Editing Alger Hiss (section)

===Soviet archives===

After the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] in 1991, Alger Hiss petitioned General [[Dmitri Volkogonov|Dmitry Antonovich Volkogonov]], who had become Russian president [[Boris Yeltsin]]'s military advisor and the overseer of all the Soviet intelligence archives, to request the release of any Soviet files relevant to his case. Both former President Nixon and the director of his presidential library, [[John H. Taylor (pastor)|John H. Taylor]], wrote similar letters, though their full contents are not yet publicly available.

Russian archivists responded by reviewing their files, and in late 1992 reported back that they had found no evidence Hiss ever engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union nor that he was a member of the Communist Party. Volkogonov subsequently stated he spent only two days on the search and had mainly relied on the word of [[KGB]] archivists. "What I saw gave me no basis to claim a full clarification," he said. Referring to Hiss's lawyer, he added, "John Lowenthal pushed me to say things of which I was not fully convinced."<ref name = SamT>
{{Cite news
  | last = Tanenhaus
  | first = Sam
  | title = Hiss: guilty as charged
  | work = Commentary
  | volume = V. 95
  |date=April 1993}}</ref> General-Lieutenant Vitaly Pavlov, who ran Soviet intelligence work in North America in the late 1930s and early 1940s for the NKVD said that Hiss never worked for the USSR as one of his agents.<ref name= Kobyakov>{{cite journal
  | last = Kobyakov
  | first = Julius N.
  | title = Lowenthal and Alger Hiss
  | journal = H-Diplo
  | publisher = Humanities and Social Services Net
  | date = October 10, 2003
  | url = http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=b&msg=xPNOEFLppoOgkkWbtl1dQw&user=&pw=
  | access-date = October 25, 2007
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130709080910/http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=b&msg=xPNOEFLppoOgkkWbtl1dQw&user=&pw=
  | archive-date = July 9, 2013
  | url-status = dead
  }}; and:<br>
{{cite journal
  | last = Kobyakov
  | first = Julius N.
  | title = Alger Hiss
  | journal = H-Diplo
  | publisher = Humanities and Social Services Net
  | date = October 16, 2003
  | url = http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=c&msg=/%2bj6%2bNHkqbEMRV0ioyVHUQ&user=&pw=
  | access-date = October 25, 2007
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130709083601/http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=c&msg=%2F%2Bj6%2BNHkqbEMRV0ioyVHUQ&user=&pw=
  | archive-date = July 9, 2013
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref>

In 2003, retired Russian intelligence official General Julius Kobyakov disclosed that it was he who had actually searched the files for Volkogonov. Kobyakov stated that Hiss did not have a relationship with SVR predecessor organizations,<ref name= Kobyakov/> although Hiss was accused of being with the [[GRU (Soviet Union)|GRU]], a military intelligence organization separate from SVR predecessors. In 2007, [[Svetlana Chervonnaya (political historian)|Svetlana Chervonnaya]], a Russian researcher who had been studying Soviet archives since the early 1990s, argued that based on documents she reviewed, Hiss was not implicated in spying.<ref>
{{Cite news
| last = Pyle
| first = Richard
| title = Researcher adds to Alger Hiss debate
| agency = Associated Press
| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040402644.html
| date = April 5, 2007
| newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref> In May 2009, at a conference hosted by the [[Wilson Center]], Mark Kramer, director of [[Cold War Studies at Harvard University]] at the [[John F. Kennedy School of Government]], stated that he did not "trust a word [Kobyakov] says,"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20110713155035/http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ondemand/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.play&mediaid=1CF9FE54-ABA6-DE06-59C4D3B1753CDA24 The Vassiliev Notebooks and Soviet Intelligence Operations in the U.S] video transcript of day 1, at 2:24:42 ''Wilson Center On Demand'' May 20, 2009</ref> At the same conference, historian [[Ronald Radosh]] reported that while researching the papers of [[Kliment Voroshilov|Marshal Voroshilov]] in Moscow, he and [[Mary R. Habeck|Mary Habeck]] had encountered two [[Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye|GRU]] (Soviet military intelligence) files referring to Alger Hiss as "our agent."<ref>[http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ondemand/index.cfm?fuseaction=Media.play&mediaid=1CFF2944-B310-AC18-3101C1CCB31D8A1F The Vassiliev Notebooks and Soviet Intelligence Operations in the U.S] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606034635/http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ondemand/index.cfm?fuseaction=Media.play&mediaid=1CFF2944-B310-AC18-3101C1CCB31D8A1F |date=June 6, 2011 }} video transcript of day 2, Part I at 1:43:10 ''[[Wilson Center]] On Demand'' May 21, 2009</ref>

