Television companies, support cspan 2 is a public service. Hello. We are here to talk with david and in cleveland about his new book, gods of deception. David, lets start out with something who was elder this . That is a great question, just before i answer, it thank you, matt. Thank you and your edgartown books for having me. And having us at st. Andrews parish. Its a wonderful space and its wonderful to be here. My family is a great lover of marthas vineyard, so its a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Alger hiss is an enigma inside an enigma. He is the great, i suppose you would have to say, the great iago of the 20th century. People have been trying to figure out who alger hiss really was, not just if he was guilty or innocent. To start, alger hiss was convicted in 1950 of spying for the soviet union. He was convicted of lying about knowing his accuser and when he knew him, this whitaker chambers. He was convicted for perjury about passing Top Secret State Department documents to his handler, whitaker chambers, in the late 1930s. In itself, no big deal, certainly not by the 1950s. We now know today, with all the new information that has come to the fore in the 1990s in particular, with access to soviet intelligence files and the publishing of decrypts of soviet cable traffic from the war years. We now know that alger hiss was indeed guilty. But guilty of a lot more than just passing papers to the 1930s. He was guilty of being an agent of influence who sat at the righthand of roosevelt during the yalta conference, and was instrumental in a lot of the development of the policies that were put forth at yalta. Including the giveaway of poland and most of eastern europe. And perhaps most devastatingly, in some respects, there was also yalta requiring the allies to return to million russian refugees who had fled to western europe during the second world war. And a stolen and the kgb required that those 2 million refugees be returned to the soviet union. And they were forcibly returned, according to the yalta agreements. Almost all of them certainly to their deaths at the gulag. That is 2 million human souls. The fact that we had, in alger hiss, a soviet agent at yalta, sitting literally at roosevelts right hand every morning, the debriefing his soviet handler as to the all aspects of the allied and u. S. Negotiating positions, that is a devastating indictment. And to add fuel to the flame, if you will, on his way back from yalta, alger hiss and a small part of the american delegation stopped in moscow for one single day. The only day that alger hiss ever stepped foot in the soviet union. There, in a secret ceremony, he was taken aside by the head of soviet intelligence and given the order of the red star for all he had done for the soviet union. So, yes, we now know that hiss was guilty. But a man who fought to clear his name, to his dying day. He never admitted to his perjury. He never admitted to his guilt. And it divided the country for 50 years. Half the country believed in its innocence, that he was a man of a new deal. That he was in the great liberal tradition, he had been one of the formulaters of the United Nations. And the other half of the country believed he was a traitor, traitor to his class and his country. So, a man of great controversy. David, why is that he was able to convince half the country he was innocent . Because he was part of the Great Eastern establishment. And i think one of the things, we talked about it a little earlier, is both in your earlier book times of betrayal and in gods deception you talk about the eastern establishment. To a certain degree and gods of deception, you talk about the decay of those families that were at the core of making American History. For example, all the people who helped shape the state department in the 40s and 50s. Who created the cia and made it. That is a theme in your work. What is it about the eastern establishment that is so, grabs your attention . In terms of alger hiss, the reason that i think he was so invisible to those who knew him best, it within the state department and other areas. Its that his pedigree seemed of great merit. He was johns hopkins, he was harvard law school. He worked with, to you john haliburtons term, the best and the brightest. He seemed to be all the things, the golden boy of the eastern establishment. He was a friend of john foster dulles. He was a friend of secretaries of state. He was a friend of the roosevelts, in fact. So, by any stretch of the imagination, he seemed to fit into the mold of eastern establishment and to hold its veritys and virtues to the highest standard. So, we know that one of the reasons that alger hiss was able to convince so many people was because he had so many supporters. These are people who should have known but who didnt know. And alger hiss was a great chameleon in the end. He is very unlike, very distinct from the soviet spies, the cambridge spies of the british establishment. Men like guy burgess, john mcclain, can cross. Who are also major soviet spies at the same period. They were racked with guilt. They tracked themselves into early graves on. Instead of standing trial, they escaped behind the iron curtain and went to moscow where they literally died of alcoholism in their moscow dachas. They were