They took heart in 1992 when a top Soviet intelligence officer seemed to exonerate Hiss. But a few weeks later the Russian qualified his statement, saying he had been pushed by friends of Hiss, who asked him to comfort an old man. Chambers’s memoir, Witness, was published in 1952, and became a national best-seller. Chambers still brooded about the future and not just Communism, but liberalism, as the enemy.
