a story that transcends a particular historical era--a story about individuals who choose to engage in espionage for foreign powers and the secret worlds they choose to conceal. In White's skilled hands, the life of Alger Hiss comes to illuminate both of those themes.
Now G. Edward White deftly draws together the countless details of Hiss's life--from his upper middle-class childhood in Baltimore and his brilliant success at Harvard to his later career as a self-made martyr to McCarthyism--to paint a fascinating portrait of a man whose life was devoted to perpetuating a lie. White catalogs the evidence that proved Hiss's guilt, from Whittaker Chambers's famous testimony, to copies of State Department documents typed on Hiss's typewriter, to Allen Weinstein's groundbreaking investigation in the 1970s. The author then explores the central conundrums of Hiss's Why did this talented lawyer become a Communist and a Soviet spy? Why did he devote so much of his life to an extensive public campaign to deny his espionage? And how, without producing any new evidence, did he convince many people that he was innocent? White offers a compelling analysis of Hiss's behavior in the face of growing evidence of his guilt, revealing how this behavior fit
into an ongoing pattern of denial and duplicity in his life.
The story of Alger Hiss is in part a reflection of Cold War America--a time of ideological passions, partisan battles, and secret lives. It is also a story that transcends a particular historical era--a story about individuals who choose to engage in espionage for foreign powers and the secret worlds they choose to conceal. In White's skilled hands, the life of Alger Hiss comes to illuminate both of those themes.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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About the author
G. Edward White
36 books9 followersG. Edward White is the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1983.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 9, 2014
The famous US espionager, Alger Hiss vs Whittaker Chambers, evokes Graham Greene-John LeCarre in this knockout investigation of a 1950s "case" now embedded in the American landscape. For cloak-dag buffs, author White's study of Hiss-tory leaves you breathless.
Careless, Smirk and Snake are characters in English comedy. In US drama we have Hiss, who performed on a stage of his own making. Urbane and cultivated, the Harvard-educated lawyer was a golden boy at the State Department - present at Yalta and founding of the UN - but he'd been giving secrets to the Russians for years. Chambers, a boozy, brilliant writer, had been a close Soviet contact in the 1930s who quit the CP upon learning of the Stalin purges.
Hiss's mask of duplicity came off during two trials: this began when he admitted to vaguely knowing Chambers in the '30s. He tried to recall Chambers during a "recognition" charade. Hmm, uh, his teeth, wavered Hiss, "look to me as though they have been improved upon" or dental work had been done. Yes, Chambers assented, he'd had extractions. Would Hiss need to speak to the dentist before he could positively ID Chambers--?
Hiss claimed he was framed by the "mentally unstable" Chambers. Problem: the Chambers testimony checked out, and why would Chambers want to frame him? He hadn't seen Hiss in ten years. For Hiss, the question of treason was a matter of manners. His were perfect.
Convicted of perjury Hiss spent 4 years in prison, and then lived on and on and on until 1996 when he died at age 92. A sense of ambiguity abt Hiss haunted journalists and partisans on both sides. He sought to vindicate himself with an aura of nobility, says the perceptive author, as a serene casualty of the Cold War.
By the late '90s transcripts of decoded Russ documents discouraged die-hard Lefties from jibbering about his innocence. The result is a psychological smashup of false rage, lies and devastated lives. Still unknown: the role his wife played (one has heard stories).
The looking-glass wars: when Hiss stared into the mirror, he surely faced -- to paraphrase Graham Greene about a damned character named Pinkie -- "the worst horror of all."
Careless, Smirk and Snake are characters in English comedy. In US drama we have Hiss, who performed on a stage of his own making. Urbane and cultivated, the Harvard-educated lawyer was a golden boy at the State Department - present at Yalta and founding of the UN - but he'd been giving secrets to the Russians for years. Chambers, a boozy, brilliant writer, had been a close Soviet contact in the 1930s who quit the CP upon learning of the Stalin purges.
