Alger Hiss (1904–1996) | Covert Council

Alger Hiss came from an old Baltimore family, graduated from Johns Hopkins and Harvard Law School, where he was a protégé of Felix Frankfurter, and clerked for Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes⁵. He joined the New Deal as a government lawyer, served on the staff of the Senate's Nye Committee on the munitions industry, and moved to the State Department in 1936 as an assistant to Assistant Secretary Francis B. Sayre^1,5. By 1945 he was a senior official in postwar planning: he attended the Yalta Conference and was secretary-general of the San Francisco conference that drafted the United Nations Charter⁵. In 1946 he left government to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace¹.

The accusation

On 3 August 1948 Whittaker Chambers told the House Committee on Un-American Activities that Hiss had belonged to a secret Communist group in Washington in the 1930s¹. Hiss denied it and denied knowing anyone named Chambers. At a confrontation on 17 August, after studying Chambers's teeth and voice, he identified him as "George Crosley", a writer to whom he had sublet his apartment in 1935¹. He challenged Chambers to repeat the charge without congressional immunity and sued him for libel when he did¹.

The suit backfired. On 17 November 1948 Chambers produced typed copies of confidential State Department documents dated in the first three months of 1938 and four memoranda in Hiss's handwriting; the government later established, and the defense conceded, that the memoranda were in Hiss's hand and all but one of the typed documents came from the Hisses' Woodstock typewriter¹. Microfilm followed from a pumpkin on Chambers's farm¹.

Perjury

Espionage charges were barred by the statute of limitations. Instead, after Hiss told a grand jury on 15 December 1948 that he had never passed documents to Chambers and had not seen him after 1 January 1937, he was indicted on two counts of perjury¹. His first trial ended in July 1949 with a hung jury; the second ended on 21 January 1950 with a conviction on both counts^1,5. He was sentenced to five years⁵. The Second Circuit affirmed on 7 December 1950, finding Chambers's testimony adequately corroborated by the documents and the typewriter evidence¹.

Hiss entered prison in March 1951 and was released from the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg on 27 November 1954⁵. He spent the rest of his life contesting the verdict; in 1975 he was readmitted to the Massachusetts bar⁵. He died in New York on 15 November 1996⁵.

The later evidence

The case did not end with the appeals. Every new archive was searched for Hiss's name.

Venona. A KGB cable from Washington of 30 March 1945 reports a conversation with a source called ALES, who had worked continuously with the "neighbors" (the GRU) since 1935, led a small group "for the most part consisting of his relations", and after the Yalta Conference had gone on to Moscow. The NSA analysts' note reads: "ALES: Probably Alger HISS"². The FBI had reached that view by June 1950³.
The Moynihan Commission. In its 1997 report, after reviewing the Venona material, it wrote that "the complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled"⁴.
Gouzenko. Information from Igor Gouzenko in 1945 about an unnamed assistant in Secretary of State Stettinius's office led J. Edgar Hoover to suspect Hiss⁵.

Contested points

Whether Hiss passed State Department documents to Soviet military intelligence in the 1930s (a jury found he lied in denying it; he maintained his innocence until his death).
Whether Hiss was ALES in Venona cable 1822 (NSA's annotation says 'probably'; Haynes, Klehr, Schindler and the Moynihan Commission accept it; Hiss's lawyer John Lowenthal and later researchers proposed other candidates).
Whether the Woodstock typewriter in evidence was genuine (Hiss's defense argued in 1952 that it had been fabricated; the court denied a new trial).
What Soviet and Hungarian archives show (a 1992 Russian statement found no evidence of espionage, later qualified by the general who issued it; Hungarian records of Noel Field's 1950s interrogation name Hiss as a Soviet agent, though Field later said torture made him confess falsely).

Key dates

1936 Joins the State Department.
February 1945 Attends the Yalta Conference as a member of the US delegation.
25 April 1945 Secretary-General of the San Francisco conference that drafts the UN Charter.
3 August 1948 Named by Whittaker Chambers before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
15 December 1948 Denies passing documents before a federal grand jury, which indicts him for perjury.
21 January 1950 Convicted on two counts of perjury at his second trial.
7 December 1950 Court of Appeals affirms the conviction.
27 November 1954 Released from Lewisburg federal prison.

Sources

Court record United States v. Hiss, 185 F.2d 822 (2d Cir. 1950), Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School (1950-12-07).
NSA Venona, Part II: Selected Messages (Washington 1822 to Moscow, 30 March 1945), Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency (1945-03-30).
CIA Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939–1957 (Introduction), Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency (1996).
Congress Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, Appendix A, US Government Printing Office (1997).
Wikipedia Alger Hiss, Wikipedia.
Wikipedia English Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking).