The New York Review of Books

To the Editors:

When Allen Weinstein and I debated the issues in the Hiss case before 1,000 members of the Organization of American Historians in St. Louis, on April 8, Weinstein publicly apologized for his charges that I had been sent as Hiss’s representative and that Hiss and I had jointly filed suit seeking access to the FBI files in the case. The implication behind these untrue allegations, and the innuendo intended by Weinstein, was that I (and others who have criticized the evidence he cites in concluding that Hiss was guilty) am biased and unwilling to evaluate evidence fairly.

I accepted Weinstein’s apology in St. Louis. However, in the most recent issue of this journal [NYR, May 27] he repeats the same allegations in his response to the letter of Athan Theoharis. He characterizes me as one of “Hiss’s supporters” and claims that I have been “associated with Hiss’s recent legal efforts to secure FBI files.” This response was obviously written after the St. Louis meeting at which he apologized, since he refers to it in his response.

To clarify matters, my research on the Hiss case began as an outgrowth of my doctoral dissertation on the early Cold War period, I interviewed several of those on the other side of the case before I met Hiss, my Freedom of Information Act suit was filed independently in federal court in Boston (Mr. Hiss’s suit is filed in New York), and I have never expressed any conclusive opinion on the question of guilt or innocence in the case. Professor Weinstein knows all of this. I can only conclude that his repetition of untrue charges and innuendoes is deliberate. Having received one useless apology (one I think is also due all of Weinstein’s critics) I do not seek another. But I think your readers should know of this.

Peter H. Irons

Somerville, Massachusetts

Allen Weinstein replies:

Last year, I invited Alger Hiss to participate in a panel discussion at the Organization of American Historians meeting in April 1976, when I intended to read a paper on the case. Hiss declined, naming as his representative John Chabot Smith, whose book I reviewed in the April 1 issue of The New York Review. Because of conflicting publisher’s commitments, Mr. Smith could not appear and designated Peter Irons as his representative. I regret that I called Mr. Irons Alger Hiss’s personal representative rather than describing him, more accurately, as the surrogate for Mr. Smith (who has recently appeared with Hiss in a variety of news conferences, interviews, and television shows promoting his book).

Mr. Irons is technically correct about another point, his complaint that I made an “untrue allegation” that he “had jointly filed suit [with Hiss] seeking access to the FBI files in the case.” Both Irons and (in the letter that follows) Stephen Salant are accurate in so far as they insist that their respective lawsuits for FBI files were not “jointly filed” with Hiss’s suit. But, as I pointed out in my reply in the New Republic (May 22, 1976) to earlier letters by Irons and Salant, both “last year filed lawsuits in tandem with Hiss’s own suit for FBI files and participated in a joint press conference with Hiss last year announcing their suit.” Moreover, according to information I had received from two reliable sources on the matter—Peter Irons himself and Alger Hiss—Irons has been involved for some time in Hiss’s efforts to obtain additional evidence about a former private detective whom both men suspect either of having helped to frame Hiss or of having known about such a plot. Irons, for example—according to Alger Hiss—helped to formulate questions to be put to the private detective.

I do not see why Irons wishes to deny (as his letter would indicate) that he has been “associated with Hiss’s recent legal efforts to secure FBI files.” Although Irons insists that his own lawsuit—”filed independently in federal court in Boston (Mr. Hiss’s suit is filed in New York)”—had no relation to the latter suit, the press release issued by Hiss’s attorneys, the National Emergency Civil Liberties Foundation, on June 5, 1975, states:

Joining Mr. Hiss in the law suit…is William A. Reuben, a New York City author who has written books on the Hiss case and on Richard Nixon….

A companion suit, Peter Irons v. Edward H. Levi, also seeks information from the files of the Justice Department regarding the Hiss case. The plaintiff in that action, Dr. Peter Irons, is an instructor of political science at the University of Massachusetts….

Both the Hiss-Reuben and Irons law suits are being instituted under the auspices of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Foundation.

Representing plaintiffs Hiss and Reuben is the New York law firm of Rabinowitz, Boudin & Standard. Professor David Rosenberg of Harvard Law School is the attorney for Dr. Irons.

An independent action, initiated by Stephen W. Salant, was also filed this morning in Federal Court in Washington, DC….¹

That same day, June 5, 1975, according to The New York Times, “Mr. Hiss and his associates” held a joint press conference at the offices of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Foundation. “Mr. Hiss…said that it was his understanding of the law that to obtain a review of his case, indication of material fraud would have to be produced. He left little doubt that this was what was being sought.”

