Talk:Alger Hiss/Archive 8

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Filing Arbitration

I filed a request for arbitration.

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Alger_Hiss

CJK (talk) 13:28, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK: Ok, what are we supposed to do with this? Doesn't appear to be any place to comment.

Am I to assume you decline to present your base of knowledge for the Hiss affair? I will assume your knowledge is solely based on reading "Spies" Chapter 1. DEddy (talk) 15:44, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

To respond, you'll need to add a new section 'Statement from DEddy'. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. I'd try to keep it brief, and on topic. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:14, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Disputes about what content should be in articles, or whether editors are accurately reading content policies is beyond the jurisdiction of arbitration. TFD (talk) 21:57, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I have looked over the "request for arbitration" guidelines and I noticed that it says, "If you have taken 'all other reasonable steps to resolve the dispute, and the dispute is not over the content of an article, you can request arbitration."

1) Editor CJK has been asked to provide a reference for his claims, a reasonable step, but has not yet made a move in that direction. 2) This dispute IS over the content of the article and therefore does not meet the requirements for arbitration.

I don't know how to post this statement on the arbitration page. I'll keep trying to find out. In the meantime the above is my statement.173.52.246.85 (talk) 22:30, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I have posted your comments and you can see an edit them by clicking here. I agree with your comments and expect that the request will be dismissed soon. TFD (talk) 23:06, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

A simple and direct question for CJK

(I'd appreciate it if other contributors didn't sidetrack this, and instead allowed CJK to give the simple and direct answers that seem to be required)

Is it still your position that the article should contain the following statements (as proposed in the RfC)?

(1) "There is a scholarly consensus of Hiss's guilt."
(2) "Notes from the Soviet archives have confirmed his guilt."

If so, can you please list here the sources you intend to cite for each statement. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:20, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

As I repeatedly stated before, the source for (2) is Spies: the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (2009) by Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev.

I will discuss (1) after we resolve (2). There are plenty of sources supporting (1) (posted by multiple users) if you read through this entire page. But right now, my focus is on resolving (2) not (1).

CJK (talk) 22:50, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Um, no. We cannot possibly make any definitive statement to the effect that archives (or anything else) have confirmed Hiss's guilt if there is no academic consensus to the effect that he is guilty - that would constitute a gross violation of WP:NPOV policy. I once again ask you to provide the source you are proposing to cite for (1). This is a simple request, and I can see no reason whatsoever why a refusal to respond should be taken as anything but an admission that no such source exists. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:00, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

We cannot possibly make any definitive statement to the effect that archives (or anything else) have confirmed Hiss's guilt if there is no academic consensus to the effect that he is guilty

Um, no, that is simply your opinion. I don't want to confuse the issues. I am talking about the notes, not the consensus. Users Yopienso and Collect have already posted a number of sources confirming the consensus. There is a note already in the introduction that gives a number of sources for the consensus, including one that is explicitly pro-Hiss.

But I want to keep the focus on the notes, instead of getting distracted. If you think there isn't an academic consensus in favor of Hiss's guilt, why are you guys having such a hard time finding a legit source to critique the notes?

CJK (talk) 23:22, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

There is no 'opinion' involved in suggesting that we can't assert that Hiss is guilty if the sources don't agree that he is. Since you are refusing once again to give a straight answer to a simple question, I shall be raising your stonewalling at the arbitration case you have initiated. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:27, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Andy, the article already includes the following information that demonstrates a consensus:

Barron, James (2001-08-16). "Online, the Hiss Defense Doesn't Rest". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-08-29. See also:
"...the vast majority [sic] of modern American historians today and particularly those specializing in domestic Cold War accept Chambers’ overall version of events." Oshinsky, David (2007-04-05). "Transcript, Alger Hiss and History, Inaugural Conference" (PDF). New York University, Center for the United States and the Cold War.
"Yet the weight of historical evidence indicates that Hiss was ... a member of the communist underground and a Soviet spy." Elson, John (1996-11-25). "Gentleman and Spy?". Time.
"In the end, the publication of the Venona intercepts ... settled the matter — to all but the truest of believers." Stanley I. Kutler (2004-08-06). "Rethinking the Story of Alger Hiss". FindLaw. {{cite web}}: External link in |last= (help) "Most historians have conceded the argument to Weinstein. They have done so, however, not because the evidence against Hiss is clear and definitive, but because the evidence box — filled as it is with a morass of circumstantial detail — leaves them the easy option of finding him guilty of some form of espionage activity during his murky relationship with Chambers." Bird, Kai and Chervonnaya, Svetlana. "The Mystery of Ales". American Scholar. Summer 2007.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

There is no 'opinion' involved in suggesting that we can't assert that Hiss is guilty if the sources don't agree that he is.

Really? If I said "Obama went to Africa" citing a news report, would I have to first identify that there is a consensus among reporters that Obama went to Africa? It seems to me that the burden of demonstrating otherwise falls on those asserting he did not go to Africa.

CJK (talk) 23:39, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

You seem to be 'citing' a number of sources - none of which actually appear to state that there is an academic consensus. Barron is equivocal as you are well aware, Oshinsky makes no general statement but instead refers to a subset of academics, Elson appears not to be doing anything but expressing his own opinion on Hiss's guilt, Kutler more or less states that there isn't a consensus, and Findlaw merely states that 'most' historians think Hiss is guilty. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:50, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK, you need to show that sources say there is a consensus in order to say that there is a consensus. Wikipedia does not require sources to remove unsourced statements.

If you cited a book saying that Obama was a better/worse president than his predecessor you would need a source saying that there was consensus for that opinion in order to say there was consensus. Incidentally, of all places for Obama to visit, why did you choose Africa?

TFD (talk) 23:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

See, this is exactly what I am talking about when I say the issues shouldn't be mixed. You want to start a whole new debate about the "consensus" (which you arbitrarily define in a manner that will be impossible for anyone to fulfill) in order to avoid talking about the fact that you do not have the slightest justification for excluding the facts about the notes. The onus is not on me to show that there is a "consensus" to prove the notes. The onus is on you to show that these notes are not accepted by significant scholars as proof showing Hiss is guilty.

It is difficult to assume good faith when you insist on playing games like this.

CJK (talk) 00:08, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

it isn't me that is 'playing games' - it is you that are insisting we assert 'facts' for which there appears to be no consensus. We cannot state as a fact that Hiss is guilty if there isn't an academic consensus that this is indeed the case. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:17, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The fact that after two months neither you or anyone else can muster an adequate source that critiques the notes constitutes proof that the notes are uncontested by scholarship. You are shifting the burden of proof where it does not belong. Saying "al-Qaeda organized 9/11" on the September 11 attacks page does not require someone provide a source explicitly saying there is a "consensus" that al-Qaeda did it.

CJK (talk) 00:30, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

to CJK: The fact that after two months neither you or anyone else can muster an adequate source that critiques the notes constitutes proof that the notes are uncontested by scholarship

Could it be possible that just perhaps no one's been able or bothered to write & publish a book?

Vassilliev's notebooks didn't become available until May 2009, a mere 4 years ago. H&K had already written what 20? books on this topic. For them writing another book would be largely an exercise in cut &paste. When did H&K get their hands on the notebooks? When were the notebooks available to interested scholars? Could an interested scholar get funding to do yet another McCarthyism book?

The fact that so far there is no counter-balancing commentary says nothing. DEddy (talk) 00:39, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK, the notes are a distraction to this discussion. Your proving the notes are genuine is neither necessary nor sufficient to support there is an academic consensus. Instead you need a source that says there is an academic consensus that Hiss spied for the Soviet Union. It is not the purpose of this discussion page to argue the evidence in the case. TFD (talk) 00:41, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

A "mere" four years ago? You don't think four years is sufficient time for one single enterprising scholar to critique the notes? In addition, general knowledge that Vassiliev got incriminating evidence against Hiss from the archives has existed since 1999.

CJK, the notes are a distraction to this discussion.

No, TFD, the notes are the subject of this discussion.

CJK (talk) 00:53, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

No. The subject of this discussion is what material can be included in the article, based on the sources cited. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:55, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, and the source cited says that the notes show Hiss was a spy. I don't need to somehow prove a "consensus" to you first for that fact to exist.

CJK (talk) 00:58, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

We can (and should) cite the source for the author's opinion that Hiss was a spy. Nobody has suggested otherwise as far as I'm aware. What we cannot do is assert this as a fact, while there isn't an academic consensus that this is the case. Just how difficult is this for you to understand? Wikipedia is not a court of law. We do not determine guilt or innocence. We leave that to sources - and while they disagree, we do not claim that they don't. End of story... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:04, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Haynes and Klehr are reporting it as a fact, not an opinion. It is your opinion that it is an opinion. Why exactly do I have to satisfy you beyond doubt that there is a consensus in order to insert relevant facts that are undisputed by legit scholarship?

CJK (talk) 01:13, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

So everyone who asserts that Hiss is guilty is stating a 'fact', while everyone who doubts it is stating an 'opinion'? Utter nonsense... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:43, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I am confident in our scholarship here: https://files.nyu.edu/th15/public/spies2.htmlJeffisme (talk) 05:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)Jeffisme

What is "nonsense" is that I have to find a source saying the exact word "consensus" before you agree to accept the evidence.

And what's ironic is that I did give you a source saying "consensus" and you arbitrarily rejected it as "equivocal". Proving that nothing would satisfy you on this.

CJK (talk) 13:29, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Utter bullshit: "Bucking the trend of scholarship on the Hiss case in the 1990's -- a growing consensus that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent -- the new site, homepages.nyu.edu/~th15, rises to his defense". "A growing consensus" - it cannot be complete and yet still growing. [1] "Most likely" - not definite. The statement cannot possibly used as a source for a statement that the academic consensus is that Hiss is guilty. This has been repeatedly pointed out to you, but still you insist on citing it as if it stated what you claim. It doesn't. It can't. It never will. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:37, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess you just read English differently than I do. Because "growing consensus" to me means there is a consensus in existence that is growing.

CJK (talk) 17:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I can read English perfectly well. And unlike you, I understand that 'most likely' doesn't mean 'definitely'. Given you inability to comprehend even the faintest possibility that the world doesn't exist solely in the realms of black and white, I see no point in discussing this further. If a claim that there is an academic consensus regarding Hiss's guilt is added to the article, based on this source, I shall delete it as unsupported by the source provided. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:46, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay. Then the consensus is that he is "most likely" guilty. Happy?

CJK (talk) 18:51, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

We already quote Barron prominently in the lede for his opinion on the matter. I see no particular reason to alter that. I am glad that you have accepted that there is no absolute academic consensus regarding Hiss's guilt however - am I right in assuming that you will therefore no longer be asking for the article to claim in Wikipedia's voice that the notes from the Soviet archives prove Hiss was guilty? It would be entirely illogical to do so, as I see it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:57, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I explained earlier why I found the lead unacceptable. Contrary to all scholarly standards it acts as if the consensus is his personal opinion, rather than an actual fact he is simply reporting.

