Hollywood Witness

In his mind's eye, Jon Voight can see the scene unfolding. Tall, self-assured Alger Hiss is waiting in the witness room to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) when a short, overweight man wearing a rumpled suit enters the room. It's Whittaker Chambers, who has accused Hiss of spying for the Soviets while a top State Department official. Chambers has confessed to being Hiss's Communist handler. So what does Hiss, having denied he knows Chambers, do? He looks unflustered, indifferent, and doesn't make eye contact. It is a scene with no dialogue, yet one brimming with all the tension and portent of the greatest spy case of the century.

Voight believes the silent confrontation between adversaries would be a riveting moment in a movie version of Witness, Chambers's 1952 epic about his embrace of communism, his break, and his clash with Hiss and the establishment figures who rushed to Hiss's defense. Voight is an admirer of Chambers and Witness. But if the film is ever made, he'd play Hiss. Voight, as accomplished an actor as he is, knows he wouldn't be credible as Chambers.

In Hollywood, Voight is an unusual figure. He's a conservative. "I have to say, in this atmosphere, I would be," he told me. But he's not active in Republican campaigns or party politics. Voight is a political loner, and, in the description of an associate, a "conservative independent."

His interest is chiefly in a single issue, national security. He's a strong defender of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, says the 9/11 attacks might have been averted if the Patriot Act had been in effect then, believes Communists were "right at the root" of anti-Vietnam war protests in the 1960s, insists the war on terror is "real" and necessary, regards actor Matt Damon as a left-wing "propagandist," and thinks "our best ambassadors" in Iraq are "our troops who are rubbing shoulders" with Iraqis.

Voight played the secretary of defense in the recent hit Transformers. But his role as a zealous Mormon leader involved in the massacre in Utah of a wagon train of Christians on their way to California is weightier and more important. The movie, which opened around the country last week, is September Dawn. The massacre occurred on September 11, 1857.

The date--9/11, 150 years ago--"gives you a bit of a chill," Voight says. And he sees the film as a metaphor for today's Islamic jihadists. The fanatical Mormons who believed God justified the killing of men, women, and children were "very reflective of Wahabbis" who teach hatred of non-Muslims and claim God approves the murder of infidels. "This is a way to examine the anatomy of religious fanatics [and how they] rationalize a murderous act."

It's also a controversial way. Mormons are unhappy with September Dawn because it implicates church patriarch Brigham Young. The Mormon church denies Young ordered the massacre. Voight, however, says the evidence against Young is unassailable and the film's director, Christopher Cain, told the Los Angeles Times that "Young's dialogue was taken directly from speeches and documents."

"We're not pointing a finger at the Mormon church today," Voight says. Nor does the movie "have anything to do" with Mitt Romney's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, is a Mormon.

Some conservatives have attacked the film as a poor substitute for a movie about Islamic terrorists. "Why would Hollywood release a controversial feature film about alleged Mormon terrorists of 150 years ago while all but ignoring the dangerous Muslim terrorists of today?" asked Michael Medved, the columnist and talk radio host.

This is a sensitive point for Voight. He says an anti-jihadist movie would have trouble getting financing, perhaps due to fear it would provoke violent Muslim protests. "For me certainly, I was drawn to [September Dawn] the way I was drawn to Rosewood, which was about a massacre in a black town," he says. "Truth should be brought to every chapter of our history."

The only full-length movie so far about Islamic extremists is United 93, released last year. It recounts, in documentary style, how a few brave souls forced the fourth plane seized by terrorists on 9/11 to crash in Pennsylvania. Voight is eager to make another. "I look for films based on their relevance to what we're facing," he says. And what's relevant in his view is the totalitarian ideology of Islamic radicalism and the threat it poses to America.