Hiss's mask of duplicity came off during two trials: this began when he admitted to vaguely knowing Chambers in the '30s. He tried to recall Chambers during a "recognition" charade. Hmm, uh, his teeth, wavered Hiss, "look to me as though they have been improved upon" or dental work had been done. Yes, Chambers assented, he'd had extractions. Would Hiss need to speak to the dentist before he could positively ID Chambers--?
Hiss claimed he was framed by the "mentally unstable" Chambers. Problem: the Chambers testimony checked out, and why would Chambers want to frame him? He hadn't seen Hiss in ten years. For Hiss, the question of treason was a matter of manners. His were perfect.
Convicted of perjury Hiss spent 4 years in prison, and then lived on and on and on until 1996 when he died at age 92. A sense of ambiguity abt Hiss haunted journalists and partisans on both sides. He sought to vindicate himself with an aura of nobility, says the perceptive author, as a serene casualty of the Cold War.
By the late '90s transcripts of decoded Russ documents discouraged die-hard Lefties from jibbering about his innocence. The result is a psychological smashup of false rage, lies and devastated lives. Still unknown: the role his wife played (one has heard stories).
The looking-glass wars: when Hiss stared into the mirror, he surely faced -- to paraphrase Graham Greene about a damned character named Pinkie -- "the worst horror of all."
May 13, 2019
Sort-of biography of Alger Hiss, the infamous State Department aide and Soviet spy whose public exposure by Whittaker Chambers, testimony before HUAC and perjury trials made him an emblem of America's domestic Cold War. While White provides a general chronology of Hiss's life, he's more interested in exploring why Hiss chose to engage in espionage (accepting his guilt as a given) and, equally interesting, why he spent his whole life trying to clear his name. White views Hiss through the lens of a troubled childhood (his father committed suicide, his brother died when Alger was in his teens) that offered ambition but little security; if not the gothic nightmare of Whittaker Chambers' background, it certainly presents him as a man who embraced, and promoted an image as an accomplished, well-connected son of the Establishment rather than a hard-working striver. White explores his early attraction to radical causes, his strained first marriage and efforts at social climbing that led him to embrace Communism in the '30s. His arrogant demeanor during the HUAC hearings doomed him into a perjury trap; then he adopted, convincingly, the tone of a political martyr who sought to clear himself, knowing full well he was guilty. An uncharitable person might characterize this as pathology; White argues it's merely an extension of Hiss's lifelong effort to build an image greater than his reality. At its weakest, White's book borders on speculative psychobiography; at its best, a convincing, insightful look at an historical enigma.
March 13, 2021
A study of Alger Hiss' attempts to clear his name after his conviction in 1950 for perjury. The focus is not whether Hiss was guilty - White believes so - but on Hiss' attempts to reframe the narrative as an innocent man in light of the 1960s and Watergate (Nixon was Hiss' main nemesis on HUAC).
Hiss was very persuasive - he acted like an innocent man. His opponents Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover were disgraced and Whitaker Chambers was an odd man - but ultimately the weight of evidence (including Venona intercepts and Russian records) doomed him.
White engages in a bit of psychology with Hiss, but I don't think he gets to the bottom of why Hiss claimed innocence until his death. I don't think anyone has a definitive answer.
Hiss was very persuasive - he acted like an innocent man. His opponents Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover were disgraced and Whitaker Chambers was an odd man - but ultimately the weight of evidence (including Venona intercepts and Russian records) doomed him.
White engages in a bit of psychology with Hiss, but I don't think he gets to the bottom of why Hiss claimed innocence until his death. I don't think anyone has a definitive answer.
May 22, 2018
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/RIBC...
This book is interesting because it starts from the premise that Alger Hiss was indisputably guilty of spying for the Russians. White's interest in establishing Hiss's guilt is secondary to his main objective of discussing why Hiss was a spy and why he spent 50 years pretending to be innocent.