In the 1990s, the time period he was reporting on, there was a growing consensus Hiss was "most likely" guilty. Evidence established by the notes confirms that he was a spy, regardless of what the exact nature of what the consensus was in the 1990s.

Appropriate language would be: During the 1990s there was a growing scholarly consensus in favor of Hiss's probable guilt. Notes since publicly released, taken from multiple documents in the Soviet archives, have confirmed that Hiss was a Soviet agent.

CJK (talk) 19:21, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Nope. Unless there is a scholarly consensus that Hiss was guilty, asserting that he was is a clear violation of WP:NPOV. We do not assert as facts things that our sources do not agree on. This is elementary stuff, and frankly I'm appalled that you find the concept so hard to grasp. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:29, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

And BTW, what source are you citing for any change in consensus since Barron wrote his piece in 2001? You seem to be suggesting that you have one. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:33, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

That Hiss was incriminated by the notes is simply not a debated fact in scholarship, so there are no opposing camps to figure out if there is a "consensus" in favor of the evidence provided by the notes. Your request is hence, impossible to fulfill.

CJK (talk) 19:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

So rather than citing sources, we should instead base article content on your own unverifiable assurances that academics have all made their mind up on the matter? I think not. If any material based on this dubious premise is added to the article, I shall delete it as unsourced. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what you are talking about. (Sorry if I'm saying that a lot.) I cited a scholarly source Spies which reported the fact that the notes confirmed that Hiss was a Soviet agent. Rather than present scholarly evidence that what Spies said is wrong or at least debatable, you are demanding that I prove that "academics have all made their mind up on the matter" something which is not possible because two opposing scholarly parties, pro-note and anti-note, do not exist.

CJK (talk) 20:10, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

...And at the end of this thread, it all comes down to the simple fact that you are arguing that Wikipedia should be making statements concerning Hiss that aren't based on verifiable sources, but instead on your own subjective opinion on the state of academic discourse. No surprise there. Anyway, like I said, it this gets added, I will remove it as unsourced. AndyTheGrump (talk)

you are arguing that Wikipedia should be making statements concerning Hiss that aren't based on verifiable sources, but instead on your own subjective opinion on the state of academic discourse

Huh? I have provided a verifiable, scholarly source that states a fact. Nowhere have I announced any "opinion" of the state of academic discourse, other than noting that the notes are not contested.

CJK (talk) 20:55, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Navasky

The New Republic was nevertheless right about one thing: Most of the historians and journalists cited above--including, by the way, Weisberg and Marshall--share in the "consensus" that Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, defendants in the two most famous cold war cases, and scores if not hundreds of others, were Russian spies. Further, they believe that, as Radosh, Klehr and Haynes collectively put it in The New Republic, "the CPUSA was not just another American political party.... Its Soviet ties defined its very raison d'etre." It was, in other words, primarily an instrument of the international Communist conspiracy.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the rehabilitation. The same cadre of historians and journalists who share the consensus and would seem to be endorsing the von Hoffman proposition that McCarthy was, after all, more right than wrong, still want to distance themselves from McCarthy himself. David Horowitz, for example, took to cyberspace to make clear that neither he nor any of those dubbed New McCarthyites by Marshall deserved the label. Each of those denominated, he complained in a column he writes for Salon, [2]

Clearly states the "consensus" is that Hiss was guilty.

[3] Lew is refers to the "consensus of later historians."

[4] Johnson also speaks of "consensus".

[5] Hammond et all. In fact (system burped on rest of post, alas, which had conclusion and more cites Collect (talk) 08:37, 5 July 2013 (UTC))

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Collect (talk • contribs) 00:59, 5 July 2013

The Nation article you quote is reporting the opinion of the New Republic, hence the "scare quotes." "Scare quotes" are used to show that writers do not endorse what another source has said. TFD (talk) 01:32, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Nope the "quotes" are not "scare quotes" - they indicate a "quotation" here -- and the "right about one thing" clearly refers to the Hiss consensus quote. The NR uses the term "most" itself, which is what a consensus means, TFD. And the other cites you seem to ignore - though each and every one uses "consensus" and not in "scare quotes" as you misstate - do you think they are chopped liver? Cheers -- and please do not say "scare quotes" when the usage is not as a "scare quote" - it does not help anyone here at all. Collect (talk) 08:37, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Collect, we have had this discussion many times before about other articles and it is pointless to explain it to you again, but for the benefit of other editors I will. There is a difference between claiming something is true and saying that someone else claims something to be true. Are you aware that your source, The Nation has consistently questioned Hiss' guilt? TFD (talk) 15:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

And each time it must be explained to you - we are not saying "Hiss was guilty" in Wikipedia's voice - we would say "the consensus according to (sources) among historians is that Hiaa was guilty." Is this actually clear to you? I am aware that The Nation acknowledges that the consensus is that Hiss was guilty. "Consensus" != "unanimity" as we also pointed out here. Cheers -- you are now actually getting tendentious with your implicit personal attack. "pointless to explain it to you again" is pure, unadulterated, false snark to boot. Collect (talk) 15:36, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Collect, are you unaware after all this time that CJK has been insisting that we state in Wikipedia's voice that Hiss is guilty? Have you actually even been reading the thread? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:58, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

As I did not make that proposal, I suggest we deal here with what I happen to write. Dealing with what others wrote here is a "straw man." And that is as stated above, for which reliable sources surely are sufficient - since even "The Nation" uses the word "most." TFD appears to misapprehend my clear words. Collect (talk) 16:33, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Could you then clarify who the 'we' was that you referred to in your post of 15:36? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

We is Wikipedia. I thought that was quite clear. Collect (talk) 23:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Collect, it's a bit hard to interpret this passage out of context, and I unfortunately do not have either Questia access or a library at hand to provide that context. But I would tend to interpret the quotation marks as marking his assertion that the consensus consists of the (presumably limited) set of specific people referred to as "the historians and journalists cited above", with the further implication that a larger set of authorities would not produce such a consensus. Even if it is supposed to be quoting a single word from a New Republic article (which I cannot tell from here), the text itself states that consensus spoken of is not necessarily much larger than the specifically named group. I think you would have to go back to that New Republic article to get an assertion that there is a larger consensus, and this article seems from the limited evidence at hand to be aimed at denying among other points that there is such a wide-ranging consensus. Mangoe (talk) 19:42, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The "most" is clear. Unless, of course, you are asserting that The Nation did not mean to say "most"? I find that a weird and untenable stretch. Collect (talk) 23:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Here is a free link to the article. It is by Victor Navasky btw not The Nation. I do not know what he means by "Replied The New Republic.... He does not mention the op-ed and I cannot find it. No idea either why we using an article about an editorial as a source. TFD (talk) 00:02, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Huh? I noted the source is Navasky. Did you miss that in the section title here? And did you somehow fail to note the other clearly reliable sources given? Chopped liver? Sorry -- it is time to end the inane impasse on this page and simply add the sentence I proposed:

"the consensus according to (sources) among historians is that Hiaa was guilty."

as being clearly correct, and silly to oppose at this point in history. Cheers. Collect (talk) 00:35, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Your thesis is taking too much interpretation to justify stating that anything much is clear, except that Navasky (a) thinks that the evidence against Hiss is insufficient, and (b) thinks that the "consensus" is about politics rather than truth. I see no sign that he intended to imply that historians as a whole hold that Chambers's accusations were meritorious. I would read him as identifying a group pushing a particular viewpoint, and perhaps implying that they are pretending to a breadth of consensus which doesn't really exist. In any case the passage doesn't support the reading that historians as a whole think that Hiss was spying for the Soviets. Mangoe (talk)

Supposed "Fact" of Hiss's guilt

The conference moderated by Oshinsky in 2007 states the opposite of what CJK asserts. Far from stating that Vassiliev's notes "prove", as a “true fact”, that Hiss was guilty of espionage, The transcript shows both Oshinsky and John Prados, Senior Fellow National Security Archives, stating that the Vassiliev's notes prove nothing and that if there is any consensus about Hiss's guilt, it must be based on earlier information. Oshinsky further stated flatly that no new evidence would ever be forthcoming, from Vassiliev or anyone else, but that older evidence should be looked at more carefully. Unless I read the transcript wrong, John Prados also says that he personally interviewed the FBi actual agents who identified ALES as Hiss in Venona and they told him the evidence in the Venona cable was not conclusive and they had always had doubts about the identification. (I am surprised that this is not more widely known! This is oral testimony from the horse's mouth!) Oshinsky and Prados seemed to feel that what was conclusive was that there really were members of the Communist Party who were employed by the New Deal in the early 1930s, and that Moscow knew about them, and they answered to Moscow, which was troubling, since Stalin was a bad guy One of these known Communists was Victor Perlo, who never denied it, and who left government work in 1937; and another was Noel Field, who also never denied it, and who resigned from the State Department and left the country in 1936 (if I remember rightly), because he didn't thing his ideological commitments were compatible with working for the US government. Non of this is exactly news. In any case, these historians can hardly be used to prove that Vassiliev's notes (or even the Venona cables) "prove" much of anything, much less the supposed "fact" of Hiss's guilt. This also appears to be the opinion of Chevonnaya and Bird. What emerges from these conferences is far from unanimity.

As far as the supposed references about scholarly "academic" consensus that CJK provides: Elson 1996, Kutler 2004, Oshinksy 2007, and Barron 2009. He himself, speaking of Kisseloff and Bird, has suggested f that journalists don't count as scholars. Elson, writing in 1996, was an editor of Time Magazine (former employer of Whittaker Chambers), not an academic historian. Nor is Barron an academic historian. He is a reporter, and we know he hedged his words. Nor has he written numerous investigative books on the New Deal, McCarthyism, or anything else, as Bird and Kisseloff have). That leaves Stanley Kutner, a bonafide scholar of American Constitutional history, and Oshinsky, who has studied McCarthyism. Both believe in Hiss's guilt, but Olshinsky at least does not do so on on the basis of Vassiliev's notes. 173.52.252.74 (talk) 05:36, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

You need to post where you are getting this information from. The transcript I saw made no mention of the notes whatsoever.

CJK (talk) 13:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I misread the material slightly. It is Prados the NSA archivist, not Oshinsky, the historian of McCarthyism, who says that Vassiliev's notes provide nothing substantive and there is never going to be conclusive new evidence. Oshinsky for his part explicitly denies being an expert in the field of Cold War espionage and doesn't mention Vassiliev's notes (as far as I can tell), much less affirm that they provide anything conclusive. Oshinsky simply declares himself a member of the older consensus on the basis what we know about the American side of things, particularly as summed up forty years ago by Earl Latham: namely that if spying occurred, it took place in the 1930s and early 40s. Bird then responds to Oshinsky: "I don’t disagree in large measure with anything that you’ve said."

