Talk:Whittaker Chambers

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There is too much discussion of Alger Hiss that is only peripherally related to Whittaker Chambers. Readers interested in the Alger Hiss story should read the article about him. Accordingly, I've made significant cuts to the account of the Hiss trial, as well as several paragraphs at the end discussing the debate over Hiss's innocence or guilt.

Also, the comment that he's responsible for ending communism probably needs some kind of citation.

Contents

[edit] Intro

This opening:
credited with or blamed for — depending on the point of view — touching off McCarthyism.,
while very good and dramatic, needs to be rewritten. McCarthyism began with McCarthy, not Chambers. Anybody got any ideas? Nobs01 19:26, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The old intro is still far better than the substitute. "the architect of the Yalta Conference" is again a great hyperbole; Alger Hiss was a junior official present in the delegation. That hardly makes him an orcestrator of the Yalta Conference. I propose the old intro come back and McCarthyism be replaced with the Red Scare, which should be agreeble to both sides.

[edit] Youth and Education

More details are deserved on his family as they are important to the character of Chambers. According to the unfinished story of alger hiss by fred j cook, his mother slept with an axe under her bed, grandmother went around picking up knives, a drunken grandfather, and a suicidal brother who later committed suicide. These details obviously had a profound effect on Chambers and should not be left out. Unfortunately, I once again find myself at 10 pm trying to finish a huge project due the next day. I don't have a source with precise details on Chambers history, just the vague outline that I mentioned above, if I find some info, I'll try and update.

[Why don't you just read Witness?]

[edit] The Ware Group

This section explicity defines Alger Hiss as part of the ware group which is not necessarily correct. The wiki on Alger Hiss states: "Hiss allegely became a member of the Ware group of underground Communists". Although Hiss was convicted, whether he was actually part of the Ware Group is a topic of debate. Please change, will lead to confusion.

[edit] OSS Dr.

This has been reverted for below reasons:

"The Hiss defense team had hired a noted psychiatrist who had successfully profiled Adolf Hitler for the OSS. His diagnosis of Chambers was that of a psychopathic liar. A retired OSS General C.D. Jackson, then working in the Eisenhower Administration, had worked at Time as well. He too diagnosed Chambers as a psychopath harming the anti-communist cause.

(1) source; (2) the doctors name; (3) which trial did he testify at (4) what evidence exists that this psychiatrist ever personally met Adolf Hitler to conduct such a diagnosis (5) what evidence exists that this psyciatrist ever persoanlly treated Whittaker Chambers that would qualify him to make such a diagnosis; (7) where in the ethics of the Psyciatric profession does it state that a doctor can publicly disclose a patient's diagnosis (8) who paid the doctor. Thank you. Nobs01 18:33, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am curious: What is it to "successfully" profile Adolf Hitler for the OSS? Pukkie 10:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

He predicted Hitler would commit suicide, which Hitler later did. Samuel J. Howard 13:49, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Psychiatrist

Hi, Nobs01. I won't presume to delete anything at this point, but I don't think your deletion of the bit about the shrink is well-founded. If the previous writer failed to include some of those details, they should be expanded upon. Only if the whole thing is untrue--i.e., that there was no such evaluation or conclusion, etc.--should it be deleted altogether. --bamjd3d

Venona was so secret, President Truman himself didnt know of its existence.
Had he known it is unlikely his aids would have undertaken to discredit Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers or taken in by "disinformation" spread by the CPUSA and Hiss's defenders, that Chambers had at one time been committed to an insane asylum. This has had unfortunate consequences for American politics, and Americans understanding of their own history. Paraphrased from Haynes & Klehr , Venona, p. 15
  • (Disclaimer: The above in no way should be interpreted that I subscribe to the "coulda woulda shoulda" school of historical thought).
See also VENONA_project#Significance first two paragraphs on Venona's secrecy. The real story about the Venona project is not confirming Hiss or Ethel Rosenberg's guilt, or vindicating Tailgunner Joe; it is rather (1) confirming the existence of a huge underground Soviet apparatus made up of American citizens working within the government in wartime, and (2) the decision by the Army to cover it up. Essential reading is this document [1], pgs. 61-75, to gain any real understanding of the subject. And that memorandum really needs to be excised from that source and moved to Wikisource. Any help in do so will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Nobs01 20:40, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Venona

More on Venona. What we have in the Venona revelations, as is so often the case, the discovery that the truth is often the exact opposite of commonly accepted conventional perceptions. It may have been that portions of FBI Venona file were leaked to Joe McCarthy, giving him the basis of his claim of "206" known communists (see pages 74 & 75). Ironically, then McCarthy went on a witchhunt for those "known" communists seeing the FBI wasn't doing much about it. Ironic I say, cause McCarthy was the beneficiary of a government leak—the exact thing he was crusading against. Beneficiary, cause the leak was his claim to fame. Ironic, cause Republican & conservative administrations are paranoid about government leaks (to wit, Pentagon Papers, White House Plumbers, Bush Administrion obsession with secrecy etc). Conversely, those elements often associated with openness in government, Democrats, liberals etc, many who claim victimhood for being suspected or accused, escaped prosecution, Theodore Hall for example. As the FBI document reveals, the difficulty of securing a conviction based on Venona transcripts would be considered "hearsay" in court, so it wasn't worth tipping America's hand to Soviet intelligence that their ciphers were being read. Ironic, cause a secret cabal of military and unelected bureaucrats decided among themselves to shape the American political scene for the next 50 years without consulting or notifying the President. Beneficiaries like Greg Silvermaster and Lud Ullman lived out quiet and prosperous lives (see New Jersey Monthly, The Spies of Loveladies, Ullman died with an $8 million estate as a real estate developer). So again, the truth is often the inverse opposite of public perceptions.Nobs01 03:30, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Witness

Excerpt from Witness,

"One operation Dr. Rosenbleitt told me about had to do with the mechanization of the Red Army. Representatives of the Irish Republican Army in London made a contact with the Soviet underground and worked out a deal whereby an officer of the General Staff in Washington—an Irish patriot—would turn over to Soviet agents here various information that he had access to. In return, the Russians would send two submarines with machine guns and other arms to the west coast of Ireland ... At this end the deal was arranged by a sportsman and politician in Queens who knew the general on the staff.
"The general agreed to turn over to Soviet agents all the material relating to Christie tanks,[2] and did so, which was why foreign representatives were surprised to see these rather American-looking tanks that paraded during one of the celebrations in red Square ...

Excerpt from Victor Suvorov's Icebreaker, pg. 14,

"One of Christie's American tanks was bought in the United States and sent to the Soviet Union under false documentation; the tank was described as an agricultural tractor. The 'tractor' was then produced in large numbers in the Soviet Union as a Mark BT - initials for the Russian words 'high-speed tank'. The first Mark BTs had a speed of l00 kilometres per hour. In the present day, there is not a tank crew anywhere which would not envy such a speed. nobs 20:29, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Time

While at Time, Chambers became known as a staunch anti-Communist, sometimes enraging his writers with the changes he made to their stories.

There'd better be some backing for this anecdote, especially the fuzzed-over connection between the second and third clauses implying that Time writers were enraged by ant-communism. --Calton | Talk 00:14, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Quick response (not the source used in article), see Whittaker Chambers: Odd Choice for the Medal of Freedom, New York Times, short piece written by Dorothy Sterling , a Time Inc. employee from 1936 to 1949, was assistant bureau chief in Life’s news bureau from 1944 to 1949. nobs 01:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC) Cached

[edit] Protect against Retribution

"Chambers saved a collection of documents he received from Hiss to protect himself and his family against retribution from the secret apparatus as occurred in the Juliet Poyntz case."

I don't get it. How could the documents possibly protect Chambers against retribution by the Communists - and why would he have saved them before he decided to defect? Having defected in a highly-visible way why was it he never needed the "protection" those documents allegedly provided? Nor, apparently, any protection of any sort?

Minasbeede 20:08, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Maybe they were bulletproof. Clarityfiend 17:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Aboudaqn 14:45, 23 September 2006 (EDT)

Why doesn't everyone who comments on this entry be sure to read Chambers' book Witness first? Almost every issue raised is discussed by Chambers himself. -- That's what I base much of my own editing on -- that and his other book, Cold Friday.

[edit] This article needs cleaned up

It's highly disorganized and sloppy at the moment. I've not even glanced for possible NPOV problems aside from the most recent additions. --TJive 09:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Some people are striving for NPOV! -- Aboudaqn 15:49, 29 September 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Listing oddity

Is there some reason the Karl group membership listing has Sveshchnikov and Herrmann on the same line? Clarityfiend 17:11, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] too much bias: close the editing?

I just spent an hour cleaning up someone's malicious seeding of bias throughout this entry.

Whoever you are, why not let the facts speak for themselves and stop the editorializing? Isn't it easier to simply list the pro's and con's in links by finer writers than yourself? I vastly prefer the attacks of a Victor Navasky to yours -- and I am the one who has listed such hyperlinks!

Wiki editors: do you think it's time to start limiting or stopping altogether the edits to this entry? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aboudaqn (talk • contribs)

That's not how Wikipedia works. KarlBunker 13:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Berle and Chambers's revelations

