Hiss, Alger (1904-1996) spy
In 1948, Alger Hiss, a former State Department employee, became a target of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), a congressional committee that sought to ferret out communist subversion in the United States.
The accusation that he was a communist agent, and his subsequent conviction for perjury, made him a salient figure in an America that, at the end of the 1940s, already was deeply involved in the cold war.
Born on November 11, 1904, in Baltimore, Maryland, Hiss had a distinguished educational background, graduating from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School, and then embarking upon a career of public service. He first served as a clerk for Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the presidency in 1933, Hiss joined the Department of Agriculture. Later, during World War II, he worked for the State Department as an aide to the assistant secretary of state for the Far East. Near war’s end, he appeared at Yalta as a presidential adviser.
Following a brilliant career with the State Department, Hiss served as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a private foundation dedicated to averting future wars. During this period, Hiss faced perjury charges for allegedly lying about his past connections with the Communist Party and passing classified documents to a communist spy located in the United States. Whittaker Chambers was Hiss’s primary accuser. Chambers, a confessed communist agent in the 1930s, later an editor at Time magazine in the 1940s, testified before HUAC that Hiss had been a member of the Communist Party. Chambers asserted that he had collected party dues from both Hiss and his wife. Hiss denied that he knew Chambers and likewise denied that he had any past affiliation with the party. Under relentless questioning from HUAC member Richard M. Nixon, however, Hiss was forced to admit that he had known Chambers, even acknowledging that he had let him use his car and live in his apartment, although Hiss maintained that Chambers had used the name of George Crosley at that time. Still, Hiss denied ever being a communist and challenged Chambers to repeat his accusations outside of Congress where congressional immunity would not apply and Hiss could sue Chambers for libel.
In response, Chambers went on the radio program Meet the Press and labeled Hiss a communist. Hiss sued. Chambers then revealed that Hiss had passed him secret State Department documents to be turned over to the Soviet Union. Chambers dramatically produced microfilms of the documents he claimed to have received from Hiss, documents that were typed copies of State Department records reproduced on a Woodstock model typewriter once owned by Hiss. These were the famous “pumpkin
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Papers,” so-called by the press because Chambers had kept them hidden in a pumpkin in his vegetable garden.
Hiss denied the charges of espionage and received unequivocal backing from the administration of Harry S. Truman. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was quoted as saying, “I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss.” Such an endorsement carried with it much political weight, and Republican detractors of the administration soon labeled Acheson a communist sympathizer. Nonetheless, Acheson stuck by his statement, this despite being good friends with Hiss’s brother Donald, and not Alger. Truman added that the charges against Hiss were a “red herring” designed to deflect criticism from Republican failures at the polls in 1948.
The first Hiss trial ended in a hung jury in July 1949. But on January 21, 1950, at the conclusion of a second trial, Hiss was convicted of two counts of perjury for having lied about his communist connections in the 1930s. He spent nearly four years in prison.
This confrontation between New Deal liberalism and resurgent conservatism carried with it far-ranging ramifications. Hiss’s past service in the State Department cast further suspicion upon a body already suspected of harboring communists. His backing by Truman and Acheson further compromised an administration struggling against partisan opposition to defend its record regarding supposed communist infiltration of the federal government. The Hiss case allowed Nixon, a newcomer to the House, to gain exposure as a staunch anticommunist. And, the Hiss trial prepared the way for Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and his anticommunist crusade.
After serving his prison term, Hiss attempted to rehabilitate both his career and his reputation. He became a frequent lecturer on college campuses. Claims by his defenders that Nixon had framed him gained more credence after that president’s Watergate debacle. Though evidence of his guilt seems inescapable today, the issue is still hotly debated among scholars, reflecting the continuing polarization between cold war conservatives and liberals.
Further reading: Alger Hiss, Recollections of a Life (New York: Holt, 1988); Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York: Knopf, 1978).
—Matthew Flynn
World History
