User:Timoteo III/workshop

Sayre Scandal
This concerns the edits of nobs in inserting blatantly false information supported by fake citations, and my subsequent efforts to discover it.

Beginning
Addition: Both Under Secretary Welles and Sayre testified that delivering the classifed documents to a foreign power would enable them to break America's most secret codes.
 * Please note that nobs initially backs this dubious statement up with nothing. The sentence is extermely difficult to believe, as the Baltimore Documents (Pumpkin Papers) put up against Hiss during his trial were mostly trade regulations and had NOTHING to do with cyptography, codes, or anything of that nature like this sentence suggests.
 * Such Congressional testimony proved impossible to find, for reasons that become obvious later.

The Slip

 * When pressed about how trade regulations somehow transformed into code-breakers, nobs replies:
 * The Welles, Sumner & Purifeouy testimony is in the HUAC record, 7 December 1948. Both Welles & Sumner testified that the four foot high stack of documents would enable a foreign government to decipher "the most secret codes" (there was no CIA or OSS in 1938; State Department would be using what would be considered "the most secret codes" at that time). Undersecretary Sayre testified,
 * Sayre: ...not only because of the substance of the cables, but because some of them were in the highly confidential codes; ... And for these telegrams to get out at the time they did meant that other governments could crack our codes and that, I think, is indescribably horrible.


 * Rankin: In other words, if they got the documents, if they were absolutely insignificant from the point of view of international importance, they could crack the codes without trouble.


 * Sayre: The other point is that some of the these cables reveal sources from which information was obtained, sources planted in foreign countries. Now you make a cable of this kind known, you cut off that source of information from another country, and you kill what you have been working on for years. nobs 17:44, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Now what the heck is Sayre really talking about? The fact that he seems to be worried about losing undercover sources in foreign countries lead me believe this quote was either fabricated, or referring to some completely different subject than the Baltimore Papers.
 * This brings us to the first fake citation. 1st Citation: Testimony of Francis B. Sayre and Sumner Welles, House Un-American Activities Committee, Washington D.C., 7 December 1948;
 * Editor nobs of course provides no known secondary source to actually access this apparent testimony.
 * Googling specific words however provided above yields only three pertinent web sites - search terms used are {sayre "most secret codes"}
 * More, very damning googling:
 * All sites are from a work "Far and Wide" by Douglass Reed, a noted anti-Zionist world conspiracy theorist.
 * Little info: "After Far and Wide, Reed was virtually banned by the establishment publishers and booksellers..."


 * Reed attributes the some of the words to Sayre (in an unidentified and undated press conference), but explictly states the contents of Sayre's testimony were private and unknown.

Douglass Reed

 * Relevant passages likely taken and twisted by nobs
 * The prints made a pile over four feet high. Not all these documents have been made public; even today their content is held too serious [ed- modern day evidence has not been so kind to this statement!]. They represented perhaps a fiftieth part of the whole mass of information which was conveyed to Moscow by this one group. Mr. White's memorandums were read to the House of Representatives and seriously incriminated himself and others. He died suddenly about this time, as did Mr. Laurence Duggan (a former State Department official also named in the business) and several other people. These deaths have never been publicly explained. Of these documents an Under Secretary of State during the period concerned, Mr. Sumner Welles, said that their release to unauthorized hands in 1938 would have been 'in the highest degree prejudicial, and in the highest degree dangerous, to the national interest'. To have delivered them to a foreign power would have meant giving away also the means of breaking the most secret codes. An Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Francis B. Sayre (whose testimony was not made public) said in comment on press suggestions [here I believe nobs twists a possible press conference of some sort into Congressional "testimony"] that the documents were not of the highest importance, I violently disagree, not only because of the substance of these cables, but because some of them were in the highly confidential codes ... And for these telegrams to get out at the time they did meant that other governments could crack our codes and that, I think, is indescribably horrible. Another point, he added, was that some of these cables reveal sources from which information was obtained, sources planted in foreign countries. Now, you make a cable of this kind known, you cut off that source of information from another country, and you kill what you have been working on for years (this is what Colonel Redl did, too).The Un-American Activities Committee now tried once more to force the government's hand by publishing the news of the pumpkin-plot papers and vague indications of their import. The Grand Jury met, and on December 10th reported, sure enough, that it could find no grounds for an indictment! It also attacked the Congressional Committee for its irritating zeal. Then the last chance intervened. The FBI., with professional energy, ran down letters written by Mr. and Mrs. Hiss on a typewriter since disappeared; they were found to have been written on the same machine which made the copies of secret documents, between their abstraction and return. At that Mr. Hiss was indicted for perjury, in denying that he furnished the copies to Mr. Chambers and that he ever saw or talked with Mr. Chambers at relevant dates (under the American statute of limitations Mr. Hiss was never charged with espionage or treason).