men who are absolutely written by their spying and their betrayal. But not alger hiss, alger hiss, for whatever reason, maintained his secrecy to the day he died. He went through numerous appeals processes, he went on speaking tours, college campuses, trying to establish his innocence. When all was said and done, he was a cool customer. And he maintained that right to the end. One of the things that you talked about is, the title of the book is gods of deception, and i immediately went back and looked up my greek gods, nemesis, apate, i dont think thats what youre talking about with gods of deception. I think youre talking about the ability to deceive. For example, like the cia, the kgb and also alger hiss, his ability to deceive and be convincing in his message. All the way up until he died. Because all the way up until he died there were people, despite the, evidence who believed he was an innocent man. The title of the book, gods of deception, to me, really is indicative of a mindset that evolved in the 1930s with the great depression. Which really took that stuffing out of the american economy. It was a great shock to the system, and a lot of people were looking for new and Better Solutions to economic and political problems. They look to the soviet union, they look to marxism at leninism. Many of them were true believers and had to realize that alger hiss was simply the tip of the iceberg of those who were disillusioned with the american system. The american communist party, at its height, had 200,000 adherence. It was basically an underground proving ground where the 500 soviet spies, agents that were active in the u. S. Government and related war industries, they all came out of the american communist party. Which provided them with an infrastructure and an underground. So, the idea of gods of destruction, this was a mindset. He was a marxistleninist, true believers, this was an alternative religion. They believed very strongly in lenins ideas and what stalin had created in the soviet union and they were willing to go to Great Lengths to overthrow the existing system, if thats what it took. Lets talk about one of those members, Whittaker Chambers. Who was, in some ways, alger hisss nemesis. Who accused hiss of being a spy. Went to adolph burrel and said, alger hiss it is a spy. Burrel went to roosevelt and was dismissed with an expletive. Why was chambers so much less believable than alger hiss . The quick answer to Whittaker Chambers is, of course, he was a communist. He had started off in the communist party, he had then, like many, moved into being an active agent, a spy handler. For the soviet union. He spent some 12, 13 years as part of the communist party. So, when he realized what was going on, finally, in the soviet union, he recognized that stalins perjurys were eliminating tens of thousands of supporters. Of the soviet union. And the communist party. These were innocent people that were being dragged off and slaughtered in prison. He realized that his head was probably going to roll as well. So, in 1938, he decided he was going to break free. He was working not for the kgb but for its partner organization, the soviet military intelligence. , so he decided he was going to break. But before he broke, he wanted to break at the same time the spies that he ran in washington. And he went to Harry Dexter White, a major spy in the Treasury Department, and tried to get Harry Dexter White to break. He said, im breaking, i think you should break as well. He thought he had broken him, but he hadnt. He went to alger and priscilla hiss, went to their home in washington. And he told them that, in fact, he was breaking with the soviet underground, and he wanted them to break at the same time. When he told them this he recognized instantly by their body language and by the way they looked at him and spoke to him that the moment he left, they were going to call and inform their spy handler that the had been contacted by Whittaker Chambers, that he can no longer be trusted. He realized immediately, the last words alger hiss spoke to Whittaker Chambers was, stalin plays for keeps. We recognized that this was an immediate threat. He bought himself a gun and got himself a second hand car and he and his family fled to florida, where they stayed for many months, waiting for the business to blow over. He finally returned to his farm in maryland and Whittaker Chambers then went on to become a very distinguished editor at time magazine. One of the best writers, is one of the best editors for time magazine. All during the war years. During that period, Whittaker Chambers not only wrote the most important journalism about the soviet union, but was the first major american journalist to warn of the dangers of stalin and the soviet union and what was coming. So, Whittaker Chambers was, among many things, a brilliant writer. But when he accused alger hiss publicly, and alger hiss called him out and threatened to sue him for libel. At which point, through a series of Whittaker Chambers was able to come up with the actual documents that alger hiss and priscilla hiss had typed out. With alger hisss handwriting. Those were instrumental in the trial that ultimately proved that alger hiss was guilty of perjury. So, there were two things you mentioned. The venona