Difference between revisions of "Alger Hiss"

'''Alger Hiss''' (November 11, 1904 &ndash; November 15, 1996) was a high-ranking [[U.S. State Department]] official<ref>"Alger Hiss, a former [https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2000/nr00-02.html high-ranking State Department official]"; and "[[#refBogdanor08|one of America's leading diplomats]]..."</ref> and Secretary-General of the [[United Nations]] founding conference.<ref>"The Secretary-General of the Conference was Alger Hiss... Secretary-General: Alger Hiss" [[#refUN46|UN 1946-47]]: 14, 48 (PDF 15, 49)</ref> He was [[#refHissAppellate|convicted of perjury]] in 1950 after [[#refBentleyGJ|denying involvement]] in [[USSR|Soviet]] [[espionage]]. Hiss partisans and many on the [[ideological]] [[left]] for many years hotly disputed the jury’s verdict in the case,<ref>Francis P. Sempa, "[http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2001_07-09/sempa_chambers/sempa_chambers.html [[Whittaker Chambers]]: A Centenary Reflection]," ''American Diplomacy'', July 2001. Hiss portrayed himself as a "liberal" rather than a communist, referring to "[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/liberalism.html liberals like myself]," writing that he had acquired a "liberal outlook" as a student, which was "strengthened and given focus at the Harvard Law School"; his work for Justice Holmes "increased my liberal convictions"; etc. He also had "[[#refBogdanor08|strong ties]] to the [http://encyclopedia.farlex.com/Alger+Hiss Democratic Party]." Thus for decades, many [[liberals]] and [[Democratic Party|Democrats]] portrayed Hiss as an [http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryAmerican/Since1945/?view=usa&ci=9780195182552 innocent victim of McCarthyism], the victim of an [http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/spies/hiss/11.html elaborate frame-up], railroaded by [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/history.html the demagoguery] of [[Richard Nixon]] and the [[House Committee on Un-American Activities]]. Cf. Tony Judt, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=qjPwuBv-0PUC Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century]'' (Penguin Group, 2008), ISBN 1594201366, p. 301</ref> putting forward a variety of conspiracy theories.<ref>For an overview of these (mutually-contradictory) conspiracy theories see the appendix, "Conspiracy Theories," in [[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]].</ref> The '''[[Legacy of Alger Hiss#Scholarly consensus|overwhelming consensus]]''' among historians today is that Hiss was guilty, as confirmed by the unanimous report of the bipartisan Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy in 1997.<ref>"The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department [in Soviet espionage] seems settled." (Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, ''Secrecy'' [Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1997], [http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf Appendix A - Secrecy: A Brief Account of the American Experience], p. A-37 [PDF p. 39]) The commission's chairman, Senator [[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]], a [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9907E5DC103EF930A15751C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all liberal Democrat], wrote, "Hiss was indeed a [[USSR|Soviet]] agent and appears to have been regarded by [[Moscow]] as its most important."(Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=FWq-5a5tqH0C Secrecy: The American Experience]'' [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998] ISBN 0300077564, p. 146)</ref>

Alger Hiss was born November 11, 1904, in [[Baltimore]], [[Maryland]]<ref>"Mr. Hiss. I was born in Baltimore. Md., on November 11, 1904." [[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 642 (PDF 152)</ref> to a [[#refNoe1|financially comfortable]] [[#refNoe1|upper-middle-class]]<ref>Contrary to ex-Communist ("I belonged for a little while to the Young Communist League, and thereafter to the Socialist party." [[#refKempton04|Kempton 2004]]: 11) Murray Kempton's oft-repeated claim that Hiss was a "child of shabby gentility," ([[#refKempton04|Kempton 2004]]: 17), Hiss protested that the economic circumstances of his childhood were "not particularly shabby." ([[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 4)

The Hisses were "prominent, respected people. They kept their own horse and carriage, and on occasion [Alger's father] would hire a private railroad car for a family outing.... they knew everyone they wanted to know in Baltimore, they belonged to the best clubs, and they were recognized wherever they went." ([[#refSmith76|Smith 1976]]: 34) "Growing up, all five children had music and art lessons, as well as German language lessons for Alger. They attended private colleges or universities and vacationed on Maryland's Eastern Shore. During college, the three boys spent summers in Europe." ([[#refShelton2012|Shelton 2012]]: 12). Young Alger went [https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/reviews/chambers-prophecy.html to camp] ([[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 643 [PDF 153]) [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,799516,00.html in Maine]; he later participated "in the usual round of activities enjoyed by affluent college students of his time" ([[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 9); among his hobbies were tennis and horseback riding. ([[#refMorrow05|Morrow 2005]]: 248)</ref> [http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300038187 WASP]<ref>"Hiss was... not only a goy but a WASP!" ([[#refJacoby09|Jacoby 2009]]: 20). Hiss testified: "I have been an Episcopalian all my life" ([[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 649 [PDF 159]); "Alger's mother claimed descent from the Earl of Leicester and, on her mother's side, a leading Baltimore family, the Grundys." ([[#refMorrow05|Morrow 2005]]: 248) Cf. Aaron Beim and Gary Alan Fine, "[http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117985047/abstract The Cultural Frameworks of Prejudice: Reputational Images and the Postwar Disjuncture of Jews and Communism]," ''The Sociological Quarterly'', Vol. 48, Issue 3 (Summer 2007): 373-397.</ref> family. His father, an executive with a wholesale dry goods firm,<ref>[[#refScott96|Scott 1996]]. This [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dry%20goods contradicts the claim] of Murray Kempton that Hiss's father was "a wholesale grocer." ([[#refKempton04|Kempton 2004]]: 17)</ref> committed [[suicide]] by [[#refMorrow96|slashing]] his throat with a razor when Alger was just two years old.<ref>[[#refScott96|Scott 1996]]. According to the [[#refBarron01|personal Web site of Hiss's son]], Alger's father died on [[#refTonyTimeline|April 7, 1907]]&mdash;this in contrast to Kempton's claim that Hiss's father "committed suicide when Alger was nine." ([[#refKempton04|Kempton 2004]]: 17) As G. Edward White puts it (somewhat charitably), Kempton's version of events is "not quite accurate." ([[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 4) Susan Jacoby also gets this wrong, writing of "the suicide of his father (when Alger was only five)" ([[#refJacoby09|Jacoby 2009]]: 62), an error she repeated on [[#refQA|C-SPAN]].</ref> When Hiss was 25, his [[sister]] Mary Ann also [[#refMorrow96|committed suicide]], by drinking a bottle of [http://farm1.static.flickr.com/118/261588419_6b641c8815_o.jpg Lysol].<ref>"....Mary Ann... had swallowed a bottle of Lysol, killing herself." [[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 5</ref> Two years earlier, Alger's older brother Bosley, a ''Baltimore Sun'' reporter,<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 6</ref> had died at age 26 from a [[kidney]] disorder attributed to excessive [[alcohol]] consumption.<ref>"Bos.... drank a lot." ([[#refTHiss77|T. Hiss 1977]]: 11); "He was undisciplined in habits of...drink." [[#refZeligs67|Zeligs 1967]]: 167; "Bos.... contracted Bright's disease, an alcohol-induced kidney ailment...." ([[#refTHiss77|T. Hiss 1977]]: 141); "Hiss's older brother Bosley, died when he was in his early twenties of Bright's disease, a kidney disorder aggravated by Bosley's [[#refNoe1|overindulgence in alcohol]]." Cf. [[#refTanenhaus97|Tanenhaus 1997]]: 383</ref>

After such a series of tragic losses, suggested Hiss's son, Alger might have found himself "susceptible, as some may have been, to the seeming solidarity offered by the Communist Party."<ref>[[#refHiss2000|T. Hiss 2000]]: 141</ref> Among others susceptible to this lure was Hiss's [[#refHUAC8-17-48|future tenant]], [[Whittaker Chambers]], who wrote of the suicide of his own brother at age 21:

{{cquote|[M]y brother's death stunned me ... this is the point at which I became a thorough Communist. I felt that any society which could result in the death of a boy like my brother was wrong and I was at war with it. This was the beginning of my fanaticism.<ref>Michael Kimmage, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=3HUvm91KDn8C The conservative turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the lessons of anti-communism]'' (Harvard University Press, 2009) ISBN 0674032586, p. 41</ref>}}

As a result of his [[father]]'s [[death]], Alger [[inheritance|inherited]] $10,000,<ref>"...provided a $10,000 bequest to each of the Hiss children..." [[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 9</ref> the equivalent of [[#refBLS|more than $200,000]] today. After graduation from [http://www.baltimorecitycollege.us/ Baltimore City College] and a year at [[Massachusetts]]' [[Powder Point Academy]] and the [[Maryland Institute of Art]],<ref>"1921-1922: Attended Powder Point Academy, Duxbury, Mass., and Maryland Institute of Art." ([[#refZeligs80|Zeligs Papers]]) A visiting artist at the Maryland Institute of Art during this era was [http://www.mica.edu/About_MICA/Facts_and_History/Historical_Timeline/1905-1960_A_Fresh_Start%E2%80%94Rise_of_Mount_Royal_Campus.html John Sloan], former editor of the [[Communist]] magazine ''[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Masses_1914_John_Sloan.jpg The Masses]'' (John Loughery, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=eGWcHAAACAAJ John Sloan: Painter and Rebel]'' [New York: H. Holt, 1997] ISBN 0805052216, p. 177), which would change its name to ''[[New Masses]]'' in 1926 and, ironically, be edited by [[Whittaker Chambers]] starting in 1931. Meyer A. Zeligs, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=aytCAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1 Friendship and Fratricide: An Analysis of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss]'' (New York: Viking Press, 1967) ASIN B000NZOTWM, p. 253</ref> Hiss attended [[Baltimore]]'s elite<ref>"Johns Hopkins was an elite university, both socially and academically." [[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 9</ref> [[Johns Hopkins University]],<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 644 (PDF 154)</ref> where he was voted "[http://www.orwelltoday.com/hisstruman.jpg best hand-shaker]" in his class.<ref>[[#refRovere96|Rovere 1996]]: 156; Cf. [http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2010/02/eighty-five-from-the-archive-richard-h-rovere.html Eighty-Five from the Archive: Richard H. Rovere] (excerpt from ''[http://www.newyorker.com The New Yorker]'', [http://archives.newyorker.com/default.aspx?iid=18616&startpage=page0000103 May 13, 1950]); Evan Thomas, "[http://www.newsweek.com/id/103447 An American Melodrama]," ''Newsweek'', November 25, 1996</ref> Hiss would later claim to have already been socially and politically progressive and anti-business when he went to college.<ref>Alger Hiss, [http://algerhiss.com/alger-hiss/in-his-own-words/alger-hisss-liberal-manifesto/l Draft of a Chapter Written By Alger Hiss on the Foundations For His Liberalism] ([http://holliscatalog.harvard.edu//?itemid=|library%2fm%2faleph|010072878 Alger Hiss papers], Small Manuscript Collection, [http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/special/index.html Special Collections], [http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/index.html Harvard Law School Library]), algerhiss.com. Cf. Ivan Chen, [http://works.bepress.com/ivan_chen/1/ Alger Hiss, 1926-1929]; [[#refShelton2012|Shelton 2012]]: 22-24.</ref>

As an [[undergraduate]], Hiss's favorite [[instructor]]s included the [[Socialist]] [[Broadus Mitchell]] and [[Stalinist]] [[José Robles]],<ref>[[#refRicher04|Richer 2004]]: 310 (PDF 4). Robles would later go fight in Spain under the [[Soviets]]; Hiss, who apparently knew Robles well enough to spend time at his home ([[#refTHiss77|T. Hiss 1977]]: 37-38) would say he too considered joining ([[#refSmith76|Smith 1976]]: 104) the forces characterized as "[[Stalin]]'s foreign legion." (Herbert Romerstein, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=D5koGQAACAAJ Heroic Victims: Stalin's Foreign Legion in the Spanish Civil War]'' [Washington: Council for the Defense of Freedom, 1994] ISBN 9994812505). "[T]he [[Nazi-Soviet Pact]] and the Lincolns' willingness to [http://www.alba-valb.org/resources/lessons/world-war-ii-letters-from-the-abraham-lincoln-brigade/before-pearl-harbor change their position on the antifascist struggle in order to conform to Soviet policy] would forever cast a shadow on their legacy, as it would with the other elements of the Communist Left."</ref> while he was drawn to the work of (among others) the [[Atheism|atheist]] [[H.L. Mencken]], socialists [[George Bernard Shaw]], [[Maxwell Anderson]] and [[Sinclair Lewis]], and the [[Communist]] [[Theodore Dreiser]]<ref>[[#refSmith76|Smith 1976]]: 51-52</ref> (the last two also [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,881224,00.html famous atheists]). Hiss was no "Hopkins Babbit [sic],"<ref>A misspelled reference to the [http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-babbi/char.html reactionary, conservative] [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/babbitt bourgeois] George F. Babbitt, of the [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1156 eponymous 1922 novel] by socialist [[Sinclair Lewis]]</ref> according to his class yearbook; he could discourse on a wide range of topics "from Soviets to styles" with "irresistible logic and rhetoric."<ref>"[http://mdhistory.net/hiss/1926yrbk.pdf Alger Hiss]," ''Hullabaloo'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1926), p. 116 (PDF p. 3)</ref>

After graduating in 1926, Hiss went on to [[Harvard Law School]], along with [[Noel Field]] and [[Laurence Duggan]]. There he resumed his friendship with boyhood friend [[Henry Collins]] and served on the ''[[Harvard Law Review]]'' with editor [[Lee Pressman]].<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 643 (PDF 153). Pressman would eventually [[testify]] that he had been a member of the "[[Ware group]]," an underground group of [[Communist]]s in the Federal government. ([[#refHUAC50.2|HUAC 1950, pt. 2]]: 2850 [PDF 16]; cf. [[#refIPR52|S. Rpt. 2050]], Appendix: 5503 [Exhibit No. 1402]); Pressman would also corroborate Chambers' identification of [[Nathan Witt|Witt]], [[John Abt]] and [[Charles Kramer]] as members of this [[Communist]] cell ([[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 612), and admit under oath that he recognized Chambers. ([[#refGall99|Gall 1999]]: 553)</ref> Hiss became a protégé of [[Felix Frankfurter]], who was at the time the [https://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/oj/frankff.htm leading champion] of the [[conviction|convicted]] [[murder]]ers [[Sacco and Vanzetti]],<ref>Felix Frankfurter, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=GiV9cR6277UC The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti: A Critical Analysis for Lawyers and Laymen]'' (Buffalo: Wm. S. Hein & Co., 2003) ISBN 157588805X</ref> [[revolution]]ary [[terrorist]]s who had become a Communist<ref>Stephen Koch, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=YIoFAQAAIAAJ&pgis=1 Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals]'' (New York: Enigma Books, rev. ed. 2004) ISBN 1929631200, pp. 31-39, 373 n. 23</ref> ''cause célèbre'',<ref>John F. Neville, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=PXn7LbZRK2IC Twentieth-Century Cause Celebre: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the Press, 1920-1927]'' (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004) ISBN 0275977838 p. 101</ref> and whom Alger Hiss would reportedly [http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2278 emulate] (and to whom he would later [https://web.archive.org/web/20120507180857/https://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1996/11/24/an-american-melodrama.html compare himself]). Explaining how he had become a "militant communist," Hiss's Harvard classmate, fellow State Department official and [[#refFieldUK|Soviet intelligence source]] Noel Field would later write, "The shock of the [[Sacco-Vanzetti]] executions drove me leftward."<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 174. N.B. New evidence [http://hnn.us/articles/4527.html suggests] that Sacco and Vanzetti were [https://web.archive.org/web/20090510093435/http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/01/28/uptonsinclair-boston.html guilty]. [[#refAvrich05|Avrich 2005]]: 133</ref>

==Early career==

[[Image:Wallstreetbmb.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Wall Street bombing, 1920, attributed to [http://www.crimemagazine.com/916-terrorists-bomb-wall-street Galleanists]. ''World-Telegram photo. Source: [http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2007/september/wallstreet_091307 Federal Bureau of Investigation]/[http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c32521 Library of Congress]'']][[Sacco and Vanzetti]] had been members of a [https://www.nytimes.com/1919/10/30/archives/nationwide-bomb-plot-unearthed-carnival-of-murder-was-planned-for.html?pagewanted=all terrorist]<ref>According to Paul Avrich, a [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/nyregion/24avrich.html historian of the anarchist movement], the 1920 Wall Street bombing that killed more than 30 people was the work of the Galleanist Mario Buda. [[#refAvrich05|Avrich 2005]]: 133. Cf. [[#refMorgan04|Morgan 2004]]: 58; Mike Davis, "[http://motherjones.com/print/11655 The Poor Man's Air Force: A History of the Car Bomb (Part 1)]," ''Mother Jones'', April 12, 2006</ref> group known as the [http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3100/the_lessons_of_sacco_and_vanzetti/ Galleanists],<ref>[[#refAvrich96|Avrich 1996]]: 59-60</ref> which was responsible for the [http://www.slate.com/id/3135/ May Day 1919 attempted bombing] of [http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9406E3D61238EE32A25752C0A9639C946896D6CF a number] of [http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3381 public figures],<ref>[[#refAvrich96|Avrich 1996]]: 146</ref> including [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] Justice [[Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.]]<ref>[[#refAvrich96|Avrich 1996]]: 143</ref> Ironically, when Hiss graduated from law school in 1929, [[Felix Frankfurter|Frankfurter]] got him the [[#refTime2.13.50|coveted]] job of [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,888531,00.html law clerk to Holmes]. Influential as Frankfurter was, Hiss said he was probably even [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/daynight.html more influenced by Holmes], whom [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissholmes.jpg Hiss admired] as "a [[skeptic]] of the first order" who "denied the [[existence]] of [[God]]."<ref>[[#refSmith76|Smith 1976]]: 58. It has been suggested that Hiss himself was [http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/to-be-as-gods/ an atheist].</ref>

