Such bleak times in our history. It brings it to life yet pulls you in and makes you feel like you are actually there.

Bob Oeste's tour de force of a novel takes the reader from the early days of McCarthyism and the Alger Hiss case to the near-present (1989) and Berlin just before the Wall fell. The story focuses on former HUAC (House Un-American Committee) investigator Joe Pope and his former boss, Richard Nixon, who calls Pope up with one last job to do. Apparently, there's one last roll of microfilm hidden on the farm of Whittaker Chambers, Hiss's chief accuser. So Pope sets off with a few of his buddies to find a document which could "rewrite the history of the 20th century." Oeste brilliantly interweaves the present-day chase with the earlier tale of Pope's days with the Hiss investigation, where the HUAC investigators are "cutting a few corners" (to put it mildly.) Along the way, we meet Nixon, Hiss, the leader of East Germany, and a host of other suspicious and shady characters. If you like spy stories, comic thrillers, historical fiction, or political satire! , you'll like this story. If you like all of the above, you're in for a real treat. I can't wait for Oeste's second book.

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This book is sloppy, disorganized--and a great read. Anybody with a romantic view of communism or the Communist Party, USA, would profit by reading Chambers' account of the Party as it really was in the 1930's. Anybody who thinks that Nixon and the HUAC were merely on a witch hunt in the late 40's would profit as well. Anybody who reflexively pooh-poohs allegations of high level conspiracies will think again after reading this book. Chambers names names and provides a myriad of detail which simply could not have been made up. His claims have stood the test of time much better than the dissemblings of Hiss' supporters. Chambers movingly describes how his world came apart when he broke with the Party. He describes how the left--both Communists and liberals, reacted with a smear campaign against him when he came forward. His prose is powerful, no more so than when he is writing about his children and how he had to defy the party even to have children in the first place.

Having said that, however, one must admit that this book could have profited from an editor who insisted on more coherence. The book raises as may questions about Chambers as it answers. For example, Chambers never does convincingly explain the attraction of Communism to an educated person such as himself or Hiss. The excesses of Lenin, Stalin & Co. were so patent and so well known, long before the show trials and the pact with Hitler, that only the worst sort of self-deception can explain one's conversion to the communist cause in the first place. But Chambers paints himself and his former pals as idealists bent on constructing a new and better world on the ruins of capitalism--which, of course, is the very argument used to excuse every excess of the left, be it the Soviets, the Sandanistas, or the SDS. Eventually, Chambers saw through this fantasy. But why did Chambers succumb to the fantasy in the first place? The book is curiously unsatisfactory on this point.

Later, Chambers rats out the Communists in the State Department, but for years tries to protect them by withholding evidence of espionage --treason -- until pressed by Hiss in a libel suit. He never adequately explains why to him, the thought (adhering to the tenets of communism) is worse than the act (treason). Most people would hold just the opposite--that the act, not the thought, is reprehensible.

This book was written in a white heat during a fearful period of our history, when nobody knew how the cold war would turn out. (Do we, even today?) It took guts for Chambers to come forth, and it took guts for him to write the book. Thus I enthusiasticaly recommend the book as an intensely felt and written period piece. But it is also timeless as an autobiography of ideas. And in a way, it is as up-to-date as today's headlines. The Hiss case reverberates loudly 50 years later, when the right is attempting to get revenge on the left and its poster boy, Clinton, for the Nixon impeachment, which itself was the left's revenge on Nixon and the right for the Hiss case.

It's unfortunate that the Left is so earnest and humorless, otherwise they might be able to enjoy the immense irony of the lofty position held by Whittaker Chambers in the Right's pantheon of 20th century heroes. I mean think about it for a second, Chambers, who spent half his life as a bisexual Communist spy, was also a leading light of TIME and the National Review, a friend of Richard Nixon and William F. Buckley, was awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan, and made many conservatives' end-of-century lists, both for this memoir and for his personal influence. That's a fairly interesting resume by anyone's standards.

Chambers would be a heroic figure to the Right even if he had done nothing else but to accuse Alger Hiss of being a Communist spy. This action, so divisive that it still echoes through our politics today, helped to define the Cold War era, forcing people to choose sides--between anti-Communists, on the one side and communists, communist sympathizers and fellow travelers, and Anti-Anti-Communists on the other--and in turn hardening the lines between the sides as the nation headed into a period of prolonged cultural civil war, from which we have still not truly emerged.