papers, also the pumpkin papers. Is that what convinced you that alger hiss was actually a spy and not the innocent man he professed to be . Like a lot of people, i went into writing this book with a lot of questions to ask, a lot of research to do. It took me over four years. I thought i had a pretty good sense, from Alan Weinsteins great book, perjury. Which came out in the 70s. About the trial, where weinstein had begun as a great supporter of hiss, he thought his investigation in the trial would prove that alger hiss was in fact guilty. And Allen Weinstein had access to all the fbi files, to all the defense files. To all of that kind of material. Is the first, person a spent years and years writing this book, perjury. And simply based on what he was able to generate from the trial itself, he felt pretty conclusively that was alger hiss indeed guilty. Weinstein was a writer, a yale graduate, yale historian who hello, were here today to Allen Weinstein was a writer, a yale graduate, yall historian who wrote the book, perjury. About the alger hiss trial. It was a sensation in its day in the 1970s. Because everybody thought he was going to prove that alger hiss was, in fact, innocent. And it proved just the opposite. Allen weinstein went on to positions ahead of the National Archives in washington for many years. And then continue to write about the trial. And he wrote about a trial called hidden woods, which was also a sensation. In about 2000, that book came out. That book came out, which was part of my research, which included two critical elements in the alger hiss story, the alger hiss trial. That is the window net decrypts, these were soviet cable traffic that the intelligence had gathered during the war. They couldnt read it because it was all in code, that they had recorded it and actually had the transcripts. It took them 20, 25 years to break this code. But by the 1990s, they had broken the code and they were able to read masses of soviet cable traffic. In the 1990s, with the fall of the berlin wall in 1989, there was a soviet scholar who is able, for a short period during the Boris Yeltsin presidency, to actually get into the kgb files. And he was able to bring out extensive notes about what he found in those files. The cumulative evidence between that melanoma the cramps and the kgb aisles that got out in the 90s make it absolutely clear that alger hiss was not just guilty in that spy trial, for passing top secret soviet papers, but that he and other soviet spies were instrumental and stalins agents who had done incredible damage to the warriors and immediately after. Lets also take a look at the book itself, because the alger hiss case is told through the lens of edward it, a man who was on the defense team for alger hiss. And also talks about his family, his grandson. He talks about the ripple effects of this case on one family. I think there was some very interesting things about it. George altman, the grandson, was called in to help his grandfather finishes memoirs, which deal with the alger hiss case. You are telling the story of alger hiss in this period of American History through the prism of a family there. Why did you make that choice . Why did you choose to tell us in a fictional manner, as opposed to a Nonfiction Book about the alger hiss case . Well, im a great believer that history matters. And history comes down to us and many different ways, through our families, by the political culture in which we live. The world that we live in, history, the town of edgar town. And a wonderful place will evoke its history. Im a great believer in that. As a fictional, writer i didnt want to write, if you will, a standard history novel. That just talks about the alger hiss trial, the ins and outs of the alger hiss trial. What i wanted to do was that the alger hiss case and the trial as the background of one family, where the patriarch of that family, edward, was at the center of alger hiss. He later became a judge, and he is the patriarch of this family. But i wanted to examine, in a sense, where the repercussions of the alger hiss case and all its manifestations alger hiss. Both in terms of if he was innocent or guilty, and what his guilt actually meant in terms of the real lives of real people. So, i wanted to, as a fictional account, to look back on the hiss case through the lens of a Single Family and three generations. And see how those three families manifested in terms of the impact, and the enormous impact on this particular american family. I think that one of the themes i noticed in gods of deception, also in times of betrayal, is just the effect of time and memory and how it can change the perspective of people who have lived through events. It seems to be a common theme, it certainly plays out in gods and deception. Did Edward Dimock remember things correctly at the end, or did he have doubts about his memory . Well, in the story, Edward Dimock is 95, hes trying to finish his memoirs and having a hard time doing it. His memory is beginning to slip and, as the book opens, we dont quite know where dimock comes out in terms of the guilt or innocence of the man he defended, alger hiss law. One of the things that intrigued me, as i think it intrigues all of us, as when you see a great trial. And the alger hiss trial was considered