In violation of a condition of this employment<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 14, [[#refJacoby09|Jacoby 2009]]: 47</ref> Hiss got [[marriage|married]], to the former Mrs. [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00330/hrc-00330.html#bioghist Thayer Hobson] (''née'' Priscilla Fansler), a supporter of perennial [[Socialist]] Party [[presidential]] candidate [[Norman Thomas]].<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 457</ref> Hiss had met her on a transatlantic cruise when he was nineteen,<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 11</ref> though she'd since had a [[marriage]], a [[Mexican]] [[divorce]],<ref>[[#refZeligs80|Meyer Zeligs Papers]] (October 13, 1963), Harvard Law School Library Special Collections, cited in Ivan Chen, [http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=ivan_chen Alger Hiss, 1926-1929], p. 31</ref><ref>Mexican courts, notorious for their corruption, would often grant these divorces, sometimes at the request of one party without ever informing the other.</ref> a pregnancy by a married man, and an [[abortion]].<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 158-159</ref> Hiss went on to the prestigious [[Boston]] [http://img.tfd.com/WEAL/weal_05_img0977.jpg law firm] of [http://www.choate.com/ Choate, Hall & Stewart].<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes, Klehr 2006]]: 97. This firm was connected to former Ambassador to the [[United Kingdom]] Joseph Hodges Choate, whose family founded the [https://www.forbes.com/2009/04/06/america-elite-schools-leadership-prep_slide_2.html elite] [[New England]] prep school then known as The Choate School (now [http://www.choate.edu/ Choate Rosemary Hall]).</ref>

[[Image:American-cities-125.jpg|thumb|300px|left|Bombing of the Federal building, Chicago, moments after [[#refNARAcities|95 Wobblies]] were convicted there, 1918. ''Source: National Archives and Records Administration'']][[#refMHSL|Two years later]], Hiss followed his wife to [[New York City|New York]], where she had obtained a grant from the [http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/ Carnegie Foundation], sister organization of the [http://www.carnegieendowment.org/ Carnegie Endowment], of which Alger would later serve as president. Hiss joined the [http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/September-October-2005/toa_sepoct05.msp white shoe firm]<ref>Nancy Lisagor and Frank Lipsius, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=VHohAQAAIAAJ A Law Unto Itself: The Untold Story of the Law Firm Sullivan & Cromwell]'' (Paragon House, 1989) ISBN 1557782393, p. 234</ref> Cotton, Franklin, Wright and Gordon.<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 27. This firm is now known as [http://www.cahill.com/index.html Cahill, Gordon and Reindell, LLP].</ref>

During this period, Hiss became "[[#refChronology|radicalized]]":<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 208</ref> In 1930, he made a coy reference to [[#refNYT9.5.1918|the terrorist]]<ref>On July 4, 1914, three IWW members were killed in New York when a bomb they were constructing exploded. The bomb also killed a woman in the next apartment, maimed many others, and destroyed the building. ("Anarchist bomb believed for Rockefeller kills three I.W.W. makers and a woman--injures many--wrecks tenement house," New York Sun, 5 July 1914, p. 1.) Moments after the sentencing of [[#refNARAcities|95 Wobbies]] (including IWW boss [["Big Bill" Haywood]]) for a series of such acts, at the Chicago Federal Building in 1918, a bomb ripped through the building, [[#refNYT9.5.1918|killing four]]. Charles Howard McCormick, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Vcvhrdr6drgC Hopeless Cases: The Hunt for the Red Scare Terrorist Bombers]'' (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2005) ISBN 0761831320, pp. 31-31</ref> [[Industrial Workers of the World]], writing to Priscilla, "[D]id thee call thyself a [[Industrial Workers of the World|Wobbly]] with an [[Industrial Workers of the World|I.W.W.]] tongue in thy [[socialist]]ic (I couldn't bring myself to write '[[Communist]]ic') cheek?" Suggesting that an article questioning the [[legitimacy]] of the existing “[[capitalist]] order”<ref>Archibald MacLeish, “To the Young Men of Wall Street,” ''Saturday Review'', January 16, 1932</ref> did not go far enough, Hiss wrote to Priscilla in 1932, “Has thee seen [[Archibald MacLeish]]'s article on [[capitalism]] in last week's ''Saturday Review''? [[Felix Frankfurter|Felix]] says it is soft thinking after [[Edmund Wilson|Wilson]].”<ref>[[#refHiss2000|T. Hiss 2000]]: 140-141</ref>

 

By that year, Priscilla [[#refNoe9|had registered]] as a member of the Socialist Party,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 85</ref> serving (along with various "Communists, Socialists, and nonaffiliated radicals") on the Advisory Board of American Labor Associates;<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 86-87</ref> Alger, meanwhile (together with [[Lee Pressman|Pressman]]),<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 27</ref> [[#refChronology|had joined]] the International Juridical Association (IJA),<ref>[[#refZeligs67|Zeligs 1967]]: 445</ref> which "consistently followed the [[Communist Party]] line."<ref>"[http://ia700408.us.archive.org/10/items/reportonnational1950unit/reportonnational1950unit_bw.pdf Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party]," Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, United States Congress (1950), p. 12 (PDF p. 18)</ref>

[[Image:Ukraine-famine-holodomor.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Victims of [[Stalin]]'s [[Holodomor|Terror-Famine]], Ukraine, 1933. ''Source: Andrew Gregorovich, "[http://infoukes.com/history/famine/gregorovich/ Black Famine in Ukraine 1932-33: A Struggle for Existence]," ''Forum: A Ukrainian Review'' No. 24 (1974)'']] In 1933, [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]], a [[liberal]]<ref>The words [[liberal]] and [[liberalism]] "entered the language of [[American]] politics in the early years of [[Franklin Roosevelt]]'s administration, and afterward they stood for the viewpoint of the [[New Deal]]." Paul Roazen, "Introduction," Louis Hartz, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=0dFEHUgqqbkC The Necessity of Choice: Nineteenth-Century Political Thought]'' (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990) ISBN 0887383262, p. 6</ref> [[Democratic Party|Democrat]],<ref>"...[[Franklin Roosevelt]] was a [[Democrat]]." Peter W. Colby, ed., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Gsr9rgvClpwC New York State Today: Politics, Government, Public Policy]'' (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1985) ISBN 0873959604, p. 52</ref> was inaugurated as [[President]] and granted [http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2013/07/08/interview-diana-west/?singlepage=true official US government recognition] to the government of the [[Soviet Union]]. Frankfurter sent Hiss a [https://www.salon.com/books/feature/1999/06/01/hiss/index.html telegram]<ref>[[#refHiss89|Hiss 1989]]: 52</ref> strongly urging him<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 644 (PDF 154)</ref> to join FDR's administration.

 

[[Lee Pressman|Pressman]] had already gotten into the government, in the [[Agricultural Adjustment Administration]] (AAA).  

That [[New Deal]]<ref>Roosevelt and his supporters saw the New Deal in revolutionary and dictatorial terms: [[First Lady]] [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] “lamented that the nation lacked a [http://www.slate.com/id/2000099/entry/1003296/ benevolent dictator] to force through reforms." [[#refVenona1289|Soviet intelligence source]] Walter Lippmann told Roosevelt, "The situation is critical, Franklin. You may have no alternative but to assume [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,924464,00.html dictatorial powers]"; in his influential column, Lippmann added that the use of "'dictatorial powers,' if that is the name for it&mdash;[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22273 is essential].'" The ''New York Herald Tribune'' approved FDR's inauguration with the headline "[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525748 FOR DICTATORSHIP IF NECESSARY]." In response to a hit [[Hollywood]] [http://allmovie.com/work/gabriel-over-the-white-house-19092 movie] featuring as hero a President who “dissolves Congress, creates an army of the unemployed, and lines up his enemies before a [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/books/chapters/0507-1st-alter.html?pagewanted=all firing squad],” FDR wrote "I think it is an intensely interesting picture and should do much to help." Jonathan Alter, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=ASmlaOHQNawC The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope]'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007) ISBN 0743246012, p. 185</ref> agency was the brainchild of FDR's [[Secretary of Agriculture]] ([http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=W000077 and future] [[Vice president|Vice President]]) [[Henry Wallace]], who was reportedly "most impressed" with [https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Henry_Wallace.htm Soviet collective farming] (and urged FDR to become a "[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F4061FF83C5C16738DDDAB0994DB405B838FF1D3 farm dictator]"). After running for [[President]] in 1948 on the [[Communist]]-inspired<ref>The Progressive Party was in fact a [http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=11398 creation of the Communist Party], growing out of [[CPUSA]] General Secretary Eugene Dennis' February 12, 1946 order "to establish in time for the 1948 elections a national third party." Eugene Dennis, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=TafcYQEACAAJ What America Faces]'' (New York: New Century Publishers, 1946), pp. 37-38. Cf. Arthur Meier Schlesinger, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=yeoSSLzr-jAC The vital center: the politics of freedom]'' (Transaction Publishers, 1997) ISBN 1560009896, p. 115; Arthur Meier Schlesinger, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=LLyNX6hMDCIC A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950]'' (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000) ISBN 0618219250, pp. 455-456; Karl M. Schmidt, ''[http://ia700307.us.archive.org/34/items/henryawallace006268mbp/henryawallace006268mbp.pdf Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade 1948]'' (Syracuse University Press, 1960), p. 265 (PDF p. 291). In 1955, the [[SISS|Jenner subcommittee]] cited the Progressive Party on its list of subversive organizations, identified as [http://www.joincalifornia.com/party/Independent%20Progressive a Communist front].</ref> [http://www.joincalifornia.com/party/Independent%20Progressive Progressive Party] ticket, Wallace would finally recant [https://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/09/almost.great.men/index.html his support] for the [[Soviet Union]]<ref>[[Henry Wallace|Wallace]] said if he were to become President, he would appoint [[#refVenona1613|Soviet agent]] [[#refBronner98|Laurence Duggan as Secretary of State]]. Had [[FDR]] died [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/lifetimes/whouse.htm 82 days] earlier, Wallace would indeed have become President.</ref> in 1952.<ref>Henry Agard Wallace, “Where I Was Wrong.” ''This Week'', September 2, 1952</ref>

 

"In two separate studies of the plight of southern tenant farmers in the 1930s, the historians David Eugene Conrad and Donald H. Grubbs have blamed not the banks but the agricultural policies of the New Deal itself. In the early 1930s, some sixty percent of farms in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas were operated by tenants. However, during the [[Depression]] they found themselves victims of Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act, which required landlords to reduce their cotton acreage. Fortified by AAA subsidies, the landlords evicted their tenants and consolidated their holdings. It was [https://web.archive.org/web/20021112222619/http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/jun02/steinbeck.htm government handouts, not bank demands, that led these landlords to buy tractors and decrease their reliance on tenant families]." "[https://web.archive.org/web/20080227033237/http://www.economics.hawaii.edu/research/seminars/02-03/02-21.pdf One] [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/421169 study] found that such [[New Deal]] policies prolonged the [[Great Depression]] by about [http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx seven years].</ref>

In response to a query about candidates for employment at AAA, [[Lee Pressman|Pressman]] wrote, "I have talked to Alger Hiss and [fellow IJA member]<ref>Martin Dies, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=bIVCVinv63AC The Trojan horse in America]'' (Ayer Publishing, 1977) ISBN 0405099452, p. 92</ref> [[Nathan Witt|Nat Witt]] who are considering" taking posts at AAA. Hiss would later deny under oath that he had discussed the position with Pressman,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 133</ref> but he soon got a position as assistant general counsel to the AAA. There he met [[#refBC07|the Communist]]<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes, Klehr 2006]]: 94</ref> [[Harold Ware]],<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 652 (PDF 162)</ref> son of [http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss8_bioghist.html American Communist Party founder] [[Ella Reeve Bloor|"Mother" Bloor]]. Ware had recently returned from several years in the [[Soviet Union]], where he had been instrumental in the organization of [http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/ukra.html collective farms].<ref>James C. Scott, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=PqcPCgsr2u0C Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed]'' (Yale University Press, 1998) ISBN 0300078153, pp. 200-201. [[Harold Ware|Ware]] reportedly "tricked" [[USSR|Soviet]] peasants into collective farms. (Deborah Kay Fitzgerald, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=nQMNb6nGmPsC Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture]'' [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003] ISBN 0300088132, p. 161). "As the Soviet archives reveal, the experiment was a dystopian nightmare. Ware and [[Jessica Smith|Smith]] lured a group of unenthusiastic peasants into their grasp and proceeded to abuse them in a [http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=14209 brutal fashion]." (C.f. Sean McMeekin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=uvDBIpHZAE8C The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow's Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West]'' [Yale University Press, 2003] ISBN 0300130090, pp. 130-141) For this Ware received a [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/oct/20b.htm commendation from Lenin], praise repeated by [[Stalin]] (J.V. Stalin, ''[http://www.marx2mao.com/PDFs/StWorks11.pdf Works, Vol. 11: 1928-March 1929]'' [Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954], pp. 195-196.) Back in the U.S., he founded the [[#refBerle|Communist-front]] Farm Research Incorporated, which published ''[[Facts for Farmers]]'',  a [[List of Communist publications|communist publication]] intended to influence decision makers in the Agricultural Department. [[#refTanenhaus97|Tanenhaus 1997]]: 92-93</ref> Ware recruited Hiss<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 30</ref> into a secret Communist Party cell within AAA<ref>[[#refHUAC50.2|HUAC 1950, pt. 2]]: 2850 (PDF 16)</ref> known as the [[Ware group]].<ref>Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=MBHSY0bCFWoC The Secret World of American Communism]'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996) ISBN 0300068557, p. 96</ref>

Other members of this cell included Hiss's Harvard friends [[Henry Collins|Collins]] and [[Lee Pressman|Pressman]] (who would join the [[Communist Party]] about this time),<ref>[[#refHUAC50.2|HUAC 1950, pt. 2]]: 2850 (PDF 16)</ref> as well as [[Nathan Witt|Witt]] (who would be identified as a fellow [[Communist]] by Pressman),<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 612</ref> [[#refCook91|secret Communist]] [[John Abt]]<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 643 (PDF 153)</ref> and [[USSR|Soviet]] spy<ref>[[#refSpies09|Hanes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 279-282</ref> [[Charles Kramer]]. Abt would later admit having been a member of the [[Ware group]],<ref>John J. Abt with Michael Myerson, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=9REaIPPh4k4C Advocate and Activist: Memoirs of an American Communist Lawyer]'' (University of Illinois Press, 1993) ISBN 0252020308, pp. 40-41. Abt would become [[#refCook91|chief counsel]] for the Communist Party. In 1950-53, Abt would unsuccessfully defend the [[Communist Party]] before the [[Subversive Activities Control Board]], which found that the party was required by law to register as an agent of a foreign power (83d Cong., 1st sess., Document No. 41, Subversive Activities Control Board, [http://ia600409.us.archive.org/22/items/herbertbrownellj1956unit/herbertbrownellj1956unit_bw.pdf Herbert Brownell, Jr. Attorney General of the United States, Petitioner vs. Communist Party of the United States of America, Respondent: Report of the Board], April 23, 1953 [Washington: United States Government Printing Office: 1953], pp. 1, 132 [PDF pp. 9, 140]); he would later argue unsuccessfully before the [[Supreme Court]] for the repeal of the [[#refCook91|McCarran Act]]. Arrested for [https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/09/books/books-of-the-times-kennedy-assassination-answers.html the assassination of President] [[John F. Kennedy]] in 1963, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm self-proclaimed "Marxist"] (Warren Commission Hearings, CE 2240, [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0085b.htm FBI transcript: Lee Oswald to the Socialist Party of America Vol. XXV, p. 140], October 3, 1956) [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] would request Abt as his attorney. [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0154a.htm Testimony of Harry D. Holmes], Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VII, pp. 299-300. Cf. [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0168b.htm Testimony of H. Louis Nichols], Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. VII, pp. 328-329; [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh10/html/WC_Vol10_0062b.htm Testimony of John J. Abt], Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. XX, p. 116; [http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0315b.htm Report of Capt. J.W. Fritz, Dallas Police Department], p. 8, Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, p. 606</ref> as would [http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch01057 Communist writer] Hope Hale Davis (wife of [[Comintern]] agent<ref>Chapman Pincher, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=netJI5stGlwC Treachery: Betrayals, Blunders, and Cover-ups: Six Decades of Espionage against America and Great Britain]'' (Random House, Inc., 2009) ISBN 140006807X, pp. 43-47, 61.</ref> Claud Cockburn), who would write that its meetings involved discussions of how to "achieve promotion&mdash;a primary goal," or whether to "try to influence policy," as well as "secret directives&mdash;for purloining official documents," etc.<ref>Hope Hale Davis, "Looking Back at my Years in the Party," ''New Leader'', February 11, 1980, pp. 11, 13. Cf. [[#refGall99|Gall 1999]]: 41. According to Davis, the Ware group “was used, [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/nav2.html to my knowledge], for stealing documents from government agencies.” Her husband, she said, regularly supplied “a party contact confidential information from his job.” Davis added, “Everyone in Hal Ware's group had accepted the directive to get whatever we could for the party to use in any way it saw fit.” Eric Jacobs et al., "Arguments (New and Old) About the Hiss Case," [https://books.google.com/books?id=DA4HAQAAIAAJ''Encounter'', vol. 52] (March 1979), p. 87</ref> This influx of radicals caused AAA administrator George Peek to resign in protest, writing:

{{cquote|A plague of young lawyers settled on Washington. They all claimed to be friends of somebody or other and mostly of Felix Frankfurter and Jerome Frank<ref>According to radical lawyer Arthur Kinoy, [https://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/childs-play_591433.html?nopager=1. leader of a group of secret Communists], Frank was "the leading liberal judge on the court; Jerome Frank, the intellectual leader of the New Deal and architect of its most progressive legislation; Jerome Frank, the idol of young progressive law students and leader of the liberals when he taught law at Yale, who had led the fight against the conservatism of the old-guard faculty...." Arthur Kinoy, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=8IQaAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1 Rights on Trial: The Odyssey of a People's Lawyer]'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983) ISBN 0674770137, p. 97</ref>... in the legal division were formed the plans which eventually turned the AAA from a device to aid the farmers into a device to introduce the collectivist system of agriculture into this country.<ref>George N. Peek with Samuel Crowther, “In and Out: the Experiences of the First AAA Administrator,” ''The Saturday Evening Post'', May 16, 1936, p. 5</ref>}}

Even before the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] would learn of [[Whittaker Chambers]]' charges, one of Hiss's colleagues at the AAA<ref>Apparently Leonore Fuller, sister of Secretary of State James Byrnes, who would later force Hiss out of the State Department. [http://media.clemson.edu/library/special_collections/findingaids/manuscripts/mss090Byrnes/byrnes.htm James F. Byrnes Papers], Finding Aid: [http://media.clemson.edu/library/special_collections/findingaids/manuscripts/mss090Byrnes/Mss90-02ByrnesSenatorial.pdf Series 2: Senatorial Series, 1924-1941; bulk 1933-1941], p. 1 [http://media.clemson.edu/library/special_collections/findingaids/manuscripts/mssindex.htm Manuscript Collections], [http://www.clemson.edu/ Clemson University] [http://www.clemson.edu/library/ Library]. Cf. "Leonora Fuller" in Morton Levitt and Michael Levitt, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=oiN4AAAAMAAJ A tissue of lies: Nixon vs. Hiss]'' (McGraw-Hill, 1979) ISBN 0070373973, p. 267</ref> would tip off FBI investigators that Hiss and his circle were [[fellow traveller]]s, if not Communists.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p. 2 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> In February 1935, the "[[#refChronology|radicals]]" [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,748453,00.html were "purged"] from AAA. According to [[New Deal]]er [http://archon.brandeis.edu/?p=collections/controlcard&id=70 Gardner Jackson]:<ref>Five years later, when [[HUAC]] would expand its probes to include [[Nazi]] allies -- including (during the [[Nazi-Soviet pact]]) [[Communist]]s -- Jackson would [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,883947,00.html pay American Fascist David Mayne for forged letters] in a failed attempt to smear the committee.</ref>

{{cquote|Late in the day of our dismissal Wallace sent word that he would see two of the people on the dismissal list. Jerome Frank and a member of his legal staff, Alger Hiss, were delegated for the interview. Wallace haltingly greeted them (and, through them, others on the list) as "the best fighters in a good cause" he had ever worked with. But he said that he had to [https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194808/henry-wallace fire them].}}

Frank, believing Hiss to be closely linked to a coterie of Communist lawyers at the agency, would later refuse to appear as a character witness for him.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 43</ref> According to reporters Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky (who covered the trials for ''Newsweek'' and the ''New York World-Telegram'', respectively): "When Hiss's lawyers approached a well-known jurist to ask him if he would appear as a character witness [for Hiss]...he said tartly: 'I have no way of knowing whether or not Mr. Hiss was ever a Communist. But as to his character&mdash;Mr. Hiss has no character.'"<ref>[[#refTL50|de Toledano, Lasky 1950]]: 60. [[Whittaker Chambers]] would testify that Hiss had "a great gentleness and sweetness of character," ([[#refHUAC8-7-48|HUAC August 7, 1948]]), although he would later admit glimpsing a "strange savagery" in Hiss's laughter at "the horrible old women of Baltimore" ([[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 363), and "the obvious pleasure he took in the most simple and brutal references to the President's physical condition as a symbol of the middle-class breakdown." (Hiss was one of the few insiders who knew that [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] was wheelchair-bound. See, e.g., Hugh Gregory Gallagher, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=kFpgOgAACAAJ FDR's Splendid Deception: The Moving Story of Roosevelt's Massive Disability and the Intense Efforts to Conceal it from the Public]'' [St. Petersburg, Fla.: Vandamere Press, 1999] ISBN 0918339502. To Hiss, according to one scholar, the ailing FDR epitomized "feeble, illegitimate authority that ought to die or disappear but refuses to do so." Alan Fraser Davis, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=8bo8AAAAIAAJ Skills, Outlooks and Passions: A Psychoanalytic Contribution to the Study of Politics]'' [Cambridge University Press, 1980] ISBN 0521293499, p. 449, n. 13) That savagery took a distinctly political form, as when Chambers raised with Hiss the issue of the bloody [[Moscow]] [[Great purge|purge trials]]: according to Chambers, Hiss replied coldly: "Yes, Stalin plays for keeps, doesn’t he?" ([[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 41) Likewise, when reminded that the prominent [http://mises.org/journals/scholar/MacKenzie7.pdf Democratic Socialist] [https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/273508/Irving-Howe Irving Howe] had written that he was persuaded of Hiss's guilt, Hiss snapped, "Howe? I don't consider him on the left." [[#refRemnick86|Remnick 1986]]</ref>

Mr. Collins. I refuse to answer that question, sir, on the grounds that my answer might tend to incriminate me. [[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 802-810 (PDF 312-320)</ref> but another AAA official, [[Nathaniel Weyl]], would later testify that he attended [[#refGuttenplan09|Communist cell meetings with Hiss]]<ref>Mr. COHN. Did you know Alger Hiss to be a member of the [[Communist party]]?

[https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Volume1.pdf Testimony of Nathaniel Weyl] before the [[Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations]], United States Senate, February 23, 1953, pp. 619-620 (PDF pp. 658-659)</ref> and [[#refTime3.3.52|saw him pay his party dues]],<ref>Nathaniel Weyl, “I Was in a Communist Unit with Hiss,” ''U.S. News and World Report'', January 9, 1953</ref> testimony he would reaffirm in his 2004 autobiography.<ref>Nathaniel Weyl, ''[http://www.worldcat.org/isbn/1413407471 Encounters With Communism]'' (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2004) ISBN 1413407471, cited in [[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 551, n. 6; [[#refFoote|Haynes 2007]]</ref> Ex-Communists Ralph de Sola and George Hewitt would both also testify to having seen Hiss at [[Communist Party]] meetings.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 360</ref> A former [[GRU]] station chief in [[London]] and [[New York]] reported that during the early and middle 1930s Hiss was a [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-HOAC&month=0704&week=d&msg=rdvHVZGvkWX%2BOMFhhKt2Iw&user=&pw= source of agent information] for a [[USSR|Soviet]] [[espionage|spy]] ring in Washington, the [[Silvermaster group]], according to [[Pavel Sudoplatov]], former [https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/28/world/pavel-sudoplatov-89-dies-top-soviet-spy-who-accused-oppenheimer.html deputy director of Foreign Intelligence for the USSR].<ref>[[#refSudoplatov95|Sudoplatov 1995]]: 227-228. Two others also alleged to be in contact with the [[Ware group]] ([[George Silverman]] and [[Harry Dexter White]]) would likewise be identified as sources of the [[Silvermaster group]].</ref>

[[Image:00811h.jpg|thumb|300px|right|The Senate Munitions Committee: Arthur H. Vandenberg, Bennett Champ Clark, Gerald Nye, counsel Alger Hiss, and Homer T. Bone]]In 1934, again with an assist from [[Lee Pressman|Pressman]] ([https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/09/books/the-truest-believer.html?pagewanted=all according to Jackson]),<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 143</ref> Hiss, "[[#refChronology|on loan]]" from AAA, became [[#refMHSL|General Counsel]] for the [[U.S. Senate]]'s [[Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry|Nye committee]], which investigated people Chairman [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=n000176 Gerald P. Nye] (R.-N.D.) called [[Wall Street]]'s "merchants of death," whom he accused of conspiracy to "drag the [[United States|U.S.]] into a struggle" with [[Nazi]] [[Germany]] that, according to the U.S. Senate Historical Office, the noted [[progressive]]<ref>John Whiteclay Chambers II, "[http://www.answers.com/topic/gerald-nye Nye, Gerald P.]," ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_Rzy_yNMKbcC The Oxford Companion to American Military History]'' (Oxford University Press, 1999) ISBN 0195071980, p. 515</ref> maintained was [https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/merchants_of_death.htm none of our business]. One scholar dubbed these hearings a "witch-hunt" for "subversive [[capitalist]]s," in which Hiss was to Nye what [[Roy Cohn]] would later be to [[Senator]] [[Joe McCarthy]] (R.-Wisc.)<ref>Peter Viereck, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=7Xu9KvBGlZMC Unadjusted Man in the Age of Overadjustment: Where History and Literature Intersect]'' (Edison, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2004) ISBN 0765808064, pp. 156-157</ref> On the [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1916lenin-imperialism.html Leninist theory] that "capitalism was a cause of aggression,"<ref>James Grant, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=A5bfknd-WcQC Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend]'' (John Wiley and Sons, 1997) ISBN 0471170755, p. 261</ref> Hiss employed what would later come to be known as "McCarthyite"<ref>[[#refHerman99|Herman 1999]]: 220</ref> methods, badgering witnesses. Even his son would admit that Hiss was "as intolerant as any communist ... high-handed, smug, arrogant," particularly toward the "business leaders he cross-examined caustically."<ref>[[#refHiss2000|T. Hiss 2000]]</ref> One such witness, [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/baruch.html Bernard Baruch], was reportedly the first to openly assert that Hiss was a [[communist]].<ref>Bruce Craig, “[https://web.archive.org/web/20100604145023/http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/hiss_bruce_craig.pdf Alger Hiss: Recent Explorations in Documenting the Public and Private Man]” (Alger Hiss and History, Inaugural Conference, Center for the United States and the Cold War, New York University, April 5, 2007), p. 5 (Archived). Hiss reciprocated, calling Baruch "a [[#refLH88|vain and overrated]] [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polonius Polonius]."</ref>  

The [[USSR|Soviets]] took great interest in the work of the committee for its [[propaganda]] value<ref>[[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 115-116</ref> as well as its access to classified documents on U.S. armaments and foreign policy.<ref>[[#refHaunted|Weinstein, Vassiliev 1999]]: 40</ref> [[Moscow]] had at least one source on the staff of the committee, who provided valuable documents to the [[Kremlin]] in 1935,<ref>[[#refHaunted|Weinstein, Vassiliev 1999]]: 28-29</ref> the [[#refVenona1822|same year]] an agent later code-named "Ales" (pronounced "Alles") began working for [[GRU|Soviet military intelligence]]. The committee's chief investigator, Stephen Rauschenbusch,<ref>This was the [http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/rhetoric_and_public_affairs/v011/11.2.zietsma.pdf son of] Walter Rauschenbusch (Elizabeth Balanoff, [http://www2.roosevelt.edu/library/oralhistory/02-Herstein.pdf Interview with Lillian Herstein, Book 2], May 7, 1971 [Oral History Project in Labor History, Roosevelt University, 2006], p. 246 [PDF p. 41]), [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/rausch-socialgospel.html founder of] the "Social Gospel" movement--who wrote that Christianity should "aid the evolution of society from the present temporary stage of individualism to a higher form of communism." (Walter Rauschenbusch, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=mug-AAAAYAAJ Christianity and the Social Crisis]'' [Macmillan, 1913], p. 414) He also investigated [[Fabian socialism]] in England "under the tutelage of Beatrice and Sidney Webb" (Donovan Ebersole Smucker, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=fIP_Til4U64C The Origins of Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Ethics]'' [McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994] ISBN 0773511636, p. 18), for whom "communism became... a substitute for religion." Richard Ingrams, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=ezBbAAAAMAAJ Muggeridge: The Biography]'' (HarperCollins, 1995) ISBN 0002556103, p. 76</ref> would later refuse to testify as a character witness for Hiss;<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 68</ref> Nye would tell FBI investigators that he believed Hiss was a [[Communist]] during his time on the committee,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 43-44</ref> and would later say he believed Hiss used his position for [[espionage]].<ref>John E. Wiltz, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=xpDtAAAAMAAJ In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934-1936]'' (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963) ISBN B000GX1RX0, p. 53</ref>

Barely a month after joining the committee staff,<ref>[[#refHaunted|Weinstein, Vassiliev 1999]]: 40</ref> [https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/reviews/chambers-chronology.html Hiss met] [[Whittaker Chambers]]. A decade later, "Vadim" ([[Anatoly Gorsky]], then chief of Soviet intelligence in the U.S.)<ref>[[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokin 2000]]: 90</ref> would report to Moscow that "‘Ales’ ... used to work in ‘Karl’s’ informational group, which was affiliated with the neighbors"<ref>[[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 26; Trans. 50-51</ref> (According to [[NSA]] cryptographers, "neighbors" was the code name for the [[GRU]], Soviet military intelligence);<ref>[[#refVStory|Benson 2001]]: 29 (PDF 31)</ref> three years after that, Gorsky would identify "Karl" as "Whittaker Chambers, former editor in chief of 'Time' magazine. Traitor."<ref>[[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 39; Trans. 77 (cf. [[#refBLH05|Bachman, Leich, Haynes 2005]]; [[#refLowCher|Lowenthal, Chervonnaya 2005]]); [[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 163; [[#refBC07|Bird, Chervonnaya 2007]]</ref>

According to Chambers, he was introduced to Hiss by Communist underground boss<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 569 (PDF 79); cf. [[#refHK03|Haynes, Klehr 2003]]: 143-146</ref> [[J. Peters]];<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 339</ref> Hiss would claim that Chambers had wandered into his office without introduction, as a [[#refHissAppellate|free-lance]] [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,799060-2,00.html writer] looking for a story. [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]]' version would be corroborated by the [http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/Bai/bevilacq.htm radical] novelist [[Josephine Herbst]], whose then-[[husband]], [[John Herrmann]], was an AAA official, a member of the [[Ware group]]<ref>Philip A. Greasley, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=ZnuYKJSoHCMC Dictionary of Midwestern Literature: The Authors],'' (Indiana University Press, 2001) ISBN 0253336090, p. 264</ref> and a courier for the [[Communist]] underground<ref>[[#refHerman99|Herman 1999]]: 85</ref> subordinate to Chambers.<ref>Elinor Langer, "The Secret Drawer," ''The Nation'', May 30, 1994, p. 756. Herbst would be the first journalist to learn that Hiss's friend and teacher, José Robles, had been secretly [https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/05/books/a-life-of-passionate-commitments.html?&pagewanted=all executed by the Communists]. Paul Preson, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=GdXvTmgQJc4C We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War]'', (Skyhorse Publishing Inc., 2009) ISBN 1602397678, p. 64</ref> Herbst's biographer claims that Herrmann introduced Chambers to Hiss at a Chinese restaurant near Dupont Circle in 1934. Correspondence between Herrmann and Herbst confirms Chambers' testimony "to the detriment of Hiss";<ref>David D. Anderson, "John Herrmann, Midwestern Modern, Part II: The Alger Hiss Case and the Midwestern Literary Connection," ''[http://www.ssml.org/publications/midwest/mm_1991.pdf Midwestern Miscellany'' XIX] (East Lansing, MI: The Midwestern Press, 1991), p. 46</ref> Hiss would later claim that he did not even know Herrmann&mdash;[http://www.thenation.com/article/great-pumpkin a "lie,"] according to Herbst's biographer.