But Chambers did not merely attack one man. With his memoir Witness he declared war on Communism and the Soviet Union and explained in no uncertain terms just what the struggle was about--what was at stake, the methods that the other side was using, and the seriousness of purpose which would be required to defeat them--and at the same time he told a life story which somehow managed to unite nearly all of the themes of modernity in one gloriously messy tale of personal degradation and desperation, followed by political and religious redemption and salvation. And to top it all off, not only does the story have all of the elements of a thriller and a courtroom drama, the author just happens to write brilliantly.

Chambers starts the book out with a forward in the form of a letter to his children (available on-line and well worth checking out) which seeks to explain why the book is necessary and why their father gained such notoriety in the first place. It is worth quoting a largish chunk :

Beloved Children,

I am sitting in the kitchen of the little house at Medfield, our second farm which is cut off by the ridge and a quarter-mile across the fields from our home place, where you are. I am writing a book. In it I am speaking to you. But I am also speaking to the world. To both I owe an accounting.

It is a terrible book. It is terrible in what it tells about men. If anything, it is more terrible in what it tells about the world in which you live. It is about what the world calls the Hiss-Chambers Case, or even more simply, the Hiss Case. It is about a spy case. All the props of an espionage case are there--foreign agents, household traitors, stolen documents, microfilm, furtive meetings, secret hideaways, phony names, an informer, investigations, trials, official justice.

But if the Hiss Case were only this, it would not be worth my writing about or your reading about. It would be another fat folder in the sad files of the police, another crime drama in which the props would be mistaken for the play (as many people have consistently mistaken them). It would not be what alone gave it meaning, what the mass of men and women instinctively sensed it to be, often without quite knowing why. It would not be what, at the very beginning, I was moved to call it: "a tragedy of history."

For it was more than human tragedy. Much more than Alger Hiss or Whittaker Chambers was on trial in the trials of Alger Hiss. Two faiths were on trial. Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies. At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it. At issue was the question whether this man's faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another. At issue was the question whether, in the desperately divided society, there still remained the will to recognize the issues in time to offset the immense rally of public power to distort and pervert the facts.

At heart, the Great Case was this critical conflict of faiths; that is why it was a great case. On a scale personal enough to be felt by all, but big enough to be symbolic, the two irreconcilable faiths of our time--Communism and Freedom--came to grips in the persons of two conscious and resolute men. Indeed, it would have been hard, in a world still only dimly aware of what the conflict is about, to find two other men who knew so clearly. Both had been schooled in the same view of history (the Marxist view). Both were trained by the same party in the same selfless, semisoldierly discipline. Neither would nor could yield without betraying, not himself, but his faith; and the different character of these faiths was shown by the different conduct of the two men toward each other throughout the struggle. For, with dark certitude, both knew, almost from the beginning, that the Great Case could end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending figures, just as the history of our times (both men had been taught) can end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending forces.

But this destruction is not the tragedy. The nature of tragedy is itself misunderstood. Part of the world supposes that the tragedy in the Hiss Case lies in the acts of disloyalty revealed. Part believes that the tragedy lies in the fact that an able, intelligent man, Alger Hiss, was cut short in the course of a brilliant public career. Some find it tragic that Whittaker Chambers, of his own will, gave up a $30,000-a-year job and a secure future to haunt for the rest of his days the ruins of his life. These are shocking facts, criminal facts, disturbing facts: they are not tragic.

Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy--not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation. That is why this terrible book is also a book of hope For it is about the struggle of the human soul--of more than one human soul. It is in this sense that the Hiss Case is a tragedy. This is its meaning beyond the headlines, the revelations, the shame and suffering of the people involved. But this tragedy will have been for nothing unless men understand it rightly, and from it the world takes hope and heart to begin its own tragic struggle with the evil that besets it from within and from without, unless it faces the fact that the world, the whole world, is sick unto death and that, among other things, this Case has turned a finger of fierce light into the suddenly opened and reeking body of our time.