I would certainly hate to see editing stopped while we still have this passage, referring to the revelations of Communist infiltration of the government by Chambers to Adolph Berle: "He chose not to produce his envelope of evidence at this time, and Berle thought his information was tentative, unclear and uncorroborated. Years later, Berle would explain that 'you didn't go to the President with reports that were relatively so unsubstantial as that.' Berle didn't even notify the FBI of Chambers's information until 1941."
That leaves the clear impression that Berle sat on Chambers's revelations and did not notify the President. I do not believe that that is consistent with the evidence. First, here's how Chambers described the upshot of his meeting in his book Witness: "But nothing at all happened. Weeks passed into months. I went about my work at Time. Then, one day, I am no longer certain just when, I met a dejected [Isaac Don] Levine. (Levine had been present at the Berle meeting. ed.) Adolf Berle, said Levine, had taken my information to the President at once. The President had laughed. When Berle was insistent, he had been told in words which it is necessary to paraphrase, to 'go jump in a lake.'"
Next we have Francis P. Sempa writing at http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2001_07-09/sempa_chambers/sempa_chambers.html
"Two years after his break with communism, Chambers attempted to warn the Roosevelt Administration about communist infiltration of the government (the same information that he revealed to HUAC in 1948). Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle ' brought Chambers' information directly to Roosevelt, but the president refused to believe it. FDR's response to Chambers' information typified his administration's lax attitude about the threat of communist subversion."
Then there's the 1997 Sam Tanenhaus biography of Chambers, on pages 203 and 204: "Nothing had come, after all, of his meeting with Berle in 1939. It was not Berle's fault. The official had taken Chambers's story to the White House, to no effect. And Don Levine had made every effort to reach the president, telling the Chambers story to every contact he knew. One of Levine's recruits, columnist Walter Winchell, had gone directly to FDR but had been rebuffed. "I don't want to hear another thing about it!" Roosevelt had said angrily, jabbing a finger at the columnist. 'It isn't true.'"
Finally, we have this from the New York Times: "Berle told neither his department nor the FBI, but did, according to one source, pass the intelligence on to Roosevelt. But the President merely `scoffed at the charge'. He was incredulous that there could be a Soviet espionage ring in his administration; to him Communists were blue-collar trade union militants, not suave representatives of the east coast establishment. Gentlemen like Hiss could simply not be traitors. As a result, no counter-intelligence programme for identifying Communist agents in the federal government was put in place."
Notice that they say, "according to one source," and they put "scoffed at the charge," in quotes as though they are quoting that source directly. That source is clearly not Chambers's book, because, as we have seen, Witness doesn't use those words.
On top of all this evidence, I can say that it is simply inconceivable to me as a longtime bureaucrat that Berle would have not have protected his rear end by taking this explosive information to his immediate superior, which in this case, I believe, would have been FDR. Imagine the consequences for him if the President were to learn about it through some other means in the future and to learn, further, that Berle had been notified but had kept it to himself. If you can imagine it, so could Berle.
Unless someone can produce some very persuasive evidence that all these sources are wrong, I plan to edit the text of the article to show that, in fact, Berle did notify FDR and FDR did nothing about it. Root50 11:53, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
You have some good data there, Root50. From the sound of it, when Berle made his "you didn't go to the President..." statement, he was being a good Democrat and taking some of the blame as a favor to his ex-boss. Still, the article has to go with what's documented, and in this case that means telling both conflicting stories. I'll edit the passage to do that; see what you think. KarlBunker 13:27, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, it's a decent beginning, but the weight of the emphasis is hardly consistent with the agreed upon weight of the evidence. By beginning with the statement, "Berle thought his information was tentative, unclear and uncorroborated. Years later, Berle would state that 'you didn't go to the President with reports that were relatively so unsubstantial as that'," the narrative is placed so completely in support of Berle's questionable story that there appears to be nothing left to say. Whatever Berle might have said, in all probability, "taking one for the team," some years later, we certainly don't know for a fact that that's what he thought, and the wealth of evidence presented by people with less incentive to lie about it suggests that that's not what he thought at all. Proper emphasis, I believe, would begin with the contrary assertion that Berle took the matter directly to the President, as seems most likely to me, and you apparently agree, and follow with Berle's later claim that he didn't. At the very least, with the wealth of quotes supporting the contradiction to Berle's assertion, he should not be the only one quoted on the matter.
Oh, and by the way, the URL for the New York Times article to which I referred is http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stafford-roosevelt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Root50 02:31, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the weight of the article as it stands is inappropriate. Berle's quoted statement is first hand, so it warrants quoting. On the other side there is Chambers saying what Levine said that Berle did, and Chambers saying what Levine said that Berle said the President said. With regard to Berle's action, all the sources seem to rely on Chambers's account in Witness. The fact that the NY Times says that "one source" says that Berle went to the President suggests to me that that one source must have been Levine, despite the fact that the "scoffed at it" quote doesn't match what's in Witness. Otherwise there wouldn't be "one source," there'd be two.
There's also Tanenhaus's account of Levine making "every effort to reach the president", and Tanenhaus reporting what Levine says one of his "recruits" said that the President said. That's pretty vague and indirect.
So in all of that, I don't think there's anything on the other side that's quotable; it's all too indirect. The article may already be too generous to this version of the story, since it says "according to other reports," when in fact it may more correct to say that there's only one "report" that tells the story that way.
Here's the relevant passage from "Red Spy Queen" that I used as the main source for this; as you can see it states the case more convincingly than what's in the article:
After Chambers left, Berle confided to his diary that he planned to “take a few simple measures.” 41 But he was not unduly disturbed: Chambers, in his view, had been tentative and unclear and might even be suffering from some “neurosis.” 42 Moreover, he had no corroboration. Chambers had decided not to produce his valuable envelope—yet. Years later, Berle would explain that “you didn't go to the President with reports that were relatively so unsubstantial as that. There was nothing offered by Mr. Chambers to back up his story.” 43
The numbered notes 41 and 42 refer to diary entries reprinted in a book by Berle: Navigating the Rapids.
KarlBunker 03:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear the rest of the quote from Berle. Rather than making it more convincing, it sounds to me like more embellishment of his story, particularly the outlandish claim that he thought Chambers must be suffering from some "neurosis." The very fact that, as the article states, several of the people named were already suspected, would have clued him in that there was likely something to the Chambers story. Surely, Berle would have been interested enough to look further into the matter, and, as I stated previously, he surely would have covered his fanny by passing the information up.
As for all the other accounts tracing back to Witness, there's nothing in Witness about Levine telling all those other people, and there's nothing in Witness about Walter Winchell. This account from the respected biographer, Tanenhaus, sounds to me like corroboration of Chambers.
Finally, the readers should be reminded that this article is about Whittaker Chambers. It is not about Adolph Berle. If anyone should be quoted on this matter it should be Chambers, not Berle. 68.100.121.215 10:53, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