probably the greatest spy trial in American History. Looking back, you wonder, did all his extensive defense team most of these were harvard guys, harvard lawyers, these were smart people. Had alger hiss actually convinced them of the fact that he was innocent . When, as the evidence came through, the woodstock typewriter which they were able to attain, priscilla hiss had in fact copied this Top Secret State Department papers on. All of this evidence. People who had seen alger hiss and Whittaker Chambers together in the same home. All of this evidence. Did the defense team really believe this man or where they simply doing their jobs as good lawyers and defending him to the best of their ability . But they had real doubts . More people at the time that thought that alger hiss was actually innocent but his wife, priscilla, might be guilty. That she might be the one who stole the top secret papers out of the briefcase of alger hiss and copied them out and turned them over to Whittaker Chambers. So, there was a lot going on at the time. The judge, Edward Dimock, is trying to figure this out. He enlisted his grandson, who is an astrophysicist. Who, if you will, has been freaked out by the extent of the universe, never quite finished his degree and astrophysics and became and yuck our curator as wave stepping back from the vastness of the cosmos. Edward dimock invites his grandson, george altman, to help him figure out what was the truth. As george says to his grandfather, grandfather, if alger hiss is guilty, the world is one thing. If alger hiss is innocent, the world is another way. Those are two parallel universes. How do they matchup . So, that starts the search. One of the things that is also in gods of deception is the art world. George altmans grandfather, for whom he was named after, was an artist. Who, and his career petered out, he became a court artist and was doing court sketches of the alger hiss trial. Couple questions i want to ask you. Art flows through all of this, one of the things that was fascinating when i was doing research is that you are also an art critic and a founder of artsy. Net, a prominent art place on the internet. How did art fit into gods of deception . Well, art has always played a large role in my writing. As an art historian, ive written the history of american tonalism, which tells the history of american landscape art between 1880 and 1920. A great lost movement of people like george innes and whistler, 40 other major artists. Ive been instrumental in writing about them and reviving the reputations. Its a critical part of american art history. The american tonal lists that these wonderful landscapes, very transcendentalist. They were followers of thoreau and emerson. And my art history, i tried to write narratives about the artists to bring them to life. I did my fiction, i try to set the landscape, i try to set the world, place and time. The books unfold in. So, ideas, if you will, my artists i, my landscape eye, in fiction this at the scene. This is very much the case and gods of deception, which is that at the catskills, a place i know well and love and a marvelous house with a 15 century italian ceiling, painted ceiling. That depicts the cosmos, the gods and goddesses, the signs of the zodiac. A mini universe, if you will. That overhangs the family home, hematology, as its called. There are on the ceiling represents home and a place that is much loved in the family. And in terms of the character, as you mentioned george and his side kick, wendy, who is also an artist. I used them as two ways of looking and exploring for the truth about alger hiss. That is, through the artist eye, through the literary eye, through a woman who is a mountain climber, a very dynamic personality. And george, who was this is an astrophysicist who looks at abc news live, americas number one streaming news, the world and the cosmos and free to you 24 7. Watch americas relativity in dark matter we, number one news, whenever you want it, wherever you are, anytime. Abc news live, streaming live and free on all his gallery is called dark platforms. Ready for Election Night . Ready for debate. Im ready for it all. Matter. He looks at the world its very important. Very different. So, through the hi everyone. Regular new ragged. Lens of the artists and scientists, the exploration for what the truth about alger hiss would george do . Unfolds. Were working on, one of the things that i it george. Were found interesting about the going to make you proud. Book is that george altmans with so much at grandfather, the artist george stake in our world altman, had a death that was right now, we want to thank you for your ambiguous. And the thought of trust and for suicide on, the stigma of, it making abc news americas number one news. Floats over the family for the and thank you for making abc news live americas number one streaming news. Admit it. Next couple of generations. These days what you need to know seems to change alger hiss father committed just about every day. What is it that you really want to suicide, his sister committed know, need to suicide. Was that something you know . To help you not just get through your are consciously aware of when day, but to make your most of it . Feel you are writing the book . Smarter. Feel better. Feel i