In 1952, when the book was published, we were only seven years removed from WWII, in which FDR and Churchill had allied the West to the Soviet Union in the fight against Nazism. The great service which Chambers provided in this book, in his journalism for TIME like the imaginative Ghosts on the Roof (1945), and in the Hiss Case, was--along with Winston Churchill in his Fulton, MO speech of 1946, declaring that "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent"--to force home the realization that the war against Communism, though "Cold," was just as much a "twilight struggle" as the war against Nazism had been. For the next four decades the West, basically the United States, would pursue this war with various levels of determination and fecklessness, and would eventually win it, thanks, appropriately, to Ronald Reagan, a near contemporary of Chambers, who had been inspired by him, as reflected in that Medal of Freedom.

The problem for us looking back at Chambers, and it may make readers scoff a little at the heated rhetoric of his prose in Witness, is that the West's victory looks inevitable to us now. Several powerful institutions--like the media, the Democratic Party, and the academy--have a vested interest in portraying the Cold War as a battle in which everyone pitched in to help defeat an enemy which pretty much self-destructed anyway. The memory of the fierce opposition of the Left to the confrontation with the Soviet Union is being gradually erased from the historic memory, and along with it the acknowledgment that as late as the mid-1980's, mainstream intellectuals considered Communism to be a viable alternative to de

I acquired an original 1st edition copy of this classic, but oddly enough I kept it shelfed, assuming it to be rather mundane. I was very wrong! This is a fascinating biographical account of a former American communist, who 'defected' to the cause of freedom after seeing communism for what it really was- a LIE! Witness profiles the life of Whittaker Chambers during his hey-day as an avid Marxist to his conversion, which was as much a spiritual transformation, as an ideological one.

He was the whistleblower who offered the account of over Alger Hiss and an entreched number of communist agents in the U.S. State Department and other positions of power. I also recommend his biography by Sam Tanenhaus. Chambers would later continue his journalism career, writing for Time. He eventually came under the umbrella of the conservative William F. Buckley's National Review.

At first W. Chambers claimed that Alger Hiss and others were secret Communists whose purpose was to influence policy (from 1939 to November 1948). After being sued for slander Chambers produced 69 documents to support his claim of spying. Chambers earlier stated he was a Communist until "1935", or "early 1937", or "the end of 1937", or "the spring of 1937". The documents were dated between January 5 and April 1 of 1938. Chambers then changed his story to leaving on April 15, 1938. You can judge his veracity by this. Note his memory of wallpaper patterns!

The original State Department files were rated "classified" to "secret". Most consisted of trade agreements, which were of commercial, not political, importance. When Chambers learned that Alger Hiss could not type, he then claimed Priscilla did it! (Did writer and translator Chambers ASSUME that other men had this skill?) The most telling fact about these documents is that most had never been routed through sections where either Alger or Donald Hiss had worked! This discrepancy has never been explained. When the contents of the three rolls of microfilm were released in 1975, they were found to be Navy Dept instructions on how to use life rafts, fire extinguishers, and chest parachutes. Where did they come from?

The biggest lie of all is Chamber's claim that the stored documents were a "life preserver". Because they had no value without his testimony to corroborate them! He should have seen a lawyer, made a notarized statement, and left immortal testimony. But then it couldn't be changed to explain new facts.

One of the great things about the Hiss case is the transparent dishonesty of those who defend Hiss. If you knew nothing else about the case, the fact that Hiss's defenders lied so often would tell you he was guilty. (For that matter, anyone reading Hiss's testimony, with it's carefully worded replies that sounded like answers, but, on examination, turned out to be legally meaningless, should have known that Hiss was desperate to hide the facts).
"A Reader" says:

'At first W. Chambers claimed that Alger Hiss and others were secret Communists whose purpose was to influence policy.' Actually, the first time Chambers ever told anyone in the govt. about his actions (Sept. 3rd, 1939; to Adolf Berle of the State Dept.), Chambers said he was a spy, a fact Berle recorded in his diary and notes of the conversation. When Chambers didn't get immunity from prosecution, as promised, he stopped confessing to felonies.

Yes, Chambers was vague on when he left the Party. He had a lousy memory for dates. And Hiss got the year he "gave" his car away wrong by a year, and the season he "sublet" his apartment to Chambers wrong by months. Imperfect memory happens.

