Ignorance is Bliss

The ignorance of some people, particularly educators at respected universities such as Marquette, has always astounded and saddened me. This morning I was expected to present my report on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible which was based on the ‘threat’ of McCarthyism and the Communist ‘witch hunts’ of the 1950s. While putting my power point presentation together I decided to discuss the factual information concerning McCarthyism (notably that there were indeed Communist agents infiltrating the United States government) and the information revealed by the declassification of documents related to the Venona Project. During my presentation in class I pointed out how the assistant to the secretary of state, Alger Hiss, was a known Communist operative to which my history professor, a Jesuit priest, objected saying that he was not a Communist. Reiterating that he was a Communist spy, I continued with my presentation. At the end of my report, he told the class that when we reached the chapter on the ‘Red Scare’ of the 1950s, he would be in vast disagreement with what I had just said. I am of course fine with this since I have the information to back my arguments up, facts that he has no reason to dispute.

Read up on this information concerning the ‘loyalty’ of Alger Hiss to the United States government …

During the KI's short existence (1947 - 1951), Anatoly Gorsky, who served in the United States and Great Britain, wrote a memorandum on Compromised American Sources and Networks. This memo incontrovertibly identifies Alger Hiss as a longtime Soviet agent who worked in the U.S. State Department.

In 1996 the United States government released the Venona papers, decoded Russian intelligence intercepts dating from the mid-1940s. These documents reference a Soviet spy at the State Department, code-named "Ales", whose biographical details matched those of Hiss.