::“Cold War Reflections on Source Material.” NYU Conference April 2007

http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/coldwar/hiss_archive/hiss_john_prados.pdf Excerpts:

Oshinsky, introduces John Prados, calling him an “analyst of the National Security Archive based in Washington where he’s a senior fellow and project director with the Archive. He’s written books on the Vietnam War, CIA Director William Colby, the National Security Council, on the Bush Administration selling of the Iraq War, and most recently, on CIA covert operations":

Prados: “. . .I will say this: the lead National Security Agency codebreaker who worked on the Venona Project, a man named Cecil Phillips and the lead FBI person who was in charge of the FBI unit that ran with the NSA on the Venona traffic, a man named Robert Lamphere -- both of them passed away regrettably -- but both of whom I spoke to before they died, specifically because in regard to the Venona traffic, it is a great concern how the names of American citizens, the names of specific persons were linked to “Cold War Reflections on Source Material.” particular codenames in the Venona traffic. Both the NSA chief codebreaker and the FBI person expressed to me their own misgivings on exactly the same subject. They themselves were not certain, not sure, that the people whose names were linked with the individual codenames in the Venona traffic were in fact the people U.S. authorities said they were . . .”

Prados: I submit to you that those who want to keep arguing this case are not going to be satisfied whether or not there is a case file because there’s always another argument that can be made which was that the documents did exist at some time but they’ve been destroyed or we were not allowed to see them or variants of that sort. And for that primary reason, I believe that in terms of quote-unquote new evidence, there’s never going to be new evidence that’s going to solve the Alger Hiss controversy. If this controversy is to be solved, it’s going to be solved on the old evidence, on the material that we’ve been working through for so many years on the recollections of the Hisses, on the material that’s right here in America. That’s my message for today.

"Alger Hiss and History: NYU panel 2007, continued, http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/coldwar/hiss_archive/hiss_david_oshinsky.pdf

Oshinsky: “. . . .I am no expert on this case, for all kinds of reasons those who know a lot more about this than I seem to have bowed out. So I’m the relief pitcher coming in, in the Sixth Inning here, but I do believe that ALES is the weakest link in the Hiss espionage chain. While it’s true that Hiss is one of the very few suspects who meets several basic descriptions of ALES and his whereabouts at a certain time in 1945, the rest of what we know about ALES from the text of Cable 1822 is not a perfect match for Hiss, as several students of this case have noted.

.........

Oshinsky: Victor [Navasky] was talking about consensus among historians. I’m one of the historians in that consensus. I come here from Texas and I somehow feel that I’m at the Alamo. I’m like Colonel Travis, surrounded here, but there are certain things I really do think should be put on the table for this conference. I don’t think you’ll agree with many of them, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The ground is far less contested in the historical community, with the vast majority of modern American historians today and particularly those specializing in domestic Cold War accepting Chambers’s overall version of events.

From the Pumpkin Papers to the Woodstock typewriter, from the confessions of Soviet spy Noel Field in Hungary to the revelations of radical novelist Josephine Herbst in the United States, from the interrogation of Elizabeth Bentley to the testimony of Hedda Massing, these historians see evidence pointing overwhelmingly to Hiss being guilty as charged

…….

I believe that the person who had the clearest fix on this is a political scientist named Earl Latham, who wrote a remarkable essay forty years ago titled, “The Communist Controversy in Washington,” which uncannily laid down the future terms of engagement. Without the benefit of Venona or Soviet archives, Latham wrote of both a communist problem and a communist issue. The communist problem as he saw it involved significant spy operations of the Soviet Union inside the federal government of the 1930’s and early 1940’s. We know much more today about the impressive size and scope of that spy operation as well as the key role of the CPUSA in providing many of the recruits. With virtually no federal security system in place, communists found it relatively simple to form cells in some of the federal government’s most sensitive places, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the Manhattan Atomic Project in particular.

But Latham insisted with uncanny accuracy that the communist problem, meaning penetration of the federal government, including espionage, largely ended with the coming of the early Cold War and the collapse of the American Communist Party. As the crimes of Stalin became undeniable and the federal government began a major crackdown on the Communist Party and its leadership, a mass defection occurred within the ranks, denying the Soviets the loyalists they needed to support their once-thriving espionage cells. The heyday of American communism was over, and in its wake came what Latham called the communist issue, the shrill, partisan, anti-New Deal, rightwing, largely Republican charges, that the Democratic administrations of FDR and Harry Truman were soft on communism and filled with traitors who worked overtime to help the Russians dominate the world. … As Latham noted, the allegations of the McCarthyites contained little of merit but lots of political dynamite. It’s no coincidence that the two spectacular espionage trials of the early Cold War years involved spying that occurred in the 1930’s, with Hiss, in the early 1940’s with Julius Rosenberg. Indeed, by 1950 when McCarthy made his first charge about hundreds of communists and subversives currently shaping the policy of the State Department, the communist spy threat in the United States was all but over.

Um, sorry, but where exactly in that do you think they refer to the notes?

CJK (talk) 16:32, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

John Prados, on the epistemological problems with Vassiliev's research (i.e., his notes):

Prados: The research in the Soviet archives has been done, or was done in the 1990s, under a special arrangement made by the American publisher Crown Books with the KGB. It was the only deal of its kind and access to the KGB archives like this no longer exists. The research done by Alexander Vassiliev actually cannot be replicated. A researcher who was starting out working on these subjects today could not go back over the same materials. More than that, if you did get access to a set of documents, you could not be sure that they were the same because of the way that that research was executed. Under the original arrangement only a former KGB officer would be given. The American co-authors could not work directly with the KGB material. The Soviet researcher who was involved in the particular effort actually did not have the ability to replicate, to photocopy any of this material, he had to take notes, and the notes were then reviewed by a panel of KGB monitors before they were released to the researchers for their further use. There was clearly a sense that the Russians were watching out for themselves throughout this process. Not to say that anything like this happened, but the Russians did have the capability of playing with the research effort if they chose to do so. That said, Alexander Vassiliev who was the former KGB officer who did the research with Allen Weinstein which generated important material on the ALES codename, which you’re about to hear a very lot about, as well as on other Soviet spies in America in the pre-World War Two and World War Two period, did serious research, there’s no question about it.

This is why Prados concludes:

:I believe that in terms of quote-unquote new evidence [i.e., the notes, no?], there’s never going to be new evidence that’s going to solve the Alger Hiss controversy. If this controversy is to be solved, it’s going to be solved on the old evidence, on the material that we’ve been working through for so many years on the recollections of the Hisses, on the material that’s right here in America. That’s my message for today.

Addendum: Oshinsky says in the passage quoted above, that Latham, whose analysis he agrees with, was writing 40 years ago, "Without the benefit of Venona or Soviet archives" -- "Soviet archives" refers to the material Vassiliev was allowed partial access to, does it not? Vassiliev was seeking proof that Hiss was ALES in Soviet archives. If Prados is to be believed even the FBI who identified Hiss as ALES were not sure that this was correct. 173.77.75.95 (talk) 17:43, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Prados actually said that Vassiliev did "serious research". He says that it can't be replicated, but he doesn't claim that that means we can't believe Vassiliev.

Prados's second statement seems clearly to be referring to a hypothetical FBI "case file" rather than the Soviet archives.

CJK (talk) 17:50, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't see where you get that Prados is referring to a hypothetical FBI case file. He said the research was serious because he is polite and civil to his colleagues. If he were saying that the notes prove something factual he would have come out and said that, not that they were incomplete and that the circumstances in which they were complied could never be replicated, which is what he did say. 173.77.75.95 (talk) 20:34, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Prados said that Vassiliev and Weinstein did serious research, but he did not say that this research constituted conclusive proof. He said it could never be replicated and suggested that it was incomplete and provisional and explained why in some detail. He also said that the case for Hiss's guilt could not depend on Vassiliev's archival reseach, but must come out of domestic archives. It is not a matter of belief or disbelief. 18:22, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

If he wanted to say it wasn't conclusive proof he would have said "it isn't conclusive proof". The main presentation at the April 2007 conference used Vassiliev's notes to argue that Hiss was not ALES. (I am not arguing right now that Hiss was ALES, by the way.) And he said was that the research was serious. Even if it was "incomplete" the "serious research" that they did nonetheless uncovered incriminating evidence against Hiss. He did not say that his research in the archives could not be used to draw conclusions. What he said was that I submit to you that those who want to keep arguing this case are not going to be satisfied whether or not there is a case file because there’s always another argument that can be made which was that the documents did exist at some time but they’ve been destroyed or we were not allowed to see them or variants of that sort. He is talking about an American case file. Nobody is talking about accessing a Soviet case file.

CJK (talk) 18:41, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Spying activity

I can find nothing in the article about the information Hiss turned over or is alleged to have turned over to the GRU, and any activities he performed for them, or at what date he ceased to work for them or why. I see no mention of his GRU contact, whether he was assigned a rank, received pay or received any honors from the Soviet government. Are there any sources for this? TFD (talk) 19:51, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

"Spies" Vassiliev's Introduction

pg xxxix ...the SVR didn't have a personal file on Hiss was handled by Soviet military intelligence (GRU), <snip> The files of the 1930s - 1940s are not indexed, and there must be hundreds of them on operations in the United States alone. One can't go down to the archives and ask what they've got because they don't know what they've got. I found some materials on Alger Hiss by researching the files for two years and by reading every page; I found them in different files for different years. Had anyone done it before me? I don't think so.

So if Vassiliev is researching in SVR/KGB archives & the Hiss files are in a different building controlled by a different intelligence organization, where does he get his in-depth knowledge about Hiss's activities? How do H&K get their airtight case when Vassiliev himself flatly states he was KGB & Hiss was GRU? Doesn't seem to be a distinction made by H&K. DEddy (talk) 15:29, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

He saw KGB documents that mention Hiss's affiliation with the GRU. Also, there was a brief merger between the KGB and GRU after World War II. Your opinion of this matter is in any case original research. I'm sorry for being so blunt, but I don't know what else to do at this point.

CJK (talk) 15:33, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Original research? Huh? These are just lines from "Spies." If this is original wouldn't your embracing "Spies" as gospel, 100% truth be original too? DEddy (talk) 15:54, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Your assumption that Vassiliev saw nothing incriminating about Hiss because he only looked through KGB files is original research. I'm sorry that wasn't clear.

CJK (talk) 16:04, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK What that quote from "Spies" says (from Vassiliev's introduction) is not my opinion it is Vassiliev's own words. Are you saying that Vassiliev's own words are original research? If that is so, wouldn't it be difficult for you to introduce "Spies" as evidence of Hiss's guilt since the book was written by Haynes, Klehr & Vassiliev?

Do notice that Vassiliev says he 'found some materials' he does not say he 'found incriminating materials.' DEddy (talk) 16:10, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't know what you are talking about at this point. The authors Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev discuss in their book the evidence that Vassiliev gathered from KGB archives and use it to show Hiss was a spy.