It's because the article is about Chambers and not Berle that I think this issue should be dealt with briefly. The only relevant point to it all is that Chambers was ignored, first by Berle and/or the President, and then by the FBI. If you want to quote Chambers, you'll have to quote what he said that Levine said that Berle said the President said (with a paraphrase somewhere in that chain). That would be confusing, would require explaining who Levine is, and wouldn't add anything valuable to the article. Alternatively, we could remove the Berle quote if you think that will make the article more correct, KarlBunker 12:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I definitely believe removing the Berle quote is in order, because it gives too much weight to his dubious claim that he did not tell the President about the Chambers revelations. Concerning those revelations, in re-consulting the Tanenhaus book, I note that they were a bigger bombshell than the Wikpedia article now suggests:
"Gradually, over the course of two or three hours, Chambers set out the jigsaw puzzle, now and then mislaying a piece that Levine nudged into place. Chambers reviewed the entire underground operation but spoke mainly of the Washington ring. He ran down the roster of government agents. Some of the names were shocking--for instance, State Department officials Laurence Duggan, Alger Hiss, and Donald Hiss, all with sterling reputations, all known personally to Berle; former State Department official Noel Field, now with the League of Nations, in Geneva; Lauchlin Currie, a special assistant to FDR. Chambers also mentioned operatives in the Treasury Department and described military espionage, including 'plans for two super-battleships;' obtained by the ring in 1937 and the sketches of 'aerial bomb sight detectors' passed on by Frank Reno. Several of the names were new even to Levine, who jotted them down later that night at the Hay-Adams." p. 162
Brevity is a good thing, but Isaac Don Levine played such an important role in brokering and participating in the Chambers meeting with Berle and then following up on it, that it might not be such a good thing to leave him completely out of the account of what transpired. I'll have more to say after I have read his book, Eyewitness. I also don't think that the interests of brevity should trump the key historical question of whether or not FDR was personally responsible for warnings of Soviet infiltration of his government being ignored. Root50 15:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
In terms of how events played out, I don't see how Levine played any role at all. He tried to bring attention to Chambers, and (AFAIK) failed. Likewise, Chambers's interview with Berle was a dramatic moment in retrospect, but it had no effect on events until years later. Anyway, I agree that the Berle quote should be taken out; I'll do that now. KarlBunker 15:33, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I thought that the statement above was pretty fantastic when I first read it, and now that I have read Levine's Eyewitness to History and the relevant portions of Allen Weinstein's Perjury I can see better than ever how outrageous it is. How events played out is that Soviet espionage continued apace in the United States and in Britain, the Soviet Union got the atomic bomb perhaps a decade or so earlier than they might have otherwise, and the big winner in World War II was the Soviet Union while the biggest losers were the people of Eastern Europe, China, Korea, and what was then known as Indo-China. Had the president of the United States taken the appropriate steps to counter the Soviet spying and had he learned the lesson from it as to what Stalin's Soviet Communism was all about, the history of the world could have been very, very different. Isaac Don Levine, who had no apparent reason to lie about the matter, describes very vigorous efforts on his part to prevent the sad developments that I list. He was just the man to do it, too. He came to this country from Russia as a teenager, and later was able to cover the nascent Bolshevik state as a Western journalist. He saw the Soviet Union as it was, not as many less-informed sympathizers in the West wished it to be. And contrary to the latest edit in the main article, he was no friend of Whittaker Chambers. This is from p. 210: "To begin with, there was never an intimate bond between me and Chambers. On his highly sensitive antennae he early caught my inner awareness that I could never forget that for seven years he had been a spy and a traitor to his country, even though he atoned for it later."
That characterization of Levine is not what I find most objectionable about the account both before and after my attempt at an edit. The account that is treated as authoritative as to how Chambers's revelations were regarded by Berle is Berle himself. This is the man who first testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee that what Chambers had revealed to him within the government was just a "Communist study group." It is not just my point of view when I say that Berle later "claimed" not to have taken Chambers's allegations all that seriously. But don't take my word for it or Levine's word for it. Here is what Allen Weinstein has to say about Berle's HUAC testimony. I'm going to put it up in hopes that someone else will duly modify the article text to reflect the clear truth of Weinstein's assessment. If they don't, I guess I'll have to slug it out some more myself. Now here's Weinstein:
...Berle's recollections of his 1939 meeting with Chambers and its aftermath were surprisingly inaccurate....
Berle's memory of his conversation with Chambers and Levine differed from their earlier testimony before the Committee. Berle asked the group to excuse any "discrepancies in detail" between his version of that meeting and the previous accounts: "I am testifying from recollection about something that happened nine years ago...please lay it [any discrepancy] to faulty memory and not lack of desire to tell the story." (Actually, Berle kept a diary, which contained a long entry on the 1939 visit and which he had every reason to consult before testifying.) Berle referred to his informant as "Whittaker K. Chambers"--apparently believing that the pseudonym "Karl," which Chambers had used throughout their talk, was actually the man's middle name. He did not think Levine had accompanied Chambers to the interview, "but that may be an absence of memory." He believed the visit took place in late August, not September 2, and confirmed that "Karl wished to disclose certain information about Communist activities in Washington."
According to Berle, Karl said he had been "a member of the underground Communist group from 1934 to [the] end of 1937," after which he had defected and gone into hiding for a year "in fear of some sort of reprisal....[He] was obviously under some emotional strain." Karl told him about the Communist Party's efforts "to develop a group of sympathizers" within the government, but there was never in his informant's story "any question of espionage. There was no espionage involved in it. He stated that their hope merely was to get some people who would be sympathetic to their point of view...."
If accurate, Berle's testimony would obviously dampen considerably the overheated climate of HUAC's investigation by suggesting to the Committee, the press, and the public that Chambers's "revelations" in 1939 had been small potatoes, hardly worth fussing over, and certainly nothing that involved the question of underground Communist Party cells capable of influencing government policy or committing espionage. But the FBI later produced a copy of Berle's 1939 memorandum on Chambers's visit, which he had retained for four years before sending it to the Bureau in 1943.
His four-page series of notes, titled "Underground Espionage Agent," contradicted almost every specific point Berle made in his HUAC testimony. It contained a list of individuals mentioned by "Karl" during their conversation, including major Communist espionage agents and underground government contacts as well as "sympathizers...."
Nor did Berle's 1939 memorandum describe a collection of Communist sympathizers casually connected in an innocuous "study group." It proceeded name by name, department by department, to show that Chambers had stressed actual espionage already committed rather than the mere possibility of future action or secret involvement with Communism....
In his testimony to the HUAC subcommittee, Berle stated that he was testifying from memory alone, apparently suggesting (unpersuasively, for a man who kept well-oredered files) that he had not retained a copy of his 1939 memorandum. But there was also his diary, and the first entry after his visit with Levine and Chambers belied Berle's assertion to HUAC that he did not know Chambers had been a highly placed espionage agent:
Saturday night [September 2] I had, to me, a singularly unpleasant job. Isaac Don Levine in his contact with the Krivitsky matter had opened up another idea of the Russian espionage. He brought a Mr. X around to my house....Through a long evening, I slowly manipulated Mr. X to a point where he had told some of the ramifications hereabout; and it becomes necessary to take a few simple measures. I expect more of this kind of thing, later. A good deal of the Russian espionage was carried on by Jews; we know now that they are exchanging information with Berlin; and the Jewish units are furious to find out they are, in substance, working for the Gestapo....
