The Contentions blog once again dips into the Commentary magazine archives to shed light on current events. The occasion for revisiting the historical record in Commentary was a recent one day conference at NYU with the quixotic mission of trying (once more) to rehabilitate the reputation of Alger Hiss. Talk about trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube. Read the articles while they're up, or snag copies of the pdf's for later.
I went through a period several years ago when I read everything on the Chambers-Hiss case I could get my hands on, which led in turn to several books on the Venona transcripts, and Soviet espionage in general, and that era continues to fascinate me. I would recommend the following as the best of those books:
Witness - Whittaker Chambers
Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case - Allen Weinstein
The Venona Secrets - Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel
Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America - John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr
The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America -The Stalin Era - Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev
There is also a pdf file on the history of the Venona Project , that I found online a few months ago, and to which you are welcome. (The file is distributed for free by the NSA, so I think I'm OK posting it here.)
Posted by dan at April 10, 2007 1:53 AM