====Hiss's 1929 Ford====

In the summer of 1936, [[J. Peters]] arranged a dummy transaction, according to Chambers, in which Hiss donated his 1929 Ford to the [[Communist Party]].<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 378</ref> Hiss would deny this, testifying instead that he had sold<ref>"I sold him an automobile." [[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 957 (PDF 467)</ref> or given<ref>Mr. Hiss...I don't think I got any

Chambers' version would be corroborated by the car's certificate of title, which showed that Hiss actually transferred the car on July 23, 1936, to the Cherner Motor Company, which [http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/spies/hiss/5.html sold it the same day] to the [[Communist]]<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 60</ref> William Rosen for $25. The address listed on the certificate was not Rosen's but [http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-25testimony.html that of Benjamin Bialek], a [[#refHaynes5-10-05|leading official of the Baltimore Communist Party]]. The company's records of the transaction had vanished.<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 1065 (PDF 566); [[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 47</ref> The salesman for the transaction refused to testify on grounds of potential self-incrimination; later investigation would establish that [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-hoac&month=0505&week=b&msg=02ybKmtOa6aYfyrfupryvw&user=&pw= he was a secret Communist] who on other occasions conducted automobile transfers to assist Soviet intelligence. Richard Tourin, son of a photographer for [http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page100.html Philip Rosenbliet]’s espionage apparatus, wrote in his memoir that his father’s Soviet contact in 1937 rewarded his father’s service to the Soviets with [[#refHaynes5-10-05|a used car supplied via William Rosen]]. Rosen would [[#refHissAppellate|refuse to answer]] [https://www.leagle.com/decision/1949361174F2d187_1293.xml/UNITED%20STATES%20v.%20ROSEN questions about his role] in the transfer or in the [[Communist Party]] on grounds [[#refHissAppellate|of potential self-incrimination]]. Hiss's attorney, Edward McLean, wrote that Rosen's lawyer, Emmanuel Bloch,<ref>This was the same attorney who had represented Communist underground boss [[J. Peters]] in his deportation hearing; he would later represent [[Julius Rosenberg|Julius and Ethel Rosenberg]] in their espionage trial. [[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 53. [[Alan Dershowitz]], Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, characterized him as "[http://highered.nbclearn.com/portal/site/HigherEd/flatview?cuecard=1746 a communist ideologue]."</ref> told him:

{{cquote|…that Rosen did lend himself to a [[#refNYRB|dummy transaction]] concerning the Ford car.... [A]t some later date, a man came to see Rosen and told him that the title certificate to the Ford was in Rosen's name and asked Rosen to sign an assignment of it to some other person. Rosen did this. The man who came to see Rosen was a very high [[Communist]]. His name would be a sensation in this case. The man who ultimately got the car is also a Communist. Bloch implied that Rosen was a Communist too....<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 53</ref>}}

The title transfer bore a signature Hiss acknowledged to be his own,<ref>Mr. NIXON. All right; you are willing to testify now then that since Mr. Smith did notarize your signature as of that time, that it is your signature? Mr. HISS. On the basis of the assumptions you state, the answer is "Yes".... Mr. NIXON. You don't deny, however, that the notarization of your signature on the transfer to Cherner Motor Co. in July of 1936 is your signature? Mr. HISS. I certainly do not. [[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 1116, 1119 (PDF 626, 629)</ref> notarized by Hiss's [[Justice Department]] colleague W. Marvin Smith. In 1948 Smith would tell the [[HUAC|Thomas committee]] that he had notarized Hiss's signature on the transfer,<ref>Mr. STRIPLING. I show you a photostatic copy of an assignment of title which was... subpenaed from the files, of the Vehicles and Traffic Division of the District of Columbia... It states in part... "Assignment of title. For value received the undersigned hereby sells, assigns, or transfer unto (name of purchaser)"; then, written in is "Cherner Motor Company; address, 1781 Florida Avenue, Northwest"... It says, "Signature of Assignor, Alger Hiss." Then it says, "On the 23d day of July 1936, before me, the subscriber, a notary public of the District of Columbia, personally appeared Alger Hiss, who made oath in due form of law that the above statements are true. Witness my hand and notarial seal, W. Marvin Smith, Notary Public." Is that your signature, Mr. Smith? Mr. SMITH. It sure does look like it. Mr. STRIPLING. You say it does? Mr. SMITH. Yes; I have no doubt it is. [[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 1072 (PDF 582)</ref> but before he could so testify in the Hiss [[trial]], Smith would be found dead from a fall down a five-story Justice Department stairwell; there would be no witnesses.<ref>"U.S. Lawyer Who Figured In Hiss Case Killed in Fall," ''The Washington Post,'' October 21, 1948, p. 1. Cf. "[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1893&dat=19510317&id=lQ8pAAAAIBAJ&sjid=39YEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4789,1952807 Drew Pearson's Washington Merry-Go-Round," ''The Southeast Missourian'', March 17, 1951], p. 6</ref>

[[Image:AlgerHiss Sig.jpg|thumb|250px|right|The name “Alger Hiss” in Cyrillic (Алджер Хисс) from [[Alexander Vassiliev]]'s notes on an April 1936 report from Hede Massing to Moscow Center. ''Image source: [[#refVas|Cold War International History Project]], Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars'']]At a 1935 dinner at the home of [[State Department]] official (and [[#refFieldUK|Soviet intelligence source]]) [[Noel Field]], Hiss argued with [[OGPU]] recruiter [[Hede Massing]] that Field should work with Hiss's [[GRU]] group, rather than Massing's OGPU group, according to Massing.<ref>Hede Massing, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=cogGAQAAIAAJ&pgis=1 This Deception]'' (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1951), p. 335. Massing's account is corroborated by Czech archives. Central Intelligence Agency memorandum for Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation: Revelations of Karel Kaplan, June 29, 1977, [http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000028650/0000028650_0015.gif p. 5] (CIA Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room)</ref>

[[Noel Field|Field]] would defect in 1948 to [[Communist]] [[Czechoslovakia]], where he would tell the [[secret police]] that he was fleeing to avoid testifying in the [[trial]] of Alger Hiss, whom he identified as a fellow Communist underground agent in the [[State Department]] during the mid-thirties, according to official records published in 1990 by Karel Kaplan, former archivist of the Central Committee of the Czech [[Communist Party]].<ref>Karel Kaplan, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=x3s6sBZw-YkC&pg=PA19&dq=%22noel+field%22&sig=d7XE7yhraGkrz6k4AP0ljIqXEvY#PPA19,M1, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary]'' (London: I.B. Taurus & Co. Ltd., 1990), ISBN 1-85043-211-2, pp. 19-25</ref> A 1955 Czechoslovak secret police reinvestigation (obtained in 2000 by Czech [[human rights]] activist Karel Skrabek) states, "Noel Field said that … Hiss worked for the [[USSR]] as a spy."<ref>[[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 133</ref> Field would end up in Communist [[Hungary]], where in 1954 he would tell Hungarian secret police that he and Hiss "mutually realized we were Communists. Around the summer of 1935 Alger Hiss tried to induce me to do service for the [[USSR|Soviets]]."<ref>Transcripts: September 23, 1954; September 29, 1954. Noel Field file, Archives, Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior, quoted in Mária Schmidt, ''[http://www.terrorhaza.hu/en/museum/about_us/curriculum_vitae.html Behind the Scenes of the Showtrials of Central-Eastern Europe]'', Budapest 1993 (uncorrected manuscript), cited in [[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 135; Mária Schmidt, “Noel Field&mdash;The American Communist at the Center of Stalin’s East European Purge: From the Hungarian Archives,” ''American Communist History'' 3, no. 2 (December 2004); Mária Schmidt, "The Hiss Dossier: A Historian's Report," ''The New Republic'', November 8, 1993, pp. 17-20</ref>

The transcripts also record [[Noel Field|Field]] [[#refTanenhaus93|saying that he turned over]] [[State Department]] documents to [[Hede Massing]] in the 1930s. In other statements, Field twice said that although Hiss knew that Field “was a [[Communist]],” he strongly supported Field at the State Department and even tried to help him obtain a job as a State Department adviser in the [[Philippines]] in 1940.<ref>Ethan Klingsberg, "Case Closed on Alger Hiss?" ''The Nation'', November 8, 1993</ref> The dossier likewise records a statement by Field that he briefly visited Hiss in 1939 in [[America]], where they agreed that if either's cover was ever blown, he would communicate to the other indirectly.<ref>Sam Tanenhaus, “Hiss: Guilty as Charged,” ''Commentary'', April 1993; Sam Tanenhaus, "New Reasons to Doubt Hiss," ''Wall Street Journal'', November 18, 1993</ref> Shortly before his [https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/02/arts/hermann-field-wartime-prisoner-and-novelist-90.html death in 2001], Field's brother Hermann said the dossier was accurate: Noel Field confirmed to him, said his brother, that [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0506&week=d&msg=TtrUE8GbtON64EPU7AQOzA&user=&pw= Hiss was a spy].

[[Image:A. Hiss - Yurist.jpg|thumb|250px|left|The name “A. Hiss” and code name "Yurist" (Jurist) in Cyrillic (А. Хисс&mdash;"Юрист") from Vassiliev's notes on a Moscow Center annotation. ''Image source: [[#refVas|Cold War International History Project]], Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars'']]In a 1936 memorandum, found in the [[NKVD]] archives by former [[KGB]] agent [http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=31935 Alexander Vassiliev], [[Hede Massing|Massing]] complains to [[Moscow]] that [[Field]] (to whom she refers by his code name "Ernst")<ref>R.C.S. Trahair, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=VNSMrps8mpcC Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations]'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004) ISBN 0313319553, p. 76</ref> "was approached by Alger Hiss" (Massing uses his real name), who "informed him that he is a Communist" with "ties to an organization working for the Sov. Union" &mdash;a serious breach of discipline. (A Moscow Center annotation identifies "A. Hiss" as the GRU agent designated by the code name "Jurist.")<ref>[[#refVasYellow2|Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #2]]: Orig. 3; Trans. 4; cf. [[#refHaunted|Weinstein, Vassiliev 1999]]: 6; [[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 6-7</ref> As a result, noted [[Boris Bazarov]], [[OGPU]] "illegal" station chief for the [[United States]],<ref>[[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 222</ref> Field "and Hiss [Bazarov also used Hiss's real name] [[#refPowers2000|have been openly identified]]" as [[USSR|Soviet]] agents.<ref>[[#refHaunted|Weinstein, Vassiliev 1999]]: 7; [[#refPowers04|Powers 2004]]: 89; [[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 228</ref>

Hiss took a 25% pay cut<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 41</ref> to transfer into the [[State Department]] in September 1936, the same month a [[GRU]] agent designated by the code name "Jurist" began working there.<ref>[[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 12</ref> Hiss was now special assistant to Assistant [[Secretary of State]] for Trade Agreements Francis B. Sayre, [http://archives.williams.edu/williamshistory/biographies/sayre-francis.php son-in-law] of [[Woodrow Wilson]]. Two years later, Alger's younger [[brother]] [[Donald Hiss|Donald]], who had followed him to [[Johns Hopkins University|Johns Hopkins]], [[Harvard Law School|Harvard Law]], and a clerkship for [[Oliver Wendell Holmes|Justice Holmes]], would join him at State, rising to the position of [https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/20/obituaries/donald-hiss-82-ex-us-official-and-lawyer-in-washington-firm.html assistant to future Secretary of State] [[Dean Acheson]].

 

At some point in 1935-37, [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]] [[#refHUAC8-17-48|gave Hiss a rug]] from Bokhara, in [[Soviet]] [[Uzbekistan]]. Just before [[Christmas]] 1936, [[Soviet]] [[Colonel]] [[Boris Bykov]], head of [[GRU|Soviet military intelligence]] in the U.S.,<ref>[[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 639</ref> had given Chambers $800 (equivalent to approximately [[#refBLS|$13,000 today]]) to buy four [http://justiceiro.smugmug.com/photos/113296067-M.jpg Bokhara rugs] for Hiss, [[Harry Dexter White]], [[George Silverman]], and [[Julian Wadleigh]], according to Chambers; Hiss would later claim that Chambers had given him his rug in 1935 in partial payment for rent.

Chambers' version was corroborated by [[Marxist]]<ref>Alan Wallach, "[https://solidarity-us.org/atc/62/p2424/ Marxist Art Historian: Meyer Schapiro, 1904-1996]," ''Against the Current'' 62 (May–June 1996), p. 52</ref> [[Columbia University]] [[art]] historian [https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/04/us/meyer-schapiro-91-is-dead-his-work-wove-art-and-life.html Meyer Schapiro], who confirmed that he arranged the purchase (and produced the canceled check dated December 23, 1936); by the [[Massachusetts]] Importing Company of [[Manhattan]], which confirmed selling him the rugs (and produced the [[Bill of Sale]]); by White's widow and Silverman (who confirmed that they had received their rugs sometime between late 1936 and the fall of 1938); and by Wadleigh, [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00611FE345F177B93CBA91789D95F4D8485F9 who confessed] to having been a member of Chambers' apparatus and delivering documents to him, confirmed that he had received his rug for [[New Year's Day|New Year's]] 1937,<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes, Klehr 2006]]: 117-118</ref> and conceded that he understood the rug to be a gift [[#refCohen93|from the Soviets]].

By 1937, the peak of [[Stalin]]'s [[Great Purge|Great Terror]]<ref>[[#refConquest91|Conquest 1991]]</ref> (the victims of which would number [https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/13/books/now-it-can-be-told-even-in-russia.html?pagewanted=all over ten million]), Hiss was delivering packets of documents to [[Whittaker Chambers]] at intervals of a week or ten days, according to Oleg Gordievsky, the [http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4126872,00.html highest-ranking] [[KGB]] officer ever to defect.<ref>[[#AG90|Andrew, Gordievsky 1990]]: 230. In 2008, Gordievsky would become [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7333382.stm partially paralyzed], as a result, he told Scotland Yard, of what he suspected was an assassination attempt.</ref> That June, [http://americanthinker.com/2014/07/diana_and_ron_what_was_going_on_.html at Stalin's behest], FDR abolished the State Department's Eastern European Division, headed by the anti-Communist Robert F. Kelley,<ref>Cathal J. Nolan, ed., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=kZMeeXLSQhsC Notable U.S. Ambassadors Since 1775: A Biographical Dictionary]'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997) ISBN 0313291950, p. 207</ref> reassigning its staff and dispersing its excellent library.

That year, [[Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov|Akhmerov]] cabled [[Moscow]] that [[Michael Straight]] ([https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1451875/Michael-Straight.html code-named "Nigel"])&mdash;an [[#refPlatt99|FDR protégé]] and intimate family friend of the President and First Lady, who was also a [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/jan/09/guardianobituaries.usa member of] the [[NKVD]]'s [[Cambridge Five|Cambridge spy ring]] (and would become an [[FDR]] speech writer<ref>[[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 153</ref> and [https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/nyregion/michael-straight-who-wrote-of-connection-to-spy-ring-is-dead-at-87.html publisher of ''The New Republic'']), then working at the [[State Department]]&mdash;mentioned Hiss (using his real name) as someone with "[[progressive]]" views "who occupied a responsible position."<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 183-184</ref> Akhmerov worried that Straight "might guess that Hiss [Akhmerov again used Hiss's real name] belongs to our family" or "find out Hiss's nature" as a [[GRU]] agent.<ref>[[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 155-156</ref>

On November 23, 1937, [[Whittaker Chambers]] bought a used car, using $400 (equivalent to more than [[#refBLS|$6,000 today]]) [[#refHissAppellate|he said Alger Hiss loaned him]].<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 39</ref> Hiss would [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,780167,00.html deny making the loan], but records showed that the Hisses withdrew $400 in cash from their savings four days before Chambers bought the car.<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 73</ref> At first the Hisses claimed that they had used the money [[#refNoe9|to buy furniture]] for a new house, but they had not signed a lease at the time,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 198-202</ref> and could not produce receipts for any purchases, nor explain why they had used cash from savings rather than the checking and charge accounts they otherwise used for such purchases.<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 73</ref>

In 1938, [[Whittaker Chambers]] made his final break with the [[Communist]]s.<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 25</ref> Trying to explain how such a reversal happened, Chambers related how a certain German diplomat who "had been extremely pro-Communist, had become an implacable anti-Communist." According to the diplomat's daughter, "[O]ne night – in Moscow – he heard screams. That’s all. Simply one night he heard screams."

"What Communist has not heard those screams?" wrote Chambers. "...What man can call himself a Communist who has not accepted the fact that Terror is an instrument of policy...? Those screams have reached every Communist’s mind. Usually they stop there...."

{{cquote|But one day the Communist really hears those screams. He is going about his routine party tasks.... Suddenly, there closes around that Communist a separating silence, and in that silence he hears screams. He hears them for the first time. For they do not merely reach his mind. They pierce beyond. They pierce to his soul.<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 15</ref>}}

The break came as a result of Chambers' insight that communism is "man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: 'Ye shall be as Gods.' It is the great alternative faith of mankind.... The communist vision is the vision of Man without God." This vision he found increasingly untenable as the birth of his daughter gave rise to Chambers' spiritual awakening:

{{cquote|She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life.... My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear—those intricate, perfect ears. The thought passed through my mind: "No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). They could have been created only by immense design." The thought was involuntary and unwanted. I crowded it out of my mind. But I never wholly forgot it or the occasion. I had to crowd it out of my mind. If I had completed it, I should have had to say: Design presupposes God. I did not then know that, at that moment, the finger of God was first laid upon my forehead.<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 16</ref>}}

Wary after the [[#refSchwartz88|murder of Ignace Poretsky]]<ref>Poretsky ([https://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/006/224euczs.asp?pg=1 alias Ignace Reiss]) was murdered, apparently to protect the identity of Hiss's Harvard friend and State Department colleague, [[#refVenona1613|Soviet agent]] Laurence Duggan: A Moscow Center report of Poretsky's "liquidation" notes, "For now the danger of 19 [Duggan] ([[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokin 2000]]: 105) being exposed through Raymond's [Poretsky's] ([[#refHaynes08|Haynes 2008]]: 129) line is significantly diminished." ([[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 232) He was killed by OGPU agent Roland Abbiat ([[#refKriv39|Krivitsky 1939]]: 261-263 [PDF 285-287]; [[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokin 2000]]: 47, 78-79), who would later go [[#refKlehr04|under cover as Vladimir Pravdin]], New York bureau chief of the Soviet government news agency TASS.</ref> and disappearance of [[Juliet Poyntz]],<ref>[[#refTanenhaus97|Tanenhaus 1997]]: 131-133</ref> Chambers asked his wife's nephew<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 319. "Mr. Levine. He gave me an envelope to put away for him some 10 years ago… I asked what would happen in the event both he and Esther were liquidated, and he said, 'You would know what to do with it, you are an attorney.'" [[#refHUAC48.2|HUAC 1948, Pt. 2]]: 1452 (PDF 80)</ref> to hide what he called his "life preserver"&mdash;a packet of copies of [[#refTime12.20.48|documents, hand-written memos and microfilm]].<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 40-41</ref> On the advice of [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70C14FB3E59147A93C5AB178AD95F408685F9 Herbert Solow], former press agent for the Communist League of America,<ref>Robert Jackson Alexander, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_eUtQjseKaIC International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement]'' (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), ISBN 0-822-30975-0, p. 775</ref> Chambers made it known to the [[Soviet]] underground, via Schapiro and the ex-[[Communist]]<ref>Theodore Draper, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=SlRc3KqcDygC American Communism and Soviet Russia]'' (Edison, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003), ISBN 0765805316, p. 357</ref> (and former Soviet agent)<ref>[[#refKobyakov04|Kobyakov 2004]]</ref> [http://www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1917/0309-lore-todebs.pdf Ludwig Lore], that he had "photographic copies of handwritten matters the appearance of which would [[#refNYRB|seriously embarrass]] them," which would be made public in the event anything were to happen to him.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 318</ref>

In 1939, Sayre became [[United States]] High Commissioner to the [[Philippines]], and Hiss transferred to become a personal aide to Stanley Hornbeck, political advisor to the [[State Department]]'s Far Eastern Division. When Hiss first walked into the office, Hornbeck advised him that he had been warned that Hiss was "a red."<ref>FBI Memorandum, March 25, 1946: Re Secretary of State James Byrnes interview with Hiss; Hiss’ response to allegations (pp. 121-124), FBI file: [[#refSilv|Silvermaster]], [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster032.pdf Vol. 32], [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster032_Folder/Silvermaster032_page123.pdf p. 2 (PDF p. 123)]</ref> Foreign Service Officer Max Waldo Bishop, who worked in the same office, said Hiss occasionally had "dubious, Left Wing characters in his office."<ref>Thomas F. Conlon, [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mfdip:@field%28DOCID+mfdip2004bis02%29 Interview with Max Waldo Bishop], Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, February 26, 1993 (Library of Congress)</ref>

