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== Corroboration from Soviet archives ==
== Corroboration from Soviet archives ==
According to [[Library of Congress]] [[Cold War]] historian [[John Earl Haynes]],<ref>John Earl Haynes, [http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page66.html Cover Name, Cryptonym, CPUSA Party Name, Pseudonym, and Real Name Index: A Research Historian’s Working Reference]</ref> Alger Hiss’s known [[cryptonym]]s were "Lawyer"<ref>Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era'', (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 43</ref> ("Advocate"<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'' (New York: Random House, 1997)</ref> or "Advokat"<ref>Whittaker Chambers, ''Witness'' (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1952)</ref>), during his time at the [[United States Department of Justice]] (1935-36), "Ales"<ref>Venona decrypts (e.g., [http://www.nsa.gov/venona/releases/30_Mar_1945_R3_m4_p1.gif Venona 1822 Washinton to Moscow 30 March 1945])</ref><ref>Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era'' (New York: Random House, 1999); Eduard Mark, "Who Was ‘Venona’s’ ‘Ales?’ Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case," ''Intelligence and National Security'' 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2003)</ref> in 1945, and "Leonard" in the "Gorsky memo."<ref>[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page48.html KGB file 43173] vol. 2 (v) pp. 49-55</ref>
According to [[Library of Congress]] [[Cold War]] historian [[John Earl Haynes]],<ref>John Earl Haynes, [http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page66.html Cover Name, Cryptonym, CPUSA Party Name, Pseudonym, and Real Name Index: A Research Historian’s Working Reference]</ref> Alger Hiss’s known [[cryptonym]]s were "Lawyer"<ref>Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era'', (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 43</ref> ("Advocate"<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'' (New York: Random House, 1997)</ref> or "Advokat"<ref>Whittaker Chambers, ''Witness'' (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 1952)</ref>), during his time at the [[United States Department of Justice]] (1935-36), "Ales"<ref>Venona decrypts (e.g., [http://www.nsa.gov/venona/releases/30_Mar_1945_R3_m4_p1.gif Venona 1822 Washinton to Moscow 30 March 1945])</ref><ref>Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era'' (New York: Random House, 1999); Eduard Mark, "Who Was ‘Venona’s’ ‘Ales?’ Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case," ''Intelligence and National Security'' 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2003)</ref> in 1945, and "Leonard" in the "Gorsky memo."<ref>[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page48.html KGB file 43173] vol. 2 (v) pp. 49-55</ref>
==The Volkogonov affair==
After the fall of Soviet Communism in 1991, former President Nixon and the director of his presidential library, John H. Taylor, asked the new Russian President Boris Yeltsin to open the former Soviet archives relating to the Hiss-Chambers case. Meanwhile Hiss and his lawyer<ref> Dmitri Volkogonov, Letter to ''Nezavisimaya Gazeta'', November 1992, quoted in John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage'' (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003) ISBN 159403088X, p. 167</ref> Faxed similar appeals to retired Soviet Army General Dmitri Volkogonov and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), asking for confirmation that Lowenthal's "client, Alger Hiss," had never been "an agent of the NKVD."<ref>Julius Kobyakov, [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=b&msg=xPNOEFLppoOgkkWbtl1dQw&user=&pw= Lowenthal and Alger Hiss], H-DIPLO</ref> (This despite the fact that Hiss had never been accused of being an agent of the NKVD, but of the GRU.)
Volkogonov, as ''apparatchik'' in charge of Soviet military history under the Communists<ref>Amos Perlmutter, "Western journalists slow to report General Dmitri Volkogonov's explanation of his exoneration of convicted spy Alger Hiss," ''National Review'', January 18, 1993</ref> had written with official blessing<ref> David Remnick, "The Stalin Tragedy Comes Home; With Official Blessings, a Soviet Historian Works on a Biography," ''The Washington Post'', June 30, 1988, p. B1</ref> a 1988 biography of Stalin in which he defended Stalin's claim that a majority in the Baltics favored incorporation into the Soviet Union in August 1940, described Stalin's invasion of Poland as "largely justified," blamed the West for the Cold War,<ref>Steven M. Miner, "The Incubus of Despotism," ''The Washington Post'', September 15, 1991</ref> and accepted the claim that Stalin's purges were provoked by Trotskyist and Nazi agents.<ref>Walter Laqueur, ''The Long Road to Freedom: Russia and Glasnost'' (New York: C. Scribner's, 1989) ISBN 0684190303, p. 68</ref>
At a 1992 press conference, Lowenthal released to the media a statement from Volkogonov claiming that "Alger Hiss was never an agent of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union." Hiss dubbed this a "final verdict," adding, "I can't imagine a more authoritative source than the files of the old Soviet Union."<ref>David Margolick, "[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE3DE113BF93AA15753C1A964958260 After 40 Years, a Postscript on Hiss Russian Official Calls Him Innocent]," ''New York Times'', October 29, 1992</ref> Lowenthal said Volkogonov was apparently "willing to stake his reputation as a general, historian and politician" on this statement.