CJK (talk) 16:36, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK: Oh? You didn't read Vassiliev's Introduction? If Hiss was dealing with GRU (I'm pretty sure that's who Chambers claimed he was dealing with) & the GRU archives were: 1) a mess, and 2) difficult to access from KGB (I'm pretty sure Vassiliev says since he was with KGB, GRU regarded him with suspicion, but I didn't show that quote, I'll see if I can find it), why/how do Haynes, Klehr & Vassiliev make such a air tight case if Vassiliev by his own words says he was primarily looking at KGB material?

Bluntly: If Haynes, Klehr & Vassilev make their case form KGB materials, what about the largely inaccessible GRU materials? Maybe GRU materials make Hiss look worse, maybe not. Point is we do not know since Vassiliev either did not have access or did not look.

You're saying that Haynes & Klehr are happy to go with admittedly incomplete "evidence." You're comfortable with that? DEddy (talk) 16:48, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK states: "The authors Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev discuss in their book the evidence that Vassiliev gathered from KGB archives and use it to show Hiss was a spy." We can all agree that they use the material to argue a case. Whether that constitutes conclusive proof is quite another kettle of fish. CJL has yet to produce the opinion of anyone else who argues that Vassiliev's notes constitute conclusive proof that Hiss's guilt is a so-called "fact." That is what we are arguing about here.173.77.75.95 (talk) 16:56, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The evidence that was gathered from the KGB archives clearly shows that Hiss was a spy, as he is referred to as a spy multiple times in the documents cited. They are not reporting this as a speculative argument, but rather as a straightforward factual matter.

The Haunted Wood (1999) also referred to material in the Soviet archives that incriminated Hiss, although they did not have direct copies of the documents back then.

CJK (talk) 17:23, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK: The evidence that was gathered from the KGB archives clearly shows that Hiss was a spy And that's good enough "evidence" for you?

Would you accept as "case closed" evidence that someone who is mentioned—with cover name—in the VENONA cables (after all they're Soviet communications & presumably ended up in GRU/KGB files) is therefore a spy?

Another question: if someone is referred to as an "agent," what does that mean? DEddy (talk) 18:09, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Hiss is referred to as an "agent" and other terms in the documents. Please don't pretend that "agent" and "spy" are somehow different.

CJK (talk) 18:18, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK:" So someone who is an agent is a spy?

Also... do you believe there is 100% clarity when a message/document is translated from one language to another? I am using "clarity" to mean there is no additional information added or lost in the translation process.

DEddy (talk) 19:01, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The original Russian text of Vassiliev's notes are available online.

CJK (talk) 19:24, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK: I know that. That wasn't my question. I'm pretty sure you haven't read them, since you haven't admitted to reading anything beyond "Spies." I'm certainly not going to read them since I get enough of a headache just trying to following the convoluted "logic" in "Spies."

I asked you what your belief is on translating documents.

I'm still trying to get an understanding what you actually know about this topic & obviously you're running for political office since most of your responses are content free.

If I read this long running discussion correctly your position is that Hiss is 100% guilty because "Spies" says so. Period. Full Stop. Do I read that correctly?

Is it your position that "Spies" in its entirety is 100% accurate & others that Haynes, Klehr & Vassiliev depict as spies are also 100% guilty? DEddy (talk) 20:34, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The information in Spies that the notes taken by Vassiliev prove Hiss's guilt is accurate.

CJK (talk) 20:59, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK Since it appears the only book you've read on this subject is "Spies" how do you know the notes are accurate & how H&K interpret them is accurate?

There is the issue that (assuming it's accurate) Hiss was a GRU resource, the GRU archives were a mess & Vassiliev was KGB & did his work in KGB location. There's nothing relevant to Vassiliev's work over in GRU? DEddy (talk) 23:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Your opinion on this issue, with all due respect, is simply irrelevant because you don't have any legit scholarly sources which share your concerns. I'm not the person who did the research for the book. There were over 1,000 pages of notes, the authors had these notes submitted to experts who all deemed the material genuine. Beyond that, I don't know how I can "prove" to your satisfaction that the notes are accurate. The authors take the notes to be genuine, and no relevant scholars are really disputing that, even historically pro-Hiss ones. Their "interpretation" of the notes involves a straightforward reading of them. Would you like me to post here each of the notes that pertain to Hiss?

I'm sure that there is also relevant information in the GRU archives, but the KGB archives alone provide more than enough evidence against Hiss.

CJK (talk) 00:17, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK: There were over 1,000 pages of notes, the authors had these notes submitted to experts who all deemed the material genuine. List of those experts would be nice, please. Are they scholars?

"Straightforward interpretation" of materials extracted from an intelligence agency. Now that's certainly going to be a first.

I take it you've never looked at an intelligence agency's raw files. "Straightforward interpretation" does not flow easily from intelligence source material.

How about just a list pointing to some of Vassiliev's notes.

Likewise, I don't know how I can prove to you that a single book's statement "Case Closed" is not proof. You are basically saying that since H&K said it, it's true.

And you're not interested in another 100% flat out wrong interpretation by H&K in "Spies?" The fact that they can get another "Guilty because we say so" totally wrong doesn't bother you? This isn't just an itty bitty errata. It's a whopper. Given these guys are supposed to be experts in this domain, one would expect they can at least get the big things right. DEddy (talk) 00:54, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

The experts in 2009 were: Max Holland, Eduard Mark, John Fox, Gregg Herken, and Steve Usdin. Additionally there was a private conference with experts back in 2006, although they don't name the participants. The Journal of Cold War Studies and its editor Mark Kramer have also accepted that notes.

The notes incriminating Hiss consist of

1. Information from KGB agent Hede Massing (codenamed "Redhead") in 1936 saying Hiss was involved with a Soviet espionage group, and that Noel Field held discussions with him.

2. Information from KGB officers in 1936 stating that Hiss was with the GRU, and rebuking Massing for interfering in the GRU's business.

3. A December 1948 proposal to discredit Chambers as some sort of Nazi. This proposal was turned down by two officials, one the deputy chairman of the KI (which in 1948 was a merger between the KGB and GRU). They said it would not help the agents betrayed by Chambers, explicitly naming "A. Hiss" as one of those agents.

4. A memo listing compromised Soviet assets in the U.S. between 1938-48. Hiss is identified under the name "Leonard".

5. A March 1950 memo from the chairman of the KGB, saying that GRU agent "Leonard" was a State Department official convicted in an American court earlier that year. The only State Department official convicted in early 1950 was Hiss.

CJK (talk) 01:27, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

This is typical of the misleading procedure of CJK, who is simply listing the participants of the 2009 Wilson conference who accept (I presume) Vassiliev, Haynes and Kehr's presentation of events. He leaves out Bruce Craig's response. Craig, who has written a well-regarded and well written biography of Harry Dexter White, now is apparently working on one of Hiss. I am not going to quote him at length since anyone can go to the link itself, http://www.h-net.org/~diplo/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-X-24.pdf But Craig does identify the heart of the problem: "with much of the evidence cited from the Vassiliev notebooks" as Vassiliev's:

questionable and at times faulty interpretation of what constitutes historical fact. It is especially challenging, for example, to determine who actually was in an 'agent' status at a particular time when so often the notebook entries reflect contradictory evidence relating to the exact status of an individual(such as Stone) who from time to time is characterized as both a 'source' and/or an 'agent'. Holland’s use of the notebook 'evidence' is illustrative of the inherent difficulties in interpreting piecemeal, incomplete documentation. Because so much in the Vassiliev notebooks is reflecting hearsay evidence, in order to help establish what can be relied upon as fact in the notebooks, I see a need for historians of espionage to consider applying a higher level of historical proof than many historians are perhaps used to. Since lives and reputations are on the line, before branding someone a communist, an espionage agent, or treasonous—well, we had better be sure we have reliable evidence to justify such allegations and/or conclusions....

N.B. Chervonnaya also takes issue with some of Vassiliev's translations. For example, according to her, Vassiliev translates what she says is the Russian word for "cooperate" as "work with" (which she says in Russian spy parlance had a specialized meaning as a term of art, as "cooperate" did not.) Craig recommends consigning Weinstein's book to the dustbin of history, as it is so unreliable. He does praises Vassiliev's notebooks as valuable, despite his criticisms of the conclusions some are drawning from them, including Vassiliev himself.. It seems that several new book are in the pipeline on this topic and the case is far from "closed". 173.77.75.95 (talk) 06:30, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, please avoid personal attacks on users who do not share your conspiracy theories.

Craig is talking about ambiguous cases, such as IF Stone. There is simply no similar ambiguity that the information implicates Hiss, and I can provide direct copies of the notes in question to you which demonstrate that. There is no "work with/cooperate" statement in the notes by Russian officials, so that criticism does not apply either.

If a new scholarly book comes around saying the conclusions about Hiss are wrong, we can remove the material then. Just like we can remove the material about global warming if someone proves it wrong. Right now, that Hiss was implicated by the notes is a undisputed fact by legit scholarship.

CJK (talk) 13:13, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Craig is, in fact, talking, in general terms about Vassiliev's methods and inadequate understanding of what constitutes historical fact. He does indeed mention IF Stone in his statement (which I have not quoted in full) and he also mentions Hiss. And in discussing Eduard Mark's paper which asserts Hiss was ALES, Craig specifically says that although he, Craig, is inclined to share Mark's "overarching" conclusion, nevertheless Mark's conclusion doesn't meet the standards of the American Historical Association for establishing fact, which Craig proceeds to quote chapter and verse. Therefore the case is not closed -- conclusions (etymology: closure together) are premature. This is not a conspiracy theory but an accurate reading of Craig's statement, which readers can ascertain for themselves. And Craig is using the respectful and courteous language that bona fide scholars are expected to employ in speaking about their colleagues, and not belittling or insulting them. No one is talking here about rightness and wrongness, we are talking about the need for further evidence. 173.77.75.95 (talk) 15:18, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

We aren't talking about whether Hiss is ALES, we are talking about the notes. The evidence against Hiss in the notes is quite simply unambiguous, unlike the evidence about Stone or others. For example, in the notes Chambers's charges against Hiss are specifically referenced as fact.