Berle's memory lapse was to some extent intentional. "I hope what I said was sedative," he confided to his friend (and Alger Hiss's onetime superior at the AAA) Judge Jerome Frank in a September 9, 1948 letter. "This was the intention but it is hard to get sanity into a super-charged emotional atmosphere. It seems the great question was not whether there was treason to the United States, but whether Alger Hiss goes to heaven when he dies--and I cannot contribute anything to that decision...."
His major concern in 1948--at a time when Berle was a Liberal Party leader in New York working for Truman's election--was to defuse, if possible, the influence of anti-Communist sentiment and of the case itself in that election year. "I hated to appear to be in the 'red-baiting business,'" he noted when composing a diary entry on his HUAC testimony. (pp. 55-58) Root50 04:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Root50, I'm not sure what the whole of your argument is, because I didn't have the patience to read through your 1300(!) word comment. Maybe I will later. In general however, a person describing his own actions has to get precedence over what someone else thinks that person did, unless there's a consensus among scholars that the person is lying.
In the future, if you want to make a point, try being brief. You're more likely to convince people if they aren't driven away by the length of your comment. KarlBunker 11:26, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
If attention deficit disorder is your problem, the concluding short paragraph, the one just above your reply, provides sufficient reason not to take Berle's testimony at face value. Berle had a very strong incentive to shade the truth in his testimony, and it is an established fact that he did so, characterizing what Chambers had revealed as nothing more than a Communist study group. As far as the work of scholars is concerned, consensus is not what's important but which of them provides the best evidence. In this case it's Weinstein. That' why I felt I had to share key parts of it here.
You, on the other hand, have invoked a passage from Kathryn Olmsted's recent Red Spy Queen as support for the argument that Berle didn't tell the president about Berle's revelations at all. Maybe if I get a satisfactory response to the letter (below) that I have written her, I would agree to give her as much weight as Weinstein, but I'm not holding my breath:
Dear Professor Olmsted,
I have just finished reading your interesting and informative book on Elizabeth Bentley, and I would like to congratulate you on your work.
I have a serious question, however, about what you say in the last full paragraph on page 31:
"After Chambers left, Berle confided to his diary that he planned to 'take a few simple measures.' But he was not unduly disturbed: Chambers, in his view, had been tentative and unclear and might even be suffering from some 'neurosis.' Moreover, he had no corroboration. Chambers had decided not to produce his valuable envelope--yet. Years later, Berle would explain that 'you didn't go to
the President with reports that were relatively so unsubstantial as that. There was nothing offered by Mr. Chambers to back up his story."
I think you will agree with me that the clear impression left with the reader by this passage is that Adolf Berle, indeed, did not share the information with President Franklin Roosevelt, although one of your sources for the passage in Berle's memorandum that he wrote up on the meeting is entitled rather provocatively and accurately, "Underground Espionage Agent."
Why, might I ask, did you choose to convey an impression that is certainly not shared by the sources that you site just before the paragraph at issue, "Witness," by Whittaker Chambers and "Whittaker Chambers" by Sam Tanenhaus? Both leave little doubt that Berle duly took the allegations far more seriously than you imply and certainly did tell the President, but got the brush-off.
Allen Weinstein, whose book, "Perjury," is in your bibliography, explains quite well why Berle's 1948 HUAC testimony which you quote from the account by the New York Times, should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Berle at that time was a New York Liberal Party wheelhorse, and was doing his best to neutralize the charges of the anti-Truman Congressional Republicans.
Finally, why do you make no mention of the man responsible for the Chambers-Berle meeting, was present at that meeting, and is the source of the information that Berle did, indeed, tell the President about Chambers's allegations? I am speaking, of course, of the anti-Communist, Russian-born journalist, Isaac Don Levine. Why did you leave his book, "Eyewitness to History," in which he gives his account of his dealings with Chambers and Berle, out of your bibliography? Root50 14:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Insults are not conducive to a productive discussion; if you want to engage in such a discussion, do not indulge in them. I've read all of your recent posts now, and I don't see anything there of much consequence or interest, nor is it clear what your point is. Berle's testimony, diary entry and 1939 memorandum were all monumentally vague, and Weinstein takes advantage of this vagueness to make some slightly-less-vague insinuations about Berle's motivations. So what? What is your point? Rather than making such lengthy but unclear comments, why don't you make specific suggestions for changes to this article, with (brief) arguments supporting those changes?
Secondly, since you seem to have a lot of interest in Isaac Levine, why don't you start an article about him? That would probably be more fruitful than trying to inflate his importance to this article. KarlBunker 15:42, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
This is where we came in. I made changes in the article to change the general tone about Chambers's espionage revelations and you changed it back. As Chambers says in Witness after reproducing the memo that Berle wrote up at the time, "...if the notes are studied carefully, it will be seen that the essential framework of the conspiracy is here, even down to such details as the fact that Reno was working as Colonel Zornig's assistant at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. It is equally clear that I am describing not a Marxist study group, but a Communist conspiracy. The Communists are described as such. The reader has only to ask himself what he would have done, if he had been a security officer of the Government, and such information had come into his hands, or even if he had been told no more than the address for cables to the Soviet apparatuses, which is the meaning of one of the entries, or the fact that a Communist was working on the bombsight." (pp. 469-470)
Adolf Berle had every reason in the world to downplay the importance of the revelations to cover up for the shocking failure of the Roosevelt administration to do what they should have done. I don't think Wikipedia should perpetuate such a cover-up. Root50 01:02, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia can't call a historical figure a liar unless it's the wide consensus of scholars that that person was a liar. As your posts have demonstrated, at least one scholar says this about Berle, and at least one doesn't. And as your posts also demonstrate, the evidence is vague and insubstantial. I think that some mention of Berle's and Roosevelt's motivation to avoid any expose' of communists or spies in the administration would be appropriate, however. KarlBunker 11:46, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, by concluding along with the preponderance of scholars who have weighed in on the subject that Berle did, indeed, inform the President of what Chambers told him, Wikipedia at this point is already concluding that Berle lied about the central issue regarding that Sept. 1939 meeting. He testified to a subcommittee of HUAC that he did not inform the President because it was too trivial. On another key point, he told the subcommittee that he checked with the FBI, and they already knew all about the stuff that Chambers had told him. I don't think you will find any scholars anywhere who will agree that that claim is anywhere near the truth. Chambers had described a serious spy ring and it was well known in New York literary circles that Chambers had broken with the Communists a couple of years before his meeting with Berle. Yet, no one from the FBI had been in touch with Chambers, and Alger Hiss continued his advancement up the ladder in the State Department after the Berle-Chambers meeting. Berle told the HUAC subcommittee that Chambers had only told him about a group of Communist "sympathizers" in the government, and that the Hiss brothers were not even members of the Communist Party. According to Berle's testimony, what Chambers was revealed didn't come close to being anything like a bad old espionage ring, which is essentially why Wikipedia at this point is now giving the impression that it didn't bother Berle very much that FDR should brush it off, and, by implication, it shouldn't bother us very much either. But I don't think you'll find any scholars to agree with this premise. Berle did title the memo he wrote up on the meeting, "Soviet Espionage Agent," after all.
