The Chambers-Hiss case

History: On its 60th anniversary, the famous spy case poses theological as well as political questions | Marvin Olasky

Can we now take anything as seriously as America took an ideological struggle 60 years ago this summer? With Court TV and other networks bringing us trials filled with tribulations undreamed of in the late 1940s, do we still have the ability to focus?

The big trial story six decades ago arose on Aug. 3, 1948, when communist-turned-Christian Whittaker Chambers accused former State Department official Alger Hiss of spying for the Soviet Union. Liberal newspapers, unsurprisingly, favored Hiss, who was known publicly as a New Deal liberal. Conservative newspapers—and there were some at that time—similarly slanted toward Chambers. But neither truly understood the deeper message that Chambers was trying to communicate.