hatred of the West—and of God andrnman—as it argues that the tse-tse fly isrnsuperior to humankind.)rnIt was this new dimension of anticommunismrnthat caught the imagination ofrnthe people, though the media tried to reducernit to the formula of “Who is lyingrn—Hiss or Chambers?” And it wasrnthis new dimension which overrode thernefforts of the rich and politically favoredrnto dismiss the case as the product ofrnright-wing fanaticism. That effort tookrnmany forms. Hiss was made to seem thernparfit gentle knight of diplomacy and,rnparadoxically, at the hands of ego-enlargedrnjournalists like David Halberstam,rnas “just a clerk.” Simultaneously, Chambersrnwas berogued and Richard Nixonrnbelabored on the false assumption thatrnhe had forced the confrontation to litigation.rnThe Leslie Fiedlers and DianarnTrillings, in the then see-sawing pages ofrnCommentary, distorted history or invokedrnFreud to discover all kinds of subtleties,rnaccepting the guilt of Hiss butrndenigrating Chambers.rnWith the conviction of Hiss, Chambersrnretired to his farm in Westminster,rnMaryland—in a way content to be a fulltimerndairy farmer, though aware thatrnpenury lay ahead if he put aside his typewriter.rnAfter the trials and for the firstrntime since he had disclosed the espionagernaspects of the Soviet apparat inrnWashington, he heard from his allegedlyrnclose friend Henry Luce in a letter whichrnevoked some bitter laughter from thosernto whom it was shown. Luce’s letter recognizedrnthe Chambers ordeal, butrnadded (this is somewhat paraphrasedrnsince I had only one quick look at therndocument), “I too have had an ordeal. Irncannot decide whether to run for thernSenate.” Chambers had been a Quakerrnfor many years; to his great pain thernAmerican Friends Service Committee,rnthe political and left-wing arm of Quakerism,rnopenly espoused the Hiss cause.rnIn Whittaker Chambers, Sam Tanenhausrnhas gathered the facts of WhittakerrnChambers’ life and background fromrnchildhood on. In the middle 1950’s,rnChambers wrote nostalgically of his boyhoodrnyears on Long Island—then unlacedrnby superhighways and unpunctuatedrnby Levitt-towns—with a love thatrnTanenhaus misses. Yet his biography isrnthe result of prodigious research goingrnback to original sources on the activitiesrnand events which took WhittakerrnChambers through his stormy years atrnColumbia (again missing the betrayal byrnthat friend of the left on the campus.rnProfessor Mark Van Doren), his involvementrnin the Communist Party whichrnbrought him international recognitionrnfor his writings in the Daily Worker andrnthe New Masses, his life in the underground,rnand his return, in Dante’s words,rna riveder le stelle. Much of this has beenrnrehearsed in Witness, in my Seeds of Treason,rnand in Allen Weinstein’s meticulouslyrndocumented Perjury: but Tanenhausrndots many an i and crosses many a trnin detail that is fascinating, as everythingrnabout Whittaker Chambers fascinates.rnAnd he solves the mystery of the allegedrnvisit to Moscow, Chambers’ strong denialsrnof which seemed to be contradictedrnby the evidence.rnThough Tanenhaus’s account of therntrials are by far the best I have read, herndoes not quite catch the drama: the pressrnroom a battlefield on which the pro-Hissrnreporters began to retreat as the litigationrnproceeded, and where Victor Laskyrn(preparing to cash in on the book Irnwrote) sailed paper airplanes out over FoleyrnSquare inscribed, “Hiss is guilty”;rnPriscilla Hiss looking at the jury with sedatedrnpinpoint eyes and destroying herselfrnwith irrelevant falsehoods; the theatricsrnof defense counsel Lloyd PaulrnStryker, who won Hiss the first trial’srnhung jury and for his efforts was deniedrnpayment; the galaxy of politically and sociallyrnimportant people who took seats inrnthe courtroom (passes were required forrnmost; I still have mine) which shouldrnhave gone to those who futilely soughtrnadmission. When in my Newsweek reportagern1 wrote that Stryker made arnpoint and “triumphantly shot his cuffs,”rnhe sought me out. “My wife read whatrnyou wrote,” he said, “and she says I’m arnham.”rnFor his researches, and for havingrnsought out possibly every friend, associate,rnco-worker, and enemy still alivernof Whittaker Chambers, Sam Tanenhausrnis to be commended. Too many biographersrntoday suck their facts out ofrnoverworked thumbs. But where the bookrnfails is in recapturing the period betweenrnthe end of the trial and the death ofrnWhittaker Chambers in 1961. There arerntwo written sources for this period—thernletters to William F. Buckley, Jr., whichrndeal for the most part in political matters,rnand those written to me, which arerndeeply personal and reflect the writer’srnsorrows, torments, hopes, and thoughts.rn(The Buckley letters were publishedrnyears ago, and Regnery will publish minernlate this summer or early this fall.)rnWhile Tanenhaus was working on hisrnbook I spent many hours talking to him,rnturning over material that would be ofrnhelp, and giving him copies of the lettersrnwhich Chambers had written to me andrnto my late wife Nora, which I had turnedrnover to the Hoover Library in Palo Alto.rnTanenhaus has used this primary researchrnsparingly and sometimes does violencernto it, as when he attempts torndemonstrate that in his last years WhittakerrnChambers had begun a retreatrnfrom what Arthur Schlesinger, in his reviewrnof Witness, referred to as his “apocalyptic”rnbeliefs. In fact, my correspondencernwith Chambers underscores whatrnhe wrote in that book, and records his regretrnthat he did not state it more positively.rnWhere Chambers made clearrnthat the possibility of nuclear war, whichrnhe felt was very remote, did not disturbrnhis sleep, Tanenhaus puts him in thernother camp. He argues that Chambersrnreturned in this period to the middleclassrncomplacencies he had foughtrnagainst all his life, as reflected by his allegedrnhopes for a life of suburbia in excelsisrnfor his son. Yet, as his letters hint, andrnas he said to close friends, a great disappointmentrnto him was that John Chambersrnchose a life as a television broadcaster,rninstead of returning to the land onrnwhich he had been reared.rnThe controversy surrounding SenatorrnJoseph R. McCarthy is badly handled byrnTanenhaus who has Richard Nixon engineeringrna Chambers-McCarthy meetingrnin January 1950, before Nixon was in thernSenate or the Wisconsin senator hadrnmade his famous speech at Wheeling,rnWest Virginia. Tanenhaus’s few pagesrnrecapitulating the McCarthy jihad arerndistressingly fictional, down to the assertionrnthat in his Wheeling speech he referredrnto “205” communists in the government.rnNo one knows what McCarthyrnsaid and, though a Democratic Senaternspent a small fortune investigating, theyrnwere never able to find a single person orrnnews story that sustained the “205,” thern”57,” or the “83” of myth.rnThis is irrelevant to Chambers’ positionrnon McCarthy. Whittaker Chambersrnknew that there were a host of peoplernstill in the State Department and therngovernment whose primary loyalty wasrnto the U.S.S.R,, and he believed that settingrnfirm numbers was an exercise in futility.rnWhat Chambers said to me and tornothers was: “McCarthy is a scoundrel.rn34/CHRONICLESrnrnrn