In 2009, Haynes, Klehr, and [[Alexander Vassiliev]] published ''Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America'', based on KGB documents reportedly hand-copied by Vassiliev, a former KGB agent, during the 1990s. The authors attempted to show definitively that Alger Hiss had indeed been a Soviet spy and argue that KGB documents prove not only that Hiss was the elusive ALES, but that he also went by the codenames "Jurist" and "Leonard" while working for the GRU. Some documentation brought back by Vassiliev also refers to Hiss by his actual name, leaving no room, in the authors' opinion, for doubt about his guilt. Calling this the "massive weight of accumulated evidence," Haynes and Klehr conclude, "to serious students of history continued claims for Hiss's innocence are akin to a terminal case of ideological blindness."<ref name = HaynesKlehr>{{Cite book
| publisher = Yale University Press
| isbn = 978-0-300-16438-1
| last = Haynes
| first = John Earl
| author2 = Harvey Klehr
| author3 = Alexander Vassiliev
| title = Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America
| year = 2010
| url-access = registration
| url = https://archive.org/details/spiesrisefallofk00john
}}</ref> In a review published in the ''[[Journal of Cold War Studies]]'', military historian Eduard Mark heartily concurred, stating that the documents "conclusively show that Hiss was, as Whittaker Chambers charged more than six decades ago, an agent of Soviet military intelligence (GRU) in the 1930s."<ref>"In Re Alger Hiss: A Final Verdict from the Archives of the KGB," in ''[[Journal of Cold War Studies]]'' (Summer 2009): 11:No. 3: 26–67.</ref> ''[[Newsweek]]'' magazine reported that [[Civil Rights Movement]] historian [[David Garrow]] also concluded that, in his opinion, ''Spies'' "provides irrefutable confirmation of [Hiss's] guilt."<ref>David J. Garrow [http://www.newsweek.com/2009/05/15/from-russia-with-love.html "From Russia, With Love"] ''[[Newsweek]]'' May 16, 2009</ref>

Other historians, such as [[D. D. Guttenplan]], Jeff Kisseloff, and [[Amy Knight]], assert that ''Spies''{{'}} conclusions were not borne out by the evidence and accused its authors of engaging in "shoddy" research.<ref>Guttenplan, D. D., ''Red Harvest: The KGB in America'', ''The Nation'', May 25, 2009. [http://www.thenation.com/article/red-harvest-kgb-america?page=full]</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Kisseloff |first=Jeff |url=http://algerhiss.com/media/books/reviews/jeff-kisseloff-2009-ii/ |title=Kisseloff, Jeff, "'Spies': Fact or Fiction?," ''The Alger Hiss Story'' (2009) |publisher=Homepages.nyu.edu |access-date=February 9, 2013}}</ref><ref>[http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/Subscriber_Archive/History_Archive/article6770809.ece Amy Knight, "Leonard?," ''Times Literary Supplement'' (June 26, 2009).]{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} Haynes responded to Knight on his [http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page73.html website].</ref> Guttenplan stresses that Haynes and Klehr never saw and cannot even prove the existence of the documents that supposedly convict Hiss and others of espionage, but rather relied exclusively on handwritten notebooks authored by Vassiliev during the time he was given access to the Soviet archives in the 1990s while he collaborated with Weinstein. According to Guttenplan, Vassiliev could never explain how he managed, despite being required to leave his files and notebooks in a safe at the KGB press office at the end of each day, to smuggle out the notebooks with his extensive transcriptions of documents.<ref name="Guttenplan, Red Harvest.">Guttenplan, ''Red Harvest''.</ref> Haynes and Klehr respond that the material was examined by historians, archivists, and intelligence professionals who unanimously agreed that the material was genuine.<ref name="johnearlhaynes.org">[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page73.html Comment on Amy Knight's review of Spies in the Times Literary Supplement ] by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr</ref>

Guttenplan also suggested, moreover, that Vassiliev might have omitted relevant facts and selectively replaced cover names with his own notion of the real names of various persons.<ref name="Guttenplan, Red Harvest."/> According to Guttenplan, Boris Labusov, a press officer of the SVR, the successor to the KGB, has stated that Vassiliev could not in the course of his research have possibly "met the name of Alger Hiss in the context of some cooperation with some special services of the Soviet Union."<ref name="Guttenplan, Red Harvest."/> Guttenplan also points out that Vasiliev admitted under oath in 2003 that he'd never seen a single document linking Hiss with the cover name "Ales."<ref name="Guttenplan, Red Harvest."/> Haynes and Klehr also cite a 1950 memo indicating that a GRU agent, described as a senior State Department official, had recently been convicted in an American court. "The only senior American diplomat convicted of an espionage-related crime in 1950 was Alger Hiss."<ref name="johnearlhaynes.org"/>