CJK (talk) 16:18, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit request of 6 July 2013

Other historians, such as D. D. Guttenplan, Jeff Kisseloff, and Amy Knight, however, assert that Spies' conclusions were not borne out by the evidence and accused its authors of engaging in "shoddy" research.[102][103][104] 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.[105] Haynes and Klehr respond that the material was examined by historians, archivists, and intelligence professionals who unanimously agreed that the material was genuine. [106]

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.[105] 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."[105] 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".[105] However, 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." [107]

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, D.C., 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."[108] Kisseloff also disputes Haynes and Klehr's linking of Hiss with former Treasury Department official Harold Glasser, whom they allege was a Soviet agent.[109] 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."[110] Haynes and Klehr also claim that Hiss was the agent who used the cover name "Doctor". According to Soviet sources, however, "Doctor" was a middle-aged Bessarabian Jew who was educated in Vienna.[111]

Other historians felt that Haynes and Klehr's information was suspect because their publisher, 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, along with KGB archivist Volkogonov, was one.[112] Other historians had not been permitted to verify Vassiliev's data. In 2002, Vassiliev sued John Lowenthal for libel in a court of British 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.[113] Vassiliev has since also unsuccessfully sued Amazon.com for publishing a customer review critical of his work.[114] In 1978, Victor Navasky interviewed six people Weinstein had quoted in his book Perjury, who all claimed to have been misquoted by Weinstein.[115] 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.[116]

Um, where to begin? How about the fact that Guttenplan and Kisselhoff are journalists, not historians. Calling them "historians" is just a flat-out lie. Guttenplan actually goes out of his way to say he is not a scholar of the Hiss case, which you would think would have been a pre-requisite to being used here. Please remove the information about Guttenplan and Kisselhoff so that the reader is not even more systematically deceived about the actual state of Hiss's guilt than they already are.

Given that zero "other historians" are named in the last paragraph, that should be removed too. Weinstein misquoting people is not relevant to this section either.

CJK (talk) 14:13, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

So you are proposing to systematically remove any evidence from the article that suggests that Hiss's guilt has been questioned? AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:27, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Unbelievable. I just pointed out a systematic fraud that has been perpetuated on thousands of readers for years, all under the noses of users and administrators who should have known better, and your first reaction is to pretend that there isn't a problem? And you wonder why people think you are un-neutral and totally uninterested in improving this article?

CJK (talk) 14:58, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

"systematic fraud"? Please stop being so utterly ridiculous. If the persons concerned should have been described as journalists rather than historians, it probably needs correction - but 'fraud'? That is not only wildly over-the-top, but arguably an attack on the integrity of other contributors. I suggest you stop casting aspersions, and confine your comments to matters of direct bearing on article content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:06, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I would remove the term "historian" as a description, but calling it "lies" and "fraud" is an extreme reaction. Saying that they should not be mentioned because they are not historians is however incorrect. When research, actions or writings of journalists become significant to the study of a subject, then they are included according to WP:WEIGHT. We are not going to remove mention of Vassiliev because he was a journalist. Since Klehr and Haynes mention them, we cannot ignore them, although you could argue that we are providing too much weight to their opinions. TFD (talk) 15:54, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

To falsely call these people "historians" and then give them four times as much space as actual historians is to perpetuate a fraud. Obviously, the reason they were falsely labeled as "historians" was so that their WP:FRINGE opinion would be given the weight it didn't deserve. Actual historians and relevant scholars do not dispute the notes. Isn't that far more important?

CJK (talk) 16:12, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

OTOH, no real scholars have authenticated the notes by comparing them with the original documents. TFD (talk) 16:25, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, that's not what I said. Real scholars do not accept Guttenplan's implicit argument that the notes were faked by Vassiliev. Even Kisselhoff doesn't make that petty argument.

CJK (talk) 16:32, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

-- It is sophistry to term biographers journalists, for the purpose of denigrating them, Apart from the fact that biography has long been seen as a branch of history. ("All history is biography" Goethe). Historians, whatever their day jobs (as archivists, freelancers, lawyers, etc.) must abide by standards such as those set forth in the American Historical Association guidelines for assessing historical fact. (Nevermind that CJK himself cites journalists, who are also expected to abide by certain standards, by the way, when they conform to his opinions -- assuming CJK is a "he"). Everyone is entitled to a personal opinion as to who is a "real scholar" and other matters, but bonafide (I.e., in good faith) scholars follow guidelines no matter what their credentials or place of employment This is wikipedia and wikipedia also has guidelines as to what constitutes a reliable source. 173.77.75.95 (talk) 16:57, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

As already indicated, they aren't being called "biographers" they are being called "historians" which is a lie. They are not biographers of Hiss or Chambers. They are not scholars of espionage, American Communism, the Cold War, or the McCarthy era. They are not experienced archivists. They are journalists who have no expertise in this matter. The people who have expertise in this matter overwhelmingly disagree with them.

CJK (talk) 17:06, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

A check of other articles will show that these sources are considered reliable for Wikipedia and do not violate WP:Fringe. CJK's definition of the word "historian" is overly-narrow and seemed to be tailored so as to be convenient to his other arguments. Joegoodfriend (talk) 17:14, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Journalists and biographers routinely make use of archives. Archivists are paid to organize files to assist others in their research, not to do research on their own. When they do, they are on the same footing as any other researcher and have no special expertise as historians.173.77.75.95 (talk) 17:30, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

D. D. Guttenplan has a doctorate in history from the University of London, was a research fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies center at Columbia, and taught American history at the University of London. Amy Knight has a doctorate in Russian politics from the London School of Economics, has taught at various universities, and has written over 25 scholarly articles about Russian politics and history and had books about Soviet history published by the Princeton University Press. Of the three, only Jeff Kisseloff is not a professional historian, he is a professional journalist. TFD (talk) 17:34, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess I have to repeat myself: They [Gutenplan and Kisselhoff] are not biographers of Hiss or Chambers. They are not scholars of espionage, American Communism, the Cold War, or the McCarthy era. They are not experienced archivists. They are journalists who have no expertise in this matter. The people who have expertise in this matter overwhelmingly disagree with them.

Guttenplan actually goes out of his way to say he is not a scholar of the Hiss case.

CJK (talk) 17:39, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

So basically, anyone who disagrees with your perspective isn't qualified to comment on Hiss? This is becoming farcical... AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:44, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Andy. What we would do without your genius insights?

CJK (talk) 17:55, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

KIsseloff's books have been published by such academic presses as Johns Hopkins University Press and the University of Kentucky Press. Why can't you fact check yourself, CJK? As I said earlier, your tactics do your cause no good at all.173.77.75.95 (talk) 18:00, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I was unaware of that, but you are right. So that makes Kisseloff a professional historian too. It is disruptive for CJK to make false statements and accusations. TFD (talk) 18:18, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

It is not only disruptive, but arguably a violation of WP:BLP policy too... AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:23, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

My tactics? This is coming from the same guy who right off the bat accused me of being part of a military conspiracy to get Hiss, and declared that we can't believe scholars because they're also in on the conspiracy to advance their careers.

What part about not being a scholar in fields relevant to this article is so difficult for you to comprehend? When you falsely call people "historians" and give them four times as much length as actual subject-related historians, you are engaging in fraud. The reader is fooled into thinking that Kisselhoff and Guttenplan, neither of whom are scholars in the Cold War, espionage, American Communism, or the McCarthy era, are somehow just as relevant in this matter as Haynes and Klehr.

It would be no different than inserting nonsense in a World War II article by two "historians", not mentioning the fact that one isn't a credentialed historian and the other is a journalist/historian of a completely different time period.

CJK (talk) 18:24, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Describing a historian as a historian isn't a falsehood... AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:29, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

It is not only disruptive, but arguably a violation of WP:BLP policy too...

Hiss is dead Andy. If you didn't know that then maybe you shouldn't be editing here.

CJK (talk) 18:31, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

The historians you are making entirely unjustified assertions about are alive. If you don't understand Wikipedia policy, maybe you shouldn't be editing here... AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:34, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Do you have the faintest comprehension of the point I am trying to make? They are not "historians" in any commonly understood way. Kisselhoff and Gutenplan do not describe themselves as "historians" on their respective pages. And nobody has spoke up about the phantom "other historians" of the last paragraph.

But let's pretend that they are somehow real full-fledged historians. They are not scholars in this field. Giving them four times as much space as scholars who are scholars in this field is totally unjustified, a massive act of fraud if there ever was one. The scholars who are in this field do not echo the WP:FRINGE arguments of Kisselhoff and Gutenplan.

CJK (talk) 18:46, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

And yet again, CJK asserts his right to determine the legitimacy of sources... AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I never said CJK or others were part of a conspiracy. That is CJK's own inference. He has been repeatedly rebuked on this page for needlessly bandying about this emotionally loaded term. Someone else, a Belgian archivist, has just published (2013) a book suggesting that US intelligence and military services were motivated by a desire to protect their informers, and I mentioned this as something for other editors to pursue. I also quoted another historian who suggested that there was a group of people who had staked their careers on Hiss's guilt (She didn't name them) and this, according to her, is in fact orthodox opinion. These are other people's opinions, not mine. BTW, when I last looked at the article, huge amounts of space in it were devoted to Kehr and Haynes's allegations. 173.77.75.95 (talk) 18:55, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

CJK, no one said you or any of the authors used as sources are part of a conspiracy AFAIK. I request that you either substantiate your remarks by citing the edit where the allegation was made or retract your statement. TFD (talk) 19:16, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

And yet again, CJK asserts his right to determine the legitimacy of sources

I'll take that as a "no" to my question Do you have the faintest comprehension of the point I am trying to make? It bears absolutely no relation to what I actually said, similar to how your justification for exclusion of facts bears no relation to what I said.

I never said CJK or others were part of a conspiracy.

You said "you and your military friends" were trying to change the article.

CJK (talk) 19:21, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

RFC

Should the lead of the Alger Hiss article include the following information:

1. That there is a scholarly consensus of Hiss's guilt.

2. That notes from the Soviet archives have confirmed his guilt.

CJK (talk) 13:01, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Can you cite your sources for the above? RfC's are intended to attract comment from uninvolved contributors, and it is unreasonable to expect them to have to look through reams of talk-page debate to find material. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:24, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

The sources are in this diff [6]. But if they won't take the time to look through talk page material, why would they take the time to look up sources for themselves? CJK (talk) 13:02, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Am I right in then assuming then that the sources are this [7] article by James Barron in the NYT, and material from Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev? If so, the latter at least is going to be problematic - it is unlikely that everyone responding to this RfC will have access to it. Dealing with the NYT piece, I cannot see how the change made in the diff can be justified - previously the article quoted the piece directly, and you have replaced a statement about something being seen as 'most likely' with an outright statement of 'fact'. The source simply doesn't say that, though if one is going to make a statement about scholarly consensus, I'd suggest that a scholarly work, rather than a NYT piece on Hiss's son, might make a better source anyway.

Dealing with the second issue, I've not seen the book, but as a general point, I don't think that Wikipedia should be making assertions of guilt based on a single source. Actually, given that there is controversy over this source (as is evident in the article section 'Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev'), I'd go further, and say that Wikipedia must not make outright assertions regarding Hiss's guilt or otherwise, based on this. It isn't up to us to determine 'the truth', but to reflect, with due weight, the differing opinions on the matter. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:12, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

I would object to the words "scholarly consensus"... based on what? "Is still passionately debated" is more accurate. Has someone conducted a poll of interested period historians for which way they lean? I'm certainly not going to take a single NYTimes (or any other newspaper reporter) opinion. Reporters write on deadline. Was the piece fact checked?

