I want to thank Jim Kindli (“Look for signs of communism”) for his recommending the Cleon Skousen book, “Naked Communist.” I have been unable to locate the Schwartz book but I wanted to add one more book to your list: Whittaker Chambers’ 1952 anti-communist memoir, “The Witness.”
Chambers joined the communist party in 1925, went underground in 1932 and became a member of the Ware group, a communist cell that included government officials and journalists. It was there among other promising New Deal civil servants that Chambers encountered Alger Hiss, and he and their spouses became close friends before Chambers renounced Communism.
The Stalinist purges and the forced starvation of Ukrainian peasants made him rethink his enthusiasm for communism, and when he realized that the secrets he was passing on to the communists would end up in Nazi hands as a result of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Chambers started collecting copies of materials as evidence which he turned over to the head of security at the state department.
The usual ad hominem attacks of the Left made him a pariah throughout the rest of his life despite the irrefutable evidence he offered, much of it in the handwriting of the individuals he was exposing. Although he was completely vindicated with the irrefragable documentation from the captured Soviet Venona cables which the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency released in 1995 and 1996, most Americans still scoff at the “witch hunts” of the 50’s. Historians have yet to come to terms with the truth.
Conservatives need to be vigilant. We need to remember the mistakes of the past. We cannot let ad hominem attacks silence us.
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