Reviewing the Reviews

“Last Soldier Standing” by David Chambers, the Washington Examiner, July 5, 2025

Nearly every historian worth their salt thoroughly researches and contemplates their subject. Eventually, they make a judgement call on a person’s character and the choices made by the individual or group. Finally, the historian places the story in context. That’s why they are paid the big bucks. 

But woe to the historian who studies the Hiss case and renders a verdict that David Chambers, he with a familiar sounding last name, doesn’t like. Mr. Chambers will declare the historian is no longer an historian. It’s reminiscent of the 1950s TV western, “Branded, when the Civil War-era officer played by Chuck Connors has his stripes ripped off his uniform by his superiors for an alleged act of cowardice.

And what are David Chambers’ qualifications as a Hiss Case historian to make such a pronouncement? He was kind enough to list them in the first six words of the essay: “As a grandchild of Whittaker Chambers….” as if that was supposed to guarantee his credibility. And in his mind it does. You see unlike “pro-Hiss” historians — me, for example, David Chambers is, or claims to be, non-partisan, which is really a euphemism for “anti-Hiss.” 

How else can one explain his belief that since the trial any controversy over the verdict was settled in his grandfather’s favor by the books “Perjury” and “The Haunted Wood” by Allen Weinstein and the authors of “Spies,” who include Harvey Klehr plus John Earl Haynes and Alexander Vassiliev. 

Klehr’s response to “Rewriting Hisstory” in “Commentary,” makes his partisanship patently clear. As for Weinstein, well, no matter what the professor claimed about wanting to find Hiss innocent when he began his research, he repeatedly manipulated the truth to paint a picture of Hiss that simply wasn’t accurate.

In “The Haunted Wood,” Weinstein’s conclusions based on Vassiliev’s notes were at times so unsupported that it prompted Vassiliev to testify against him in court. In “Perjury” Weinstein baselessly accused one of his sources, who felt that Hiss was innocent, of being a murderer. His source sued him for libel and won. He recklessly reported a false story about Priscilla Hiss without checking up on it, a mistake that set back the book’s publication date. He also refused to give her or Donald Hiss the chance to rebut the allegations against them. It all sounds partisan to me. Yet, David Chambers admires Weinstein’s work on the case. I still remember the journalist Bill Reuben saying, “Weinstein is very persuasive, unless you know the record.” Perhaps that is the answer: someone doesn’t know the record.

David Chambers runs into another problem with his praise of “Perjury.” In a clumsy attempt to characterize my research as offering nothing new or significant he scoffs at me for making use of evidence in the defense files that goes back to the original trials. But in doing so, he forgets one of the core aspects of “Perjury,”:  Weinstein’s claim that the evidence of Hiss’s guilt emerged not from the new material he was obtaining from the FBI but from the defense files, the very same material I cite in “Rewriting Hisstory.”

But I didn’t rely only on those files. The release of 120,000 pages of FBI files was the result of a lawsuit I filed against the Bureau. Also, over the years, I, or a hired researcher, scoured the special collections departments in libraries across the country. Those departments held the personal papers of many people involved in the case. Often, I was the first person to go through them. They eventually led me to the people who framed Hiss. 

One of the things I noticed that no one else had were the attempts to use phony cards and other printed pieces of paper in the early 1940s to trap the Hisses in alleged lies. This was long before Chambers’ first public testimony. I also spent hours talking to the last remaining witnesses. Two of them, Alger’s stepson Tim Hobson and Elizabeth Inslerman, whose husband was accused of photographing documents for Whittaker Chambers, were especially helpful in exposing Chambers’ allegations against Hiss as untrue.

David Chambers also accuses me of not practicing “a historian’s intellectual honesty or curiosity. ” Why does he think I went after those files when no one else did or went through special collections across the country; sought or their relatives, or asked basic questions of evidence that had gone unasked? The entire book was all about my curiosity and to determine whether the evidence held up and to find out what else was out there.

As far as my not being honest, David Chambers offers no example. 

Among the book’s “minor issues” my research demonstrated that:

Hiss was not a Communist and had no motive to participate in any spy ring. A key FBI file that was included in the release exploded the prosecution’s argument that Hiss’s work with a group called the International Juridical Association was the result of any radicalism on his part.

Chambers couldn’t identify photos of a number of key people he claimed to have worked with in the Communist underground. That so alarmed the prosecution, they hid it for 70 years.

Priscilla Hiss didn’t and couldn’t have typed the documents Chambers accused her of typing. This information came about from my own examination of Woodstock #230099.

Chambers lied about photographing the documents, according to important grand jury testimony and about the secret group that Hiss allegedly belonged to.

When Whittaker Chambers went on the run after leaving the Party, it was not because he had been a valuable spy, but because he had stolen some $2000 from the Party. 

Each of these addresses a key aspect of Whittaker Chambers’ story that I found to be false. If David Chambers does not feel these are major points, then he must be reading about another case. 

David Chambers’ swings and misses don’t only plague him in my review. Just as a single example, he wrote another review for the Washington Examiner, about six weeks before. This time, he took on “Red Scare,” a cultural and political history of the McCarthy Era by Clay Risen of The New York Times. No surprise, he also finds Risen to be “decidedly biased” but without exactly saying what makes Risen biased, other than a different interpretation of the facts.  