[[Image:Molotov signs.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov signs the Nazi-Soviet Pact; Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin stand behind him, Moscow, August 23, 1939. ''Image source: [https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/242.html#242.28 Collection of Foreign Records Seized], National Archives and Records Administration'']]At the 1935 funeral of Marshal [https://archive.is/wip/cZPAt Józef Piłsudski] in [[Warsaw]], [[U.S.]] [[Ambassador]] to [[Moscow]] [http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/archives_roll/2003_01-03/sempa_bullitt/sempa_bullitt.html William C. Bullitt] had given confidential assurance to the [[Polish]] [[government]] that the [[United States]] would stand by [[Poland]] in the event of a [[Nazi]] invasion. But after Bullitt reported back to [[Washington]] that he had done so, someone at the [[State Department]] passed this information to the [[Kremlin]], which in turn transmitted it to [[German]] intelligence (with which [[Soviet intelligence]] had maintained liaison since the time of [[Lenin]]).<ref>See, for example: Michael Pearson, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=7rkeAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1 The Sealed Train: Lenin's Eight Month Journey from Exile to Power]'' (New York: Putnam, 1975) ISBN 0399112626, particularly the German documents in the Afterward. Cf. Yuri Dyakov and Tatiana Bushuyeva, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=WddoAAAAMAAJ The Red Army and the Wehrmacht: how the Soviets militarized Germany, 1922-33, and paved the way for Fascism]'' (Prometheus Books, 1995), ISBN 0879759372; [[#refNekrich97|Nekrich 1997]]: eg., 2, 69; [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/intdip/formulti/rapallo_001.htm German-Russian Agreement] (Treaty of Rapallo), April 16, 1922; [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/intdip/formulti/rapallo_002.htm Supplementary Agreement], November 5, 1922; Hans W. Gatzke, "[http://www.jstor.org/pss/1848881 Russo-German Military Collaboration during the Weimar Republic]," ''The American Historical Review'', Vol. 63, No. 3 (April 1958), pp. 565-597; Ernst Fraenkel, "[http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5280948 German-Russian Relations Since 1918: From Brest-Litovsk to Moscow]," ''The Review of Politics'', Vol. 2, No. 1 (1940), pp. 34-62. N.B. the coming to power of the Nazis did nothing to interrupt this liaison: "The documents of the German Foreign Ministry, captured by the Allies at the end of World War II and published in London during the 1950's, show that secret negotiations between Stalin's agents and the Hitler Government began as early as 1933." Aleksandr Nekrich and Mikhail Heller, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=G-poAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1 Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present]'' (Summit Books, 1986) ISBN 0671462423, p. 310. Nazi-Soviet relations became even closer [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/nazsov.asp in 1939-1941]. (Cf. Daniel Pipes, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=1akgAQAAIAAJ Communism: a history]'' [Modern Library, 2003] ISBN 0812968646, pp. 74-75; Viktor Suvorov, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=4-khAQAAIAAJ The chief culprit: Stalin's grand design to start World War II]'' [Naval Institute Press, 2008] ISBN 1591148383, p. 248) The Soviets were still negotiating with the Nazis [[#refBlack06|as late as the Teheran conference]] in December 1943. Robert C. Grogin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=qBBcqDludakC Natural Enemies: the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, 1917-1991]'' (Lexington Books, 2001) ISBN 0739101609, p. 38</ref> Nazi [[propaganda]] minister [[Joseph Goebbels]] exploited this information to portray the United States as a warmonger. According to de Toledano, the State Department source who passed this information to the [[Soviets]] [https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-19048238/embarrassment-aided-and-abetted-the-top-soviet-spy was Alger Hiss].

When in the wake of the [[Hitler-Stalin pact]] the [[Communist Party]] organ ''[[The Daily Worker]]'' came under suspicion for reversing its anti-[[Nazi]] posturing, [[Politburo]] member Roy Hudson<ref>[[#refKHA98|Klehr, Haynes, Anderson 1998]]: 45</ref> discussed what to do about it with Soviet agent<ref>Scotland Yard (London) Secret Special Report, No. 4, "The Case of Philip Price and Robert Minor," U.S. State Department Decimal File, 316-23-1184 9, Washington, D.C.</ref> [[Robert Minor]], according to former ''[[Daily Worker]]'' editor Louis Budenz. Someone mentioned that [[Nathan Witt]] and [[Lee Pressman]] could not be of much help as they, too, were under suspicion at the time. According to Budenz, Alger Hiss was then mentioned as a good Comrade who would be helpful.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44), p. 30.</ref>

 

The year before, in [[Paris]], defecting former [[GRU]] chief in [[Europe]] Walter Krivitsky<ref>Roman Brackman, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=zQL8POkFGIQC The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life]'' (Florence, Ky: Routledge, 2001) ISBN 0714650501, p. 299</ref> had identified Hiss as an agent of [[GRU|Soviet military intelligence]], according to [https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/28/obituaries/alexander-g-barmine-88-dies-early-high-level-soviet-defector.html Alexander Barmine], former Charge d'Affairs at the [[Soviet]] [[Embassy]] in [[Athens]], who had defected in 1937.<ref>FBI Report: Alger Hiss, February 4, 1949</ref> When news of the [[Hitler-Stalin Pact]] (which Krivitsky had predicted)<ref>Julien Steinberg, ed., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=gJPBKoLgOxwC Verdict of Three Decades: From the Literature of Individual Revolt Against Soviet Communism, 1917-1950]'' (Manchester, NH: Ayer Publishing, 1971) ISBN 0836920775, p. 358; David C. Martin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=kpNwCgiTJXEC Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception and the Secrets That Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents]'' (Globe Pequot, 2003) ISBN 1585748242, p. 5</ref> broke on August 24, 1939, Krivitsky warned his ''Saturday Evening Post'' ghostwriter, [[Russia]]n emigré [http://findingaids.library.emory.edu/documents/levine700/?keywords=levine Isaac Don Levine], "Everything that went on in the embassy, especially the major communications between [[Washington]] and Bullitt, were quickly relayed to the Soviet [[secret police]]."<ref>[[#refLevine73|Levine 1973]]: 191. Loy Henderson, then charge d'affaires at the [[U.S.]] Embassy in [[Moscow]], would later confirm that at that time "in the [State] Department were a number of persons who did not hesitate to give [Litvinov] copies of my [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/hendrson.htm#transcript secret memoranda] relating to United States-Soviet relations." Krivitsky would be found shot dead in his Washington hotel room in 1941. (Roland Perry, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=btVW_NnmmS8C Last of the Cold War Spies: The Life of Michael Straight&mdash;The Only American in Britain's Cambridge Spy Ring]'' [Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2006] ISBN 030681482X, p. 131) Although he had warned friends (including HUAC investigator Joseph Brown Matthews), "If they ever try to prove that I took my own life, [http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/phillip-knightley-ignore-the-conspiracies-spies-never-forgive-a-traitor-425822.html don't believe it]," his death was [[#refTanenhaus93|ruled a suicide]]. ("[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A11F93959167B93C3A81789D85F458485F9 Gen. Krivitsky Found Dead; Suicide Finding Questioned; Notes Convince Washington Police He Shot Himself, but Friends Charge Former Ogpu Officer Was Slain by Reds KRIVITSKY'S DEATH IS INVESTIGATED]," ''The New York Times'', February 11, 1941, p. 1) Krivitsky had been liquidated by one of the [[NKVD]]'s Mobile Groups for Special Tasks, according to former Soviet [[espionage]] official Alexander Orlov. (Alexander Orlov, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=7eRoAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1 The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes]'' [Norwich, Norfolk: Jarrold's, 1954], pp. 232-233; cf. Flora Lewis, "[http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/186559502.html?dids=186559502:186559502&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&fmac=&date=Feb+13%2C+1966&author=By+Flora+Lewis+Washington+Post+Staff+Writer&desc=Who+Killed+Krivitsky%3F Who Killed Krivitsky?]" ''The Washington Post'', February 13, 1966, p. E1) Orlov's account is [https://www.hoover.org/research/dark-memories corroborated by] the [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf7290056t Nicolaevsky] and Honeyman collections in the archives of the Hoover Institution. "Although the death was ruled a suicide, most people think that Stalin had his revenge." [http://www.cod.edu/library/Libweb/blewett/blewett.htm Daniel K. Blewett], "[http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Death-in-Washington/Gary-Kern/e/9781929631148 Review]: ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=2t_eAAAAMAAJ Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror]'' by Gary Kern," ''Library Journal'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=R2zhAAAAMAAJ Vol. 128] (R.R. Bowker Co., 2001), p. 102</ref>

In 1938, [[Whittaker Chambers]] confessed to Levine that he had been a courier for the [[Communist]] underground. As [http://www.17september1939.com/ the joint] [[Nazi]]-[[Soviet]] invasion of [[Poland]]<ref>William Fortescue, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=zNtJcb0mtkoC The Third Republic in France, 1870-1940: Conflicts and Continuities]'' (Oxford: Routledge, 2000) ISBN 0415169445, p. 231; William L. Shirer: ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=sY8svb-MNUwC The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]'' (Simon and Schuster, 1990) ISBN 0671728687, pp. 626-632</ref> was gearing up, Levine sought to get Chambers an appointment with [[President]] [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]], but was diverted by the [[White House]] to Assistant [[Secretary of State]] for Administration (in charge of security) [[Adolf Berle]].<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes, Klehr 2006]]: 105</ref> On September 2, 1939, Chambers told Berle of an [[#refBerle|underground apparatus]] of the [[Communist Party]] for employees of the [[Federal government]] in [[Washington, D.C.]] Its organizer, said Chambers, was [[Harold Ware]], its treasurer [[Henry Collins]]; among its members he identified [[Lee Pressman]], [[Nathan Witt]], and the brothers [[#refTime2.13.50|Alger and Donald Hiss]].

{{cquote|Isaac Don Levine in his contact with the Krivitzky [sic] matter had opened up another idea of the Russian [[espionage]]. He brought a Mr. X around to my house on Saturday evening.... Through a long evening, I slowly manipulated Mr. X to a point where he had told some of the ramifications hereabout; and it becomes necessary to take a few simple measures. I expect more of this kind of thing, later. A good deal of the Russian espionage was carried on by [[Jews]]; we know now that they are exchanging information with [[Berlin]]; and the [[Jewish]] units are furious to find out they are, in substance, working for the [[Gestapo]].<ref>[[#refBerle52|Berle 1952]]: 249-250. Cf. [[#refLevine73|Levine 1973]]: 55-58</ref>}}

Before the month was out, the [[Nazi]] and [[Soviet]] armies staged a [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art6.html joint victory parade] through the streets of occupied Brest-Litovsk, [[Poland]],<ref>Olaf Groehler, ''[http://www.worldcat.org/isbn/3928787012 Selbstmorderische Allianz: Deutsch-russische Militarbeziehungen, 1920-1941]'' (Berlin: Vision Verlag 1993), pp. 21-22, 123-124; [[#refNekrich97|Nekrich 1997]]: 131. Cf. Anthony Read and David Fisher, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=kMtmAAAAMAAJ The deadly embrace: Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939-1941]'' (M. Joseph, 1988), ISBN 0718129768, p. 336; Nigel Thomas, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=JBwBUSg1PoUC World War II Soviet Armed Forces (1): 1939-41]'' (Osprey Publishing, 2010), ISBN 1849084009, p. 15; Norman Davies, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Jzxt9FFBDPwC Rising '44: the battle for Warsaw]'' (Viking, 2004), ISBN 0670032840, p. 30</ref> where the Soviets handed over to the Gestapo some 600 prisoners, "most of them Jews."<ref>Louis Rapoport, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=5rZtAAAAMAAJ Stalin's war against the Jews: the doctors' plot and the Soviet solution]'' (Free Press, 1990), ISBN 0029258219, p. 57. Cf. Guy Stern, "[http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=395031 Writers in Extremis]," ''Simon Wiesenthal Center annual, Vol. 3'' (Rossel Books, 1986), p. 91; Robert Conquest, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=ubXQSk2qfXMC The Great Terror: A Reassessment]'' (Oxford University Press US, 2007), ISBN 0195317009, p. 402; Richard J. Evans, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=iG4ud0PxeDMC The Third Reich in Power]'' (Penguin, 2006) ISBN 0143037900, p. 694</ref>

But when it came to Chambers' allegation about Hiss, Berle “[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_hiss.html scoffed at the charge],” according the Public Broadcasting System's NOVA Online. “I have vague recollections of having mentioned the matter to [[FDR|the President]] when shortly thereafter we were working on the [[Foreign Agents Registration Act]] [FARA],” claimed Berle, “which was the real, tangible outcome of this....”<ref>[[#refBerle52|Berle 1952]]: 598</ref> (Berle's “vague recollections” were mistaken: FARA was actually [http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fara/ enacted in 1938]&mdash;the year ''before'' he met with Chambers.) According to his diary, Berle discussed the matter with the FDR's secretary Marvin McIntyre, but not until 1942.<ref>[[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 91</ref> According to Levine:

{{cquote|When I called on Berle a couple of weeks later, he indicated to me that the President had given him the cold shoulder after hearing his account of the Chambers disclosures. Although I learned later, from two different sources who had social relations with Berle, that Roosevelt, in effect, had told him to "go jump in a lake" upon the suggestion of a probe into the Chambers charges, I do not recall hearing that exact phrase from Berle. To the best of my recollection, the President dismissed the matter rather brusquely with an expletive<ref>"an exclamatory word or phrase; especially : one that is [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expletive?show=0&t=1314204947 obscene or profane]"; "an exclamation or [http://www.collinslanguage.com/results.aspx?context=3&reversed=False&action=define&homonym=0&text=expletive swearword]." Levine published his [[#refLevine73|memoir]] in 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, which popularized the use of "expletive" as a [[euphemism]] for "[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=expletive cuss word]."</ref> remark on this order: "Oh, forget it, Adolf."<ref>[[#refLevine73|Levine 1973]]: 197-198</ref>}}

In 1940, after Levine informed Bullitt of what [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]] had told him about Hiss, Bullitt relayed to Hornbeck what Daladier had told him the year before. Bullitt advised [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/books/review/Mallon-t.html Alice Roosevelt Longworth] and de Toledano that he also took this information [[#refToledano01|directly to FDR]]. Levine also told [http://www.dol.gov/dol/aboutdol/hallofhonor/1993_dubinsky.htm David Dubinsky], president of the [http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/KCL05780.html International Ladies Garment Workers Union] about [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]]' revelations. Dubinsky, wrote Levine, "took up the Chambers matter with the [[Franklin Roosevelt|President]] at the first opportunity and was brushed off with an amiable slap on the back." Levine wrote that he also told fellow journalist [http://www.radiohof.org/walter_winchell.htm Walter Winchell] of "a ring of six [[Soviet]] agents operating within the [[State Department]] alone. In his broadcast of December 12, Winchell announced that he had carried my information to President Roosevelt. Still there was no action."<ref>[[#refLevine73|Levine 1973]]: 197-199</ref> Winchell's posthumously published memoir confirms Levine's story:<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 331</ref> After he informed FDR that Hiss was spying for Moscow, according to Winchell, "Leaning closer and pointing a finger in my face, he [Roosevelt] angrily said, 'I don't want to hear another thing about it! It isn't true."<ref>[[#refSchecter02|Schechter 2002]]: 159</ref>

Diplomat [[#refTime11.5.45|Spruille Braden]] said he knew of three separate occasions when Roosevelt was told about Hiss, including, apparently, once by liberal columnist [http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/thompson-dorothy.cfm Dorothy Thompson]:<ref>[http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/thompson-dorothy.cfm Wife of] the [[Socialist]] [[Sinclair Lewis]], in 1948, Thompson would [http://www.peterkurth.com/DOROTHY%20THOMPSON.htm vote for] Socialist Party candidate [[Norman Thomas]] for [[President]].</ref> "Each time they were completely ignored."<ref>[http://clio.cul.columbia.edu:7018/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=4072554 Oral history interview with Spruille Braden], Oral History Research Office, Nicholas Murray Butler Library, Columbia University. Cited in Peter Grose, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=vjSliiGAx1MC Operation Rollback: America's Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain]'' (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001) ISBN 0618154582, p. 65</ref> According to Christopher Andrew, the [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British intelligence historians], Roosevelt was uninterested when confronted with reports of Soviet spying in the United States.<ref>[[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokhin 2000]]: 107</ref> For Hiss was a family friend of the Roosevelts;<ref>While Hiss would claim only to have worked "under... or in association with" [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] "in the Government" ([[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 1163-1164 [PDF 673-674]), the First Lady would write that she knew Hiss “[[#refER48|fairly well]],” while her daughter Anna reportedly had known him “[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/cherrick.html very well]” (in contrast to [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]], concerning whom Mrs. Roosevelt would sniff, “[http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGYzMjIzMWYyZDFkNzBiYmU5MjdiZjJkNDZmNjE5ZDk= He’s not one of us]”).</ref> FDR therefore "merely 'scoffed at the charge,'" according to British historian and former diplomat [http://www.shc.ed.ac.uk/staff/hon_fellows/dstafford/ David Stafford]: "As a result, [https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stafford-roosevelt.html no counter-intelligence programme for identifying Communist agents in the federal government was put in place]."<ref>Years later, Hiss would comment from prison, "If the old man were alive, none of this would have happened." According to de Toledano, "the 'old man' was none other than [[#refToledano01|Roosevelt himself]]." ''Chicago Tribune'' Washington bureau chief Walter Trohan disagreed with Hiss's assessment: "Roosevelt would have sacrificed Hiss at the snap of the finger. He would have sacrificed anybody..." [[#refTrohan1970|Trohan 1970]]: 14</ref> According to FBI Historian John F. Fox, Jr:

Hiss would thus rise unimpeded through the ranks, by 1944 becoming deputy director of the [[State Department]]'s Office of Special Political Affairs, a policy-making office for postwar planning and international organization.<ref>[[#refDallas05|Dallas 2005]]: 412</ref> In August, he [[#refLinder03|would organize]] the [https://web.archive.org/web/20131008202927/https://www.un.org/en/aboutun/history/dumbarton_yalta.shtml Dumbarton Oaks Conference],<ref>Hiss even suggested the location from which the conference derives its name. Robert C. Hilderbrand, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=BFHJMfMtiKsC Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security]'' (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2001) ISBN 0807849502, p. 67</ref> where he would serve as [[#refWhalen48|executive]] [[#refTime2.13.50|secretary]], presiding over<ref>[[#refYUNHiss|YUN Hiss]]: 8 (PDF 9)</ref> the drafting of the proposed [[United Nations Charter]].

Berle, in contrast, would find his [[State Department]] career soon over. In 1948 he would be serving as chairman of [[New York]]'s Liberal Party, working for the reelection of [[President]] [[Harry Truman]]. That year, the New York bureau of the ''Christian Science Monitor'' would send a teletype to the home office in [[Boston]], relating a background interview with the party's publicity director, Arnold Beichman:

{{cquote|From a thoroughly reliable contact: According to this informant Berle has said privately that classified material which Hiss was handling was reaching the Russians. It was coded stuff. Berle took the handling out of Hiss's hands and [[#refToledano97|the leaks stopped]].<ref>Ralph de Toledano, "Foreward," in William F. Buckley, Jr., ed., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=ZmoXAQAAIAAJ Odyssey of a Friend: Whittaker Chambers' Letters to William F. Buckley, Jr., 1954-1961]'' (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1969) ISBN 0895265672, pp. 38-39 (PDF pp. 42-43)</ref>}}

{{cquote|[I]n the fall of 1944 there was a difference of opinion in the [[State Department]]. I felt that the Russians were not going to be sympathetic and cooperative....[I]ntelligence reports which were in my charge indicated a [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_200002/ai_n8887974/ very aggressive] policy, not at all in line with the kind of cooperation everyone was hoping for. I was pressing for a pretty clean-cut showdown then when our position was strongest. The opposite group in the State Department was largely ... [[Dean Acheson|Mr. Acheson]]'s group ... with Mr. Hiss as his principal assistant in the matter.... [A]t that time Mr. Hiss did take what we would call today the pro-Russian point of view....<ref>[[#refSISS53|SISS 1953]]: 28 (PDF p. 34). J. Anthony Panuch concurred: “Mr. Acheson and Mr. Hiss at the time I was in the department were sympathetic to the Soviet policy.” Chesly Manly, "[http://www.mmisi.org/ma/14_02/manly.pdf Acheson's Apologia]," ''Modern Age'', Spring 1970, pp. 203-204 (PDF pp. 1-2)</ref> I got trimmed in that fight, and, as a result, went to [[Brazil]], and that ended my diplomatic career.<ref>M. Stanton Evans, "[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=453 McCarthyism: Waging the Cold War in America]," ''Human Events'', May 30, 1997</ref>}}

Among those who directed the President's attention to the issue of Soviet agents in the government was Roosevelt's erstwhile congressional ally<ref>"Initially, Dies supported the New Deal." (William D. Pederson, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=cv-kRJoXag4C The FDR years]'' [Infobase Publishing, 2006] ISBN 0816053685, p. 67) "He was in full agreement with the Public Works Administration and with government regulation of banks and businesses. He proposed a comprehensive unemployment program of public works and wanted to use idle gold in Fort Knox to finance the relief program. He also asked Congress to increase gift and inheritance taxes, grant homestead exemptions on small farms and on homes worth five thousand dollars or less, and legislate tax differentials favoring small merchants." Dies also had a record of "support for governmental controls over giant corporations in order to preserve democracy and opportunity." George N. Green, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=egiHx_P8H0AC The establishment in Texas politics: the primitive years, 1938-1957]'' (University of Oklahoma Press, 1984) ISBN 0806118911, pp. 69-70</ref> [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000338 Martin Dies], Democrat of Texas. The President, recalled Dies, was "furious"&mdash;not at the infiltration of his administration by agents of a foreign power then allied with the Nazis, but with Dies for mentioning it&mdash;"you must see a bug-a-boo under every bed," he railed, adding "there is nothing wrong with the Communists in this country. Several of the best friends I have are Communists."<ref>Martin Dies, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=BEl3AAAAMAAJ Martin Dies' story]'' (Bookmailer, 1963), p. 144</ref>

 

During the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]], HUAC, now under Chairman Dies, included in its probes the Nazis' then-allies,<ref>Although one American public school teacher's guide claims that the [[Nazi-Soviet pact]] "was not an alliance. At the start of World War II, Joseph Stalin (...strongly anti-fascist) was aligned with Great Britain and France against the Axis Powers of Germany," etc., (''[https://books.google.com/books?id=1KtAAFE2nAwC World War II]'' [Social Studies School Service, 2007] ISBN 156004313X, p. S11), this is false. As French Communist Party leaders Maurice Thoruz and Jacques Duclos put it upon the Nazi conquest of France, "the struggle of the French people has the same aim as the struggle of German imperialism. It is a fact that in this sense there is a temporary alliance." ([[#refTolstoy82|Tolstoy 1982]]: 113) As late as January 1941, the Soviets were appealing to the Nazis for permission to join as full members of the Axis. (Gerhard L. Weinberg, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=xlsrAxuWekQC A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II]'' (Cambridge University Press, 2005) ISBN 0521618266, p. 202) Six months later, when the pact collapsed, the USSR rushed into the arms of the Allies, which the Communists viewed as yet another "temporary alliance." David Gress, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=NKyzGG92uMUC From Plato to NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents]'' (Simon and Schuster, 2004) ISBN 0743264886, p. 408</ref> including Communists.<ref>[[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 78; Trans. 155</ref> In the midst of the [[Nazi-Soviet pact|Pact]], the [[House Committee on Un-American Activities|Dies committee]] obtained the membership list of the Washington Committee for Democratic Action, which would be confirmed as a [[Attorney General's list|Communist front]] the following year by [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]]'s [[Attorney General]] Francis Biddle.<ref>[[#refEvans07|Evans 2007]]: 55 (n. 6), 610</ref> Included on the roster was the name of Priscilla Hiss,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 329; [[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 48</ref> with the notation appended, "[[Husband]] with [[State Department]]."<ref>[[#refNKVD|NKVD]]: [[#refSilv82.120|109 (PDF 120)]], [[#refSilv|FBI Silvermaster file]]</ref>

[[Image:FBI-Hiss-chart.jpg|thumb|300 px|Confidential FBI chart documenting the dissemination to the White House, State Department and Attorney General of dozens of secret memos and reports on Alger Hiss in 1942-47. ''Image source: J. Edgar Hoover Official & Confidential File #34, [https://vault.fbi.gov/ FOIA Reading Room], Federal Bureau of Investigation'']]As mandated by the [[Hatch Act]], this [[HUAC]] finding triggered an [[FBI]] background investigation of Hiss,<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 971 (PDF 481)</ref> in the course of which one of Hiss's former colleagues at the AAA told investigators that Hiss and his circle were [[fellow traveller|fellow travelers]], if not [[Communist]]s.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p. 2 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> Hiss denied everything, although he said he thought his wife might have been a member of the [http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss134_main.html League of Women Shoppers], a [[Popular Front]] group<ref>Michael Denning, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=QY8pUkLRM1YC The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century]'' (New York: Verso, 1998) ISBN 1859841708, p. 410</ref> identified by the committee in 1939 as a [[Communist front]].<ref>Meg Jacobs, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=M9kcixM1P6wC Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-century America]'' (Princeton University Press, 2005) ISBN 0691086648, p. 171</ref> In 1942, the Bureau sent a report of this investigation to the [[Secretary of State]],<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p. 2 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> the first of what would become a veritable avalanche of FBI memos and reports on Hiss disseminated to the [[State Department]], Attorney General and [[White House]] over the ensuing five years.<ref>As the [[SISS|Jenner subcommittee]] would conclude in 1953: "There is ample evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies learned the underlying fact of the Communist conspiracy, and time and again performed their duty and notified the proper administrative agencies of this information." ([[#refSISS53|SISS 1953]]: 1110 [PDF 50])</ref>

After ex-[[OGPU]] agent<ref>J.N. Kobjakov, “Bumazhnaja fabrika,”  ''Ocherki istorii rossiiskoi vneshnei razvedki'', tom 3, 1933-1941 gody (Moskva: Mezhdunarodnye otnoshenija, 2003), ss. 191-199 (J.N. Kobyakov, “The Paper Mill,” ''Essays on the History of Russian Foreign Intelligence'', vol. 3, 1933-1941 [Moscow: International Relations, 2003], pp. 191-199). Cf. [[#refKobyakov04|Kobyakov 2004]]</ref> Ludwig Lore identified [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]] to the [[FBI]] as a former [[USSR|Soviet]] agent,<ref>Edith Tiger, ed., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=pmj5QgAACAAJ In re Alger Hiss: petition for a writ of error coram nobis, Volume 2]'' (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980) ISBN 0809001500, pp. 208-209; [[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 156-158</ref> the [[FBI|Bureau]] interviewed Chambers [[#refChronology|for the first time]] in 1942.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 340</ref> After Chambers informed the investigators that he had already supplied this information to the State Department in 1939,<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes, Klehr 2006]]: 106</ref> the FBI requested and in 1943 obtained the notes Berle had taken during his meeting four years earlier with Chambers and Levine.<ref>FBI Memorandum: Conroy to Hoover, March 28, 1946, FBI file: [http://education-research.org/CSR/Holdings/Silvermaster/Silvermaster.htm Silvermaster], [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster031.pdf Vol. 31], [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster031_Folder/Silvermaster031_page50.pdf p. 50]. Cf [[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 92</ref> That year, an encrypted cable (decrypted in the [[Venona project]] and released in 1995) from Pavel Melshikev (code-named "Moliere"),<ref>Jonathan Haslam, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Sl5orE32HzcC Russia's Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall]'' (Yale University Press, 2011), ISBN 0300159978, p. 13</ref> controller of military intelligence for the [[NKVD]]<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 224</ref> (under cover as [[Soviet]] Vice Consul in [[New York]] "Pavel P. Mikhailov")<ref>[[#refVStory|Benson 2001]]: 43 (PDF 45)</ref> to [[NKVD]] chief of foreign intelligence Lt. Gen. [[Pavel Fitin]] ([http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/9feb_atomic_energy.pdf code-named "Viktor"]) in Moscow,<ref>[[#refRafalko2-4|Rafalko, Vol. 2, Ch. 4]]: 221 (PDF 6)</ref> identifying the real names and code names of several agents in the [[U.S.]], said the [[GRU]] (code-named "Neighbors")<ref>[[#refVStory|Benson 2001]]: 29 (PDF p. 31)</ref> reported someone "from the [[State Department]] [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1943/28sep_gru_sources.pdf by the name of Hiss]."

Unfortunately, this data about Hiss emerged just as the Nazi-Soviet alliance [https://web.archive.org/web/20100210161901/http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/suvorov.html broke down]. The Roosevelt administration promptly lost all interest in Communists, focusing its attention on hunting [https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/nazi-saboteurs-and-george-dasch Nazi and fascist agents].<ref>According to FBI Historian John F. Fox, Jr., "From the entry of the US into the war in 1941, the FBI, with cooperation of its fellow agencies and significant foreign allies, effectively negated Axis intelligence operations in the US and the western hemisphere. The Bureau was distinctly [http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/highlights-of-history/articles/venona less successful in identifying the Soviet threat] during the same period."</ref> Throughout the duration of the pact, Moscow had fiercely opposed the U.S. Lend-Lease program for Britain<ref>[[#refKHA98|Klehr, Haynes and Anderson 1998]]: 87. The Communist front [[American Peace Mobilization]] picketed the White House, [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,790078,00.html protesting Lend-Lease] aid to the U.K. When Britain declared war on the Nazis, German Communist Party leader Walter Ulbricht denounced not Nazism but "English Imperialism" as “the most reactionary force in the world” ("[http://library.fes.de/fulltext/sozmit/1940-008.htm reaktionärste Kraft in der Welt]"). “The German government declared itself ready to establish peaceful relations with the Soviet Union, whilst the Anglo-French war bloc want war against the Soviet Union,” [http://www.marxists.org/archive/ulbricht/1940/die-welt.htm declared Ulbricht]. During the battle of Britain, "Communists in the factories actually fomented strikes, and spread defeatist propaganda in [http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/07/a-final-word.html the blitzed areas of London]," writes [http://theorwellprize.co.uk/shortlists/peter-hitchens/ Orwell prize winning] journalist Peter Hitchens.</ref> (which was fighting for its life against the Nazis), but now the U.S. extended Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union. In 1943, Stalin reciprocated by [http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/dissolution.htm officially dissolving] the [[Comintern]], forcing Soviet intelligence to reorganize its espionage channels in the United States.<ref>“At the time that Stalin acceded to President Roosevelt’s request and dissolved the Comintern in 1943, Soviet intelligence had to reorganize its espionage channels in the United States.” [http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/e-dossier-no-11-was-oppenheimer-soviet-spy-roundtable-discussion-jerrold-and-leona e-Dossier No. 11: Was Oppenheimer a Soviet Spy?] A Roundtable Discussion with Jerrold and Leona Schecter, Gregg Herken and Hayden Peake, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars</ref> The International Department of the [[CPSU]] Central Committee was created that year essentially to carry out functions previously performed by the Comintern<ref>“The International Department, created in 1943 essentially to carry out functions previously performed by the Third Communist International... was responsible for CPSU relations with nonruling communist parties in other states.” [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field%28DOCID+su0271%29 Departments of the Central Committee], Soviet Union, Country Studies, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1989</ref> (which included “control over the CPUSA”),<ref>[[#refKHA98|Klehr, Haynes, Anderson 1998]]: 48</ref> gradually transferring Comintern assets and networks to direct [[NKVD]] control.<ref>“During the latter part of the war, the KGB gradually took over assets and networks originally established by the GRU and the Comintern (particularly after Stalin dissolved the latter body in May 1943)." [[#refPrefaceBW96|Benson, Warner 1996: Preface]]</ref> Hiss was by this time among a handful of the Soviets' most important agents, who were run individually and not through spy networks, according to Oleg Gordievsky. Hiss's wartime controller, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html wrote Gordievsky], was [[Akhmerov]], the leading [[NKVD]] illegal in the [[United States]], who, in a lecture before a [[KGB]] audience, identified Hiss as a Soviet agent during [[World War II]];<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 325</ref> meanwhile, the Administrator of Lend-Lease was [[Harry Hopkins]],<ref>[http://www.roosevelt.nl/Content/RSC/docs/Finding%20Aids%20Primary%20Sources/Presidential%20collection/06%20Staff%20Members/Personal%20Papers%20of%20Harry%20Hopkins.pdf Personal Papers of Harry Hopkins (1930-1946)], Roosevelt Study Center</ref> whom [[Iskhak Akhmerov|Akhmerov]], according to Gordievsky, called "the most important of all Soviet war-time agents in the United States."<ref>[[#refAG90|Andrew, Gordievsky 1990]]: 287; [[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokin 2000]]: 111; [[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 212-215; cf. Thomas Fleming, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=EyZ3AAAAMAAJ The New Dealers' War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the War Within World War II]'' (Basic Books, 2001) ISBN 0465024645, pp. 320-321. Upon being “purged” from AAA, Communist ([[#refHUAC50.2|HUAC 1950, pt. 2]]: 2850 [PDF 16]) lawyer [[Lee Pressman]] was immediately hired back into the government by [[Harry Hopkins|Hopkins]] ([[#refHUAC50.2|HUAC 1950, pt. 2]]: 2849 [PDF 15]), who apparently had little regard for the law: According to Pressman, Hopkins told him, “The first time you tell me I can’t do what I want to do, you’re fired. I’m going to decide what I think has to be done and it’s up to you to see to it that it’s legal.” ([[#refGall99|Gall 1999]]: 32) After carefully examining [[Venona project|Venona]], the late U.S. Air Force historian Eduard Mark identified Hopkins as Soviet agent “19.” Edward Mark, "[http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/ftinterface?content=a789090332&rt=0&format=pdf Venona's Source 19 and the ‘Trident’ Conference of May 1943: Diplomacy or Espionage?]" ''Intelligence and National Security'', Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp.1-31</ref> Moreover, "the bureaucrat who administered all but singlehandedly that division in the Treasury that was specifically in charge of proposing and overseeing foreign monetary aid, including Lend-Lease," was [[Harry Dexter White]],<ref>Albert Loren Weeks, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=z3hP33KprskC Russia's Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the U.S.S.R. in World War II]'' (Lexington Books, 2004) ISBN 0739107364, p. 7</ref>

one of "the most highly placed espionage sources the Soviets ever possessed."<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes and Klehr 2006]]: 66</ref>

[[Image: Soviet-poster.jpg|thumb|left|200 px|World War II U.S. propaganda poster proclaims Soviet Army "fights for FREEDOM." ''Courtesy [https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/USSoviet Office of the Historian], U.S. Department of State'']]In March 1943, U.S. Army Air Corps Major George R. Jordan opened several [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,854011,00.html black suitcases] leaving the U.S. bound for the [[Soviet Union]]. He found "hundreds of maps, patent documents, blueprints of industrial plants, railroad tables, and [https://web.archive.org/web/20050204193218/http://www.missoulian.com/specials/salute/Salute3-espionage.html top-secret U.S. government documents]," including "five or six [[State Department]] folders, bound with stout rubber bands. Clipped to each was a tab." From one tab, said Jordan, he copied the legend: “From Hiss.” According to Jordan, "I had never heard of Alger Hiss, and made the entry because the folder bearing his name happened to be second in the pile. It contained hundreds of Photostats of what seemed to be military reports."<ref>George Racey Jordan with Richard L. Stokes, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Iu9HAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1 From Major Jordan's Diaries]'' (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), p. 42</ref>

