Post #4052909
2026-07-24 03:25 UTC
Frisk and I have both read a book called The Last Pumpkin Paper which canny readers knowledgeable about #Nixon will recognize as a reference to the infamous Alger Hiss case which has never been satisfactorily settled.
It was an early political victory for the young Nixon, who was a vicious anti-Communist ideologue from the start of his Congressional years, given to slandering his opponents as Communist spies. Hiss was one of these persons, a State Department bureaucrat and a promising one.
(cont'd)
Replies (1)
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@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-24 03:28
In this case Nixon was able to make the charge stick because a curious young man named Whittaker Chambers, a conservative Christian fanatics as I recall, came forward to say that he used to be a Communist but repented, and he fingered Alger Hiss as a "fellow traveler". Hiss said it was bullshit but Chambers came up with a bombshell, records linking Hiss to Communism hidden in a hollow pumpkin. These were accepted as genuine, Hiss was convicted of perjury (for denying Chambers's story) and that finished him. And Richard Nixon racked up one of his Six Crises, which both Frisk and I have also read. (cont'd)