In summary, I believe that there is general agreement that in his testimony to a subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities on August 30, 1949, he lied about quite a number of very important aspects of that crucial encounter with Chambers. Berle even had this to say about the encounter, according to the report of the New York Times the next day, "The idea that the two Hiss boys and Nat Witt were going to take over the United States Government was childish."
Should Wikipedia really base its account of the government's 1939 treatment of the Chambers revelations on the assumption that this man was fundamentally truthful about it? Root50 02:42, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
"Berle lied about the central issue regarding that Sept. 1939 meeting. He testified to a subcommittee of HUAC that he did not inform the President because it was too trivial."
The only pertinent quote of that testimony I've seen is the one that used to be in the article: "'you didn't go to the President with reports that were relatively so unsubstantial as that." Some have interpreted this as him saying that he, in fact, didn't go to the president, but it's not clear that that's what he meant.
"he told the subcommittee that he checked with the FBI, and they already knew all about the stuff that Chambers had told him. I don't think you will find any scholars anywhere who will agree that that claim is anywhere near the truth."
Since most of the people Chambers named were already known to be or suspected of being Communists, this statement was certainly "somewhere near" the truth. Tanenhaus writes (pg. 169-170) "As early as March 1940 he [Berle] had prodded the FBI to follow up on Berle's own interview [with Chambers] of September 1939." This doesn't speak to what the FBI "said," but it's known that the FBI didn't launch any major investigation at this point. Given Hoover's obsession with Communist subversion, the FBI's lack of action before 1945 is significant. It indicates that Berle and FDR were not alone in dismissing the importance of Chambers's story.
"Chambers had described a serious spy ring"
That is not clearly established by any part of the record that I'm aware of or that you have quoted. Since Chambers was afraid that admitting to espionage would lead to his being prosecuted, there was every reason for him to be vague and tentative with Berle. All accounts, including his own, indicate that he was.
"Wikipedia at this point is now giving the impression that it didn't bother Berle very much that FDR should brush it off... But I don't think you'll find any scholars to agree with this premise."
As you've pointed out yourself, Kathryn Olmsted agrees with the essentials of this premise. Though she apparently believes that Berle didn't go to the president, she clearly believes that he felt there was no good reason for him to do so. If you know of any scholars that clearly disagree with this premise, and who voice an opinion that this point is an important one, I'd be interested in seeing that information.
Should Wikipedia base its account of what a person did based on what that person says he did? Unless there is a clear consensus among scholars that he's lying, yes, it should. Keep in mine that your and my opinions and conclusions aren't relevant here. It's what Wikipedia:Reliable sources have written on the subject that matters. KarlBunker 05:08, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
First, concerning Berle's lying about not telling the President, I might have been a little off the mark is saying that he testified to that effect before a HUAC subcommittee. I have not seen the actual testimony, only the New York Times article about it the day after. Here's more of the article that the author Kathryn Olmsted used as her source for the Berle quote:
"Answering a question by a reporter, Mr. Berle said he did not report to President Roosevelt on Mr. Chambers' story. 'You didn't go to the President with reports that were relatively so unsubstantiated as that,' he said. 'There was nothing offered by Mr. Chambers to back up his story.'"
I had assumed that that's what Berle told the committee, but that is really immaterial to the question of Berle's veracity on this key point. He told the world, in effect, that he did not report the allegations to the President. I believe we can agree that that claim by Berle is now, as they used to say in the Nixon administration during Watergate, "inoperative."
Here's what that New York Times story has to say with regard to the FBI already knowing all about what Chambers had described to Berle:
"On the basis of Mr. Chambers' story, said Mr. Berle, he checked on the Hiss brothers and found they had 'good records.' The check up was not only in the State Department where Alger and Donald Hiss then had 'minor jobs,' but among Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, where the brothers had worked previously. A check was made also with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which already knew all about Mr. Chambers' allegations, Mr. Berle recalled."
That's a far cry from the reference given in the Tanenhaus book to Berle saying that he told the FBI more than six months later that they ought to look into some unspecified things that Chambers had told him, with no recorded reaction from the FBI. What follows in the Tanenhaus book also undermines the Berle claim and the claim being made in opposition to my assertions: "But the FBI was preoccupied with Nazi spies, was not interested in the Communist underground, and Berle's messages sat unread in its files. It was two years before FBI agents came to Chambers's office to interview him. To his surprise, they seemed unaware of the disclosures he had made to Berle."
The endnote accompanying this passage also makes interesting and germane reading. Here's an excerpt: "The bureau decided to interview WC after hearing about him from a number of journalists, including Ludwig Lore, American Mercury editor Eugene Lyons, Victor Riesel of the New Leader, and Will Allen of the Washington Daily News." The references given are various FBI files.
Concerning what the author Kathryn Olmsted currently believes about the Berle episode, that is really very hard to determine. Note the email above that I wrote to her asking how she could come to the conclusion that Berle sloughed off the Chambers allegations and didn't even tell the President, based on Berle's words some years later, when that directly contradicts the authors Chambers and Tanenhaus that she had cited in the paragraph just above, and the author Weinstein whom she cites elsewhere. I also asked her why she made no mention of Isaac Don Levine and his book that deals with the subject first-hand. Here is her response of January 21:
Thanks for your kind words about my book. It's been a few years, so I don't remember the details about why I made certain decisions about describing the Berle affair. I do know Eyewitness to History, though, and have found it very informative. Best wishes, Kathy Olmsted
Concerning the seriousness of Chambers's charges and a scholar who agrees completely on that point, we have Allen Weinstein, already cited above:
His four-page series of notes, titled "Underground Espionage Agent," contradicted almost every specific point Berle made in his HUAC testimony. It contained a list of individuals mentioned by "Karl" during their conversation, including major Communist espionage agents and underground government contacts as well as "sympathizers...."
Nor did Berle's 1939 memorandum describe a collection of Communist sympathizers casually connected in an innocuous "study group." It proceeded name by name, department by department, to show that Chambers had stressed actual espionage already committed rather than the mere possibility of future action or secret involvement with Communism....
There it is. Chambers made extremely serious allegations about an ongoing spy ring. As we see from the New York Times of August 31, 1948, Adolf A. Berle, Jr. lied about the nature of the allegations and he lied about what he did about them. Wikipedia may report what Berle said, but it should not treat what he said as though it were the same thing as fact. Root50 03:26, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
You've just added another 800 words to this interminable debate without making any relevant new point whatsoever. Even in terms of repetition, the only relevant point you've repeated is to note that Weinstein believes Chambers's statement to Berle was more substantive than Berle would later state. As I've responded three times before: a person describing his own actions has to get precedence over what someone else thinks that person did, unless there's a consensus among scholars that the person is lying. KarlBunker 11:58, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Venona Project and KGB File Revelations

Could someone point to sources regarding Senator Moynihan's "flatly" stating Harry Dexter White was a Soviet Agent. I've read Moynihan's book (which I assume was largely ghost written) & there was nothing substantive about White's unambiguous credentials as a Soviet Agent. Source of information, yes. Agent? The record is quite silent on that.

The VENONA cables on White are ambiguous, particularly the August 4, 1944 series (1119 - 1121). They show White meeting with a Soviet KGB agent which the paranoid crowd uses as 100% proof that White was an agent. But the record is silent as to whether White knew "Koltsov" was a KGB agent, or the economist he was credentialed as at Bretton Woods. Totally absent from any of these current discussions is the context of what White was doing at the time. Anyone want to offer a guess? DEddy 15:03, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Since there have been no takers... the context of that August 4, 1944 VENONA cable was that the Bretton Woods conference had just finished. The Russians had attended, but had not signed. (They ultimately did not join the IMF/World Bank.)

White was in the role of salesman. White was grabbing the bull by the horns—as salesmen are apt & expected to do—and selling the Russians on the wisdom & benefits of their joining the IMF/World Bank. Salesmen on the hunt for the big deal tend to be rather aggressive & assertive. Some have even been know to imply greater benefits than actually can be realized. DEddy 13:03, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] changes

Please see Wikipedia:Manual of Style section 9.7 regarding contradictions and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) section 1.7 regarding use of 'of' between months and years. This is what I follow in my editing. Thanks Hmains 05:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I know the MOS advises against contractions. In some cases however, avoiding contractions results in awkward, stilted and silly-looking prose, and that takes precedence over a MOS recommendation. I have no preference regarding "of" between months and years in this case. KarlBunker 11:55, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Please forgive me, but, who do you think you are? "I have no preference"? I'm sorry, but this is Wikipedia. We can edit it if we please. You don't own us. So, please, stop reverting the edits of users who want to copy-edit this article. Thanks. Stormy nightmare 23:02, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Okay, you're forgiven. Now, please forgive me: I didn't know that "this is Wikipedia" means that I am not allowed to have a preference, while other editors are. Thanks for setting me straight on that point.
Seriously, you've misinterpreted my attitude in the above comments. I don't believe that I "own" anyone (ew) or any article. I only believe that I have a right to edit, and to agree or disagree with other people's edits. KarlBunker 23:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The article is confusing because of missing and misplaced punctuation. Please leave the copyedit flag until the article has actually been copyedited. Afterwards, instead of reverting, just move or add whatever you like on top of the copyedited version.

