I had rather judge a Witch to be an honest woman, than judge an honest woman as a Witch.

        Increase Mather

The fall of Richard Nixon accelerated a process that had begun for me four years earlier. I had taught an under-graduate seminar on American autobiographies in 1970, and in order to consider at least one book that makes a central issue of its own veracity I had assigned Whittaker Chambers's Witness. That assignment had drawn me back into the world of the Hiss case—the Case, Chambers calls it—an irresistible accumulation of baffling personalities, mysterious evidence both sworn and circumstantial, questions of civil liberty, major issues of congressional power and ethics, and (for my generation) major problems of symbolic allegiance. To teach Witness, one could not simply read Chambers. One had also to read Hiss's In the Court of Public Opinion, Nixon's Su Crises and transcripts from the Case.