Cass R. Sunstein, Harvard Law School, has posted The Enduring Relevance of Alger Hiss vs. Whittaker Chambers:
The Hiss-Chambers saga stemmed from a stunning accusation, by Whittaker Chambers, that Alger Hiss, a law clerk to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and a golden boy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, was a Communist who had engaged in espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. Initially, Chambers's accusation seemed implausible. But the evidence mounted, and Hiss's firm claims of innocence split the country. The Hiss-Chambers saga helped define, for a long period, the right and the left. In all probability, Chambers told the truth. Still, the Hiss-Chambers saga contains many mysteries, one of which is this: Why did Hiss proclaim his innocence for all of his life? What was in his mind? The Hiss-Chambers saga also casts a bright light on contemporary law and politics. There is no question that the Hiss Case helped to define modern conservatism; Chambers' great book, Witness, is one of its foundations. For decades, many conservatives thought that Hiss's guilt confirmed a large point, or a series of large points, about liberalism, the left, godlessness, disloyalty, otherness, loyalty, and patriotism. One could easily draw a straight line from the right-of-center conception of Alger Hiss, in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, to widespread views about enemies-on-the-left today.
Professor Sunstein's paper provides an occasion to note the publication last year of Jeff Kisseloff's Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss (University Press of Kansas, 2025). As the subtitle suggests, the book is the culmination of Kisseloff's decades-old research into the Hiss case. It concludes, contrary to much recent scholarship, including G. Edward White's Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars (Oxford University Press), that Hiss was framed. Here's Kansas's copy on the book:
When Alger Hiss was accused by Whittaker Chambers in 1948 of being a secret Communist spy in the 1930s, the subsequent perjury trials were some of the most sensational and politically significant trials of the century. Although Hiss was convicted, he maintained his innocence until his death, and historians have taken sides ever since. In this groundbreaking and revelatory book, Jeff Kisseloff brings new perspective, evidence, and accusations to this historical controversy.
Rewriting Hisstory is a firsthand account of how over fifty years, beginning when he worked for Hiss as a college student in the mid-1970s, Kisseloff was eventually able to determine the truth about Alger Hiss. With the skills of a veteran reporter and the analytical mind of a scholar, he brings to light a wealth of original material, including 150,000 pages of mostly unredacted previously unreleased FBI files—which he sued the FBI to obtain—and other documents from government and library collections around the country. Kisseloff also acquired a key piece of evidence: Woodstock 230099, the machine that the government claimed was used to type the copies of State Department documents placed in evidence against Hiss.
Taken together, Kisseloff has pieced together the truth, showing that Hiss was neither a Communist nor a spy and that the government knew it. But if Hiss didn’t produce the documents that were placed in evidence against him, who did? After careful research and by applying a process of elimination used in classic crime novels—who had the means, motive, and opportunity to do the job—Kisseloff points his finger at the only people who fit all three qualifications.
An act of vindication for one of the most divisive figures in the twentieth century, Rewriting Hisstory is a thrilling political page-turner about an accused spy that is itself a work of scholarly espionage, built on decades of painstaking research. This is an iconoclastic work that should rewrite history books.
The book has prompted a lengthy response by another independent investigator of the Hiss case, the lawyer John W. Berresford, who had posted a monographic paper and published several articles on the case. In his response to Rewriting Hisstory, Berresford praised Kisseloff "for his dedication and some of his conclusions" but did not believe that the book had shaken "the overwhelming consensus that Hiss was indeed a Soviet spy and traitor."
I myself have only researched Hiss in connection stopped with his service in Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the New Deal's emergency farm agency, which ended well before his time at the State Department. I'll save my conclusions about Hiss and AAA for my forthcoming book on the legal "shock troops of the New Deal," but I am indebted to Kisseloff for filing that FOIA request and for the result, which anyone can access via the Black Vault and cite by "Kisseloff number."
Update: Kisseloff's website for his book has a review essay by Peter Irons, entitled Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Dogs That Didn’t Bark. Among other things, it explains how Professor Irons came to offer to to help Hiss with the research for his coram nobis petition and replies to a review of Kisseloff's book by Harvey Klehr in Commentary.
--Dan Ernst
