638
pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0394585598
Many
moons ago Anthony Lake was up for the job of National Security Advisor to
President Clinton when he appeared on the news/interview program Meet the Press. Then-host, the late Tim Russert,
asked him if, in light of new access to Soviet files and the revelation of the Venona
Project, he would be prepared to acknowledge that Alger Hiss was a spy. Lake
sat there like a deer in the headlights before mumbling some bilge about how it
was still an open question – and just like a fault line of the Left/Right
divide in American politics for 50 years was once again brought forth. In you
wanted to know where someone stood upon the political spectrum you could find
out simply by getting their answer to whether Whittaker Chambers or Alger Hiss
had told the truth. For the American Left (never mind the European Left), the
innocence of Alger Hiss was an article of faith; after all, if such a
mainstream New Deal figure as Hiss had actually been part of a secret
underground cabal, spying on the US for the Soviets, even as WWII was underway,
then a whole battery of conservative attacks would gain legitimacy and the
whole of FDR’s legacy (both New Deal and Grand Alliance) would be called into
question. Well, it’s time for our entire society to face those questions and
this celebrated Chambers biography by Sam Tanenhaus offers an excellent
starting point.
The
story of Whittaker Chambers is familiar enough, yet remains fundamentally
elusive. Born on April 1, 1901, his life journey is a virtual parable of Modern
man: his father was bisexual, his mother was paranoid, his grandmother (who
lived with them) was completely insane, and his younger brother committed
suicide. Chambers was brilliant but slovenly, both physically and mentally. His
own sexuality was somewhat ambiguous and he was generally alienated from the
world around him. After failing to complete his degree at Columbia, he joined
the Communist party and went underground in its extensive espionage apparatus,
wherein he helped to run a Washington spy ring. By 1937, with Stalinist purges
and show trials in full swing and amidst the brutal Stalinization of the
republicans in the Spanish Civil War, Chambers became disenchanted with the
Party and fled the underground. From there he attempted to reveal what he knew
about communist spying to the requisite government authorities, but was
basically ignored. Chambers ended up as an editor at Henry Luce’s Time magazine and built a reputable
middle class life for himself, his wife, and their son and daughter. He became
devoutly religious and vehemently anti-Communist. From there he was sucked back
into the political maelstrom when he was called to testify before the House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) where he revealed that Alger Hiss, a
prominent New Dealer and pillar of the Establishment, had been a member of his spy
ring in the 1930s. Hiss promptly denied it and the stage was set for a years
long legal battle that finally ended with Hiss being convicted for perjury.
In
1952 Chambers published his brilliant memoir, Witness, in which he recounted his own life experiences and sounded
the alarm to alert the West that it was locked in a death struggle between
Communism and Christianity. One of the things that made the book so
extraordinary was his assertion that, in leaving Communism and becoming a
Christian, he had joined the losing side in this struggle. He spent the last
few years of his life working on his beloved farm and writing articles and
reviews, including a series of letters to the newborn opinion magazine National Review. He died in 1961 of a
heart attack.
Tanenhaus’
book came is a revelation as his subject steps out of these pages and comes
into his own as a person of significant accomplishment. Tanenhaus traces
Chambers’ eclectic career, not only as a repentant and atoning undercover
operative, but preeminently as someone with a gift for language who used that
gift at every turn to give meaning to a chaos of events. The reader of this
biography discovers Chambers as a commentator, poet, translator, and respected
writer/editor for Time. Tanenhaus furthermore
guides readers through a broader chronology that puts the history of
Communism/anti-Communism in America into perspective (not only did most of the
Hiss hearings and trials predated McCarthy’s, “Tail Gunner Joe” only came to power
on the coattails of Hiss’ ultimate conviction for perjury). This book also
provides an enlightening time-line of the careers of some of the major figures
in American politics in the middle of the 20th Century, and I, for
one, experienced an I didn't know that!
jolt at least once a chapter (for example, I didn’t know that Richard Nixon
ultimately became disenchanted with McCarthy and distanced himself from the
bulk of McCarthy’s excesses; on the other hand, I also didn’t know that William
F. Buckley, Jr., long regarded as one of America's leading intellectual
conservative spokesmen, remained a staunch supporter of McCarthy to the end).
While
I feel that Tanenhaus is sympathetic to Chambers, I don’t believe this sympathy
he was not prejudiced his view of his subject (at least, not more than any
biographer’s identification with his subject). I finished the book comfortably
assured that I hadn’t been manipulated or slanted away from any important
truth. Beyond all the politics and court cases, this is a profound human drama
about telling the truth whatever the costs. Chambers threw away a lucrative
career at Time and personal
well-being to testify against Communists in government; his concern about
personally damaging people like Alger Hiss only multiplied his problems. While
later evidence ultimately vindicated Chambers, the damage had been done; to the
end of his life, Chambers remained a pessimist – but in that pessimism, he
found a kind of hope, and his life today seems not a tragedy but a triumph.
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