As for the documents Hiss passed, they were of great importance to the former Soviet Union (OOH! I just LOVE to type "former Soviet Union!"), which already knew it was likely to end up in wars with Nazy Germany and Imperial Japan. Contrary to the claim, almost all the documents had been routed to Alger's department (some had his initials on them to show he'd seen them, some were handwritten by him). Much of the information passed to the Soviet Union concerned Japan's war in China. The trade agreements concerned U.S. trade with Nazi Germany, a subject of considerable interest to the USSR.

As for the other microfilm, it was never claimed that Hiss had anything to do with passing it. And while much of it was worthless, some was excellent technical intelligence (for example, inertia starters for aircraft engines). It was passed by a contact of Chambers in the Navy Dept.

And the "life preserver" was not intended to be a legal document. It was a threat to use against the GRU if they found Chambers and tried to kill him, a 'leave me alone or I'll expose some of your spies posthumously.'

All the above, btw, has been part of the public record for decades. It was mostly covered in the earliest books about the case, and it was ALL dealt with in Allen Weinstein's PERJURY: THE HISS-CHAMBERS CASE, which I give my highest recommendation.

Oh, about THIS book: these are classic essays by people involved with varying aspects of the case, looking at it from many different personal and political views. They're hard to come by, and I'd read less than half in my years of studying this case. By all means, read this to see why the Hiss perjury case was important, then and now.

This book is a collection of essays about the Hiss/Chambers case. All points of view are taken into account, including supporters of Hiss, supporters of Chambers, and various agnostics.

What is great about this book is that it doesn't just tell the story of the case, but it shows how these events influenced political thinking in America over the subsequent 50 years.

To criticize this book by taking shots at Whittaker Chambers, as if it were uniformly supporting him, is foolish, reactionary, and illiterate.

I've had just read an original copy of Chambers' autobiography Witness when I had purchased this book. It was a real eye opener to the real communist threat in the 20th century. This is an excellent companion to the autobiography of Whittaker Chambers (Witness.) The prolific writer and journalist Sam Tanenhaus does an excellent job at creating an impression of Mr. Chambers. I think those interested in the Chambers-Hiss affair will also be interested in: The Black Book of Communism; The Hollywood Party; and Arthur Herman's biography of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Tanenhaus has done superb work: his biography of Chambers is methodically documented and beautifully crafted. He challenges us readers who are used to the black and white moral harangue of character sketches to understand the shades of grey in the Hiss/Chambers episode, the anti-Communist fervor following the hearings and trials, and the personalities involved (e.g. Chambers, Hiss, their wives, and Richard Nixon, to name only a few).

Tanenhaus gives us no easy answers and forces us to think that 1) just because some were maliciously and falsely named as Communist spies doesn't mean that every one accused was innocent; and 2) a man who can lie can also tell the truth.

If anything, Tanenhaus is somewhat too loyal to Mr. Chambers. Alger Hiss's character is less well developed in this book than I wanted as a longtime student of the Hiss/Chambers affair. It is reasonable, though, that Hiss was somewhat the privileged, pretty-boy smartass Tanenhaus portrays Hiss to be. Tanenhaus thankfully doesn't indulge himself much in his personal feelings. He sticks closely to the evidence and remembers that being a richboy like Hiss is not justly punishable by 44 months in the federal pen, just as being a slovenly, fat, and uncharismatic little man like Chambers doesn't preclude literary brilliance or profound courage.

I never expected to like--or even understand--Mr. Chambers, but by the end of this book, I did both.

This was quite a compelling saga. I knew very little of either Chambers or the Hiss case prior to reading this book. The author makes the details and players come to life. Quite enlightening to read how Richard Nixon got his career kicked into overdrive via the Hiss Case. As the 1900's come to a close, this book provides a unique way to review some of the key political events of the 20th Century - the rise of the Soviet Union, Communism in America, the New Deal, the McCarthy Hearings. I would recommend this to readers from either side of the political aisle.

