A Generation on Trial: U.S.A. v. Alger Hiss

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Alistair Cooke, A Generation on Trial: USA v Alger Hiss

This was a surprising and serendipitous discovery. I remember Alistair Cooke as an older man with shockingly white hair who was famous for “Alistair Cooke's America.” It was quite a surprise to find that this man who I knew for his homage to his adopted country crossed paths with the Alger Hiss perjury trial as a younger man.

This book is worth reading as a stylish and often very humorous account by an outsider of the perplexing and byzantine kabuki theater of American trials. Cooke's writing is erudite and educated and witty; it is quite refreshing in this era which looks at erudition, education and wit with suspicion. I have a good vocabulary, but I learned words like “talesmen” (meaning ‘jury alternate” although Cooke uses it to mean potential jury member) and “acromegalic” (meaning “abnormal growth of the hands, feet, and face”) and “clamantly” (meaning “forcing itself urgently on the attention.”) Cooke constantly strikes off some great sentences, such as “Then Mr. Murphy shook down his ace” and ‘Literalness was Mr. Murphy's favorite hunting ground, and patience his most dependable rack” and “After nearly two hours the apostles were chosen” and:

“Either incapable of anger at such absurdities, or disdaining to show it, Hiss sat with his fingers locked and his elbows on the arms of the chair, and to each of Mr. Stryker's roaring strophes gave out the terse antistrophe: “Of course not,” “Certainly not,” “There certainly is not.””

Cooke's knowledge of the Hiss case is purely from his participation as an observer at the trial and other court proceedings. He explains:

“This is not, then, a “dope” book. There is nothing here for anyone who wants to learn the inner life of Hiss and Chambers or anything at all about them that was not available in the proceedings of both Trials. I am not qualified to write such a book, since I knew and know none of the principals in the case. It struck me early on, in fact, that this disqualification—which so far as I can gather is unique among the populations of Washington and New York City—might be turned to good account if it could be guarded.”

Ultimately, this is a fair and even-handed book. Allen Weinstein in Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case identifies Cooke's book as the “notable exception” to the “attitude of partisan exhortation that has characterized almost every book written on the case.” Cooke's book starts out almost as an apologia for Hiss by explaining to the reader how things were different in the 1930s (than when the book was written in 1950) and many people felt that Communism was the only means of fighting fascism. This explanation is salutary in a sense, since it is useful to put historic events in context - according to Robert Louis Wilkens' “Every act of historical understanding is an act of empathy.” However, I found the argument unpersuasive and ad hoc – in what world is espionage and betrayal of one's own country justified by such circumstances? Likewise, this argument ignores the historical context that Communism was every bit as evil as fascism.

However, my sense was that by the end of the book, Cooke had largely conceded that Hiss was guilty. Cooke never comes out and says so, but it seems that by the end, there are too many problems with the various claims that Hiss was making, including those documents that Chambers had pulled out of his history as a spy handler. Added to that was the improbable story that Hiss was telling about an annoying boorish deadbeat, who he lent money to, gave a car to, and let into his apartment. By the time that the evidence was in, the assumptions that had to be made to support the theory of Hiss's innocence had reached monstrous proportions. Thus, on the motion for a new trial, the judge destroyed the defense theory that Chambers had fabricated a typewriter in three months that the defense team's experts had taken 18 months to fabricate:

“Mr. Lane was making quick intakes of breath to come in and reassure the judge, but Judge Goddard's voice broke in above him: “Is there any proof?”—he gave an insistent emphasis to the word “any”—“Is there any proof anywhere that Chambers had the skill, the tools, the resources?” The judge's eyebrows shot up and he bent expectantly over the bench as he appealed again: “Is there any?” Mr. Chester Lane looked up and down: “There is none whatsoever, your Honor.”

But the journey to Cooke's agnostic conclusion is filled with the confusion of trial testimony, where witnesses prevaricate and shade the truth in the interest of a narrative. Following the testimony about when the Hisses gave their typewriter to the Catletts and what the Catletts did with the typewriter, and when, is confusing in the extreme. Ultimately, the issue becomes a “jump ball” which could go either way. Of course, it did not help – as Weinstein points out – that Mike Catlett was lying his ass off on behalf of Alger Hiss. Cooke treats Mike Catlett's testimony as a comedic interlude – with definite racist overtones. Mike Catlett becomes a kind of “step'n'fetchit” character. Cooke treats Catlett as a confused and shiftless specimen (“White folks sure ask the darndest questions.”) Cooke did not have access to the FBI and Hiss defense attorneys' files, which showed that Catlett was lying for Hiss. Weinstein's inside information clears up a lot of the conundrums that appear in this book, but I think it may be better to read this book first in order to become invested in the answers that are provided in the Weinstein book.

After Whittaker Chamber's Witness (Cold War Classics), this is an excellent next step in learning about the Hiss case and Communism during the 1930s and 1940s.