Fraternal twins - Kim Philby and Alger Hiss books

National Review, June 10, 1988

Fraternal Twins

TOUGH luck that Kim Philby died just when he did. He led a charmed life, in contrast to Alger Hiss, the intended effect of whose new memoir was spoiled by the timing of Philby's death.

In Recollections of a Life, Hiss has another go at the Woodstock typewriter, yes, but mostly he invokes names and phrases that will emotionally confirm his innocence for a suitably...progressive, shall we say? ... readership. he conjurs up Richard Nixon, all "opportunism and ambition"; J. Edgar Hoover, "one of the most evil men in American public life"; and Whittaker Chambers, "a possessed man," "a psychopath," and "a closet homosexual" (though for today's progressive readers, the damning accent should be on "closet"). The three men constitute "an unholy trinity bound together by the theology of anti-Communism."

Theology, in Hiss's lexicon, means superstition, fantastic doctrine. The suggestion is that these opportunists and psychos dreamed up the whole idea of Communist spies.

Cut to: Kim Philby, urbanely puffing his cigarettes at a Moscow cafe, telling his half-admiring Western interviewers he would do it all over again, "absolutely.' Philby had roughly the same privileged background as Hiss, with the difference that fate privileged him too. He was luckier even in being more unequivocally caught in his betrayal: knowing there was no point in risking a trial, he fled to Russia, there to claim a new set of privileges, including the Order of Lenin. He never had to protest his innocence or whine that he'd been framed.

Poor Hiss. Instead of the Order of Lenin, a lousy life as a greeting-card salesman, relieved only by Watergate Schadenfreude. And even his mendacious summary of his mendacious life has been undermined by the coincidental end of Philby's life. How that drab old hypocrite must envy Philby's naughty glamor.