The Vassiliev books are also highly suspect. How did he get them out of the KGB? Clearly the KGB has gotten too much mileage from this story to stop salting our tail now. While there certainly could be, I'm not aware of a detailed examination of the Vassiliev books. DEddy (talk) 19:39, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

There is always several ways of rewording sentences. Unfortunately, when it comes to referencing them, it becomes limited. Does any other sources provide a reference for the information in question? If so, should it be sourced by two or more? Adamdaley (talk) 23:36, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

On question 1., I oppose the change.

The lede of the article has been stable for more than two years, the result of lengthy and hard-won consensus by the editors. It was felt by the editors that if the lede was to make a statement on Hiss' guilt, that the statement should be objective and factually accurate. This resulted in the text, Various reports suggest that those who believe in Hiss's innocence are in the minority of scholarly opinion. This evolved into the notation that the New York Times had observed a, “growing consensus that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent.”

The text, “That there is a scholarly consensus of Hiss's guilt” should not be added because (1) it is not verifiable, as there is no survey of scholars available, (2) it ignores the significant scholars and subject matter experts (discussed below) who believe that Hiss may have been innocent of espionage. Thus the new text tends to violate wikipedia's neutral point of view policies.

On question 2., I oppose the change.

The “notes” in question do not prove Hiss' guilt. Far from it. These notes are what are alleged to be hand-copied transcripts of Soviet documents made by former Soviet agent Alexander Vassiliev. Vassiliev does not claim to have found information on any activities of spying by Alger Hiss, or whom he worked with. He asserts only that to have found a reference to an agent with the code-name "Leonard" and concludes that "Leonard" was Alger Hiss. There is no proof that the notes are accurate. Historian Amy Knight has questioned the notes' validity,[8] noting, “the inconsistencies in the story of his research are disturbing.” She also notes glaring omissions in Vassiliev's use of Soviet documents to conclude that Hiss was guilty. “Not surprisingly, the authors of Spies (Vassiliev's book on the notes) omit evidence suggesting that the GRU did not know who Hiss was. Take, for example, a VENONA cable to Moscow written in September 1943 by Pavel Mikhailov, chief of GRU operations in North America since 1941. In his message, Mikhailov refers to someone “from the State Department by the name of Hiss”. If Hiss had been a GRU agent, Mikhailov would not have mentioned him in this way, especially using Hiss’s real name.” John Lowenthal says of the notes, "There is no way to verify the authenticity of the KGB documents; no way to check the accuracy of the excerpts and paraphrases; no way to study their context, such as the rest of the file from which a particular document came, which every historian and student knows can be crucial to a correct reading and interpretation. We do not even know whether the documents Vassiliev saw are in the Russian language and, if they are, who translated them and how accurately."

Then there is the matter of other studies of the Soviet archives and the statements of former Soviet officers. Soviet Foreign Intelligence office Boris Labusov 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." Generals Dmitry Volkogonov and Julius Kobyakov have stated that Hiss, "had never been listed as a paid or recruited agent for the Soviet Union," and that Soviet archives contain "positive hard evidence that Alger Hiss had not had any relationship," with Russian intelligence services. Svetlana Chervonnaya, a Russian researcher who had been studying Soviet archives since the early 1990s, stated that Hiss' name was absent from Soviet archives. To my mind, these statements are at least as significant to the question of Hiss' guilt as one man's (Vassiliev's) unverified claims of what he saw in the Archives. Joegoodfriend (talk) 04:55, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the responses. My points are as follows:

1. The source for the consensus is not just the NYT piece there are other pieces in the note as well. The statement is that a scholarly consensus exists, not that Hiss is guilty. Attributing this fact to one reporter's single opinion is weasel wording and is not applied to any other source material.

2. Vassiliev does not claim to have found information on any activities of spying by Alger Hiss, or whom he worked with. He asserts only that to have found a reference to an agent with the code-name "Leonard" and concludes that "Leonard" was Alger Hiss. This is untrue, only two out of the five instances where Hiss is found in the notes is the term "Leonard" used, both of which are identified explicitly and implicitly as Hiss. I can supply all of the notes if you want to see them yourself.

There is no significant scholarly controversy about the notes. The notes have been examined by experts who have deemed them genuine. Even the Hiss defense is not really challenging the authenticity of the notes. They do challenge the meaning of the notes, but their views about this by and large represent only a fringe. I'm not sure how Boris Labusov would know that Hiss wasn't in the archives. Vologonov and Kobyakov have been explained repeatedly, the former recanted his statement, the latter merely referred to a Hiss relationship with the NKVD and not the GRU.

CJK (talk) 12:32, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Which other source states that there is a scholarly consensus that Hiss is guilty? AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:41, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

I too am baffled by this "scholarly consensus" allegation. From where? I look at that footnote & just get more confused. The references do not provide any substance. One is a broken link. One is a link to an inaccessible TIME article. Given Henry Luce's political views & Whitaker Chambers employment, TIME is hardly a scholarly resource is it? My guess is that if you stood up in a court of law & offered as evidence a TIME story, the judge would laugh you out of court. TIME was (is?) notorious for inaccurate reporting. Where does this consensus come from? DEddy (talk) 15:45, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

This is problematic. I actually agree with the truth of the proposed statements but this article needs to rely upon verifiability. The refs do not, in my opinion, fully support the proposed statements. I would not suggest such a change. Capitalismojo (talk) 21:31, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Really? What part is not supported? The NYT piece refers to a "growing consensus". Another link, from a Hiss supporter, also agrees that "most historians" believe Hiss is guilty. CJK (talk) 13:50, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

The NYT piece cannot be used to assert something it doesn't say. It says that there is "a growing consensus that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent" 'Most likely' means what it says, not what you appear to wish it to mean. And I see no reason to take the NYT as a definitive source for a statement regarding academic consensus. As for 'another link', which one? AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:07, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

What can be said is that there is a scholarly consensus that Hiss had been a Soviet agent, and that Vassiliev et al reported that the claim was confirmed in Soviet records. [9] etc. seem to indicate that this is not a really contentious point now - there are plenty of independent reliable sources making the claim. [10], [11] etc. The NYT further notes that the charge is not only from Vassiliev but others as well [12] In the interrogations, and in written testimony made during the same period, Noel Field categorically states that one of his most trusted accomplices in the Soviet underground was his close friend Alger Hiss. The two had met in the mid-1930's when both were idealistic young public servants drawn into the Communist underworld, the political night-town of New Deal Washington. which seems fairly dispositive of the issue. Thus statement one is correct, statement two should include Hungarian archives etc. as well. BTW, "consensus" does not mean "unanimity" as the NYT points out ... Collect (talk) 15:15, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Collect, I don't think anyone is arguing that there haven't been many works published that assert Hiss's guilt. What we need is a reliable source that unequivocally states that this is the scholarly consensus. Do any of the sources you link actually say that? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:22, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

I thinks Collect is right on point. His statements are those for which we have RS. Capitalismojo (talk) 15:28, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

How exactly is Collect on point? He hasn't provided a source for an assertion that there is a scholarly consensus on Hiss's guilt. All he has provided is evidence that there are sources that assert that Hiss is guilty. We know that already... AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:10, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

The vast majority of sources support the assertion - thus "consensus." We do not need to show "unanimity" at all here, nor is it up to us to "prove" anything to anyone - we go by the clear preponderance of current sources - and they are clear. Vide [13]

Given recent disclosures which have been made available to the author of Whittaker Chambers, the Hiss-Chambers case should finally be brought to closure. Tanenhaus, an author and journalist, has put together a convincing argument that Alger Hiss was not the victim of an elaborate plot but guilty of the charges levelled against him by Chambers. The author has benefited from the release in 1995 of Soviet cables, which were intercepted by American counterintelligence officers in the 1940's. Referred to as the Venona traffic, the National Security Agency disclosed the contents of more than two thousand cables sent from U.S. based Soviet agents to Moscow. The cables confirmed that there had been a large espionage network centered in Washington D.C., which included Alger Hiss. In one such cable, dated March 30, 1945, Soviet officials pointed to Hiss as someone who had been working for Soviet intelligence, and who was personally thanked by Soviet diplomat Andrey Vyshinsky for his devoted service.

Looks pretty strong here. Collect (talk) 16:48, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

We are not here to determine whether Hiss was guilty or not. Please cite a source for "The vast majority of sources support the assertion". AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:41, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Essentially every major article after Vassiliev is of the same opinion. TFD seems to think that opinions dated prior to Vassilief count <g>. In short - the peer-reviewed journals which before Vassiliev printed the denials, no longer do so. Which is what a "consensus" means, folks. Not "proof" but simply that the folks writing in the journals no longer deny that Hiss acted for the Soviets. Cheers. Collect (talk) 17:47, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

• Exclude The book by Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev says on p. 4 that articles supporting Hiss' innocence continue to be published in "prestigious academic journals", which would seem to argue against an academic consensus. The NYT article actually says that there is a "growing" consensus, which is different from there being a consensus. A consensus cannot "grow". In any case, newspaper articles are not good sources for what academics say. TFD (talk) 17:38, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Note that the journal article published after the Vassiliev book do not seem to still have denials in them. The fact of actual documetation seems to have made the current consensus fairly clear. Vassiliev's book could not make statements about a later clear consensus, could it? In short - I would like to see prestigious current articles asserting that Hiss was innocent -- I dount you can find many (if any) at all. Cheers. Collect (talk) 17:47, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

What journal article are you referring to? TFD (talk) 18:09, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Some of the many books and articles from after Vassiliev:

Scott and Jackson, 2004, Routledge [14] VENONA provides persuasive evidence that all were guilty (though that does not, of course, justify the death sentences passed on the Rosenbergs). Hiss (Agent ALES), who was a member of the US delegation at the Yalta Conference, was personally congratulated afterwards in Moscow by the Deputy Foreign Minister, Andrei Vyshinsky.

Aron, 2004, Wiley [15] There was no smoking gun to prove Hiss was a spy, but he was mentioned as one in at least one Romanian archive and one 1945 cable to Moscow. If anything, the new evidence pointed to Hiss's guilt.