In a baffling paragraph, he accuses Risen of ignoring what he seems to think is a telling action, so much so he mentions it in both reviews: when Hiss was allowed to address Chambers’ accusations of August 3, 1948, two days later. David Chambers seems to think that HUAC was somehow granting him a special favor (In HUAC’s investigative file, I only recall seeing one person respond immediately to Chambers’ allegations, and that was Hiss.) He also claims,“when the Hiss case started, Chambers did not name Hiss.” Huh? Maybe his dog ate his copy of the testimony because Hiss is mentioned along with other alleged members of the “Ware Group” on page 566 of the official transcript. Either way, I’m supposedly the person who “treats minor issues as highly salient.” 

But David Chambers can’t or won’t recognize a major issue if it jumped up and bit him on the butt. For the first time in print, “Rewriting Hisstory” shows that HUAC knew Hiss was telling the truth when he identified Whittaker Chambers as a freelance writer named George Crosley, as opposed to Chambers’ claim that Hiss knew him as a CP operative named Carl. That turns the whole case on its ear. Yet it just goes right by David. 

He claims I was misled by my own evidence when I said that Hiss was not a member of the “Ware Group” of secret underground Communists in the 1930s. Chambers supposedly ran the group but had no idea its actual name was “The Cling Peaches.” That’s the most telling point. Unfortunately for David Chambers, he misses it. 

As for my being misled, David Chambers mentions that John Abt refused to say whether Hiss was or wasn’t a member. The fact is, though, that Abt and others refused to confirm or deny anyone else. When Lee Pressman testified before HUAC in 1950 that Hiss was not, the others refused to speak to him for years afterward. 

Here again though, David Chambers is so focused on nitpicky stuff (which he gets wrong) he misses the bigger story. Nathaniel Weyl who also claimed Hiss was a member, an allegation that Weinstein says confirms Whittaker Chambers’ story, but here’s the problem and it’s a big one for the anti-Hiss crowd who embraced Weyl so enthusiastically. Weyl said Hiss was a member in the summer of 1933. G. Edward White, whose book on the case, also finds Hiss guilty, said Hiss joined because he was tired of the slow pace of the New Deal. 

Hiss didn’t join the New Deal until mid to late spring. If White was correct, then Hiss was already bored on the job after maybe six weeks of work. This was during the first hundred days, maybe the most exciting period for progressive new legislation by a single administration in this country’s history. This was also when the Agricultural Adjustment Administration was born, and Hiss was crucial in getting it established. Far from being bored, Hiss frequently recalled it as one of the most exciting times of his life. So it goes for his motivation to join. 

David Chambers’ complaints make so little sense that you begin to wonder what is really at the root of them.

“As a grandson of Whittaker Chambers”

The problem for David is that’s kind of it for his achievements. He has been a businessman, an impresario, a voice over artist, and now he says,“I am a historian,” But other than a few “reviews,” letters to the editors, proofing jobs and some articles, most of which seem to either directly or indirectly have something to do with his grandfather, whose literary estate he co-manages, there’s not much there.

If this were the deep sea, Chambers would be a remora, the small creature that fastens itself to sharks, whales and tortoises for a free ride around the ocean. Chambers has heavily keyworded his review of “Rewriting Hisstory” so that the SEO will put him right above me or below me in search engine results. That way, if someone Googles my name, his page will appear by virtue of his review. By keywording his other essays carefully, readers also have no choice but to see Chambers piggy backing there as well.  

While he declares himself to be a historian, he also insists that I am not.  Aside from “Rewriting Hisstory,” I have had three books of oral history published and two on baseball. Two of my histories have been published by academic presses only after being vetted by professors. Three others were published by major houses.  From my vantage point, I’ve got him shut out 6-0. Yet, he, not me, is the historian. Go figure.

Or am I not a historian because I’m a partisan? Now matter how many times Tony Hiss and I express our attitudes toward his father, that we are interested only in determining the truth, a principle that has guided all our work together, people like Harvey Klehr or David Chambers refuse to accept it. The fact is that without fail, the source material has shown that Hiss, not Whittaker Chambers was telling the truth. Had it been the other way, we would have said so. David Chambers, however, dismisses out of hand overwhelming evidence that his grandfather was lying without giving any reason why. And yet he not only considers himself a historian but also the non-partisan one. He’s as delusional as his grandfather was. 

And yet, he also has the temerity to lecture me directly, to inform me that Alger Hiss like everyone else tied to this case, lied. How did he lie? Chambers doesn’t say. He concedes that there are enough errors “of omission” in “Witness” so that if they were restored to the book, it would double in size.. Not one of the mistakes, however, changes the story in a fundamental way, he says, so so much for his being nonpartisan. His statement that his grandfather did make errors is David Chambers trying to demonstrate his nonpartisanship in the hope that an agent or producer will be interested in the treatments and proposals for film, TV and theater he mentions on his LinkedIn page, asking anyone who might be interested to direct message him. Apparently, he doesn’t have an agent working for him, so with negative “reviews” such as this one making news and by linking them to his LinkedIn page, it seems clear he is using the negative reviews to contrast our alleged partisan view point, with his alas partisanship, cash in and help sell his larger projects. And he accuses me of lacking integrity.

Currently, he calls himself an Independent Historian and a screenwriter with an expertise in 20th Century Espionage and Communist History. He also lists himself as “Literary Executor or Acting Literary Executor. His duties include protecting “the name, copyrights, and integrity of the author and the estate. 

Book “reviews”, if that’s what they are, serve the important purpose of raising his and his grandfather’s profile and can bring income to the estate. For a while he has said he is writing his own book on the case. We can all rest assured, however, that if it is published, it will surely be nonpartisan.