But Volkogonov admitted that he spent only "two days" in the Foreign Intelligence Archive,<ref>[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10611FE385C0C748DDDAB0994DA494D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fH%2fHiss%2c%20Alger Serge Schmemann, “Russian General Retreats on Hiss,” ''The New York Times'', December 17, 1992]</ref> and that he had not actually examined any archives. Instead, he had asked Yevgeny Primakov, head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (formerly the KGB), to provide him with the information.<ref>[Herbert Romerstein, ''Human Events'', November 28, 1992]</ref> Volkogonov said that Primakov said that employees of the foreign intelligence archive said that "A. Hiss was not registered in the documents as a recruited agent."<ref>Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, ''The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors'' (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2001) ISBN 0895262258), p. 140</ref>
“The Ministry of Defense also has an intelligence service, which is totally different,” admitted Volkogonov.<ref>[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10611FE385C0C748DDDAB0994DA494D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fH%2fHiss%2c%20Alger Serge Schmemann, “Russian General Retreats on Hiss,” ''The New York Times'', December 17, 1992]</ref> He admitted that he had "not seen anything from the GRU archive" and that without going through the files there, there was "no basis for saying anything that would shed greater light on the question of Hiss.”<ref>[http://www.thenation.com/bletters/20070430/navasky/date Mark Kramer, “The Hiss Case and General Volkogonov: A Comment on Victor Navasky's Article,” Web Letters, ''The Nation'', May 17, 2007]</ref> “I looked only through what the KGB had,” said Volkogonov. “There's no guarantee…that it was not in other channels….”<ref>[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10611FE385C0C748DDDAB0994DA494D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fH%2fHiss%2c%20Alger Serge Schmemann, “Russian General Retreats on Hiss,” ''The New York Times'', December 17, 1992]</ref>
Asked if he had examined the files of the Comintern, Volkogonov admitted, “I have not seen these documents…. I have not had the opportunity to see these documents ... only foreign intelligence archives in Russian which contained information on agents.”<ref>Reed Irvine, Ed., “[http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/1992/11b.html Media Bites on Hiss Hoax],” ''AIM Report'', November B 1992</ref>
In addition, even in the KGB archive, “many documents have been destroyed,” admitted Volkogonov. “There's no guarantee that [Hiss’ file] was not destroyed.”<ref>[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10611FE385C0C748DDDAB0994DA494D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fH%2fHiss%2c%20Alger Serge Schmemann, “Russian General Retreats on Hiss,” The New York Times, December 17, 1992]</ref>
“What I saw gives no basis to claim a full clarification,” said Volkogonov. “[Hiss’] attorney, Lowenthal, pushed me hard to say things of which I was not fully convinced,”<ref>[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10611FE385C0C748DDDAB0994DA494D81&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fH%2fHiss%2c%20Alger Serge Schmemann, “Russian General Retreats on Hiss,” The New York Times, December 17, 1992]</ref> he said. Volkogonov added that he felt he had been ‘deceived’ by Lowenthal.<ref>[http://www.thenation.com/bletters/20070430/navasky/date Mark Kramer, “The Hiss Case and General Volkogonov: A Comment on Victor Navasky's Article,” Web Letters, ''The Nation'', May 17, 2007]</ref>
Meanwhile, retired KGB General Julius N. Kobyakov, whom Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes write "insists that Hiss was not a spy, while nostalgically applauding the greatness of the KGB and lamenting the fall of the USSR,"<ref>Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, "Professors of Denial: Ignoring the truth about American Communists," ''The Weekly Standard'', Volume 010, Issue 25, March 21, 2005</ref> claimed that it was not Volkogonov (who died in 1995), but he who actually searched the files.<ref>Julius N. Kobyakov, [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=b&msg=xPNOEFLppoOgkkWbtl1dQw&user=&pw= ], H-DIPLO (Humanities and Social Sciences Net Online), October 10, 2003</ref>
Like Volkogonov, Kobyakov admitted that he had not even seen the GRU files, simply taking the military intelligence agency's word for their contents—while refusing to disclose what that word was: "No, I did not examine Soviet military archives. I wrote a letter to the GRU and received the relevant answer. That of course was, and, I believe, still is a classified correspondence." Why correspondence about 60- or 70-year-old files of a regime that no longer exists is classified, he did not say (although he did mention that he "strongly disapprove[d]" of allowing Weinstein and Vassiliev access to the archives, saying, "fortunately they had no access to the files I worked with."<ref>Julius N. Kobyakov, "[http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=c&msg=/%2bj6%2bNHkqbEMRV0ioyVHUQ&user=&pw= Alger Hiss]," H-DIPLO (Humanities and Social Services Net Online), October 16, 2003</ref>
Kobyakov also claimed that former KGB General-Lieutenant Vitaly Pavlov, who ran Soviet intelligence work in North America in the late 1930s and early 1940s for the NKVD, claimed that Hiss never worked for the USSR as one of his agents.<ref>Julius N. Kobyakov, "[http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=c&msg=/%2bj6%2bNHkqbEMRV0ioyVHUQ&user=&pw= Alger Hiss]," Humanities and Social Services Net, October 16, 2003</ref> That is hardly surprising, say historians, since Hiss is accused of working for the GRU, not NKVD.
After the Volkogonov fiasco, Russian officials stripped Soviet archives of all files regarding Hiss and Chambers, reported the editor of the ''New York Times Book Review''.<ref>Sam Tanenhaus, ''Whittaker Chambers: A Biography'' (New York: Random House, 1997) ISBN 0375751459, p. 600</ref>
Three years later, the U.S. National Security Agency released the Venona decrypts.
==Legacy==
==Legacy==