Eichaer, 2004 "Modern Age" [16] However, just as Soviet archives began to close on the subject of Hiss and Chambers, Cold War archives in Europe in America began to open. The revelations have not been happy ones for the Hiss campaign. ... In 1992, a Hungarian historian, Maria Schmidt, discovered the Hungarian K.G.B.'s files on Noel Field, a former State Department official, Soviet spy, and friend of Alger Hiss. Field had been imprisoned in Budapest from 1949 to 1954. While in prison, Field gave the Communist Party a detailed accounting of his extensive work as a Communist, including Alger Hiss's 1935 attempt to recruit him into the underground. (40) A year later, the State Department made public a 1946 internal security probe which revealed that Alger Hiss had purloined several highly classified documents on matters of national security, including China policy and atomic energy--documents Hiss was not authorized to access, which were unrelated to his official duties at State, but of obvious interest to Soviet intelligence. Soon after the investigation was concluded, Hiss quietly resigned. (41) In 1990, Colonel Oleg Gordievsky, a former high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer who defected in 1985, named Hiss as a Soviet spy with the code name "ALES." (42) In 1995, the National Security Agency released the Venona cables, a series of coded wartime communications between Soviet intelligence in America and Moscow. One Venona cable names "Hiss" directly. Another cable refers to an agent "ALES" who served in Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius's delegation at Yalta in 1944 and flew with Stettinius from Yalta to Moscow. While there "ALES" met with Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Vyshinsky, notable for being Stalin's first Prosecutor General, the official in charge of conducting show trials. It was Vyshinsky who conceived the method of extracting written confessions from the accused, a popular and highly effective tactic of the Great Terror. (43) During his meeting with "ALES," Vyshinsky personally thanked him for his many years of loyal service to the Soviet Union. The only member of Stettinius's delegation ever suspected of being a Soviet spy was Hiss. (44) ... More than fifty years after Alger Hiss's conviction for perjury, his most enduring deception is not the one he perpetrated on his own country, but the one he selfishly sustained on his own son. "Had Chambers's charges been true," writes Tony Hiss, "had the third Alger been the real Alger, then Alger's story would today carry an abiding balm and comfort--the knowledge that it now had ended, for better or for worse--and could be laid to rest with his ashes." (58) Perhaps only after Tony Hiss moves beyond denial can the world finally lay the Hiss Case to rest, along with the ashes of the Soviet Union on whose behalf Alger Hiss spied for so many years.

And so on -- no article or major WP:RS book dated after 2003 remotely suggests Hiss was innocent, folks. That's right - none in searching diligently. Collect (talk) 18:34, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America was published in 2009, not 2003, and hence was written after all your sources. TFD (talk) 19:15, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

RE:"no article or major WP:RS book dated after 2003 remotely suggests Hiss was innocent, folks. That's right - none in searching diligently."

I find it curious that you can't find articles written since 2003 defending Hiss. If one searches for information on the web regarding Hiss, it seems that what one chiefly finds are articles attacking Hiss' defenders. Example:[17] Consider John Haynes' own web site, where Professor John R. Schindler, notes, "Hiss’s defenders in the media and academia have consistently protested his innocence."[18] Conclusion: Hiss has defenders.

Some articles you may not have found:

Amy Knight of the Times Literary Supplement, writing about her doubts on Vassiliev's "smoking gun," the identification of Hiss as agent "Leonard."[19] (You can read this article using the public Username: library-ts-group@sjsu.edu and password: tlsonline ).

Kai Bird and Svetlana Chervonnaya, on doubts that Hiss was the agent, "Ales"[20]

Lynn Duke of the Washington Post notes that, "Alger Hiss was a spy, many scholars say. He was not, say many others."[21]

Some articles from long-time Hiss defenders: Victor Navasky [22]. DD. Guttenplan [23]. Jeff Kisseloff [24]. And of course John Lowenthal, who admittedly hasn't commented since 2003 (his death)[25].

Some of the relevant comment on the subject comes not from books and articles, but from interviews and statements of former Soviet Generals and archivists. Several have commented, all of them in the negative, on the Archives containing information that Hiss was a spy.

One additional note. In the 1950s, long-after his torture-induced "confessions," Noel Field affirmed his belief in Hiss' innocence and dismissed the evidence presented against him at his trial as "false testimony" and an "outrageous lie." Joegoodfriend (talk) 23:15, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

Wow! I would point out tjat polemic sources are not WP:RS for statements of fact, and that some of your "sources" are exceedingly far from scholarly peer-reviewed positions entirely. 'CounterPunch", for example, fails WP:RS quite completely. Schindler also fails WP:RS but supports labelling Hiss as a Soviet agent:

I will conclude by noting that the identification of ALES as Alger Hiss, made by the U.S. Government more than a half-century ago, seems exceptionally solid based on the evidence now available

so your suggestion that he does not is rather odd indeed. Guttenplan simply cites Lowenthal for Lowenthal's position - and does not take the same position himself and, as you note, that pllaces this back in the 2003 context only. In short - looking at even a few of your "cites" one is left with exactly the same position I found myself in -- after 2003, no one in a scholarly context (peer-reviewed article or book) exhibited doub about Hiss being Ales.

And at least one of your Soviet Generals specifically stated later that he could not state that Hiss was not a Soviet spy - only that he had not found it himself.

Bird, by the way, only deals with "was Hiss 'Ales'" and not with whether the admitted Soviet cables using "Hiss" referred to ... Hiss. As this essay is an exercise to label Foote as "Ales" which is decidedly a fringe POV, I think we can safely treat it as "fringe" per Wikipedia policy. Unless, of cource, you find mainstream scholars in RS books and peer-reviewed articles making that charge? Cheers. Collect (talk) 02:55, 11 June 2013 (UTC) .

Collect, please explain why Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009) is not a reliable source. TFD (talk) 03:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

RE:"no one in a scholarly context (peer-reviewed article or book) exhibited doub about Hiss being Ales."

Sorry, which of the sources you cited are, "peer-reviewed"? I see that "Modern Age" boasts of being, "America's leading conservative quarterly for more than a half century." Would you say it's more or less a "polemic" than the London Times Literary Supplement or the Washington Post? Would you mind explaining why this publication is a legitimate source, and The American Scholar is not? Are you going to argue that The Nation violates WP:RS? Shall we check and see how many Wikipedia articles use The Nation as citations? Joegoodfriend (talk) 05:19, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

I consider Routledge, Wiley, OUP, etc. to meet WP:RS as being publishers of scholarly books. Clearly you demur. BTW, the book published ny YUP makes a case that Hiss acted as a Soviet agent - is there any reason to suppose YUP is not an RS publisher? As I never said it was not RS, the posiing of a claim that I said it was not is simply inane and useless argumentation entirely. Meanwhile, the section in the BDP misrepresents the content of some of the sources used to contradict that source -- which is not precisely how we are supposed to act. Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:29, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Your sources are all good for WP:RS. Thanks. Joegoodfriend (talk) 15:29, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Collect, you need to distinguish between facts and opinions, in this case people saying they believe Hiss was guilty and saying there is a consensus that he was guilty. As noted in Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (2009) some academics consider Hiss to be innocent. You need a source that says there is an academic consenus in order to say "there is an academic consensus" in the article. We cannot rely on your original research in this matter, where you search through and read every single article written about the subject since 2003. Since Google scholar shows 1,070 articles that mention "Alger Hiss" published since 2009, I do not understand how you are going to complete your project. TFD (talk) 18:54, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

TFD, you should learn to distinguish between "consensus" and "absolute truth." The clear current "consensus" is that Hiss was a Soviet agent, and that should be so stated. It is not a "fact" that Hiss was a Soviet agent - which I assume is your cavil here. I have given more than enough RS sources on this, and tendentious denial is not going to help you. Nor are the sources my original research as you seem to imply. Nor is using Routledge and Wiley and YUP and OUP published books "original research" on my part. It is in fact you who seems to be pushing your own OR here -- and denying the huge number of strong reliable sources now. BTW, if you look you will note I used Questia -- so I am at a loss as to why in hell you wish to use Google here! Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:33, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Collect, Wikipedia articles are based on published reliable sources. Please provide a published reliable source for the statement that there is a scholarly consensus that Hiss was guilty. If no source can be found, the article cannot make such an assertion, end of story. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:36, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Where zero WP:RS sources say that he was not an agent, and literally dozens say he was an agent, it is reasonable to say there is a "consensus". We do not need to find an historian using that specific word when we find wording like "it is increasingly apparent to historians" etc. Let's add [26] The tone changed in the 1990s, when newly declassified Soviet and U.S. intelligence sources indicated that a few Roosevelt and Truman officials, most notably Alger Hiss, indeed were Communist Party members or sympathizers who passed information to the Soviets—just as anticommunist conservatives from Congressman Martin Dies (D-Tex.) to Senator McCarthy had charged.9 These findings reignited the disagreement between espionage scholars and those who emphasized the negative consequences of the Red scare. Each side accused the other of ignoring a grave threat to American democracy—espionage on the one hand, repression of political dissent on the other. The espionage historians have been very harsh, likening critics of the anticommunist crusade to Holocaust deniers, and castigating them as Stalin apologists bent on creating a left mythology of the “Lost Cause.” In their view, focusing on the repressive aspects of anticommunism implies a moral equivalence between the Soviet dictatorship and the U.S. government.10 If one wishes to dispute the clear consensus, then one ought to be able to furnish a reasonable umber of learned books and journals with a contrary view - so far, no one has provided one. And add [27] for good measure -- need another hundred or so on this talk page before accepting the clear current consensus? While some still disagree that Hiss was a communist and spy for the Soviet Union, the documentation against him is overwhelming, sure seems to say that the "some" are a small minority. I assume you trust John Ehrman as RS (substantial author on intelligence matters)? See [28] from the CIA Journal. WRT Volkogonov - "I only looked through what the KGB had," he said as he explained that he had not checked military or Communist Party files. "All I said was that I saw no evidence." rather undercuts any claim that he had exonerated Hiss by a few miles. Hiss's defenders stubbornly tried to rebut each revelation, but eventually they were overwhelmed. In Volkogonov's case, they emphasized the general's first statement and ignored his retraction Note the word "overwhelmed" which seems to imply that they were far from being a majority. Navasky--by now virtually alone in his rejection of the case against Hiss, who had died in November 1996--repeated his charges from 1978 Note virtually alone which seems to indicate "minority view". If you know of a better historian, pray tell us. At some point, this exercise in denial becomes an eensy bit ludicrous, indeed. Collect (talk) 21:18, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. From the discussions above we have found one major RS (the New York Times), and a fair number of academic sources on there being a "growing consensus that Hiss, indeed, had most likely been a Soviet agent" as James Barron, a staff reporter for the New York Times says. That is all we really need to improve the lede. All this back and forth about the guilt or innocence is beside the point. We have RS that says there is a consensus. It should be added. There is no reasonable policy I can think of for excluding it. Capitalismojo (talk) 21:47, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Unless I'm mistaken, you two have just concluded that the New York Times is a reliable source, but The Washington Post is not. Also that, "Modern Age," "America's leading conservative quarterly," is a reliable source, but The Nation, The American Scholar, and the London Times Literary Supplement, are not. Or am I reading this wrong? Joegoodfriend (talk) 22:25, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

As such does not represent what I have written above, who is the other person of "two"? All the RS books and peer-reviewed articles, including Ehrman;s article, seem quite in accord with each other. Collect (talk) 01:04, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Collect, your latest source says, "Findings from the Venona project and Soviet sources have convinced most scholars that the government officials Alger Hiss, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and Laughlin Currie, for example, shared information with the Soviets, chiefly during the Second World War." (p. 297) It is dishonest to use that source to say there is an "academic consensus." We should go with the sources, rather than with our hearts say. TFD (talk) 03:19, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

To complete the footnote (#9) TFD quotes: "Findings from the Venona project and Soviet sources have convinced most scholars that the government officials Alger Hiss, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and Laughlin Currie, for example, shared information with the Soviets, chiefly during the Second World War. About 350 Americans, most of them not government employees, are known to have engaged in espionage. Disagreement remains about how damaging their actions were to U.S. security. There is consensus that information from Julius Rosenberg and others associated with the Manhattan Project accelerated the Soviets' development of atomic weapons. For a brief review of this debate, see Ellen Schrecker, "Soviet Espionage in America: An Oft-Told Tale," Reviews in American History 38 (June 2010): 355-61." This very clearly supports Collect's argument; also please see my note about Schrecker above, posted 07:19, 27 April 2013. It is not in the least "dishonest to use that source to say there is an 'academic consensus'." Au contraire. Yopienso (talk) 05:02, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

No it does not. The "consensus" is about Rosenberg and others. AFAIK no one has suggested that Hiss had access to atomic secrets. TFD (talk) 05:41, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll bold what you appear to have missed: "Findings from the Venona project and Soviet sources have convinced most scholars that the government officials Alger Hiss, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and Laughlin Currie, for example, shared information with the Soviets, chiefly during the Second World War." "Have convinced most scholars" = "scholarly consensus"; "Alger Hiss" = "Alger Hiss"; "shared information with the Soviets" = "spied." Stripping down the sentence to what deals with Hiss, we read, "Findings have convinced most scholars that Alger Hiss shared information with the Soviets."

