The defense of Bill Clinton bears an eerie resemblance to Hiss case
Detroit News
February 1, 1999 By Barrett Kalellis
Detroit News
The scene of Bill Clinton being surrounded by hugging and cheering House Democrats after the
impeachment vote in mid-December is strangely similar to the "laying on of hands" usually found at revival
meetings.
Like the procedure normally used to exorcise demons, the South Lawn gathering produced a much
revived patient in Clinton, who thanked Democrats for their support.
What's wrong with this picture? The fervent support of Clinton, in spite of overwhelming evidence of
disgraceful and even criminal behavior, is eerily reminiscent of another political upheaval that occurred 50
years ago: the Hiss-Chambers spy trial.
Alger Hiss was a prominent New Dealer who served in a number of important positions in the Franklin
Roosevelt administration. He had a stellar resume and snobby East Coast academic credentials. He was a
delegate at the Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta conferences, as well as temporary secretary general of the
newly founded United Nations.
The trouble was, he had been a Communist spy for Soviet leader Joe Stalin for several years. In 1948,
after being named president of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, Hiss was publicly "outed"
in a congressional committee meeting by Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor for Time magazine.
Chambers had been a fellow spy with Hiss during the 1920s and 1930s but renounced communism
around 1938. To back up his accusation, Chambers had microfilm copies of State Department documents
that Hiss had passed on to his Soviet handlers. Before the age of the copy machine, Hiss' wife Priscilla
had to retype them on his old Woodstock typewriter, which became the strongest piece of hard evidence
against him.
When confronted with the proof, Hiss denied everything. The Justice Department ultimately indicted him
for perjury, and after a second trial in 1949 (the first resulted in a hung jury), he was convicted and served
44 months in a federal penitentiary. To his dying day at age 92, Hiss never admitted his guilt and always
blamed his misfortune on others' machinations against him, even though recently released Soviet
documents contradict his claims.
The Hiss case became a defining issue during the Cold War. Intellectual leftists and Eastern establishment
liberals - many of them former communists or sympathizers - rallied around Hiss, as well as other Soviet
spies like the Rosenbergs, and echoed their claims of innocence.
In the Monica Lewinsky affair, a similar scenario is being played out. Beginning with the accusations of
perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power against Bill Clinton, Clinton, like Hiss, responded with
forceful denials. When more facts became incontrovertible, he and his Democratic sympathizers began a
stream of verbal obfuscations, backpedaling declarations, false contrition and, most prominently, corrosive
assaults on any accuser.
Similarly, Hiss' left-wing allies vilified Whittaker Chambers and his partisans like Richard Nixon for years:
Chambers was not only a liar, a fabricator and a villain, they said, but a closet homosexual and a dumpy,
disgusting troll with bad teeth. Today, Clinton apologists lash out from all quarters: Clinton accusers are
"trailer park trash" (James Carville), part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" (Hillary Clinton), practitioners
of "sexual McCarthyism" and "mad dogs of radicalism" (Alan Dershowitz) and "a bunch of dirty old white
men" (Betty Friedan).
In his 1997 biography of Chambers, author Sam Tanenhaus reveals the significance of the Hiss-Chambers
case: It was "the passionate belief by so many that Hiss must be innocent no matter what the evidence."
Hiss had become a symbol for leftist causes, and he had to be supported at all costs against the forces of
the right.
Bill Clinton is the Hiss for the '90s. He's trapped by his own lies, and the country is divided as to what to
do with him. People guided by a moral compass want him removed from office. Clinton defenders want to
keep him around because they believe his stand on social or economic issues trumps any failings of
personal morality.
In fact, Clintonistas curiously want it both ways. Clinton is guilty and his behavior was "reprehensible and
indefensible," but he should not be removed from office; yet he's innocent because he "legally did not
commit perjury" and therefore broke no law.
If history teaches any lessons, we should consider that the knee-jerk defense of Alger Hiss in 1948 led to
the scourge of McCarthyism. Unfortunately, if our "Fabricator-in-Chief" fails to pay a hefty price for
traducing the Constitution and the rule of law, future candidates might get the idea that once elected, they
can pull the wool over everyone's eyes.
|