Irons states that he has “never expressed any conclusive opinion on the question of guilt or innocence in the case.” Neither have I; nor have I questioned either the good faith or the seriousness of my critics, whether apparently linked to the Hiss defense or not. Perhaps my critics might be willing in future to avoid the acrimony and carelessness that have characterized some of their recent writing in response to my own work.²

To the Editors:

In my letter [NYR, May 27] concerning Professor Weinstein’s article [NYR, April 1] on the Hiss case, I sought to present additional evidence which in my view undermines his principal accusations against Alger Hiss. After raising unwarranted questions about my independence, Professor Weinstein carefully obscured the evidence I presented by seizing on irrelevant detail, erroneously challenging my accuracy, and appearing to deny the very existence of documents from which I quoted. To reduce the likelihood of a recurrence of such a response, I am enclosing a copy of each document cited in this letter for the benefit of the editors of The New York Review.

Before reconsidering his accusations against Mr. Hiss, I wish to correct a mistaken impression created by Professor Weinstein concerning my independence. Taking an approach which unfortunately is becoming his trademark, Professor Weinstein begins his response to me by questioning the accuracy of my own claim to being an independent researcher who, among others, sued for access to the Pumpkin microfilms. Elsewhere [New Republic, May 15] he has gone so far as to characterize a scholar who discussed his work unfavorably at recent professional meetings, Peter Irons, as “a co-plaintiff with Alger Hiss and two others in a suit coordinated by lawyers for Hiss”—one of those two others presumably being me. Professor Weinstein is simply mistaken in believing that either Dr. Irons or myself is a co-plaintiff with Mr. Hiss. Last year, I filed an independent law suit in Washington, DC through my own attorney. Dr. Irons filed a separate suit through his own attorney in Boston. Ironically, it is presumably our participation in a press conference along with Mr. Hiss—a conference where each plaintiff clarified his separate reasons for filing a separate suit for the same microfilm evidence—which has confused Professor Weinstein. Contrary to Professor Weinstein’s suggestions, there exist no monolithic “suit coordinated by lawyers for Hiss.” In “correcting” my characterization of myself as an independent, Professor Weinstein presumably sought to depict me as a “Hiss partisan” who lacks “balanced” judgment. Such suggestions are unacceptable substitutes for logical, factual responses to the many questions which have been raised concerning his conclusions.

The Handwritten Note

In his original article, Professor Weinstein asserted that Mr. Hiss transcribed an incoming State Department cable from Moscow which “had nothing to do with international economic questions with which Mr. Hiss was concerned”; that the cable got back to Soviet Military Intelligence; and that the Rubens couple described in the cable was presumably subsequently executed by the Soviets.

Professor Weinstein’s “convincing evidence” that the information in the cable got back to Soviet Military Intelligence turns out to be a story to that effect by Chambers—whose veracity should presumably be as much open to question as that of Mr. Hiss. His speculation that Mrs. Rubens was executed is at variance with stories in The New York Times: “Mrs. Rubens Takes Soviet Citizenship—American Involved in Passport Fraud Settles in Ukraine” [November 17, 1939]. But most important, Professor Weinstein has failed—despite my query—to provide any basis for his bold accusation that Mr. Hiss “had no legitimate reason for transcribing the cable in question or even concerning himself with it.”

Mr. Hiss, it should be recalled, has always maintained that he concerned himself with the cable because it was his responsibility to brief his superior Mr. Sayre orally on incoming cables at their office sessions and working lunches. Mr. Hiss claimed he wrote the notes, which Chambers somehow obtained, for his own use in refreshing his memory when briefing Mr. Sayre. Now, it is a fact that the cable in question was routed to Mr. Sayre’s office—although Professor Weinstein did not mention this point in his original article. And it was Mr. Sayre’s testimony at the second trial—also omitted in Professor Weinstein’s accounts—that one of Mr. Hiss’s responsibilities was to keep Mr. Sayre current, sometimes by oral briefings, on cable traffic incoming to the State Department. As Mr. Sayre testified:

[Mr. Sayre:] I used Mr. Hiss as my righthand man to help relieve me of the load. Now, part of the load was familiarizing myself with the contents of hundreds of cables which kept pouring in from all over the world, cables bearing on all these various matters, great armfuls of them would come in. I could not possibly read every word of every cable. It was absolutely necessary for me to have someone helping to comb through and bring the important and significant ones to my attention, and perhaps summarize orally what this cable contains, what that cable contains; so that, that again was part of his work. [Tr. 1479, emphasis added]

As Assistant Secretary of State, it was Mr. Sayre’s responsibility to keep abreast of cables on a wide variety of subjects. In his testimony, he noted that “it was the practice in the State Department to pass copies of cables, even though in the military or political field, to pass copies to the Assistant Secretaries so that they would have a background knowledge” (Tr. 1481).