Alger Hiss [was: Re: Privacy Worries? Don't Print in color]

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, snipped-for-privacy@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

It's more than "general agreement"; it's been conclusively proven.

Hiss was a dues-paying member of the Communist Party, and worked with the GRU (Soviet military intelligence, now Russian military intelligence) from 1935. This has been corroborated in recent years with releases from Soviet archives and formerly classified US documents.

The entire reason that there ever was a debate about Hiss' guilt was that most of the evidence against him was classified until the 1990s. Belief in the innocence of Hiss and the Rosenbergs were enduring liberal myths from the early Cold War years; but mainstream liberals now admit that on this point they were wrong.

Conservatives have their own bitter pill to swallow. The excesses of Senator McCarthy were a blessing in disguise to the very real Communist conspiracy. In my opinion, McCarthy caused much greater harm to the US than Hiss ever did. Time has washed away the effects of Hiss's treason; we're still suffering from the damage caused by McCarthy.

-- Mark --

does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Senator McCarthy ... now there was a real class act. This Republican Senator from Wisconsin had his very own television show; in 1949-50 the United States Senate televised the 'McCarthy Committee Hearings' direct from Old Joe's office. Joe McCarthy seemed to have a running battle with three groups of people: the Communists, the US Army, and the gay community. Joe was convinced that 'the government is full of homosexuals working for it.' And most, if not all the gay people were also Communists, don't you know ... and McCarthy went on that tangent for several months, all day long, on television. He was forever pulling scraps of paper out of his desk at the hearings, and he would claim, "I have here a list of known homosexuals and communist sympathizers working for the US Government." No one ever got to see the list of same he would pull out of his desk drawer, but he would subpoena these alleged gay guys to give testimony before his congressional committee day after day, and question them under oath if they were (or knew of any) 'communists' or 'homosexuals' working for the government. All those poor guys were so frightened and scared as McCarthy would grill them over and over. Most produced at least a few names of fellow employees or friends. Oddly, or maybe not so odd, those who confessed or told on their buddies never lost their jobs; only the ones who 'took the Fifth Amendment' and would neither admit the allegations nor snitch on their buddies got McCarthy furious enough to demand they resign their employment.

All the TV stations (we only had four in Chicago at the time) carried his hearings live in their entirety each day, usually from about 9 AM until mid-afternoon most days, with breaks for his (and the other Congress critter's) lunch each day and any Quorum Calls which happened to arise when they were expected to go to the Chamber and vote on something or another. When they broke for their lunch each weekday, Channel 9 WGN-TV would put on 30 or 45 minutes of Bozo Circus or some old movie until it was time to restart the committee hearings in the afternoon.

I think that nonsense went on for three or four months. Nothing on TV all day except for Joe McCarthy and his stupid congressional hearings. We could always count on Joe adjourning the hearing each day about 3:30 PM central time (4:30 eastern) when he would always keep looking at his watch and figiting in his seat. You see, part of Joe McCarthy's 'research' into the 'problem' of gay guys working for the government was go cruise all the gay bars once they opened each day; he and his good friend J. Edgar Hoover and Hoover's lifetime companion, Clyde Whats-His-Name (Tolson I think?) . All three as closety as could be, all with their little lists hidden in their desk drawers of all the 'known homosexuals and communists' in the government. And the hearings would resume the next morning on national television. Thanks for reminding me of that creep, Mark. PAT]