Historian Jeff Kisseloff questions Haynes and Klehr's conclusion that Vassiliev's notes support Hede Massing's story about talking to Hiss at a party in 1935 about recruiting their mutual friend and host Noel Field into the communist underground. According to Kisseloff, "all that the files Vassiliev saw really indicate is that she was telling yet another version of her story in the 1930s. Haynes and Klehr never consider that, as an agent in Washington, DC, who was having little success in the tasks assigned to her, she may have felt pressure back then to make up a few triumphs to reassure her superiors."<ref>Kisseloff, "Spies: Fact or Fiction" (2009).</ref> Kisseloff also disputes Haynes and Klehr's linking of Hiss with former Treasury Department official [[Harold Glasser]], who they allege was a Soviet agent.<ref>According to Kisseloff, "In the handwritten Glasser autobiography [copied by Vassiliev] ... that Haynes and Klehr refer to in "Spies," Glasser says, as they report, that he met with a 'Karl' [Chambers] on a regular basis through 1939.... But on December 31, 1948, Chambers told the FBI that he and Glasser had only met 'on two or three occasions'. Chambers also told the Bureau that 'Glasser had not been part of his apparatus and he had no knowledge of his underground activities.' (Chambers's comments didn't help Elizabeth Bentley's credibility either, as the FBI report noted the discrepancy between his comments and what Bentley had told them: that Glasser had been stolen from the Perlo group by Alger Hiss.)" See Kisseloff (2009.)</ref> Finally, Kisseloff states that some of the evidence compiled by Haynes and Klehr actually tends to exonerate rather than convict Hiss. For example, their book cites a KGB report from 1938 in which Iskhak Akhmerov, New York station chief, writes, "I don't know for sure who Hiss is connected with."<ref>"Kisseloff (2009).</ref> Haynes and Klehr also claim that Hiss was the agent who used the cover name "Doctor." According to some Soviet sources, "Doctor" was a middle-aged Bessarabian Jew who was educated in Vienna.<ref>Kisseloff (2009).</ref>

Other historians {{failed verification|date=August 2013}} felt that Haynes and Klehr's information was suspect because their publisher, [[Crown Publishing Group|Crown]] (a division of [[Random House]]), obtained temporary and limited access to KGB files through a payment of money (amount unspecified) to a pension fund for retired KGB agents, of whom Vassiliev was one, as was KGB archivist Volkogonov.<ref>"Just a year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the intelligence services responded to an offer from Crown Publishers, which offered a substantial payment to a pension fund for its retired officers in return for cooperation on a series of books on Soviet intelligence. As part of the agreement the SVR gave Alexander Vassiliev permission to examine archival records for a book project that teamed a Russian (Vassiliev) and an American (Allen Weinstein) for a book on Soviet espionage in the 1930s and 40s," Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev (2009), p. xxii.</ref> Other historians had not been permitted to verify Vassiliev's data. In 2002, Vassiliev sued John Lowenthal for libel in a British court of law for publishing a journal article questioning his conclusions. Vassiliev lost the case before a jury and was further reprimanded by ''[[The Times]]'' for trying to exert a "chilling effect" on scholarship by resorting to the law courts.<ref>Judge Eady also issued a [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthalruling.html separate opinion] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101126003201/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthalruling.html |date=November 26, 2010 }} in which he stated that the book by Haynes, et al., by asserting that the Hiss case was definitively "settled," had in effect "thrown down a gauntlet" to any would-be defender of Hiss; and that family, friends, or any other defender of Hiss should not be penalized for "picking up that gauntlet."</ref> Vassiliev has since also unsuccessfully sued [[Amazon (company)|Amazon]] for publishing a customer review critical of his work.<ref>Charles Arthur, "Former KGB Agent Sues Amazon Over Book Review" [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/former-kgb-agent-sues-amazon-over-book-review-537930.html ''The Independent'', UK (May 3, 2003)]{{dead link|date=August 2021|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}.</ref>

In 1978, Victor Navasky interviewed six people Weinstein had quoted in his book ''Perjury'', who all claimed to have been misquoted by Weinstein.<ref>[http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/5062.html Jon Wiener, "Allen Weinstein: A Historian With a History," ''Los Angeles Times''], May 2, 2004, reprinted in the HNN.</ref> One, Sam Krieger, won a cash payment from Weinstein, who issued an apology and promised to correct future editions of his book and to release his interview transcripts, which he subsequently failed to do.<ref>See [https://books.google.com/books?id=8uACAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA61 "Costly Error for Hiss Historian: Weinstein Pays for Mistake," ''New York Magazine'' (May 21, 1979), 61]. For more on Weinstein, see also Jon Wiener, "Alger Hiss, the Archives, and Allen Weinstein," pp. 31–57, Chapter Two, in ''Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower'' (New York: New Press, 2004, {{ISBN|978-1565848849}} (Paperback 2007).</ref>