The proposition that Hiss was guilty seems to clear now to be seriously argued by anyone without a vested interest in his innocence. Even at the time, there was too much pointing to Hiss as a spy. Whitaker Chamber's testimony was corroborated by several other former Russian spies, Hiss's testimony was proven to be inferior to that of Chambers, and Hiss never offered a coherent explanation for how documents typed up by a typewriter he used for private communication became part of Chamber's "life preserver" 10 years before. The release of Soviet archival information that identified Hiss by name as running a spy network put an end to any pretext of innocence.
But why did Hiss become a spy. Although he did not come from the highest tier of the upper class as a matter of birth, he used his connections and talents to break into that class. His connections were such that Felix Frankfurter recommended him as a clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Hiss moved from leftwing concerns about agricultural policies to the State Department to being the first Secretary General of the United Nations.
The author, G. Edward White, postulates that Hiss enjoyed the control and power he was able to exercise by keeping his well-groomed public life separated from his life as a Russian spy. He may also have been a pathological altruist who took a great deal of pleasure in presenting himself as the moral paragon. He had a childhood of taking care of family, and he threw himself into the role of the savior of Priscilla, who was a pregnant, divorced single mother. Hiss also had a history of blatant deception, such as when he made plans to secretly marry Priscilla against Holmes' rules for his clerks while claiming not to know those rules.
I am not sure that White answered my question about why Hiss became a traitor, but, ultimately, an answer may never be forthcoming. It may be nothing more than that he was young and he fell into a crowd where such behavior was the trendy thing to do.
PSB
This book is interesting because it starts from the premise that Alger Hiss was indisputably guilty of spying for the Russians. White's interest in establishing Hiss's guilt is secondary to his main objective of discussing why Hiss was a spy and why he spent 50 years pretending to be innocent.
The proposition that Hiss was guilty seems to clear now to be seriously argued by anyone without a vested interest in his innocence. Even at the time, there was too much pointing to Hiss as a spy. Whitaker Chamber's testimony was corroborated by several other former Russian spies, Hiss's testimony was proven to be inferior to that of Chambers, and Hiss never offered a coherent explanation for how documents typed up by a typewriter he used for private communication became part of Chamber's "life preserver" 10 years before. The release of Soviet archival information that identified Hiss by name as running a spy network put an end to any pretext of innocence.
But why did Hiss become a spy. Although he did not come from the highest tier of the upper class as a matter of birth, he used his connections and talents to break into that class. His connections were such that Felix Frankfurter recommended him as a clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Hiss moved from leftwing concerns about agricultural policies to the State Department to being the first Secretary General of the United Nations.
The author, G. Edward White, postulates that Hiss enjoyed the control and power he was able to exercise by keeping his well-groomed public life separated from his life as a Russian spy. He may also have been a pathological altruist who took a great deal of pleasure in presenting himself as the moral paragon. He had a childhood of taking care of family, and he threw himself into the role of the savior of Priscilla, who was a pregnant, divorced single mother. Hiss also had a history of blatant deception, such as when he made plans to secretly marry Priscilla against Holmes' rules for his clerks while claiming not to know those rules.
I am not sure that White answered my question about why Hiss became a traitor, but, ultimately, an answer may never be forthcoming. It may be nothing more than that he was young and he fell into a crowd where such behavior was the trendy thing to do.
PSB
September 6, 2025
The Hiss case has, since the early 1960's, been a hobby of mine. It is shocking how even today ambiguity remains in our body politic regarding Hiss's guilt. White is too generous in his evaluation of Hiss's apologists. It should be possible to decry McCarthyism's red scare tactics, be repulsed by Nixon's Watergate malfeasance, oppose as over wrought Americas anti communist Cold War policies yet still understand that Hiss was guilty. The metal gymnastics necessary for liberals to blame conservative excesses for a completely proper finding of Hiss's guilt are shameful.
