This weeks reading gets into the details of the first Hiss case.  Richard Nixon features very prominently in that story.  Chambers goes so far  as to state that without Richard Nixon and Judge Thomas Murphy, the Hiss case may not have been possible:

That the committee did not act on its fears is a fact of history that no one can take from it.  Its stand was greatly strengthened by one man.  Richard Nixon argued quietly but firmly against a switch from the Hiss investigation to any other subject.  He pled the necessity of reaching truth in the Hiss-Chambers deadlock.

By his action, then and later, he became the man of decision of the first phase of the Hiss Case, as Thomas F. Murphy (now Judge Murphy) was to be man of decision of the second phase of the Hiss Case.  Richard Nixon made the Hiss Case possible. Thomas F. Murphy made it possible for  the nation to win the Case.  Without either man, the Case would,in my opinion, would have been lost.  Let any rational fellow who likes explain to the nation how, in that crisis, those two men, and just those two men, one a Quaker and on a Catholic, one a Republican, and on a Democrat, each utterly unlike the other in mind and character, came to be where each, in indispensable succession, was needed.

This is a very different opinion of Richard Nixon than I ever learned in school.  Its also very different than how Richard Nixon is painted by movies, TV, and the media.  As this section unfolds, we  find that Nixon had a very big part to play in discovering the truth about Alger Hiss.  Imagine what our country would look like today if Nixon didn’t push on to discover if Hiss was in fact a communist.  Without the Hiss case, there is every reason to believe that the communist apparatus would be more firmly entrenched in the highest levels of government today.  I think it is a little dissappointing that he doesn’t get more credit in today’s school system.

For TWO Weeks: I have to go to liberal occupied San Francisco this week.   I am going to take the week off.  In two weeks, I want to cover up to section XXX of chapter 11.