 * Then it goes on about Jews and how they ruin everything, the Holocaust was just imaginary, etc, etc.
 * Very high probability that this is the true source.
 * Where is Rankin? I suspect he was sliced in to give the faux appearance of the HUAC Committee so that it would be believable as a Congressional testimony
 * Obviously false to imply secret testimony was the same as a press conference; the latter may not even be true as the only one saying this was Sayre is a rabid nutcase, Douglas Reed. Obviously unworthy of citation as a source, possible motive for fraudulent citation.

More Crap
2nd Citation: Donald H.J. Hermann, Deception and Betrayal: The Tragedy of Alger Hiss, Paper delivered to the Chicago Literary Club, November 14, 2005; " The statute of limitations for espionage of ten years, protected Hiss against the charge of having passed secret material from State Department files to Chambers, of having placed in the hands of agents of the Soviet Union documents which enabled the Soviet Union to break important secret codes used by the United States." - ''This bit is completely from the author, with no reference or citation to any physical evidence or detective work by others. It is simply stated as fact by the author with no support. It doesn't even appear that the author intended to make that assertion alone beyond some overexcited reference to espoinage''
 * Editor nobs is told that paper says nothing about Sayre and his relation to the above contested sentence. Silence prevails reply
 * Editor nobs never explains how paper proves that Sayre actually testified to the what the contested sentence implies
 * Editor nobs characterizes the paper as cutting edge research. Mr Hermann is a lawyer who dedicates his paper to everything but his actual professional expertise. Psychoanalysis, radical quotes on intelligence and cyprotgraphy are not even bolstered in the article by statements from people in the field. There is no evidence of independent research by the author; Hermann simply regurgitates well-known arguments of Hiss detractors with passing references to their orginal authors. There is no bibliography, no formal citations used by Hermman. The majority of the article concerns Alger Hiss's percieved psychological defects that supposedly turned him to the Soviets, in the authors view of course.
 * Editor nobs' citation again fails to support the statement, though it is at least referring to the correct document this time.
 * At this point I extend the olive branch and tells nobs he's obviously wrong, accept his mistake, and we can move on. Rejected, substantial edit war continues.

Round 4
Nobs provide more yet more dubious citations. Please note it is now more than a week after me hounding him for his "real sources." nobs 23:06, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Ralph de Toledano and Victor, Seeds of Treason, (Los Angeles:Western Islands Rev. 1962), pp. 231-234.
 * Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York: Random House, 1997), p. 232.

Ralph de Toledano
Ralph de Toledano and Victor, Seeds of Treason, (Los Angeles:Western Islands Rev. 1962), pp. 231-234.


 * Note that this book is next to impossible to find and went out of print decades ago. According to the Boston Public Library System, this book is officially designated a "Rare Book." Not alot about this book is known, based on internet searches
 * Note that Ralph de Toledano is a self-professed McCarthyite- Since I had been at and on Joe McCarthy’s side. While David Horowitz and John Earl Haynes love to rail against liberals about the great Communist infiltration, even they bend over backwards to distance themselves from McCarthy.
 * Even so, I would bet a pretty penny that nob's fact doesn't appear in this book, just like it hasn't for all the other sources

Weinstein
Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York: Random House, 1997), p. 232. Summary of page:
 * Relates to Baltimore documents, but not remotely in the way nobs is trying to spin.
 * The first part refers to one subset of the Balt. Doc. that concerns the Spanish Civil war, possible dipolmatic moves by Germany, naval expansion by Britian. No mention of covert US agents in foreign lands, no mention of blowing anyone's cover, no mention of cypotography, no suggestion that these were not routine observations.
 * There is not a word of nob's dialogue ("the most secret codes" and other phrases) found here. He is not quoting anything I can see on this page
 * There is not a word of Sayre's congressional testimony, not even a passing mention of it
 * Not anything about Senator Rankin or his testimony AT ALL
 * The Baltimore Documents or Pumpkin papers were in plain English, see pictures here
 * Sayre says privately to Hiss lawyer that "dispatches in secret codes" could help Russians crack THAT code. The problem being that none of the papers presented by Chambers were in secret codes, that was a hypothetical that never materialized.
 * There is a reference to an FBI Interview (how could this be confused w/ congressional testimony?) where it reveals that most of these documents were not even sent encyprpted: only a dispatch from Bullit was "in a secret code for the most part"
 * So, only a infinitismal portion of the documents were ever encrypted. And having the orginal without the encyrpted version isn't going to help you crack the code.
 * NO CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY AT ALL
 * Nobs is spinning a web of half-truths and complete lies to make the statement. This is not his real source though, its an ad hoc justification for using Douglas Reed