was aware that. On one happier. Well, how about a third hour of level, alger hiss its a Good Morning America . Gma3. What do you need to know. Remarkable man, in some ways a now streaming on real humanitarian. For all the abc news live. Its crimes that he committed, i all about think its always important to remember that the communist you. Party in its heyday was a huge Amber Rose Isaac was supporter of civil rights for the love of my African Americans and those life. She went into the hospital and then i just saw she was as good as dead days. And that team plays out as soon as she walked into the hospital. Black women are four light times more likely to die than their white counter port within the dimock family, the parts, with the same story in my book. But it goes symptoms. I cant let amber be another statistics. I need to make sure this doesnt happen to anyone else. Deeper than that. The element this fight is not over. We are doing this together, man of suicide around the alger. Hiss case, this was something that was remarked on at the time. And something, frankly, that i only discovered by having access to newspapers of the period. Google book search and all those kind of thing. There is a whole number of unexplained deaths surrounding the alger hiss trial. These are desperate pleas for help caught on surveillance cameras. Chilling people who might have testified images show in the trial against alger 16yearold twins both bruised hiss, and what happened to and malnourished, one without these people . One, lawrence a shirt, ringing on doorbells, knocking duggan, a high state official, on doors after they say they escaped fell from 16 stories from his abuse at their texas home. Office window in new york on tonight their mother and her boyfriend in 45th street again died. It was custody. What is next for their five younger called a suicide, but nobody siblings really knew the truth. His wife and the missed warning said he was not suicidal and signs. An alarming spike tonight in the number of children the physical circumstances of hospitalized in u. S. The signs and symptoms of the fall did not show it respiratory illness that parents need looked as if he had been thrown to look out for. Torture, mass graves, and were out that window. William crimes. An indepth look at remington, another spy, was the unspeakable bludgeoned to death and luis horrors forced upon ukrainians in byrd present where alger hiss a war they never wanted was imprisoned for four years. The just before alger hiss it got we are recording an out, they never figured out interrogation in torture chamber in why, what the motivation was for that. It sure looked like a kgb set up to warrant alger hiss to continue to keep his mouth shut. Loughlin curry, a spy in the white house, the Roosevelt White house, fled south of the border to columbia and he is unavailable to testify as a spy. Harry dexter white, lets buy in the Treasury Department who did event marked damage then alger hiss did, terrible damage, which we can get to. He died suddenly of an overdose and his summer home in new hampshire. That was very suspicious. Marvin smith, another important person, witness in the alger hiss spy case, fell six stories down and interior staircase in the justice department. Again, they call that suicide but nobody really knew. Noel field, a state Department Official who also knew the story with alger hiss, disappeared behind the iron curtain and was unable to testify. These mysterious deaths were a kgb specialty, they specialized an ambiguous deaths that nobody could quite figure out. And this, as in my gods of deception, in the story that i tell, these ambiguous deaths impact families dramatically, terribly. Because its one thing to know that your father or grandfather was a spy who was then knocked off by the kgb, as opposed to somebody who committed suicide for reasons you dont know. That ambiguity is tragic in a family. And again, i deal with that in the book. So, yes, suicide, ambiguous death, a kgb specialty. Not all surrounded the alger hiss trial and people noted this, journalism today. This has been largely forgotten to the general public now. You deal with it through, again, the prism of the dimock family, the altman family. How did you conceive of Edward Dimock and the family that he generated . Well, this is getting pretty close to home. Because i did in fact bass Edward Dimock on a Edward Dimock judge that i knew from our family home in the catskills. Other than the fact of the, man that he was a judge, that he infected have some cases before him, members of the communist party that were charged for various crimes. Other than that, the Edward Dimock in my fiction lives only between nine pages. And is pretty much made up out of whole cloth. But i did love the original Edward Dimock. You know, so ive heard god from deception, your knowledge of that period, again going back to times of betrayal, both deal with midcentury america. You know it intimately. How is it you came to know and right so intimately about that period of American History . Well, i hate to say that the intimacy, for what its, where this comes out of a lot of reading and a lot of memories as a kid. I remember how the alger hiss case resonated for so many people. I watching William Buckley is firing line years after the trial, where he would have Alan Weinstein on there. And he would have his questionnaire is. And the fierceness of the rhetoric, the passion. 20, 5 30 years after the trial, the contention that was still going on. That was fascinating to me. And of course, any of us of a certain age, it still resonates. Because those where the red 50s, there was the red scare. And much of those passions moved on in the 60s and 70s, they sparked the civil rights movement, they sparked the Antiwar Movement in vietnam. So, if you will, on a political level, the contentious issues around the alger hiss trial resonated right up through the 70s and 80s. And was the fall of the berlin wall. It seemed to be, as it was spoken of by many commentators, the end of history as we had known it. That era seemed done and passed and all of the sudden Vladimir Putin comes along. And it looks like the ghosts of the 50s and 60s, and the cold war era, back and still haunting us today. For this, i want to go on and ask you, what lessons do we take from gods of deception . Now that its coming out in the 20 twenties, with a war waging in ukraine. Something that we did not expect. Well, history matters. And those of us who dont Pay Attention to history and dont know the facts of history, maybe we are fated to have these bad things happen again. I go back to the impact of data alger hiss and stalins spies on the world that we know it. Just to give you some brief examples, before getting to Vladimir Putin. Harry dexter white was another colleague of alger hiss, he was a top dog in the Treasury Department. And he was called up in 1939, in the summer of 1939. This was before the u. S. Was at war. Before we had gotten into the war in europe, but for the attack on pearl harbor. And Victor Pavlov was his soviet handler. Victor pavlov says, i want you to meet me at old abbots grove, right across the street from the Treasury Department. My wife, who is in the Treasury Department, used to have lunch there as well. My wife is in the Treasury Department harried extra white said, okay. Ill meet you there. They met for lunch and Victor Pavlov had a thats now how Harry Dexter White newt who this guy was. He sat down at the table and Victor Pavlov passed a sheet of paper across the table to Harry Dexter White and said that i want to memorize i want you to memorize what is there, remember what is there. He read it. He nodded, nodded, nodded. He said yes, i agree with all of this. He folded up the paper and put it in his jacket pocket. Victor pavlov says, no give me that back. He took paperback. Carried extra white said, yes, i will do exactly what is written down that plan was a secret plan of soviet intelligence by the name of operation snow white as in, Harry Dexter White. The print land was for Harry Dexter White and his colleagues at treasury which was honeycombed with soviet spies, the state department, to ratchet up the pressure on the japanese. At that point, japan was at war with in china, a very aggressive, the u. S. Had sanctions on oil, robbery, all of these warmer materials. This plan from Victor Pavlov indexed or whites and was for the u. S. To ratchet up further these sanctions on japan. Carried extra white wrote position paper, after position paper following up on that ratcheting up of these. In fact the u. S. Did tighten restrictions on japanese and war material at the very time that the u. S. Navy was pleading with the white house, pleading with roosevelt not to take more aggressive measures against the japanese because we are not itching to fight a war in the pacific and they pleaded this. We have to deal with germany. That is where we won the war. Please take it easy with japanese. We ratcheted up and what happened was at the japanese, instead of moving north to siberia in manchuria ended up having a board with evading in, devastating fighting along those lines instead of moving that direction the Japanese Military decided to go south. What that meant was that it was an attack on pearl harbor, he moved to the philippines, indonesia. In fact, what was happening was that Harry Dexter White and his soviet spies in the Treasury Department commits the u. S. Government, they pushed and advocated, for those sanctions against japan which ultimately resulted in japan in the attack in pearl harbor it is devastating what actually happened. Before we take some questions from the audience, lets, let me ask you this question. Is putin the new stolen . Im not an expert on putin. All i can say is that putins game book it is all taken from his background as an ex kgb. All of his Leadership Circle is ex kgb people. They are masters at the skies, propaganda, false flags, this information. This is what the kgb does best. We have seen it in the early days of the war against ukraine that putin deployed all of these kgb tactics. It is very clear le pen that hes finding these moves. He was going to try to come up with all kinds of excuses to do so in the end he relied on force. That is an excellent playbook and ill read you an epitaph of the first page of my book. This is from whitaker he wrote this in witness to describe stalins mentality. I think it fits putin to a tee this is the quote, for the temper of stalins mind requires a strategy of multiple deceptions which confuse the victim with the illusion of