It is interesting to see how facts change political debates. Harry Dexter White was a spy for the Soviet Union, but for years the left argued that it was just right-wingers making information up about him. Now Foreign Affairs recognizes that he was indeed a spy. So the right wins this one. The issue should be truth and political bias should not stand in the way of finding out what exactly happened. But I haven't heard anyone on the left stand up and admit they were in error on this one. But could this same thing be happening today?
The truth about White's actions has been clear for at least 15 years
now, yet historians remain deeply divided over his intentions and his
legacy, puzzled by the chasm between White's public views on political
economy, which were mainstream progressive and Keynesian, and his
clandestine behavior on behalf of the Soviets. Until recently, the White
case has resembled a murder mystery with witnesses and a weapon but no
clear motive.
Now we have one. The closest thing to a missing link between the
official White and the secret White is an unpublished handwritten essay
on yellow-lined notepaper that I found buried in a large folder of
miscellaneous scribblings in White's archives at Princeton University.
Apparently missed by his previous chroniclers, it provides a fascinating
window onto the aspirations and mindset of this intellectually
ambitious overachiever at the height of his power, in 1944.
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