In his article, "Alger Hiss Rides Again", Ron Rosenbaum mentions that he first heard of the article Pulitzer prize-winning winner Kai Bird co-authored with Svetlana Chervonnaya from me at a party. I hadn't realized I was speaking to my friend Ron for the record, but since he now makes it public, I want to share my memory of the conversation. Ron recalls that I was "bursting with enthusiasm for a paper" Bird had delivered at a recent conference of Hiss scholars at NYU. It is true that I admire the Bird-Chervonnaya paper not least because they had the courage to take on the consensus historians, none of whom had previously bothered to investigate whether there any plausible alternatives to the Hiss-is-Ales thesis. (I urge others to read it in the current issue of the American Scholar and decide for themselves.) But what Ron omits, I am embarrassed to say, was that actually I was bursting with enthusiasm for my own keynote address at the Hiss and History Conference, on the Ten Reasons that the Hiss case refuses to die. I pointed out to Rosenbaum that I had cited his own writing on the case in connection with Reason Number Six (which I described as "the mystery which has hovered over the case since Hiss emerged from prison." If, indeed, Hiss was guilty, why did he spend the rest of his life trying to prove his innocence?) Readers curious about what I had to say about what Ron had to say in Reason Number Six may find my address at http://hnn.us/article3s/377701​.html. Anyway, since RR concedes that B&C have indeed raised "a legitimate question" about the Hiss-is-Ales thesis, I am disappointed that instead of pursuing the implications of their new finding, Rosenbaum chooses simply to defend a position he had already taken prior to the Chervonnaya-Bird article.

"If, indeed, Hiss was guilty, why did he spend the rest of his life trying to prove his innocence?"

You cannot seriously believe this is a credible objection? Hiss has tried to "prove his innocence" because he, like you, Bird, and the rest of the Soviet apologetklura are still hard at work trying to hollow out the capitalist West from the inside.