power and soft in the illusion of hope, only to plunge them deeper into despair with the fades a trap is wrought in the victims as they tend to question, we seem to be in another cold war. Yes. Lets open up, on that note, thats a beautiful quote from chambers who you describe to us it it is descending almost in the poetry from people beauty of writing. Lets take some questions, anybody have a question they would like to ask about gods of deception and our conversation with david . Could you go a little bit more into the motivations that led hiss away from the establishment and into this dual role that he had. What would be so upset about . Yet to imagine that many like the camp depression were devastated by the a collapse of the economy and they were looking around for other im running, finding solutions to the economic mass of the country. You dont actually know in detail what hisss motivations were or how whitaker chambers, who wrote an entire book on this talking about his days without their heads. He spent days and weeks with alger and priscilla. They were birdwatching together. They had ideological discussions. We know from whitaker chambers that his wasnt committed, marxistleninist, no doubt about it. Nowhere is there a paper trail where hiss admits or shows that. We dont even have their library. Im sure they got rid of all of their books along those lines. For the claimed the bookshelf out when he was accused of being a spy. Hiss remains an enigma inside an enigma. It is hard to know. Heres marxistleninist for sure, but you never expected anybody in public. One of the things along that line in the shock of the depression was that alger hiss father committed suicide in the panic of 19 when he overextended himself. He was a very young boy it was traumatized by that because of his financial pressure that drove with his father to suicide. There was all kinds of drama trauma in his family, lots of which never came out. In the trial, one of his sisters died of an overdose. Its possible that these traumas that hes never really talked about in public, never confessed, much less confessing to be a spy he never confessed about the traumas in his own family he held up a public face to the world that, to many, seemed to speak the best about america, the new deal, the roosevelt and most ministration. He was, after all, part of the formative papers in the development of the United Nations that was also a great idea of the day that he was a part of. Why is the state department so might i even with the magnitude of spies in their midst . Why was the state department so naive about all of the spies in their midst . Thats a very good question. This is a question that haunts us today. By the time alger hiss had left the state department in 1946, i believe it was, he left the state department to take over as president of the Carnegie Endowment for National Case which was a big he always portrayed this as simply a movement from his standpoint to a better job, perhaps even a more important job. In fact, we now know that the state Department Security people were very skeptical of the. They couldnt prove anything, but they had the information from chambers. They had the information from elizabeth bentley, who was the red spy queen who, in 1945 came with a list of 45 names another ex kgb agent. Albert hansen his brother had, donald hiss were also in the Statement Department on her list. He actually left the state department because security people wanted him out. A fact that was not known at the time and that obviously alger hiss never talked about it. To answer your question, a lot of the state Department Security files on the communist stalinist penetration disappeared over the years. There was great controversy about this in the 1950s. It is unclear whether the state Department Personnel files where whitewashed at some point or what happened but certainly during the Truman Administration this was a big issue and truman wanted the problem to go away whether the files were destroyed, whitewashed, when people just simply look the other way. We dont know. Don kiley the truth. Any other questions . What do we, what do you know about his family . Grandchildren, children, perspective on this . This is the alger hiss family . Well, this is one of the elements of trauma i think it is that is passed down in families. Where a parent is convicted of one thing or another or a parent or relation has died at certain and the u. S. Death. This issue, the ambiguity, come down and haunt the generations. In fact, alger hiss and priscilla hiss maintained their innocence to their dying day. I think that a priscilla hiss preceded algorithms. She died a broken woman. One has to think of the guilt, trauma that she experienced during this period. Just devastated. If you follow health i believe she died early, but spent much of their lives proclaiming fathers in a sense. Tony hissed, he was a writer for the new yorker boast about the phenomenon of their life together in a very eloquently. If they maintain their innocence even with the new evidence and the elder his family still six by their man and believes in his innocence until the end. Any other questions . Okay. I would like to thank you all for coming. Thank you for the questions. 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