Jordan’s unlikely story would be corroborated by ex-NKVD agent<ref>[[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 191</ref> [[Anna Louise Strong]], code-named "Map."<ref>[[#refHaynes08|Haynes 2008]]: 21</ref> Strong boasted that&mdash;with the help of American millionaire<ref>Gregg Herken, "[http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jcws.2009.11.3.68 Target Enormoz: Soviet Nuclear Espionage on the West Coast of the United States, 1942–1950]," ''Journal of Cold War Studies'', Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer 2009) ISSN 1520-3972, pp. 68-90</ref> Louise Bransten and other “friends of the American Russian Institute” (a [[Attorney General's list|Communist front]])&mdash;she passed at least one shipment of material in [http://www.brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbmedia/notes_chap6.doc black suitcases] to Moscow via Lend-Lease from Gore Field in Great Falls, Montana<ref>Anna Louise Strong, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=qnjNAAAAMAAJ Peoples of the USSR]'' (The Macmillan Company, 1944), p. 1</ref>&mdash;the same base where Maj. Jordan was stationed as a Lend-Lease expediter.<ref>Katherine A. S. Sibley, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=HNd4AAAAMAAJ&pgis=1 Red Spies in America]'' (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2007) ISBN 0700615555, p. 94</ref> These black suitcases were protected by diplomatic immunity<ref>[[#refHerken03|Herken 2003]]: [http://www.brotherhoodofthebomb.com/bhbmedia/notes_chap6.doc Notes for Chapter 6], note 124</ref> from FBI searches, having been sealed “under the supervision of the Russian consulate” in San Francisco.<ref>Tracy Strong and Helene Keyssar, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=sapZAAAAMAAJ Right in Her Soul: The Life of Anna Louise Strong]'' (Random House, 1983), ISBN 0394516494, p. 208</ref> Bransten was not only a secret member of the Communist Party<ref>[[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 88</ref> and a Soviet agent<ref>[[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 263</ref> (code-named ''Lyre''),<ref>[[#refHerken03|Herken 2003]]: 129 (cf. [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/18mar_pash.pdf 132 KGB San Francisco to Moscow], 18 March 1944; [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/7jun_corday.pdf 257 KGB San Francisco to Moscow], 7 June 1944; [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/22jun_greeting_charlotte_corday.pdf 270 KGB San Francisco to Moscow], 22 June 1944</ref> but also the mistress<ref>[[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 257</ref> of [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0208&week=d&msg=2UO5GGvif1xPsNJ1mNou7A&user=&pw= NKVD San Francisco Station Chief] [[Grigory Kheifets]].

Jordan was U.S. liaison to the Soviet Purchasing Commission, an agency of the Soviet Union; his story would be further corroborated in April 1944, when Victor Kravchenko, economic attaché of that bureau, defected to the U.S.<ref>[[Harry Hopkins|Hopkins]] (then Lend-Lease Administrator) and [[John Paton Davies]] urged Roosevelt to forcibly return Kravchenko to the Soviets, but Biddle refused to extradite him. Dennis J. Dunn, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Cm6IH1a4oksC Caught Between Roosevelt & Stalin: America's Ambassadors to Moscow]'' (University Press of Kentucky, 1998) ISBN 0813120233, p. 236. Cf. [[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 219</ref> He described preparing a shipment of "black suitcases" carrying industrial espionage to the Soviet Union via Lend-Lease,<ref>Richard Rhodes, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=f113iCcn87wC Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb]'' (Simon and Schuster, 1996) ISBN 0684824140, p. 101. Romerstein and Breindel reproduce a 1943 receipt for a Lend-Lease shipment of uranium, ordered by [[Harry Hopkins|Hopkins]], sent to the Soviet Union via Great Falls. [[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein and Breindel, 2001]]: 468</ref> and released a statement warning:

The [[Soviet]] Government has dissolved the [[Communist International]] but only in form.... The new democratic terminology is only a maneuver... to promote the inclusion of [[Communist]]s, obedient to the [[Kremlin]], in the future Governments... of Italy, Austria and [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885439,00.html other countries].<ref>In 1966, Kravchenko would be found [http://www.americansterling.com/ASPL_Film_Defector.asp shot] to death in his Manhattan apartment. Although his [[death]] would be ruled a [[suicide]], his [https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/04/us/first-meeting-for-two-sons-of-a-defector.html sons maintain] that he [https://www.latimes.com/la-tm-kravchenko11may11,0,6020141,full.story was executed] by a [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2960709.stm SMERSH] assassination squad.</ref>}}

On New Year's Day, 1945, [[Secretary of State]] [https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/stettinius-edward-reilly Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.] told [[Harry Hopkins|Hopkins]] that he had a meeting scheduled for the next day with [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]], to which he was to bring "people who would be involved in the forthcoming [[Yalta conference|conferences" at Yalta]], in [[Soviet]] [[Crimea]]. [[FDR]] "did not want to have anyone accompany him in an advisory capacity," but Stettinius told Hopkins he felt "Messrs. Bowman<ref>Isaiah Bowman, the president of Johns Hopkins University [http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/0900web/red.html who hired] [[Owen Lattimore]]</ref> and Alger Hiss ought to go."<ref>[[#refFRUS45|FRUS 1945]]: [http://images.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/EFacs/1945/XL/0525.gif 439]</ref>

Hiss served as [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol48no4/alger_hiss.html aide to] Stettinius, who was considered in some quarters to be "not very bright," according to Ambassador Ellis Briggs.<ref>Ellis Briggs, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=2pflY3LYw88C Proud Public Servant: The Memoirs of a Career Ambassador]'' (Kent State University Press, 1998) ISBN 0873385888, p. 197</ref> State Department [http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/468607241.html?dids=468607241:468607241&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT chief of security and consular affairs] Samuel D. Boykin agreed that Stettinius "was not brilliant." But, he added, the Secretary had the ability to utilize [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mfdip:@field(DOCID+mfdip2004boy03) "other people's brains"]. The brain Stettinius most depended upon was that of his [[#refFoote|aide]], the [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_hiss.html brilliant] Alger Hiss. [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/hstpaper/panuchja.htm J. Anthony Panuch], Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in charge of security,<ref>[[#refSISS53|SISS 1953]]: 9 (PDF 15)</ref> noted that "Hiss exercises [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/svengali Svengali]-like influence over the mental processes of Junior Stettinius."<ref>Panuch to Russell, March 7, 1946 ([[#refSISS13|SISS pt. 13]]: 853 [PDF 19]). Cf. Louis Francis Budenz, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=IkqboMAiCkkC The Techniques of Communism]'' (New York: Ayer Publishing, 1977) ISBN 0405099428, p. 287. Dean Acheson subsequently forced Panuch, not Hiss, out of the State Department. ([[#refSISS53|SISS 1953]]: 9-10 [PDF 15-16])</ref> Indeed, Stettinius gave Hiss control over [[FDR]]'s access to information, directing that "all memoranda for the President on topics to be discussed at the Meeting of the Big Three should be in the hands of Mr. Alger Hiss not later than Monday, January 15."<ref>Rothwell to Rockefeller, January 10, 1945, [[#refFRUS45|FRUS 1945]]: [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1945&page=42&isize=XL 42], cf. [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1945&page=441&isize=XL p. 441]</ref>

[[image:Yaltaconference.JPG|thumb|300px|right|At Yalta, a [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904574638352930354872.html withered and diminished] Roosevelt flanked by Stettinius (left) and Hiss (right); Churchill (foreground right, three-quarters back view); Stalin in shadows (far left). ''Courtesy [https://web.archive.org/web/20041017194141/https://www.un.org/UN50/Photos/un50-016.gif United Nations Department of Public Information]'']]By this time, "[[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] was not always master over his mind," according to Professor Felix Wittmer, a [http://www.biblio.com/books/225432106.html refugee from Nazi persecution].<ref>Felix Wittmer, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=6hFWAAAAYAAJ The Yalta betrayal: data on the decline and fall of Franklin Delano Roosevelt]'' (Caxton Printers, 1953), p. 48</ref> "At Yalta he could neither think consecutively nor express himself coherently," agreed former Soviet propagandist<ref>David C. Engerman, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=UkFlO7hoxOMC Modernization from the other shore: American intellectuals and the romance of Russian development]'' (Harvard University Press, 2003) ISBN 0674011511, p. 201</ref> W.H. Chamberlin. With less than three months to live, the President suffered "occa­sional blackouts of memory, and loss of capacity for mental concen­tration."<ref>William Henry Chamberlin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=JGQhAAAAMAAJ America's Second Crusade]'' (Regnery, 1950) ASIN 0865977070, p. 206. Cf. Rose McDermott, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=N_G-wELa3xYC Presidential Leadership, Illness, and Decision Making]'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008) ISBN 0521882729, pp. 96-110; Bert Edward Park, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=hSnUtD0-nWIC Ailing, Aging, Addicted: Studies of Compromised Leadership]'' (University Press of Kentucky, 1993) ISBN 0813118530, pp. 200, 207</ref> His face was "gray, gaunt, and sagging and the muscles controlling the lips seemed to have lost part of their function," wrote [[New Deal]] [[liberal]]<ref>Nathaniel Burt, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=L9ueb6r1uXgC The perennial Philadelphians: the anatomy of an American aristocracy]'' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999) ISBN 0812216938, p. 35</ref> John Gunther. "I felt certain that he was going to die."<ref>John Gunther, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=pRd3AAAAMAAJ Roosevelt in retrospect: a profile in history]'' (Harper, 1950), p. 29</ref> According to James Farley, former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee:

“The President seemed placid and frail,” wrote [[Winston Churchill]]. “I felt that he had a slender contact with life.”<ref>Sir Winston Churchill, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=M_6cljKX0uUC Triumph and Tragedy]'' (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1986) ISBN 0395410606, p. 348</ref> "Winston is puzzled and distressed," noted Churchill's physician. "The President no longer seems to the P.M. to take an intelligent interest in the war; often he does not seem even to read the papers the P.M. gives him."<ref>This may have been due to FDR's "inability to follow the text," perhaps due to "a dysfunction in the right posterior portion of the brain." Claude R. Marx, "[http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2010/01/02/a_journalist_and_neurologist_examine_fdrs_deadly_secret/ A Second Opinion on FDR’s Condition]," ''Boston Globe'', January 2, 2010. Cf. Steven Lomazow and Eric Fettmann, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=usRaPgAACAAJ FDR's Deadly Secret]'' (PublicAffairs, 2010) ISBN 1586487442</ref> He commented:

{{cquote|Everyone seemed to agree that the President had gone to bits physically....He intervened very little in discussions, sitting with his mouth open....I doubt, from what I have seen, whether he is fit for his job here.<ref>Jerrold M. Post and Robert S. Robins, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=SvU-aEsPWdoC When Illness Strikes the Leader: The Dilemma of the Captive King]'' (Yale University Press, 1995) ISBN 0300063148, p. 26</ref> To a doctor's eye, the president appears a sick man. He has all the symptoms of hardening of the arteries of the brain in an advanced stage....<ref>[[#refWilson2002|Wilson 2002]]: 276-277</ref>}}

In [https://books.google.com/books?id=jVZ-AAAACAAJ his memoirs], Churchill's bodyguard Walter Thompson would later recall seeing the Prime Minister

{{cquote|weeping over the concessions Roosevelt made to Stalin at Yalta in 1945. "Why, Thompson, did they allow the president, almost dying on his feet, to be there?" he [Churchill] asked. "[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article581067.ece All Europe will suffer from the decisions made at Yalta]."}}

The deterioration in Roosevelt's judgement became evident in some of his more controversial statements at Yalta, including the following, recorded in the formerly [http://archive.today/p3GKt Top Secret minutes] two weeks after the liberation of [[Auschwitz]]:

{{cquote|MARSHAL STALIN asked whether the President intended to make any concessions to Ibn Saud [King of Saudi Arabia].

THE PRESIDENT replied that there was only one concession he thought he might offer and that was to give him the six million Jews in the United States.}}

====United Nations planning====

As what Harvard historian [http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/serhii-plokhii Serhii Plokhii] calls "the State Department's expert on the United Nations" at Yalta, Hiss was involved in discussions preceeding the secret agreement<ref>According to Hiss, the agreement to give the Soviets three votes in the UN to one for the U.S. “was not put in the [[#refYalta45|communiqué]]" containing the public Yalta agreement. It was, he said, an "oral agreement ... that the Russians would bring their two delegations [''sic''&mdash;actually three delegations&mdash;the Soviet Union, Ukraine, and Byelorussia] to [the UN Charter Conference in] San Francisco, propose them for admission [to the United Nations], and we [the United States] would agree. But it would not be announced in advance.” [[#refYUNHiss|YUN 1990]]: 18 (PDF 19)</ref> to give the [[Soviet Union]] three votes in the UN to one for the U.S. Although Hiss officially opposed this decision, there is some mystery as to how it came about: Hiss would later claim that the British informed him that US agreement to this Soviet demand had come from Stettinius himself, but Stettinus denied that he had ever made such an agreement.<ref>[[#refPlokhy2010|Plohky 2010]]: 192</ref> Later urging [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] to tell the [[U.S.]] delegation to the UN founding conference "the whole truth" about this agreement (which he called "this X-matter"), Stettinius would advise [[FDR]] to have Hiss with him when he broke the news to the [[American]] delegates.<ref>[[#refStettinius75|Stettinius 1975]]: 305-306</ref> The President would be dead within a month; this agreement would not be disclosed for another two years.<ref>Michael Kort, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=xAnwfRnsl6oC The Columbia Guide to the Cold War]'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) ISBN 0231107730, p. 179</ref>

The Soviets, already [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/24may_roosevelt.pdf covertly informed] of Roosevelt's declining health, bugged the U.S. quarters, and [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol49no3/html_files/FDR_Teheran_12.htm listened avidly].<ref>At Teheran, Roosevelt actually chose to stay in the Soviet embassy, because it had [[#refBlack06|larger quarters]].</ref> On [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/index.php?action=chrono February 4, 1945], Hiss accompanied [[FDR]] to his meeting with [[Winston Churchill|Churchill]] and [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]. According to Robert Louis Benson, former Technical Director for Counterintelligence at the National Security Agency<ref>[http://www.nsa.gov/about/_files/cryptologic_heritage/SYMP_2009_agenda.pdf Agenda], 2009 Cryptologic History Symposium, Center for Cryptologic History (National Security Agency - Central Security Service), p. 3</ref> (NSA), and Cecil Phillips, a cryptanalyst who was instrumental in [[#refBenson95|cracking the Soviet code]], "The Russians came to the table with ample knowledge of our purposes and attitudes, through information provided to them by traitors whose deeds ultimately were revealed in [[Venona project|Venona]]."<ref>[[#refBP95|Benson, Phillips 1995]]: 13</ref> But Venona is not the only source: According to Plokhii, the [http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2012/September%202012/0912yalta.aspx foremost modern analyst of Yalta], "New evidence from the Soviet archives supports the thesis that Hiss was a Soviet spy at the time of the [[Yalta Conference]]."<ref>[[#refPlokhy2010|Plokhy 2010]]: xxv</ref> "One of the officials [at Yalta] we had established confidential relations with was Alger Hiss," who was, according to Sudoplatov,  "highly sympathetic to the interests of the Soviet Union."<ref>[[#refSudoplatov95|Sudoplatov 1995]]: 227</ref> According to confidential [[GRU]] sources, during the conference, Hiss gave daily briefings to Stalin's military adviser, General Mikhail Abramovich Milshtein, who had been one of Hiss’s control officers in 1935-38, when he served as vice-consul at the Soviet consulate New York, and was now deputy director of the GRU. Hiss's briefings revealed not only the American negotiating strategy but insights into the attitudes of the American negotiators.<ref>[[#refSchecter02|Schecter 2002]]: 130</ref> Sudoplatov added:

{{cquote|In conversation, Hiss disclosed to [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,851866,00.html Oumansky], and then Litvinov,<ref>Hugh D. Phillips, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=qjWPAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1 Between the Revolution and the West: A Political Biography of Maxim M. Litvinov]'' (New York: Westview Press, 1992) ISBN 0813310385</ref> official U.S. attitudes and plans; he was also very close to our sources who were cooperating with Soviet intelligence and to our active intelligence operators in the United States. Within this framework of exchange of confidential information were references to Hiss as the source who told us the Americans were prepared to make a deal in Europe.<ref>[[#refSudoplatov95|Sudoplatov 1995]]: 227</ref>}}

