Submitted by jim crawford, Oct 11, 2007 04:07

Re "Verdict on Truman" PAUL GREENBERG Tribune Media Services Inc 10 10 07 NY Sun http://www.nysun.com/article/64291 CC: truman.library@nara.gov Re. "Verdict on Truman" – informative and interesting article. However, a note about " 'Controversy over Hiss's conviction finally faded during the 1990s, when strong evidence that he had indeed been a spy emerged from Soviet archives and U.S. Intelligence files.' " Sounds as though someone at the Truman Library hasn't had time to keep up with recent news: An update: in actuality," 'controversy over Hiss's conviction' " has been rekindled in the last decade or so as more and more evidence comes out via research and analyses of Soviet files and of the Venona transcripts, translations of decoded Soviet cables from the 1940s, that increasingly indicate Hiss was not an intelligence agent of the USSR. In fact, Hiss is mentioned many dozens of times in those cables without a code name, a practice that the Soviets did not allow: all of their agents had code names; real names of operatives were only very rarely included in such cables. The fact that Hiss is never mentioned except "in the clear," with his real name, is strong evidence that he did not in fact work for them. Objectors will interpose that the code name "Ales," used in one of the cables, referred to Hiss, but the most recent analysis of that communication demonstrates that the cable can be interpreted in more than one way, and other analyses of the text also indicate strongly that Ales was not Alger Hiss. The situation is complicated by the fact that according to the best information on the subject, upwards of twenty people in the State Department were working for the USSR at one time or another during the time periods in question, two of whom were purportedly secretaries to Assistant [assistants to assistants?] Secretaries of State. [And probably another twenty or so for the French, the British, the Dutch, et al.] The FBI never discovered the identities of most of these people, and although much of their "testimony" is now suspect, neither Elizabeth Bentley [the "Red Spy Queen"] nor Whittaker Chambers never mentioned more than a handful of them. Most important were the results of the thorough and extensive searches of classified Soviet files ordered in 1992 by the head of the Russian archives, General Dmitri Volkogonov – examinations by trained specialists of the files belonging to the Soviet KGB [domestic and international intelligence], the GRU [military intelligence, for whom Chambers was working], the Ministries of Defense, Security, and the files of the Soviet Army, the Comintern, et al. Although at the request of people on the American political right Volkogonov did issue a subsequent statement to the effect that "other" files might exist, the results of his research still stand: NOWHERE in any Soviet files is the name of Alger Hiss mentioned as a Soviet operative. For much more extensive information on these subjects, including material about how "someone" [only the FBI had the resources to get this done] remanufactured a typewriter in order to duplicate the typing of the original Hiss Woodstock typewriter, see http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/home.html . "L'Affaire Lewinsky" ? Who's Lewinsky? Was that the guy Truman owned the haberdashery shop with? Best Regards, jim crawford Westwood NJ

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