Many historians date the (Second) Red Scare to 75 years ago this year. On Feb. 9, 1950, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy made his first anti-communist speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, now often known as the “Enemies From Within” speech. Days before, on Jan. 26, Rep. Richard M. Nixon had reported to the House on “The Hiss Case: A Lesson for the American People.” This “Second Red Scare,” or “McCarthyism,” lasted the decade.
Between then and now, two big revelations for historians came out, both in the mid-1990s. The first set came with the release of the Venona Project by the congressional Commission on Government Secrecy, which made public communications intercepted by American intelligence from decades prior. The second set came from an all too brief opening of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, or RGASPI, to Western historians by the pre-Putin Russian Federation.
What we have learned with the benefits of time and these declassified archives, at the highest level, is a lesson in synthesis. One, McCarthy’s methods of investigation and smearing really were as illiberal as remembered in popular culture. Two, there really were Reds to fear, as Venona and RGASPI documents confirm — far less than the Right asserted, far more than the Left claimed. One does not have to become a fan or apologist of McCarthy to acknowledge that there were in fact some Communist-sympathizing Americans acting as Soviet agents inside the U.S. government in the middle of the 20th century. One need only be aware of the documented historical record.
Historical facts about the Red Scare remain imperfect and incomplete (as should be, if any spies involved are doing their job). But new facts can and do pop up. As the grandson of Whittaker Chambers — who accused Alger Hiss, a mid-level State Department official, of being a Soviet spy, sparking a spectacular series of trials and hearings that gripped the country for years — I look forward to each new book. That is, I await them eagerly but trepidatiously. Are there new revelations shared? Are there new insights on offer?
In the preface of the latest such volume, Red Scare, author Clay Risen declares that the (Second) Red Scare “didn’t end for everyone.” That’s a tantalizing hook. What does he mean? “I leave it up to the reader.”
Red Scare is decidedly biased. Risen is for Roosevelt and the New Deal. He is against the 1948 Progressive Party and its “moon-eyed” presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace. He is against Truman, whose poorly executed loyalty program sets the stage for the Second Red Scare. He lumps Eisenhower with Truman as “not distinct and separate.” That’s the lay of the land. None of this should prove a deal-breaker for readers, as opinionated and politically partisan historians can be excellent, so long as they present compelling facts.
What undermines this book, however, is a preference for moral narrative over facts. This is a book about good guys and bad guys, not what happened in the past. This preference makes itself known even in the prose style itself, which employs a pervasive “they” of bad guys (which assumes “we” readers are the good guys).
Admittedly, good guys and bad guys in dramatic moments make for fun history reading. And this book is fun to read and presented in stylish prose. Unfortunately, as history rather than entertainment, Risen’s characterizations verge on the cartoonish. In lieu of factual descriptions, readers often find scenes that read like scripts for the old CBS show You Are There. The book rounds up the usual suspects — unsurprisingly, often members of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, or HUAC, and the FBI. Here is how Risen introduces one famous HUAC member: “Nobody besides his family much liked Richard Nixon, not then, not before, not ever. He had been born and raised with the small-town comer’s resentment of the better off. He carried a chip large enough for everyone.”
Out of 28 chapters, three concern the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers Case. The literature on this historical episode is sadly divided into two sides: pro-Hiss or pro-Chambers. These sides generally code for pro-Democrat or pro-Republican, an ever-growing shame, since facts in this recent history do keep accumulating.
Worse than merely regurgitating pro-Hiss literature, Red Scare can be misleading. For instance, Risen claims that at the end of Hiss’s second trial, a guilty verdict for Hiss was a “foregone conclusion” because of the “tide of anti-Communism.” Here, Risen seems to have confused the various venues involved in the Hiss case — what Time magazine called a “three-ring circus” in 1948. Washington is where the case started with HUAC in August. Baltimore is where Hiss sued Chambers for libel in October. New York is where the Justice Department indicted Hiss for perjury in December. In Washington, HUAC often treated witnesses as “guilty,” but in New York, two courts tried Hiss for perjury. The first resulted in a hung jury, 8-4 voting guilty. The second voted unanimously guilty. Hiss spent the rest of his life retrying the case “in the court of public opinion” (also the title of his first book in 1957). Tellingly, Risen lists no book by Hiss in the bibliography — a gross omission.
Risen doesn’t question his primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. In fact, he asks no questions. Here is a simple question he missed. When the Hiss case started, Chambers did not name Hiss. He named a whole cast of characters in a “Ware Group” spy ring, for whom Chambers served as a courier. Other Ware Group members at first got as much or more press than Hiss. Why was Hiss eventually singled out among the so-called group? Because, after Chambers’s testimony, Hiss pushed his way to the front of the hearing line and got onto HUAC’s stand just two days later — a near-Olympic feat, which Risen fails to question. Ask no new questions, get no new answers.
Worse than his omissions, Risen commits factual errors, large and small. Here is one big one: Regarding Chambers’s early testimony, Risen states, “Nor did he even once hint at espionage.” Quite the opposite is true. On day one, Chambers’s testimony included three important, back-to-back statements about the Ware Group. “The purpose of this group at that time was not primarily espionage. Its original purpose was the Communist infiltration of the American government. But espionage was certainly one of its eventual objectives.” Risen even quotes the first two sentences but drops the third. This is sloppy or intentionally misleading.
At times, Risen sprinkles in misleading speculation. A key part of the conclusion of this historical episode concerned the “Pumpkin Papers” (forebear of the Pentagon Papers, Panama Papers, etc.), which were stolen secret documents that Chambers produced to defend himself in Hiss’s lawsuit in Baltimore, before Hiss’s federal indictment in New York. Later, the Pumpkin Papers helped convict Hiss during his trials in New York. Risen asserts that Chambers kept the Pumpkin Papers “in his back pocket” as a “last card” when testifying. Did Risen not read Hiss case books? When he defected (1938), Chambers had kept the Pumpkin Papers (microfilm and documents) stashed away but ready to pull out against the Soviets. The Soviets were already liquidating defectors: Soon they would kill Chambers’s friend Walter Krivitsky (1940) and Leon Trotsky (1941). A decade later, Chambers had no “back pocket” or “last card” because he had no plan to testify. HUAC had to subpoena him, without which there would probably have been no Hiss case. Risen is free to disbelieve Chambers about his stated motivations and his telling of the chain of events, but as a historian, he needs to mention facts more clearly.
It’s a shame that this book is bad in the ways it is, which is the same way many books about this historical episode are. Political partisanship has polluted the way we remember the Red Scares for decades. Today, with records from Venona and RGASPI releases to confirm facts that were in so much more dispute in the ’50s, there is no excuse for books like this.
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David Chambers is an independent historian of Soviet espionage and the Hiss case (1948-1950), in which his grandfather Whittaker Chambers was a major participant. He runs WhittakerChambers.org.