Uploaded March 2024 | Updated September 2026, 6 days ago
I'm often asked if "real historians" use undesigned coincidences. I answer that of course they do, if they're good historians, even though it's unlikely that they use that exact phrase. Here I begin to explore confirmations in the Chambers-Hiss hearings in 1948. Alger Hiss had claimed (at first) that he didn't know Whittaker Chambers at all. Later he changed that and said that he had known him slightly as a down-and-out named George Crossley who took advantage of Hiss's good nature to get money loans. Chambers, in contrast, swore that they had been close friends for years while they were both Soviet spies. The details that Chambers knew about Hiss were not the sorts of things that could plausibly have been researched in a world without social media. Nor were they the kinds of things that one would be likely to share with a down-and-out whom one was never close to.
The Congressional committee carefully separated the two men, and Hiss's testimony in which he confirmed details about himself was given after Chambers's testimony, so even if someone on the committee were "feeding" Hiss's answers to Chambers (for which there was no good motive in any event), this would not have helped Chambers with the details in question.
Today I discuss the prothonotary warbler, a bird that, Chambers testified, Hiss had seen and spoken of with excitement.
I'm often asked if "real historians" use undesigned coincidences. I answer that of course they do, if they're good historians, even though it's unlikely that they use that exact phrase. Here I begin to explore confirmations in the Chambers-Hiss hearings in 1948. Alger Hiss had claimed (at first) that he didn't know Whittaker Chambers at all. Later he changed that and said that he had known him slightly as a down-and-out named George Crossley who took advantage of Hiss's good nature to get money loans. Chambers, in contrast, swore that they had been close friends for years while they were both Soviet spies. The details that Chambers knew about Hiss were not the sorts of things that could plausibly have been researched in a world without social media. Nor were they the kinds of things that one would be likely to share with a down-and-out whom one was never close to.
The Congressional committee carefully separated the two men, and Hiss's testimony in which he confirmed details about himself was given after Chambers's testimony, so even if someone on the committee were "feeding" Hiss's answers to Chambers (for which there was no good motive in any event), this would not have helped Chambers with the details in question.
Today I discuss the prothonotary warbler, a bird that, Chambers testified, Hiss had seen and spoken of with excitement.
