Six Crises (13 page)

I have no doubt that President Truman personally had just as much contempt for Alger Hiss as I had when the full import of his activities became known to him. An indication of his attitude was a report Bert Andrews gave me shortly after Hiss's indictment. He said Truman was shown copies of the stolen documents by a representative of the Justice Department. As he thumbed through page after page of the incriminating evidence, he muttered, over and over, “Why, the son of a bitch—he betrayed his country!” Yet when asked in his next press conference if he still thought the Committee's investigation of the Hiss case was a “red herring,” he replied in the affirmative! When a friend asked him how he could possibly make such a statement in light of the new evidence, his reply was: “Of course Hiss is guilty. But that damn Committee isn't interested in that. All it cares about is politics, and as long as they try to make politics out of this Communist issue, I am going to label their activities for what they are—a ‘red herring.'”

President Truman spoke quite properly and effectively of the need for bipartisanship in meeting the threat of Communism abroad. Along with a substantial number of the Republicans in both House and Senate,
I responded to his pleas in this respect by voting for and supporting the Greek-Turkish Aid Program and the Marshall Plan. What he did not seem to understand—and here is the really crucial point—was that Communism in America is part and parcel of Communism abroad. The problem, like Communism itself, is indivisible. If, in other words, he had recognized the need for bipartisanship in fighting Communism at home as well as abroad, he would not have persisted in making his “red herring” statements with regard to the Committee investigations. And furthermore, there would have been no need for that investigation to be continued as it was, simply in order to force the Justice Department to take the action demanded by the facts.

Once the FBI was given the green light in its investigation of the Hiss case, it did a magnificent job. The blame for failing to act before that time rests not on the FBI but squarely on those officials of the Executive branch who had full access to FBI reports and who failed or refused to order a full investigation.

The Hiss case taught the nation some major lessons, too, about the most effective methods for fighting Communism in the United States. Communism cannot be fought successfully by brushing off or ignoring the danger because of the small number of Communist Party members, or by concentrating solely on “removing the causes of Communism by making democracy work.” The nation finally saw that the magnitude of the threat of Communism in the United States is multiplied a thousandfold because of its direct connection with and support by the massive power of the world Communist conspiracy centered in Moscow.

But while we should not underestimate the danger, we also must not resort to Communist methods to fight Communism. We would then become little better than the Communists themselves—playing their game, by their rules. We must not be so blinded by the threat of Communism that we can no longer see the principles of freedom. The most effective weapon the Communists and their supporters use against their opponents is to complain of unfair play and abridgment of their civil liberties, in order to divert public attention from the charges being leveled against them. Even when the most impeccably correct procedures are used, they will cry “foul.” When the investigators' conduct gives even a hint of unfair procedures, the Communists are able to make their accusers, rather than themselves, the issue.

There is nothing more irresponsible than for the radicals of the right to make a racket of anti-Communism. By exaggerating and making
charges they can't prove, they raise doubts as to the very real danger that Communist agents in the United States in fact present. On the other hand, it is just as irresponsible for the radicals of the left to pooh-pooh the danger of Communism at home by denying it exists, even in the face of facts like the Hiss case—thereby adding fuel to the fire of the demagogues on the right.

We succeeded in the Hiss case for three basic reasons. First, we were on the right side. Second, we prepared our case thoroughly. Third, we followed methods with which few objective critics could find serious fault. This is not the easy way to conduct a congressional investigation and certainly not the best way to make sensational headlines. But it is the way which produces results. In dealing with Communists, any other procedure can play into their hands and usually does.

To give an extreme example. If we were to accuse X of having killed his mother, his two brothers, and five friends, X and his allies would shout back, “That's a lie! X never hurt a hair on his old mother's head and he only wounded
one
brother. Foul and unfair!” The counterattack would be on, with attention diverted from the five friends and the other brother whom X had, indeed, actually killed. Thus, if someone charges that there are fifty-eight Communists in the State Department, he is at once attacked on the exact number and on the fine distinction between Communists and security risks. The tactic of exaggeration and the deliberate “fishing expedition” does, to be sure, attract public attention to the problem. But it also tends to undermine the effort to develop an effective program for weeding out the actual security risks in the government bureaucracies. The best tactic in the face of suspicion from a large segment of the press and public is to be certain you can prove every statement you make about Communist activities.

These lessons from the Hiss case are important. But more vital still is that we understand why a man like Alger Hiss, with his education and background, joined the Communist Party in the first place.

The tendency too often is to try to find some convenient excuse for his conduct and thereby avoid facing up to the real reasons. But none of the typical excuses fit Alger Hiss. He did not join the Communist Party, accept its rigid discipline, and steal State Department secrets for money, position, or a desire for power, or for psychological reasons stemming from some obscure incident in his early life, or because he had been duped or led astray by his wife. He joined the Communist Party and became a Communist espionage agent because he deeply
believed in Communist theory, Communist principles, and the Communist “vision” of the ideal society still to come. He believed in an absolutely materialistic view of the world, in principles of deliberate manipulation by a dedicated elite, and in an ideal world society in which “the party of the workers” replaces God as the prime mover and the sole judge of right and wrong. His morality could be reduced to one perverted rule: anything that advances the goals of Communism is good. Hiss followed his beliefs deliberately and consciously to the utmost logical extreme, and ended up in the area of espionage.