I finished reading this book last week and came away totally convinced that Alger Hiss was a spy for the former Soviet Union. Chambers is depicted in this book as a very unlikely hero for the Anti-Communist cause in the late 1940's. The book is very detailed and it leads you through the entire investigation process that took place immediately after Whittaker Chambers publicly accused Alger Hiss of being a Communist spy in the 1930's. There was much corroborating evidence through eye-witness testimony before the Congressional committee(HUAC) and in the 2 trials detailed in this book. It was at times quite tedious and extremely detailed, which I found to be rather boring. But history does not work in the fast pace people are accustomed to in the movies and on television. Espionage is a dangerous game to play and any sudden moves can get you killed. Most spies always try to hide in plain sight, which Alger Hiss was able to do quite well for many years. The end of the Cold War and the opening of the secret files in the KGB and VENONA transcripts allowed the author unprecedented access to evidence which proved devastating to Hiss's claims that he was not a spy after getting out of prison many years ago. Thank God for the end of the Cold War! Otherwise, we may never have known the whole story of Hiss's espionage activities. A great book if you have patience with all the details.

This is one of *the* books that made me want to become a historian. It's a miracle of research and writing. Weinstein started out as a left-wing partisan who wanted to prove Hiss innocent, and he received blessings from the man himself. But as he dug deeper and deeper, the professor discovered the remains of the secret world of Soviet espionage in America, and became convinced that Hiss was guilty. And he proves it in a tour-de-force of historical analysis: I would go so far as to say their is really no reasonable doubt left. This new edition contains the evidence of the recently declassified "Venona" Soviet documents that were decoded by the CIA at the time. One can argue about the wisdom of keeping such damning evidence secret for so long, but their release now puts the last nail in the coffin of the ill-considered faith of those who still, after everything, mock Whittaker Chambers. The writing of this book affected Weinstein so much he left academia to set up a foundation to help the U.S. goverment build democracy around the world. He recently wrote a sequel, "The Haunted Wood", about the history of Soviet espionage in the U.S. during the '30's and '40's.

Having grown up in the 1950s, for me the Alger Hiss spy case was wrapped in a lot of emotion and few facts. This book remedies that imbalance. Author Allen Weinstein is a lawyer making a case, and he does it well. He lays out the evidence in detail--great detail--and lets the reader draw conclusions, without hiding his own. I can now see both why Hiss became a liberal cause and why Chambers was despised. It is a case where the good guy is far more likeable than the bad guy. I came away convinced, as many others have been, of Hiss's guilt. Extensive research, balanced arguement and clear prose make the case compellingly.

This is one of those books. In addition to not being a communist(DO YOU EXPECT ANY OTHER CONCLUSION FROM TONY HISS?), did you know Alger loved Picasso and VanGogh? He also loved his family and wrote letters from Lewisberg penitentiary -- you don't say! B L A H ! ! ! !

I enjoyed this book for many of the reasons some writers here hated it, the author just doesn't quite "get" that his father was a spy, and while I don't care one whit about the history of the cold war (which is ancient history to me) I was fascinated by this son's attempt to romanticize his father and decipher a relationship which was, at different times, warm and false.

Who really gets to know the core thoughts of his or her parents? Not Tony. But I don't think that makes him so unusual. There's something strangely fascinating about the halo most children give to their parents. Alger Hiss was at peace with himself, it seems clear in hindsight, because he either believed in his work as a spy (something which isn't all that unusual for those times) or he was one of those people who could delude himself into thinking that night was day (also not that unusual, call it OJ Simpson-itis).

One gets no clue from this book that the son ever got into the head of the father when it comes to these questions, and yet I think that makes it interesting document, how many adult children can say the same thing? Those who read this book uncritically, of course, and don't see the cat and mouse game that the author is playing with himself, are being silly.

This excellent book is beautifuly written and proves the sterling character of Alger Hiss. Hiss was framed by three of America's mid-century most evil men...Richard Nixon, Whitaker Chambers and J. Edgar Hoover. Alger Hiss was a Jeffersonian democrat who will be honored in the long run of history as a key man in the Roosevelt administration and the Secretary General of the United Nations during its founding conference in San Francisco in 1945. Pass the book along to your grandchildren,for it will become a valuable document of 20th Century America.

After 50 years, the Alger Hiss case still remains a present and somewhat controversial topic in our society, so it is wonderful to bring up the subject in the children's series "You Be the Jury," giving children a chance to see which one they believed would be guilty, Alger Hiss or Whittaker Chambers.

