The visual account remains uncreated. However, before the generation that lived through the Soviet threat leaves this world entirely, the story of Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers and the penetration of Soviet espionage to the highest levels of the United States government should be told, most beneficially in a HBO-type miniseries format. That time is now.

Witness tells the gripping story of Whitaker Chambers journey from Communist true believer to anti-Communist Christian, through to his determination to expose his former fellow-travelers and the threat they posed to American national security, and the trials that followed. In 1984 Chambers was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.

His testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was later corroborated by the Venona cables released by Russian KGB in 1996, which confirmed the communist activities of high administration officials like Harry Hopkins and Harry Dexter White. Committed leftists continue to deny these realities as they did in the 1940's and 50's.

The decades long conflict between the rumpled, intellectual Chambers and the sophisticated urbane Alger Hiss, a former assistant to the Secretary of State and General Secretary of the United Nations founding conference in San Francisco, possesses all the intrigue, twists and turns of fortune, espionage and drama any movie could ask for and it ought to be told in its entirety.

In addition, the media's virtually unquestioned belief in Hiss's truthfulness, despite the evidence, stands as the morning star evidence piece for present day media bias. Moreover, Hiss's ultimate conviction makes Chamber's persecution and lonely, tortuous road through the years all the more poignant. Witness was voted one of Time magazine's top 50 books of the 20th century.

For me, it stands as the most profound and moving autobiographical account I have ever read in any form. The opening "Letter to My Children" is worth the price of the entire book, where Chambers tells his children that the scope of human history can only be understood through the prism of the choice between "God and man," or between faith in God and a pervasive secular liberalism that was disturbingly close to Communism.

In "Letter to My Children" Chambers writes, "the crisis of the western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God." Chambers weaves his story by documenting in great personal detail the appeal of Communism, namely that it burrows its way into the human soul in people whose economic opportunity, family structure and religious conviction are absent or deeply threatened. Such was Chambers own life in the early years of the 1920's and 30's when his family was collapsing, his faith non-existent and his work prospects dim.

The Communist Party USA, known as the Workers Party of America, offered him immediate false relief in all three areas but at a price he would later believe was too high. Chambers brilliant writing was infused with a highly perceptive if pessimistic view of human destiny, despite his mid-life turn to Christianity. William F. Buckley Jr. who eventually employed Chambers at National Review remembered this encounter with Chambers near the latter's death.

"It is idle, he rebuked me, to talk about preventing the wreck of Western civilization. It is already a wreck from within. That is why we can hope to do little more now than snatch a fingernail of a saint from the rack or a handful of ashes from the faggots, and bury them secretly in a flowerpot against the day, ages hence, when a few men begin again to dare to believe that there was once something else, that something else is thinkable, and need some evidence of what it was, and the fortifying knowledge that there were those who, at the great nightfall, took loving thought to preserve the tokens of hope and truth."

The French writer Andre Malraux said to Chambers after his ordeal "you have not come back from hell with empty hands." Witness is Chamber's record of his round trip. It is a must-read for any conservative and any liberal who reads Witness will find his worldview shaken to the core. But why make the movie now? Simple.

The story of Whittaker Chambers needs to be told while the generation who lived under Communism still lives. We must never forget that communists in the former Soviet Union, China, Romania and other places imprisoned, tortured and murdered far more people than the Nazis did. Yet we see very few movies out of Hollywood exposing their infamous deeds and explaining the reasons for them. Why no movie versions of The Gulag Archipelago or One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch?

Furthermore, there are far too many people who still believe that Chambers was lying or that his accusations against Hiss were never proved, despite the fact that Hiss was convicted of perjury and ended up serving three years and eight months in prison after being given a five-year sentence.

On April 8, 2007, President Clinton's former national Security Advisor Anthony Lake when asked on Meet the Press if he believed Alger Hiss was a spy, replied "I don't think it's conclusive." Many forget that the reason Hiss was never indicted for espionage was that the statute of limitations had run out.

Even today, a George Soros funded chair called the "Alger Hiss Professor of History and Literature" still exists at Bard College and various "Hiss seminars" are still held to attempt to either redeem Hiss's image or pretend that Hiss was never proven to have undermined his country from within.

Several years ago when I was doing talk radio, I decided to find out who owned the movie rights to Witness.I wanted then as I do now to see it made into a movie. Through Whitaker Chamber's biographer Sam Tanenhaus, I contacted Chambers son, John Chambers, who lives today on the family farm in Maryland, and seemed open to the idea of a movie.

Many Americans will know that Jon Voight is an outspoken conservative and I hope he will decide to make the movie and soon. In fact, Jon Voight might be just the man to play Whitaker Chambers in what might the most challenging and rewarding role of his life. When Witness, or whatever the movie version ends up being called, becomes a reality, Hollywood leftists will predictably trot out the "McCarthyism" label to attempt to stop it. But they should not be allowed to succeed.

2011 is a different time and place than the 1950's. No matter our politics, we can all admit that McCarthy went overboard and that his personality and alcohol consumption left something to be desired. We can argue about who was hurt and whether it was justified or not. But we also should be able to admit that Whitaker Chambers, at great personal sacrifice and enduring much public scorn, laid his life on the line to tell the truth about people who threatened the United States of America.

Hiss's attorney's attacked Chambers in the first trial as "an enemy of the Republic, a blasphemer, a disbeliever in God with no respect for matrimony or motherhood."

They trotted out Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter and Stanley Reed to testify against Chambers. In the second trial, Chambers was called a "pathological liar."

Conversely, Chambers himself confessed that he also told some lies in the course of his testimony. He had his reasons and all of this should be grist for the movie. In my opinion, Chambers self-admitted fallibility, which is manifested throughout Witness, makes him more attractive and believable, not less.

Thankfully, Whitaker Chambers prediction that when he left Communism, he was "leaving the winning side" has proved not to be true, despite the continuing existence of Communist regimes in China, North Korea and Cuba. The latter two are economic and social basket cases and if the former wins the economic war it will be despite Communism not because of it.

Finally, there is one more great reason why Chambers's story should be told to an audience that won't read an 800 page book. In the era of Wikileaks, America today is being forced to address and answer the question we failed to answer in the 1940's and 50's, namely "what is the cost to be paid for remaining not only on the winning side of history but on its higher ground as well?" Whitaker Chambers will help us answer if we will but tell his story. Telling it in film is the next step.

----Jay Haug is a former Episcopal priest, radio talk show host and current financial advisor. He lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida with his wife Claudia. They have three grown children. You may contact him at cjcwguy@gmail.com