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From Whittaker Chambers (1997) by Sam Tanenhaus
The next day was October 31. [1938] Solow and Tresca had been invited to a Halloween party in Brooklyn that coincided with the publication of Not Guilty!, the second volume of the Dewey Commission findings.* Solow invited Chambers along. The occasion could be a coming out for the defector and [could?] help reestablish his public identity. Besides, John Dewey would be there, and Chambers was eager to secure the philosopher�s sponsorship, (etc).
Solow had previously sounded out Dewey�s protégé Sidney Hook, the commission�s organizer. But Hook was skeptical of Chambers, whom he had met just once, in 1933.. ( . . ) Hook would approach Dewey only if Chambers first established his bona fides by a public denunciation of Stalin�s spy apparatus. Chambers was not yet ready for that. (Etc.)
New York : Random House 1997, p. 141.
* So far as I know the Commission was engaged in establishing the facts of the possible "guilt" by Mr. Trotzky and any of his partisans, actual or (often falsely) alledged — of the "crimes" he/they had been accused of by his more successful rival J. Stalin.
The facts of the case have rather been, this was plain "crook war" between two men, one pretty much worth the other. Trotzky was Stalin's "superior in wit, though not in crime" (W. Churchill), a description well borne out by independent research ; while the accusations of 'trotzkyism' were used when any accusation would have served Stalin to get rid of the "old guard" or of any persons he did not find convenient.
The Commission had pretty much wasted its time, and the time of those people who took its investigations seriously.
I am presently wasting my time and the time of the presumed reader with the sole aim of lessening further waste. (WPT).
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