In many ways White misses the main point. Yes, in the fullness of time J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon, and Joe McCarthy have been proven to be bad actors. But that was and is no reason to doubt the judicial process that found Hiss guilty. No reason to excuse a traitorous spy. Instead of a book that examined Hiss's psychology a better book would expose the liberal elites intellectual bankruptcy in supporting Hiss in spite of overwhelming evidence of his guilt. The liberal elites continued devotion to Hiss, even to this day gives comfort and credibility to Trump's claims of "fake news" and a "liberal elite media bias." It is possible liberals falling into Hiss's trap has been more damaging to our political culture than even McCarthy's abusive red scare tactics or Nixon's transitory Watergate turmoil.
Nonetheless this is a five star book. The history of the Hiss case is important. White's book is accurate and carefully researched. And, like Weinstein's book "Perjury" provides a welcome ray of truth amidst a sea of propaganda
In many ways White misses the main point. Yes, in the fullness of time J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon, and Joe McCarthy have been proven to be bad actors. But that was and is no reason to doubt the judicial process that found Hiss guilty. No reason to excuse a traitorous spy. Instead of a book that examined Hiss's psychology a better book would expose the liberal elites intellectual bankruptcy in supporting Hiss in spite of overwhelming evidence of his guilt. The liberal elites continued devotion to Hiss, even to this day gives comfort and credibility to Trump's claims of "fake news" and a "liberal elite media bias." It is possible liberals falling into Hiss's trap has been more damaging to our political culture than even McCarthy's abusive red scare tactics or Nixon's transitory Watergate turmoil.
Nonetheless this is a five star book. The history of the Hiss case is important. White's book is accurate and carefully researched. And, like Weinstein's book "Perjury" provides a welcome ray of truth amidst a sea of propaganda
April 23, 2020
I have read a number of books on real-life espionage and was looking forward to learning the story of Alger Hiss. He has always struck me as being an extremely polarizing figure with people either thinking he was framed or feeding treasure troves of deep secrets to the Soviet Union as a New Deal treasonous communist.
The first two chapters provided the background and catalogued his documented spying. I had always assumed that he was a patrician New England blue blood who graduated from Johns Hopkins and Harvard Law. Far from that, he was middle class from Baltimore and raised by a single mom after his dad's suicide. There was a lot of interesting information and he was not much of a likable man.
The middle of the book led to my 3* rating since I found his time in prison and trying to vindicate himself a little too long and somewhat repetitive.
My favorite chapter in the book dealt with everything that happened related to Hiss after the fall of the Soviet Union. This chapter was fascinating as it rolled out new information that had been kept in the dark recesses of the Soviet Union files.
Overall, Hiss was not a likable guy and had a very inflated sense of his worth and importance. I wish that he really had paid a larger price for what he did.
The first two chapters provided the background and catalogued his documented spying. I had always assumed that he was a patrician New England blue blood who graduated from Johns Hopkins and Harvard Law. Far from that, he was middle class from Baltimore and raised by a single mom after his dad's suicide. There was a lot of interesting information and he was not much of a likable man.
The middle of the book led to my 3* rating since I found his time in prison and trying to vindicate himself a little too long and somewhat repetitive.
My favorite chapter in the book dealt with everything that happened related to Hiss after the fall of the Soviet Union. This chapter was fascinating as it rolled out new information that had been kept in the dark recesses of the Soviet Union files.
Overall, Hiss was not a likable guy and had a very inflated sense of his worth and importance. I wish that he really had paid a larger price for what he did.
May 24, 2017
White's study definitely portrays Hiss in a guilty light. Rather than center around Hiss's perjury trial, this history examines how Hiss's image has changed throughout the years. Different generations and events have inspired people to condemn Alger Hiss or perceive him as a misunderstood figure of liberalism. Woven into White's narrative are sections about HUAC, McCarthy, Nixon's rise and downfall, and the end of the Cold War. All of these events set the stage for different "looking-glass wars" for the public perception of Alger Hiss.
Very interesting look at Alger Hiss and the changes in Cold War mentality.
Very interesting look at Alger Hiss and the changes in Cold War mentality.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews