Concealed Enemies, Part I: Suspicion

American Playhouse was a great PBS Channel that produced high quality programming before HBO and Lifetime television did it. I first saw Concealed Enemies when it was orginally broadcast and saw it once in a repeat. I wish they would put it out on video because it is grade A drama all the way thruough. John Harkins and Edward Hermann were wonderful as Alger Hiss and his mysterious accuser Whittaker Chambers. Hermann captured Hiss's stuffiness and pomposity very well. You sense his arrogance and he truly believes he is going to get away with it. We all know that Hiss was convicted and went to prison, but you are still on the edge of your seat because of the first class script and fine acting. They capture the mood in the America of 1948 wonderfully when everyone was worried about Communist subversion in the government. You have to remember that this was after World War II and we were very paranoid about Russia and mysterious "Iron Curtain". Everyone was suspect it seems. Peter Riegert is a wonderful character actor who really shines as Richard Nixon, then a Republican memeber of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It was Nixon more then anyone else that pressed the case against Hiss and demanded that the charges against him either be proved or disproved. Riegert looks a lot like a young Nixon and captures his spirit as well. The only thing was that Nixon wrote a book called Six Crises about his life and mentioned the Hiss case in it. He portrayed himself as calm and rational throughout, a real profile in courage. It didn't happen that way in real life, Nixon believed Hiss guilty, but he also feared the case could ruin his career. He was a nervous wreck and times and Riegert caputres that very well. One funny inside Joke in the film is where Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles are talking and one says to the other "You know there is every reason to believe Dewey will be President before the year is over". As you may recall Harry Truman pulled off one of the biggest political miracles of all time when he beat Dewey that year. We always need to remember the McCarthy era and this film certainly helps. By the way, there is every reason to believe that Hiss really was a spy for the Russians. After his release from prison, he basically spent the rest of his life trying to "prove" his innocence, but all the evidence points to his guilt.

Even though I disagreed with the central theme of this program--that is, the innocence of Alger Hiss--I found it to be a very enjoyable historical presentation.

The cast was superb. Edward Herrmann was excellent, as was the late John Harkins. Peter Riegert gave one of his best performances ever as Richard Nixon.

The main problem--in fact, the only problem--was the very shaky assumption that Hiss (played by Herrmann) was framed by Whittaker Chambers (Harkins).

This was one of very few efforts put this story on film, and even if it must be taken with a grain of salt, is still very much worth watching.

Years ago this excellent and rivetting two part mini series was shown on late night Australian TV for the first and last time. Why is it never shown anymore and why isn't it available on video? If an Emmy award doesn't justify showing something of this quality more than once what does?

I recall shortly after the fall of The Evil Empire seeing and reading news reports that a KGB general -- apparently the only honest man in that den of iniquity -- had scoured the KGB archives for any reference to Hiss or any of his presumed code names or operations, and came up empty! "Hiss vindicated!" the leftist yahoos hollered. Oops. Not quite. A few months later came the reports that the same general had gone into other files and found them replete with Hiss' treachery. Seems he was NOT a KGB agent, but an agent of the GRU -- Soviet Military Intelligence. These reports did not receive a tenth of the play in the media that the initial "vindication" did. So much for media bias. Case closed.

...is that many in the 'biz' don't like the inference that Hiss was guilty and would prefer this subject be forgotten. It is amazing that this film was made at all and then shown on PBS no less. Based on a book called 'Perjury' the true hero of the story is a journalist named Whittaker Chambers who had been a member of the Communist Party USA and came to renounce that ideology and expose it's conspiracies and operatives. While these events happened 60 years ago, die-hard American leftists and particularly those in Hollywood, prefer to advance the notion that Hiss was an innocent man and ruined by the evil Nixon. Ever notice how there is no shortage of one-sided dramas about Senator Joe McCarthy and the blacklisting of Hollywood writers? Now there exist quite a number of good books documenting the extent and intentions of communists in the early 1930's, 40's and 50's.

KGB archives that became available after the fall of the Soviet Union prove that Hiss was guilty. Look it up.