At a less rigorous level—somewhere in a vague area that goes by such names as “positivism” or “pragmatism” or “ethical neutralism”—Hiss was clearly the symbol of a considerable number of perfectly loyal citizens whose theaters of operation are the nation's mass media and universities, its scholarly foundations, and its government bureaucracies. This group likes to throw the cloak of liberalism around all its beliefs. Eric Sevareid's term “liberalists” probably describes them most accurately. They are not Communists; they are not even remotely disloyal; and, give or take a normal dose of human fallibility, they are neither dishonest nor dishonorable. But they are of a mind-set, as doctrinaire as those on the extreme right, which makes them singularly vulnerable to the Communist popular front appeal under the banner of social justice. In the time of the Hiss case they were “patsies” for the Communist line.

The “liberalists” now stand self-accused in all their vulnerability by a most damaging fact. As soon as the Hiss case broke and well before a full bill of particulars was even available, much less open to close critical analysis, they leaped to the defense of Alger Hiss—and to a counterattack of unparalleled venom and irrational fury on his accusers.

Some of the reasons may have been simply political. The New Deal had fallen hard for the popular front tactic and now it was going to be called to account for its past errors—or, perhaps, for its past “innocence.” Some thought it had to be defended at any cost. Typical of this attitude was a conversation I had with a New Deal lawyer who had served in the Roosevelt Administration during World War II. The Hiss case was being discussed at a Washington dinner party shortly after the “pumpkin papers” came to public attention. He shouted at me, “I don't give a damn what the facts are. Even if Hiss admits he's guilty, these investigations are dangerous and will have a terrible and disastrous effect on the country—because the net result is to cast reflection
on the United Nations and all the other progressive aspects of the Roosevelt-Truman foreign policy.”

What then is the answer to the appeal Communism seems to have, not only in the so-called “underdeveloped” countries abroad and not just among the “downtrodden masses,” but to those with excellent intellectual backgrounds and material security right here in the United States?

Certainly more is needed than a purely negative militant “anti-Communism.”

Nor is it enough to answer Communism's constant claims of “we shall win—we represent the wave of the future” with a static position in which we say, “All we want is peace, and we will only defend what we have.”

And we must never be put in the position of meeting the appeal of the Communists on their ground alone. A watered-down materialism of our own will be no match for the authentic article, with all its trappings, peddled by the Communists. If materialism is all we have to offer, then men like Hiss, impatient with compromise and anxious for faster progress, will turn to Communism as the simpler and swifter vehicle for the realization of purely materialistic goals.

Our goal cannot and must never be to force our way of life on others. But our fundamental belief that every nation has a right to be independent, that individual freedom and human rights are grounded in religious faith and because they come from God cannot be taken away by men, must be instilled in the new generation. And our beliefs must be combined with a crusading zeal, not just to hold our own but to change the world—including the Communist world—and to win the battle for freedom, individual dignity, and true economic progress without a hot war.

Foster Dulles, in commenting on Alger Hiss's conviction, said: “The conviction of Alger Hiss is human tragedy. It is tragic that so great promise should have come to so inglorious an end. But the greater tragedy is that seemingly our national ideals no longer inspire the loyal devotions needed for their defense.” In these words, Dulles summed up the greatest lesson of the Hiss case for our generation, because the case so dramatically demonstrated the intellectual confusion of our time. Since 1917 Moscow had been successful in convincing all too many of our best educated citizens of the superiority of Communism and caused them to abandon Western ideals and values for the chimera
of Soviet “idealism” which unconsciously became their moral standard. To this day, many “liberalists” are incapable of facing the brutal reality of Soviet totalitarianism and dealing with it accordingly.

•  •  •

The Hiss case was, of course, also a lesson for me. I learned firsthand about the true nature of the Communist conspiracy at home and abroad.

I learned, too, some valuable lessons in crisis conduct—the necessity for thorough preparation for battle; the need for handling a crisis with coolness, confidence, and decisiveness; the importance of guarding against a letdown in that most dangerous period of a crisis, after the battle is over.

The Hiss case brought me national fame. I received considerable credit for spearheading the investigation which led to Hiss's conviction. Two years later I was elected to the United States Senate and two years after that, General Eisenhower introduced me as his running mate to the Republican National Convention as “a man who has a special talent and an ability to ferret out any kind of subversive influence wherever it may be found, and the strength and persistence to get rid of it.”

But in politics, victory is never total. The Hiss case brought me national fame. But it also left a residue of hatred and hostility toward me—not only among the Communists but also among substantial segments of the press and the intellectual community—a hostility which remains even today, ten years after Hiss's conviction was upheld by the United States Supreme Court. Bert Andrews once gave me his opinion about the primary motivating force for much of this attitude. “The surest way to make yourself unpopular with anyone who considers himself an intellectual,” he said, “is to prove him wrong once he has gone out on a limb on an issue so charged with emotion as the Hiss case.”

Ironically enough, I not only gained the deadly enmity of the Communists and others who, for a variety of reasons, defended Hiss; I was to receive, at best, lukewarm support and at times outright opposition from many of those who claimed to be the anointed apostles of anti-Communism in America. There were two reasons, I think, for this attitude. First, they deeply resented the fact that I would not go along with their extremes. The second reason is perhaps more controlling. Earlier in this section I pointed out the inexcusable attitude of some
officials and apologists who could see the danger of Communism abroad but were blind to the threat at home. Strangely enough, many of those who speak up most vigorously about the threat of Communism at home simply reverse the blind spot: they oppose programs designed to deal with the same threat abroad. Because I have consistently supported what some of them consider to be “liberal” international policies—like foreign aid, reciprocal trade, collective security pacts, and adequate appropriations for our information and foreign service programs—the credentials I had gained as an anti-Communist because of my work in the Hiss case became somewhat tarnished with a tinge of “pink!”