Dreamers and Deceivers

by Glenn Beck

  To avoid prison, Alan had pleaded guilty and accepted a reduced punishment: a cocktail of chemicals unlike any he’d experimented with as a boy on Christmas morning or as a student playing with iodates at secondary school. The primary ingredient in the compulsory cocktail was estrogen, which was supposed to eradicate his libido.

  In effect, it was a successful nonsurgical form of sterilization. But it had embarrassing side effects: It made the marathon runner fat. Worse than that, it caused him to grow breasts. The physical deformities on his chest were like a scarlet letter, a constant reminder to everyone of his punishment for a sex crime.

  There were other changes in his life that were less obvious to observers, but even more painful to Alan. He had always been discreet, and although he wasn’t ashamed of his private life, he was horrified at seeing its details splashed across the pages of local newspapers. Even more difficult to bear was the reaction of his brother John. Upon receiving a letter from Alan explaining the arrest, John made it clear that Alan repulsed him and deserved the government’s punishment.

  Perhaps most troubling of all was the scrutiny he received from Britain’s national security apparatus, which viewed men who committed crimes of “moral turpitude” as security risks. Because Alan’s work at Bletchley had given him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, officials in London required him to keep them apprised of his whereabouts. They were particularly concerned about his trips abroad to countries that allowed sex criminals to visit.

  He may not have become a “different man,” but his life was certainly very different now.

  After the arrest, the public humiliation, and the exacerbation of a loneliness he had felt for most of his life, Alan didn’t have as much to lose as most men. Certainly, he felt, he didn’t have as much to live for as the man who was protected by the police and whose government repaid his selfless service with something better than persecution, forced sterilization, and feeble attempts at social engineering. Two years after his arrest, the simple fact was that Alan no longer wanted to be surrounded by a society of simpletons.

  “Dip the apple in the brew,” he whispered, sitting on the side of his bed. “Let the sleeping death seep through.”

  When his housekeeper arrived the next morning, she found him lying in bed—asleep forever.

  Beside him was an apple with a single bite taken from it.

  It had been dipped in cyanide.

  EPILOGUE

  There is a modest tribute to Alan Turing at Manchester University, where he spent the final nine years of his life. It is a bronze statue of him sitting on a bench, staring into the distance and holding an apple.

  Turing’s accomplishments will also undoubtedly receive a new wave of attention later this year when The Imitation Game, a major motion picture about his role in breaking the Enigma codes, opens in theaters.

  But the true Turing monument is the world we now live in: a world free of the fascism that he, perhaps as much as Patton or Bradley or Eisenhower, helped to defeat. And in a world where Windows means more than framed glass apertures in buildings, where Deep Blue can compete with Russian chess master Garry Kasparov, and where a lovely female voice on your phone can tell you anything from the name of Britain’s prime minister to the winner of last year’s Super Bowl.

  Every time a computer searches the Internet, plays music, or processes words by retrieving an encoded application from its “memory,” a small tribute is made to the man who imagined tape with an ever-changing code that a machine can read, rewrite, and obey.

  Perhaps the most striking, if possibly coincidental, memorial to the man who invented the first computer is that anytime someone looks at an iPhone, iPad, or MacBook they find the image of an apple on the back.

  It is missing a single bite.

  8

  The Spy Who Turned to a Pumpkin: Alger Hiss and the Liberal Establishment That Defended a Traitor

  I had attacked an intellectual and a liberal. A whole generation felt itself on trial.

  —Whittaker Chambers

  Yalta, Soviet Union

  February 4, 1945

  While the barrel-shaped British prime minister droned on, the American diplomat stole glances at the magnificent view outside the windows. The Black Sea looked menacing and cold from the warmth of Livadia Palace. With antique mirrors, crystal chandeliers, and the finest in Soviet hospitality, the palace was a grand setting. The American figured it was the perfect place for leaders seeking to carve up the world to meet. It was here, he recalled, where the last Russian czar and his family enjoyed many summers, basking in their decadence while their people starved. At least until Soviet communists rose up and conquered them.

  The Soviets were now using the same apartments in the same decadent palace for themselves. That irony did not even cross the mind of the forty-year-old American diplomat, Alger Hiss, who viewed the communist leadership as a force for good.

  The three titans of the world—Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin D. Roosevelt—along with their respective military brass and diplomatic corps, had cause to celebrate. After five years of grinding war, it was finally coming to an end. The fascists were all but defeated. The only question left was how to divide up the spoils.

  “These are among the most important days that any of us shall live,” Prime Minister Winston Churchill thundered. Hiss rolled his eyes. It wasn’t even noon and he was convinced that Churchill had already downed one too many Johnnie Walkers. He had a penchant for grandeur, hyperbole, and self-importance. Someone ought to just tell the senile old man he was losing his empire.

  Then it was the Soviet leader’s turn. Hiss fixed his eyes on the commanding presence of the mustachioed Stalin. It was the first time he had been in a room with the powerful Soviet leader, and he wasn’t disappointed. Stalin had nearly ended his monologue, which had been accentuated by the loud pounding of his fist on the table, when the English translation began:

  For the Russian people, the question of Poland is not only a question of honor but also a question of security. Throughout history, Poland has been the corridor through which the enemy has passed into Russia. Poland is a question of life and death for Russia.

  Hiss thought that Stalin was a man of strength and composure. The Baltics. Poland. Eastern Europe. Stalin insisted on having it all. Soviet blood—20 million martyrs—had earned it. Meanwhile, the Brits and Americans had been content to fight from afar, letting the Soviets do the hard work against Hitler.

  Across the round table, Churchill looked irritated. Hiss knew what he must be thinking: Wasn’t this precisely the reason the Allies had entered the war? To preserve the freedom and independence of nations like Poland?

  The stage was now set for the third member to speak, a man Hiss had gotten the opportunity to observe closely since being assigned to the Yalta delegation by the State Department. The crippled, ailing American president looked unperturbed. Gaunt and drawn, Franklin D. Roosevelt turned his head and beckoned Hiss to come closer.

  Hiss revered the old man. Though FDR was a capitalist, he had done his best to promote social justice for the masses, a new social construct. Roosevelt always thought the best of people, and that included Stalin. But Hiss could see that Stalin’s expansive demands to control all of Eastern Europe seemed extreme, even to Roosevelt.

  “Mr. Hiss,” Roosevelt asked, his voice stronger than his body, “what are our objections on Poland?”

  Hiss leaned forward, whispering into the commander in chief’s ear. “None really, Mr. President. The Soviets have assured us they will hold free and fair elections in whatever territory they are currently occupying. What we need is Soviet agreement on the creation of the United Nations.” The UN was FDR’s passion, the diminished heir to the grandiose League of Nations for which his predecessor Woodrow Wilson had vainly given his life.

  Roosevelt took a drag on his long cigarette. “Very well,” he said.

  Hiss leaned back in his chair and did his best to suppress a s
mile.

  16 Years Earlier

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  June 14, 1929

  Commencement exercises were under way and Alger Hiss could not help but feel a moment of validation. Not only for the stellar grades he’d received at Harvard Law School, although even he had to admit they were impressive, but rather because he had survived it all: his father’s suicide when he was just two years old; his sister’s suicide twenty-two years later; the death of his brother from Bright’s disease; and the sad, dreary existence of growing up in a Baltimore neighborhood that seemed to be in a constant state of decline.

  Hiss scanned the crowd of beaming, proud parents. In their top hats, morning coats, and exquisitely crocheted lace dresses, this was a portrait of privilege. Adams. Cabot. Choate. Eliot. Lowell. Putnam. Weld. Williams. Winthrop. They were all there. They had sent their children to Exeter and Andover. Then to Princeton and Yale. Now, with Harvard Law degrees in hand, these children would be unleashed into the world to become industry magnates, bankers, and governors. Hiss knew it wasn’t because they worked harder or were smarter; it was because they happened to have names that usually traced back to the Mayflower.

  His mother sat a dozen or so rows back, stone-faced and grim. In the creased lines of her face were the unmistakable signs of suffering, although you would never know it from talking to her. She was the one who had taught her children to rise above their circumstances. Forty years ago, she might have fit in here. She had grown up with wealth but, without a husband to provide income for the family, her inheritance had dwindled to nothing. A widow with five children to raise, Mary Lavinia Hiss had good reason to be mad at the world, but had never shown an ounce of it. She taught Hiss and his siblings that self-pity was for the weak.

  Perhaps more so than his brothers and sisters, young Alger took his mother’s advice to heart. He’d been a scrapper for much of his life—aided by a keen mind, a natural charm, and appealing looks. Few knew that he lived a nearly penniless existence, even selling spring water from his little wagon to earn money when he was a boy. From an early age, he’d learned to ingratiate himself to get ahead. He was the kind of guy who was everyone’s best friend, and was named the “most popular” student while earning top marks at Johns Hopkins. He also learned to look the part. Hiss realized that if he surrounded himself with people of wealth and taste and status, then others would assume he had it as well.

  “Hiss,” the dean called out, shaking Alger from his childhood memories and his resentment for just about every other student sitting alongside him on the stage. Hiss stood and strode with purpose to the podium. He forced a smile when he caught the eye of Professor Felix Frankfurter, sitting in the first row.

  Professor Frankfurter had known how far Alger’s talents could go, even if he wasn’t from one of New England’s wealthiest families. Hiss had been introduced to the revered liberal law professor by a mutual friend and had quickly become a regular at the Frankfurters’ Sunday teas—which featured the professor’s favorite authors, friends, and fashionable leftist views on issues of the day. Hiss and Frankfurter saw most of these issues the same way. For example, they shared the firm belief that anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti had been falsely convicted at their famous Boston murder trial.

  When the ailing Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the legendary jurist appointed to the bench by Theodore Roosevelt, had delegated the selection of his law clerks entirely to Professor Frankfurter, it came as no surprise to anyone that his top recommendation was his protégé, Mr. Alger Hiss.

  Now, at twenty-four years old, with a tall, lean frame, wavy dark hair, large ears, and expressionless eyes, Hiss had not only attained a coveted law degree from Harvard, but he was about to clerk for the most famous and esteemed Supreme Court justice.

  As he stood at the podium looking out at the crowd, Hiss realized just how far from his humble Baltimore roots and life of small-bore tragedies he’d come. He also knew that it was only the beginning.

  Washington, D.C.

  April 8, 1930

  Alger Hiss watched as Oliver Wendell Holmes bristled at what he clearly viewed as an impertinent and unprofessional suggestion.

  “It won’t work,” he told his young clerk. “It’s too personal.”

  Hiss was undaunted. He wished to achieve a higher level of intimacy with Holmes, one that would distinguish him from the other clerks, all of whom had sterling pedigrees similar to his own.

  When he first met the justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes had already been on the bench for twenty-seven years. His health was clearly on the decline—there was no doubt about that—but he still had the finest mind of anyone on the Court. Even as he completed his ninth decade, Holmes was so proficient at expediently turning out stunningly lucid and scholarly opinions that Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes sometimes withheld work from Holmes to save his slower colleagues the embarrassment.

  But Hiss could see time had caught up with him. Now, at eighty-eight years old, Holmes’s eyesight was failing. Before his beloved wife, Fanny, died earlier that year, she had taken to reading him literature out loud. But now, with her gone, Holmes missed the enjoyment of a good book. Seeing an opening, the ambitious Hiss saw an opportunity.

  “Mr. Justice, it would be an honor if I could read to you,” Hiss suggested to him one evening. Holmes rejected the idea out of hand. A clerk spending hours alone with him was far too much of an imposition. It was also inappropriate and much too personal—which is exactly why Hiss wanted to do it.

  He saw himself becoming a confidant of the justice, learning from him, sharing his secrets. Holmes could also help him strengthen his façade of established wealth, breeding, and social class. But, if he really examined himself, and if he were willing to admit it, there was more to it than that. In Holmes, Hiss saw the wise, revered fatherly figure that he’d lacked all of his life.

  One didn’t push Oliver Wendell Holmes, and one certainly didn’t pester him. So Hiss devised a different strategy. “Mr. Justice, the decision is yours, of course.” Hiss was always unfailingly polite, but he did note to the jurist that there was an existing precedent. “But, sir, in case you were not aware, Esme’s secretary reads to him.”

  Hiss knew that Sir Esme Howard, the British ambassador, was one of Holmes’s favorite visitors and a man Holmes very much admired. If he knew that the respected Sir Esme had his secretary read to him, Hiss figured that Holmes might reconsider.

  And he was right. Holmes soon relented and let Hiss read to him almost every weekday. Of course, Hiss did not mention to Holmes what might have been a useful fact: Sir Esme’s secretary did indeed read to him, but that was because the secretary was also his son.

  How easy it was, Hiss thought, to get what one wanted with nothing other than a simple omission of a key fact or two.

  16 Years Later

  Washington, D.C.

  January 22, 1945

  Two days after being sworn in for an unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt arrived at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Underneath the building was a secret rail line where his specially outfitted private train car, the Ferdinand Magellan, was waiting to take the wheelchair-bound president on the first part of a long, arduous trip that would eventually culminate in Yalta on the Crimean Sea. There he would meet with Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and British prime minister Winston Churchill to plan for the aftermath of what was now an inevitable Allied victory over Hitler’s Germany.

  Among the American delegation that accompanied Roosevelt was the elegant and erudite Alger Hiss. Since joining the federal government in 1933, Hiss had excelled in his career. This was not all that surprising given that he had arrived brimming with qualifications and endorsements from men like Justice Felix Frankfurter—appointed to the Supreme Court by FDR in 1939—and the late Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  Hiss was a perfect match for what many called “the striped pants set” at the State Department compound popularly known as “Foggy
Bottom”—young men with Ivy League degrees, great self-assurance, and occasionally batty ideas about the world. The previous spring Hiss had become special assistant in the new Office of Special Political Affairs within the State Department, where he spent most of his time on postwar planning. He wasn’t that concerned about the Soviet Union—he believed they would continue to be a key American ally after the war; but he was concerned about Great Britain attempting to protect what was left of its empire.

  Hiss was enthusiastic about his next assignment. He had been tasked with preparing all of the background material to be used by the U.S. delegation at the Yalta Conference, even for matters outside his department. It was clear to anyone paying attention that Hiss’s career was on an impressive trajectory—one with seemingly no limits. The establishment didn’t just embrace him; they admired and even loved him. He felt like nothing could stop his ascent.

  Nothing, that is, except for one little secret.

  U.S. Capitol

  Washington, D.C.

  August 3, 1948

  The freshman Republican from California had been in Congress for less than two years. He’d been sent to Washington through the hard work of small-business owners, ranchers, and bankers who had drafted him to run and represent California’s 12th District.

  He was an odd choice. He certainly did not look the part of a typical congressman. His most noticeable features were his prominent jowls, bushy eyebrows shadowing his small darting eyes, and an omnipresent five o’clock shadow.