It does not take long to realize that Doreen Rappaport believes Chambers to be the guilty, and this is reflected in her select, partisan accounts of the testimony, where she singles out Chambers's "lies" and "psychotic" personality. I have noticed that a lot of the more liberal accounts of the trial to do so and while my opinion about Chambers did not change any(I believe him to be the "better" of the two), I was begining to wonder about the fabrications of his testimony(though most of them are very very tiny errors, like slightly inaccurate dates, or saying somebody is a couple of inches shorter than they really were). I decided to look in another account of the trial, and that is when I noticed that the liberal accounts were taking some of these statements quite out of context and viewing them as "solid proof" that Chambers was some liar and bad person,this book included. While that remains rather "disgust worthy" in adult books, it's downright terrible to mislead children like this! How can you have children decide to be a fair and honest jury if you are not giving them the whole story?

Nonetheless, the basic premise remains a good idea, and children will be treated to a fantastic closing argument by attorney Thomas Murphy that most likely added to the final verdict of the case. The will also be treated to the "good news" that Alger Hiss was "innocent," as Rappaort closes her book with what must have been stunning news delivered by a Russian General who was convinced of Hiss's innocence. It would have been nice if she had gone on to add that not so long after that news, came the dawning of the Verona papers, which included documents written by somebody who was "probably Alger Hiss." Maybe she was trying not to sway the children's opinions, but the truth is the truth...

Doreen Rappaport did a superb job on this one. It is incredibly non-biased, though it leans from side to side. One minute it convinces you that Alger Hiss was guilty, and the next you're positive that he was guilty. Its amazing (and a little scary) that this trial is still contraversial, even though Hiss died in 1997. All in all, a very good book. I recomend it.

Given what we now know about the nature of the Soviet threat that we did not know when this book was written it is easy to see how Mr. Hiss could have attracted a following of sympathizers to his claims of injustice. This book is well written but, in light of now-available KGB documents and Venona intercepts, Mr. Hiss's "Woe is me!" tale of conspiracy and "forgery by typewriter" ring pretty hollow when compared to the woe that was visited upon millions of innocents who lived their entire lives never knowing the freedom that their heirs now enjoy in a free, democratic Europe. Mr. Hiss and those who shared his world view must bear in eternity the guilt recompense an individual who would enslave a continent.

In the first edition of R. Nixon's 1962 "Six Crises", he told how they "built a machine" in the Hiss case. When this was publicized, this book was quickly changed. In A. Hiss's book (p.304) "we still had no idea that it was possible to construct a typewriter which duplicated the typographical imperfections of another machine." "The Quiet Canadian", published in 1963, had a few pages that told how this was done circa 1936.

Pages 403-4 states the scientific proof why the Hiss machine was a forgery: the types on the Woodstock were soldered in a careless fashion; the solder used on the types had a different metallic content from that used on other machines; the typeface metal contained elements not used at the date of manufacture; the altered types show tool marks unlike that found on normal types. The photos between pages 374-5 show the unusual soldering of type onto the typebars.

The book tells how they wanted to get W. Chambers' 1935 passport and photo, but were prevented by the Govt. W. Chambers' photo shows his sandy blonde hair, moustache, and about 145 pounds. In 1948 he was bald, gray, and about 300 pounds - they look like two different people!

After his release from prison, AH spent many decades as a "stationery salesman", but the press never revealed any more details. Was his customer then a proprietary company of a Defense Dept. agency? If so, the truth is that AH was not guilty, but only a victim of inter-governmental rivalry. This job was his reward for being a stand-up guy who took the hit and didn't squeal.

Hiss was very talented, but from a poor family (unlike the Dulles); his rise in the State Dept. was unusual, and he must have had rivals. He later joined the "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace" (which sounds like a refuge for ex-OSS agents).

From the Civil War to the 1930s the Secret Service was in charge of counter-intelligence; then FDR turned it over to the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover hated William Donovan and his OSS. He probably wanted to include their function as part of his empire. So a false witness was created to destroy AH, and the rest of the secret operations (alluded to in p.414). But the Establishment went on to found the CIA.