Alger Hiss Yet Again

by Richard Kostelanetz (September 2013)

II

Some sixty-plus years later, the conflict between these two men assumes different, less ideological lines, at least for me. I see two kinds of people, each reflecting a different kind of character. Hiss on the surface was the focused bureaucrat, a favored young man who began his postgraduate career as a clerk for a chief justice of the Supreme Court, who climbed rapidly through government positions, thanks to his highly developed skill at impressing his elders.

What got Hiss into legal trouble was his confidence in his dishonesty. Let me suggest a theme not seen elsewhere about his continuing appeal decades later. He is still especially beloved by those who persist in taking secrets to their grave, or those admiring those who do. (One of my favorite Hiss admirers claims to have attended a prestigious university that has no record of her. Another has persistently fibbed not only about his age but his ethnic identity.)

That accounts for why I think, regardless of your opinion of Communism, Hiss in the end belongs with Joe McCarthy in the garbage can of American history.

NNDB.com, Wikipedia.com, and Britannica.com, among other distinguished directories. Otherwise, he survives in New York, where he was born, unemployed and thus overworked.

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