You obviously care about this article; why not let someone make it better by standardizing the grammar? :) IrisWings 07:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Just as it's not correct to add a "POV" tag to an article with no more explanation than "This article is POV!", likewise it's incorrect here to insert the "copyedit" tag with no explanation. If you are honestly having trouble understanding anything in the article, I doubt that it's because it uses "wasn't" instead of "was not", and use of contractions is the only specific complaint that has been made about the article. If anyone has any other specific complaints about the "spelling, grammar, usage, tone, style, and voice," I'd be most happy to see the problem explained or simply fixed. If anyone finds any part of the article confusing, I'd be very happy to hear about that too--unless your problem is that you don't understand contractions; I can't help you there.KarlBunker 12:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Copyediting is the procedure of making the article more clear and accurrate - for example, correcting typos and style issues. One such style issue is an inconsistant use of style, as shown in the Communism and espionage section - the first paragraph is introduced as "In 1924, Chambers...", while the second is introduced as "In 1931 Chambers...". If both options are correct (which is not the case,) one of the two needs to be chosen to prevent the article from looking it was written by an inexperienced author (in this case, one of the two is correct. I did a systemic correction of this specific issue, but there is bound to be more issues present.
In addition to typos, copyediting also corrects style to make the article more consise and easier to read, in a tone that is expected of an encyclopedia. Blind reversion of one style change is a symptom of this issue, especially when such a reversion breaks consistancy in how the article is written and undoes other copyediting at the same time. --Sigma 7 13:50, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I asked what needs fixing, and you give me a definition of copyediting. You also give one example--of something that you fixed in the same edit in which you replaced the {{copyedit}} tag. Do you believe that the {{copyedit}} tag is appropriate on the basis of "there is bound to be more issues present"? Do you generally add this tag to articles that "might has issues"?KarlBunker 14:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
I generally go ahead and fix punctuation problems without tagging the article. The only reason I bothered to explain why the article needed copyediting is because you seemed so determined against it--you reverted it several times.
If you don't understand the proper use of punctuation, perhaps you should accept the help of those who do. We are only trying to improve the article. Don't you want it to look as polished as possible? IrisWings 22:06, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Good dig, IrisWings; Two points for you. :-) I understand the proper use of punctuation. I also understand that good writing, even good formal writing in an encyclopedic style, doesn't always come from the mindless and pedantic following of rules. I also understand that "This manual, along with the supplemental manuals linked from it, provides guidance for those seeking it, but does not prescribe rigid rules that must always be followed."
And I'm still waiting for any mention of anything that allegedly still needs fixing in this article. If any editor insists on the inclusion of a tag in an article, but refuses to discuss why it supposedly belongs there, then that is disruptive editing. The prohibition against disruptive editing, unlike the MOS, is not a guideline. KarlBunker 22:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
While I'm waiting, allow me to demonstrate my point about good writing versus rigidly rule-following writing: In any biographical article, there is bound to be an unfortunate number of sentences with the format "On [some date], [article subject] [did something]". A good writer will find ways to avoid too much of this repetition, but it can't be totally avoided without getting into weird contortions. So what to do? Simple: Drop the comma after the date on some of these sentences. Most readers won't consciously notice the presence or absence of that comma, but the sentence will have a different rhythm to it, and the sense of repetitiveness will be reduced.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is today's lesson in "the proper use of punctuation." No need to thank me; I'm glad to be of service. Feel free to leave a small donation in the jar by the door as you leave. KarlBunker 00:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
It wasn't a dig; insults are counterproductive. ;)
Previous to the recent edit, there were not only missing commas, but missing endmarks as well. That is not a negotiable stylistic choice.
If you'd like a current example, here's just one: From the history section, "His mother was overbearing while his father was bisexual..."
Hilariously, the lack of comma after overbearing makes it sound as though his mother was actively overbearing only during certain times in which his father was bisexual. IrisWings 07:37, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes; that was indeed a mistake. And instead of typing one character to fix it, you typed 317 to point it out. Your edits here serve no purpose other than disruption and are an example of trolling. Please desist. KarlBunker 12:48, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Again, the only reason I've bothered to write to you at all is because you persisted in reverting several previous copyedits.
Please do not accuse me of trolling. What happened to presumption of positive intent?
If you no longer plan to revert attempts to improve this article, then I have no further reason to write to you. Is that the case? IrisWings 19:39, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
The only style-related edits I ever reverted were those of Hmains, where, among other unnecessary changes, he converted some contractions. Your (and Sigma 7's) comments were well-intended at first, but then you got your back up and your input here and the persistent replacement of the copyedit tag became meaningless, disruptive and trollish. KarlBunker 19:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I think you're mistaken. If you'll check the history, you'll find I only flagged the article once.
If I've seemed angry or defensive, it was a false impression; there's no point in becoming emotionally attached to a Wikipedia article.
Since you seem to have no further intention of negating positive changes to this article, I am satisfied. Thanks for conceding. :) IrisWings 20:38, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "ad hominem" edits

User:69.255.38.94, you are making a number of edits with unclear or questionable edit summaries. For example, you have removed some material that you describe as "ad hominem," when it pertains to Chambers's dysfunctional family life in his youth. As I've noted in my own edit summaries, Chambers himself has pointed to his unhappy childhood as being a key motivation in his belief in Communism. It seems to me that this makes the nature of his childhood home very relevant. You describe this same deleted text as "ad hominem" when it consists of 4 words; 2 derogatory and 2 laudatory. Even ignoring the laudatory half, I would point out to you that a biographical article cannot be accurate or balanced if it avoids all negative comments. In still another deletion, you describe the text "but his faith in Communism was waning" as a "superfluous comment." It describes how Chambers's views were undergoing the most crucial change in his life--how is that superfluous?

I look forward to a little clarification of these points from you. KarlBunker 01:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notes/References

Would it be better to have the headings in the notes/references section as regular bolded text instead of individual section headings? The notes/references section currently takes up half of the TOC, making it hard to navigate through the article. Tntnnbltn 17:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

You could also put in a _NOTOC_ and put in two custom TOC's, one at the top:

Contents

And one at the bottom for the references:

- Nunh-huh 18:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Using bolding rather than section headers to break up the references section sounds easier to maintain, and would probably look better. KarlBunker 18:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Levine's Involvement

Levine's involvement is pertinent, due to the fact that without him, Chambers would not have had that meeting. It is also pertinent, because he mentioned Krivitsky's informing, which gives context for his death/suicide in the next part, and shows why that would lead Berle to recall Chambers. Defenestrating Monday 20:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Good points. KarlBunker 21:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Levine's importance and the pitfalls of relying to much on Adolf Berle's Congressional and court testimony are both well illustrated by the following passage from Levine's Eyewitness to History:
Between the two [Alger Hiss perjury] trials--the first one having ended in a deadlocked jury--I had occasion to refresh Mr. Berle's testimony in a way which led to the discovery of a momentous document in the government files in Washington.
Mr. Berle had baffled many observers with his sworn testimony that Chambers had on the night of September, 1939, described to him a group engaged merely in the study of Communism. I ascribed this at first--perhaps too charitably--to a fading memory of an event which had taken place late at night when he was in a state of almost utter exhaustion. While on the witness stand, Berle was asked by no one why he should have invited to his home to dinner an anonymous stranger in the critical days of the outbreak of the war and why President Roosevelt's secretary should have troubled to call him about the matter presented by me, if it was just to listen to a yarn about a Communist study group.
I now drew a diagram for Berle, to indicate the position of the desk at which he sat down as we entered the house from the garden where we spent most of the evening talking, how he picked up a sheaf of common copy paper, how he scrawled in a large hand on leaf after leaf the highlights of "Carl's" disclosures, and how I had warned him of our understanding not to put down in writing Chambers's name or alias.
The consequence of my prodding was that copies of the incriminating memorandum were found in the archives at the FBI and the State Department, under the original caption handwritten by Berle: "Underground Espionage Agent." This memorandum was introduced as evidence in the second trial. Berle had listed in it some forty names, including my own. But nowhere is there any reference to Chambers except in the disguised caption. More than half of the names were of Soviet agents and collaborators. (pp. 209-210) Root50 14:28, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ayn Rand

I don't think Ayn Rand was ever an editor of National Review. 192.88.212.34 18:55, 5 August 2007 (UTC)A. Fletcher