As I quoted Schrecker above, "There is now just too much evidence from too many different sources to make it possible for anyone but the most die-hard loyalists to argue convincingly for the innocence of Hiss, Rosenberg, and the others." And from the Schrecker article cited in footnote #9 you yourself posted, "Like everyone but Tony Hiss and a tiny handful of hold-outs, she [Susan Jacoby] accepts the guilt of Alger Hiss" (p. 360). Yopienso (talk) 09:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Again, "convinced most scholars" is not the same as saying there is a consensus. Whether the hold-outs are "diehard" or "left-wing", their views continue to receive attention in academic circles as pointed out by a 2007 review by the CIA.[29] This case differs from the Oswald case for example, where a large number of people question his guilt, but there actually is a consensus that the official version was correct. TFD (talk) 14:13, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Certainly it is--that's what "consensus" means. Only the biased fringe disagree. The biased fringe There can always be alternative views, some held by nut jobs, but often by scholars of repute. See, for example, List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming. There is a scholarly consensus on global warming, but some very bright and capable scientists demur. So, too, with Hiss--there's a consensus among scholars, but not a 100% agreement.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Powers writes: . . . the end of the cold war . . . made available documents which have . . . definitively settled many old controversies about the guilt or innocence of people accused during the 1950s of having spied for the Soviet Union—the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel; their colleagues Al Sarant and Joel Barr, . . . the State Department official Alger Hiss and his wife, Priscilla . . . Yopienso (talk) 18:20, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

The two situations are different. Most of the global warming sceptic scientists have no expertise in the relevant area and none of them publish their theories in peer-reviewed publications. There are defenders of Alger Hiss however who are experts and do publish their theories in peer-reviewed publications. When a consensus is found, whether on evolution, global warming, the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, the moon landing etc., dissenting views are relegated to the fringe and ignored. TFD (talk) 21:59, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken; these and many other scientists are eminent in the field:

• Freeman Dyson, professor emeritus of the School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study; Fellow of the Royal Society
• Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences
• Garth Paltridge, retired chief research scientist, CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research and retired director of the Institute of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre, visiting fellow ANU
• Hendrik Tennekes, retired director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute

Some eminent historians may disagree with the consensus on Hiss, but Kai Bird is not one; he is a fine journalist.

You will be more helpful at this article if you will set aside your opinions, read the sources, and accept what they say. Yopienso (talk) 22:56, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I said most global warming sceptic scientists have no expertise in the relevant area. But much more importantly, none of them, including the experts you listed, challenge climate change in peer-reviewed

BTW I have no opinion on the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss.

TFD (talk) 00:22, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Sure they do, but that's beside the point. Richard Lindzen. Hendrik Tennekes. Garth Paltridge.

My apologies for reading into your comments a bias you do not hold.

Do we agree that most scholars hold the view that Hiss was a Soviet spy? Yopienso (talk) 01:05, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I do not agree that the statement that "there is a scholarly consensus of Hiss's guilt" has been adequately sourced. What is going to be cited for this? So far we only have the NYT, which is equivocal ('most likely'), and a questionable source for a dogmatic assertion regarding scholarly consensus. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:29, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Yopienso, I do not mind saying that most scholars have that view, since that can be sourced. While I do not want to make too much of a distraction out of the climate change issue, the sources you provide do not appear to bear you out. While these writers do write articles that are highly critical of mainstream climate change science, the articles they actual publish in academic papers tend to be far less aggressive. Lindzen's article was written 20 years ago. Tennekes' article was published in the highly controversial Energy and Environment, which has poor peer review and little acceptance among scientists and has always been edited by a global warming skeptic. Paltridge's article has a narrow focus and does not challenge climate change science, unlike his highly polemical non-academic book, The Climate Caper. The point is that fringe views do not get expressed in academic writing, which is what WP:FRINGE means. The climate change debate is over, and skeptics publish their views outside academia. TFD (talk) 02:08, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Please put on your reading glasses, Grampaw Grump! :) This page cites to White, Shelton, Haynes & Klehr, Weinstein, Vassiliev, Schrecker, Aron, Richer, and of course VENONA. Yopienso (talk) 02:13, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

TFD--OK--the point is that consensus does not equal unanimity, even among the best experts. Yopienso (talk) 02:13, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

It means unanimity in reliable sources. Obviously there may be astronomers who read their horoscopes, and nothing stops them from writing for astrology magazines, but astronomers' journals will not publish articles defending astrology. That is because it is not possible to make a reasonable argument in defense of astrology. TFD (talk) 02:45, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, it doesn't; not in history. History is an interpretation of facts, and scholars will disagree. (Scientists very often disagree, too.) Yopienso (talk) 03:29, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

When historians do disagree over interpretations of facts we follow WP:WEIGHT and disclose the various opinions. However historians agree on most facts - when the Declaration of Independence was signed, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, that Oswald killed Kennedy, etc. In those cases we do not even say there is a consensus, we merely state the facts. TFD (talk) 03:50, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Courtesy break

[Hope that works--the section was getting unmanageably long.]

Reply to TFD: I have stricken my wording above wrt "biased fringe" and replaced it with "alternate views." We're not comparing history to pseudo-history here, but simply one historian's view with another. More precisely, we're balancing the majority view of historians of Alger Hiss with the minority views of other historians. Yopienso (talk) 03:40, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

I could agree with the "consensus" among scholars about Hiss being guilty if it read "there is a consensus among scholars who rely mainly on ex-Soviet sources that Hiss was guilty". The evidence brought out at the trials and on appeal showed the exact opposite. For example, the now-forgotten author John Chabot Smith, who published in 1976, pointed out that the spy documents were copies or transcripts of non-confidential State Department documents. He gave his source for that statement. This is a matter that Professor Weinstein, for example,does not address. If they were not confidential, then Mrs. Hiss, often portrayed for reasons that escape me as a fanatical Communist, typed them out laboriously. Then Whittaker Chambers came from Baltimore to Washington, took the typed copies to his (communist) photographer in Baltimore, got them copied, then destroyed the typescript. Then -apparently the next day- Hiss took the originals which he had brought home to the State Department. The offence was enough to give him life imprisonment at least for espionage. What nonsense! On appeal, the Hiss defence produced an expert on questioned documents, who claimed- independently of her main testimony- that Priscilla Hiss did not type any of the typed documents. Indeed, she said that the testimony of the FBI expert on the typed documents was "absolutely worthless".

The three experts, Elizabeth McCarthy, Dr. Daniel Norman and Dr. Evelyn Ehrlich, were all people who had contractual or professional dealings with government bodies, and were to that extent testifying against their own interests.

By the way, is Dr. Svetlana Chervonnaya an academic or not? And could the contributors to this text give me a clear account of her views? RhosfawrRhosfawr (talk) 18:52, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

• Neither lede The original lede, which has a direct quote, equivocated Hiss' guilt. The proposed lede, which summarizes the cites, hammers Hiss' guilt and, basically, calls those who think otherwise crackpots. I've read this discussion and looked up the cites (except the sign-in one, which didn't work for me) and I think neither lede works precisely. Rhosfawr has a point that while the tide has clearly turned to accept that Hiss did work with the Soviets, however some historians who focus on the Soviet 'evidence' hold that Hiss' guilt was manufactured. Can't the lede say that and leave the OR arguments of the case to the side?EBY (talk) 02:34, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Why would the post-Soviets forge Soviet documents to prove Hiss' guilt? Collect (talk) 16:20, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

No one has claimed that they did. TFD (talk) 16:46, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I would like to clarify what I said. I have no basis on which to judge the academics who have studied the Soviet or Russian sources. Messrs. Haynes and Klehr, and for that matter Sam Tanenhaus, Professor Weinstein and numerous others, have had opportunities and access to sources that I do not have. But it has been possible for everyone with the time and money to study the American sources, and they tell a different tale. I believe that there is a qualitative difference between the American and the Soviet/Russian sources. The former have been as it were peer-reviewed. You can check the trial transcript against analyses based on other sources. For example, we know that Whittaker Chambers lied both in his book "Witness" and to the court. I would prefer to say that he fantasized. The fraudulent basis of the prosecution's case was shown in open court. Note that adjective "open". The Soviet files, and the trials based on that regime, have no such open basis. I do not know how many academics believe Hiss guilty, but that is hardly the important thing. We toilers in the US sources have discovered, for instance, that most of the documents the prosecution said Hiss gave to Whittaker Chambers were not confidential. To say that the Soviet sources provide a "consensus" among academics that Hiss was a spy, or for that matter that Harry Dexter White was a spy, ignores such facts. This is why I, for one, doubt the guilt of either man has been shown. The document we have from White, supposedly given to Chambers,is a summary of various facts which are in some cases irrelevant to the Soviet Union and in other cases obtainable from other sources. That is why the "blanket" statements by the "consensus" academics should not be taken as conclusive. The person who reads them without having knowledge of the background will think that OK, this matter is settled, I can go and play football without thinking further. RhosfawrRhosfawr (talk) 17:22, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

• Agree with both "1" and "2". While I did not read a lot about this, good books I read, such as "KGB in Europe" by Christopher Andrew (historian) and Mitrokhin, claim that he was indeed a Soviet agent, essentially as a matter of proven fact (as much as anything at all can be proven in historical research).My very best wishes (talk) 02:02, 7 July 2013 (UTC)