Although it had nothing to do with Hiss's area of responsibility—the UN—when [[Franklin Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] asked the [[Secretary of State]] "to get a lawyer to consult with him over the wording of the Polish boundary statement," wrote Stettinius, "I called Alger Hiss."<ref>Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=IjhQ_gsiCzwC Roosevelt and the Russians]'' (Whitefish, Mont.: Kettinger Publishing, 2005) ISBN 1419103105, p. 270</ref> The U.S. ended up ceding eastern Poland to the Soviet Union,<ref>[[#refDallas05|Dallas 2005]]: 557</ref> [https://web.archive.org/web/20120216060530/http://politicom.moldova.org/news/moscow-attempts-to-reinterpret-the-molotovribbentrop-pact-203326-eng.html effectively ratifying] what Eden called [[#refBlack06|the "Ribbentrop-Molotov" line]]&mdash;the deal [[Stalin]] had made with [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] in the [http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/docpage.cfm?docpage_id=2316 secret protocols] of the [[Nazi-Soviet pact]]. As [http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/2004-General-Nonfiction Pulitzer prize winning] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/biographies/anne-applebaum.html ''Washington Post'' columnist] Anne Applebaum put it, Yalta "went beyond mere recognition of Soviet occupation and conferred legality and international acceptance on [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051001187.html new borders and political structures]." It was agreed to keep these plans [[#refBlack06|entirely secret]]. U.S. Ambassador to Poland Arthur Bliss Lane resigned in protest: "As I glanced over [[#refYalta45|the document]], I could not believe my eyes," he wrote. "To me, almost every line spoke of a surrender to Stalin."<ref>Arthur Bliss Lane, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=SzQrAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1 I Saw Poland Betrayed: An American Ambassador Reports to the American People]'' (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1948) ASIN B000NWTIF8, p. 56. When Truman became President and saw the secret codicils, he was "amazed the Polish agreement 'wasn't more clear cut'." Wilson D. Miscamble, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=QWc58mXB5uUC From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima, and the Cold War]'' (Cambridge University Press, 2007) ISBN 0521862442, p. 112</ref>

Hiss had input even on China. During pre-conference negotiations with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, regarding the war with Japan, "Mr. Hiss brought up the question of China," according to the formerly [https://archive.is/HTiIW Top Secret minutes], "and stressed the importance which the United States attaches to U.S.-British-Soviet encouragement and support for an agreement between the [[Comintern|Commintern]] [sic] and the Chinese Congress [sic]."<ref>[[#refStettinius75|Stettinius 1975]]: 229. The official State Department record resorts to the passive voice, obscuring Hiss's role in this incident: "The desirability of unity being achieved between the [[Kuomintang]] and the [[Communists]] was raised, and reference was made to the President having some doubts as to whether the British desired this unity." Meeting of the Foreign Ministers, February 1, 1945, 10:30 A.M., on Board H. M. S. "Sirius" in Grand Harbor. [[#refFRUS45|FRUS 1945]]: [http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/FRUS/FRUS-idx?type=goto&id=FRUS.FRUS1945&isize=XL&submit=Go+to+page&page=502 502] Press reports relying on this [https://books.google.com/books?id=kotPYEqx7kMC&q=memory+hole#v=snippet&q=memory%20hole&f=false bowdlerized] official account thus reported, e.g.: "Alger Hiss, whose role at the Yalta conference long has been a subject for hostile speculation, spent his time there [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40C11F6345A107A93CAA81788D85F418585F9 exclusively on planning for the United Nations]." FDR apologists such as liberal "[https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/weekinreview/04tanenhaus.html court historian]" Arthur Schlesinger parroted this official version as dogma: "As for Yalta, Alger Hiss had nothing to do with the Far Eastern discussions, and knew nothing of their existence," etc. Arthur Meier Schlesinger, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=MegmQB1MxqkC The Politics of Hope: And, The Bitter Heritage: American Liberalism in the 1960s]'' (Princeton University Press, 2008) ISBN 0691134758, p. 237</ref> The British, due to their interests in Hong Kong and Singapore, had influence with the [[Kuomintang]], but none with the [[Communists]]; the Soviets, who did have influence with the Communists, were not present (because they were [http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/smenu.asp not at war with Japan]). The only effect Hiss had in bringing up the issue therefore was to co-opt the British to pressure the Chinese government into acquiescing to a [[Kremlin]]-backed power-sharing arrangement with the rebels, thus granting a measure of legitimacy to forces dedicated to its destruction&mdash;a policy that Acheson would subsequently use as a pretext to obstruct aid to China<ref>"Too much stress cannot be laid on the hope that our economic assistance be carried out in China through the medium of a government fully and fairly representative of all important Chinese political elements, including the Chinese Communists," said Acheson. (Freda Utley, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=JmAcAAAAMAAJ The China story]'' [H. Regnery Co., 1951], p. 15) This was the pretext for the U.S. embargo on arms to China in July 1946. Even after the embargo ended in May 1947, Acheson was able to delay shipments another six months. In 1949, he would explicitly instruct his subordinates that "it is desirable that shipments be delayed where possible to do so without formal action." (David S. McLellan, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=SfJ2AAAAMAAJ Dean Acheson: the State Department years]'' [New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1976] ISBN 0396073131, p. 188) After the fall of China, Senator John F. Kennedy would comment: "Mr. Speaker, over this weekend we have learned the extent of the disaster that has befallen China and the United States. The responsibility for the failure of our foreign policy in the Far East rests squarely with the [Truman] White House and the [Acheson] Department of State. The continued insistence that aid would not be forthcoming unless a coalition government with the Communists was formed, was a crippling blow to the National Government. So concerned were our diplomats and their advisers, the [[Owen Lattimore|Lattimore]]s and the Fairbanks, with the imperfection of the democratic system in China after twenty years of war, and the tales of corruption in high places, that they lost sight of our tremendous stake in a non-Communist China." John F. Kennedy, ''A Compendium of Speeches, Statements, and Remarks Delivered During His Service in the Congress of the United States'' (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1964), pp. 41-42. Cf. [[#refEvans07|Evans 2007]]: 419</ref>&mdash;a move that would prove [http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/RummelDemocide.php catastrophic for the Chinese].<ref>After the fall of the Nationalist Chinese government, Communist Chinese dictator Mao Zedong "was responsible for [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1069136,00.html well over 70 million] deaths in peacetime, more than any other 20th-century leader," according to Jung Chang, a former [http://chineseculture.about.com/od/mediainchina/p/Writer-Jung-Chang.htm member of Mao's Red Guards]. [[#refChang05|Chang 2005]]: 3, 560, 651. Cf. Stephane Courtois et al., ''[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674076082 The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression]'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999) ISBN 9780674076082, p. 4.</ref>

Among the "memoranda for the President" Stettinius directed be placed "in the hands of Mr. Alger Hiss," according to retired U.S. intelligence analyst Christina Shelton, was a position paper registering the State Department's strong opposition to turning over to the USSR the southern Kurile and [[Sakhalin]] islands. This State Department memo never made it into the Yalta briefing books, but did make it to Moscow, where it would be [http://frontpagemag.com/2012/05/03/alger-hiss-why-he-chose-treason/ found in the Russian archives] after the fall of the Soviet Union.<ref>[[#refPlokhy2010|Plokhy 2010]], cited in [[#refShelton2012|Shelton 2012]]: 151</ref>

 

 

According to [https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/byrnes-james-francis James F. Byrnes], then director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, he and others returned from Yalta to Washington on February 10, but Roosevelt stayed behind with a select few&mdash;including Hiss:

{{cquote|We expected the conference would end that evening and that the President would leave the following day. But that afternoon [http://education-research.org/images/FDR-Stalin-Jews.jpg Stalin requested] the President to remain one more day. He said they could not conclude their work and he wished to discuss some matter he deemed important. The President complied.... [T]he protocols... were signed on February 11.

Only after [[FDR|Roosevelt]]'s death would Byrnes, by then Secretary of State, learn&mdash;due to "a news story from Moscow," he wrote&mdash;of "the full agreement."<ref>James Francis Byrnes, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=OCQqAAAAYAAJ Speaking Frankly]'' (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1974) ISBN 0837174805, pp. 42-43</ref>

Although the conference ended February 11, [http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1947/mar/24/yalta-and-potsdam-agreements-publication yet another] "secret codicil" was added on March 31, less than two weeks before [[FDR]]'s death. This agreement would [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2149110 force] the "[http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=1988&month=12 repatriation]" of some [[#refHornberger95|two million]] refugees ([http://www.capitalcentury.com/1945.html including] [[#refHerman95|1.5 million POWs]]) to the Soviet Union for [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/lubini.htm slave labor]<ref>[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/cab_195_3_transcript.pdf U.K. War Cabinet Minutes], June 11, 1945, p. 182</ref> or [[#refHerman95|death in the Gulag]].<ref>"V. REPARATION: The following protocol has been approved: Protocol: On the Talks Between the Heads of Three Governments at the Crimean Conference on the Question of the German Reparations in Kind... 2. Reparation in kind is to be exacted from Germany in... (c) [[#refYalta45|Use of German labor]]." "Stalin then brought up the question of reparations in kind and in manpower.... The latter, of course, referred to forced labor.... [T]he Russians were using many thousands of prisoners in what was reported to be virtual slave camps...." William D. Leahy, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=e-dmAAAAMAAJ I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time]'' (Whittlesey House, 1950), p. 302. Cf. Nikolai Tolstoy, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=u-dvAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1 The Secret Betrayal]'' (New York: Scribner, 1978) ISBN 0684156350; Julius Epstein, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_3kNAAAAIAAJ&pgis=1 Operation Keelhaul: The Story of Forced Repatriation from 1944 to the Present]'' (Old Greenwich, Conn.: Devin-Adair Co., 1973) ISBN 978-0815964070. Stettinius apparently paid little attention to the issue, evidently leaving the details up to Hiss: When historian Walter Johnson asked him about the Yalta agreement on slave labor, Stettinius referred him to Hiss. ERS and WJ, November 13, 1948, Edward R. Stettinius Jr. Papers, [http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/small/collections/manuscripts_and_rare_books.html Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library], University of Virginia</ref> Acting Secretary of State Joseph Grew, in Washington, sent [https://archive.is/TDxrP a Top Secret telegram] to Stettinius at Yalta, objecting to the repatriation as a violation of the Geneva Convention and of the traditional American policy of granting [[political asylum]]. The U.S. nevertheless agreed to the repatriation (which would become known as [[Operation Keelhaul]]), but that agreement was kept secret from the American people [[#refHornberger95|for 50 years]]. As Chamberlin concluded:

{{cquote|The Yalta Agreement … represented, in two of its features, the endorsement by the United States of the principle of human slavery. One of these features was the recognition that German labor could be used as a source of [[reparations]] … And the agreement that Soviet citizens who were found in the Eastern zones of occupation should be handed over to Soviet authorities amounted, for the many Soviet refugees who did not wish to return, to the enactment of a fugitive slave law.<ref>William Henry Chamberlin, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=hZ12AAAAMAAJ Beyond Containment]'' (H. Regnery Co., 1953), p. 42</ref>}}

After the conference, Hiss [[#refEhrmanSI51.4|went on]] [http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/highlights-of-history/articles/venona to Moscow],<ref>[[#refMark03|Mark 2003]]: 54-55, 57-88, 62, 64</ref> where he was [[#refToledano01|honored by]] Foreign Minister [[Vyacheslav Molotov|V.M. Molotov]]. According to [http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/directory/cma1001@cam.ac.uk Cambridge professor Christopher Andrew], the [http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British historians of Soviet espionage], Soviet "files show that after the Yalta conference [https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/03/reviews/990103.03persict.html Hiss was secretly awarded the order of the Red Star] during a visit to Moscow."<ref>[[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 278; Robert L. Beisner, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=D9Zb_feBUdkC Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War]'' (Oxford University Press, 2006) ISBN 0195045785, p. 282; [[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 226; [[#refSchecter02|Schecter 2002]]: 131</ref> In 2006, the [https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/06/opinion/l-do-us-files-hold-more-atom-spy-secrets-a-coherent-story-012505.html official newspaper] of the Russian Ministry of Defense, ''[http://www.redstar.ru/ Krasnaya Zvezda]'' (''Red Star''), confirmed that five members of a [[GRU|Soviet military intelligence]] apparatus in Washington (one of whom had been a [[GRU]] source in the 1930s, and had access to high-level intelligence about U.S. foreign policy) received Soviet decorations [[#refHK07|in February 1945]].

[[Image:Hissetal.jpg|thumb|300 px|Vishinskii (2nd from left), Molotov (5th from left), Stettinius (7th from left), Alger Hiss (right), ca. January 1945. ''Image courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, National Archives and Records Administration'']]{{cquote|According to data from [[Anatoly Gorsky|Vadim]] the group of agents of the [[GRU|"military" neighbors]] whose part [[Harold Glasser|Ruble]] was earlier, recently was decorated with orders of the USSR. Ruble learned about this fact from his friend Ales, who is the head of the mentioned group.<ref>[[#refHaunted|Weinstein, Vassiliev 1999]]: 269</ref>}}

This memo apparently refers to [[Venona project|Venona]] [[#refVenona1822|decrypt 1822]], dated March 30, 1945, in which "Vadim" ([[Anatoly Gorsky]]) reports,<ref>The translation used here is that of [[#refSchindler05|John R. Schindler]]. Cf. Eric

Breindel, "Goodies from the Venona files: Hiss’ Guilt," ''The New Republic'', April 15, 1996, reprinted in [http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-1996-04-18/pdf/CREC-1996-04-18-pt1-PgH3640.pdf ''The Congressional Record'' Vol. 142, No. 50] (April 18, 1996), pp. H03644-H03645 (PDF pp. 5-6)</ref> following up on a conversation with "Ales," that "Ales has been working with the neighbors [GRU]<ref>John Earl Haynes, [http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Diplo&month=0501&week=a&msg=obaTGXSrsBmHu2ps7TI6fA&user=&pw= KGB sources and the Hiss/'Ales' dispute], H-Diplo Discussion Logs, Humanities and Social Sciences Net Online (Michigan State University), January 5, 2005</ref> continuously since 1935"; that for "a few years now he has been the director of a small group of probationers [agents]<ref>[[#refVStory|Benson 2001]]: 17, 29 (PDF 19, 31)</ref> of the neighbors for the most part drawn from his relatives";<ref>[[#refBenson95|Benson 1995]]</ref> that recently, "Ales and his whole group were awarded Soviet medals"; and that after "the Yalta conference, back in Moscow, one very high-ranking Soviet worker allegedly had contact with Ales (Ales implied that it was Comrade [[Andrey Vyshinsky|Vyshinskii]]) and at the request of the [[GRU|military neighbors]] he conveyed to him their thanks, etc." Regarding "Ales," one FBI memo reports:

In its unanimous final report in 1997, the bipartisan [[Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy]] agreed regarding Ales, "This could only be Alger Hiss."<ref>[[#refMoyComA|Moynihan Commission Appendix A]]: A-34 (PDF 36). After it had been classified for half a century, the late [[Senator]] [[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]] ([[Democratic Party|D.]]-[[New York|N.Y.]]) “asked that [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/directors-and-deputy-directors-of-central-intelligence/deutch.html Deutch] discuss with the [[NSA]] what the status of [[Venona project|Venona]] was and whether its secrecy might no longer be necessary… [O]n July 11, 1995… the heads of the [[CIA]], [[FBI]], and NSA, along with Senator Moynihan, jointly announced that Venona was being opened…” ([[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 5-6) In his book ''Secrecy'', Moynihan, a [https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/23/weekinreview/the-rehabilitation-of-morning-in-america.html liberal Democrat], concluded "Hiss was indeed a [[USSR|Soviet]] agent and appears to have been regarded by [[Moscow]] as its most important. Parts of the [[United States government|American government]] had [[conclusion|conclusive]] [[evidence]] of his guilt, but they never told." ([[#refMoynihan98|Moynihan 1998]]: 146)</ref> Analysts at the NSA have also gone on record that [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_hiss.html Ales could only have been Alger Hiss]. The late U.S. Air Force historian Eduard Mark called the FBI and NSA's conclusions "eminently reasonable," writing that the evidence showed that "ALES was ''very probably'' Hiss."<ref>[[#refMark03|Mark 2003]]: 54–55, 57–88, 62, 64 (italics in original).</ref> John R. Schindler, professor of strategy at the Naval War College and himself a former NSA analyst, agrees, calling this identification "[[#refSchindler05|exceptionally solid]]" and the evidence "compelling." [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no4/article09.html John Ehrman] of the [[CIA]]'s Directorate of Intelligence concurs, "it is clear that [[#refEhrmanSI51.4|Hiss alone remains the best candidate to be ALES]]." Christopher Andrew, writing with [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/world/europe/23poison.html ex-KGB agent] Vasili Mitrokhin, says the identification of "Ales" as Hiss is "beyond reasonable doubt."<ref>[[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokin 2000]]: 599</ref> The codename Ales, concludes Mark Kramer, [http://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/about-us/people/mark-kramer director of the Project for Cold War Studies] at [[Harvard University]], "seems to fit [http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/37819.html only Hiss]."

On March 24, [[FBI]] agent E.A. Tamm, assistant to FBI Director [[J. Edgar Hoover]], alerted Robert Lynch, Special Assistant to the [[Secretary of State]], to [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]]' allegations that Hiss had been a member of the underground organization of the [[Communist Party]], and to Hiss's links to [[Nathan Witt]] and [[Lee Pressman]]. After interviewing Hiss the next day,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 359</ref> FBI official D.M. Ladd furnished Frederick B. Lyon, Chief of the [[State Department]] Division of Foreign Activity Correlation, a summary memorandum outlining this information.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949 (FBI file: Hiss Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> On March 26, State Department security officer Robert Bannerman sent Donald Russell, Assistant Secretary of State for Administration, a comprehensive secret report on Chambers' allegations regarding Hiss, recommending "that immediate action be taken to terminate Mr. Hiss's services with the Department."<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 364</ref>

On March 19, [[William J. Donovan|"Wild Bill" Donovan]], director of the [[Office of Strategic Services]] (precursor of the [[CIA]]), offered Stettinius the services of [[OSS]] foreign experts to prepare research studies "on all personnel concerned" in the conference. According to Stettinius, Hiss "strongly opposed" this proposal, and "vigorously endorsed" the view that OSS "doing espionage work" at the conference would "seriously embarrass us." As a result, "American intelligence work at the conference was sharply limited."<ref>[[#refStettinius75|Stettinius 1975]]: 303</ref>

Meanwhile, "Vadim" ([[Anatoly Gorsky|Gorsky]])<ref>[[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokin 2000]]: 90</ref> wanted to meet with "Ales" at the conference, according to [[#refFoote|a cable]] Vassiliev discovered in the Soviet archives. His notes indicate that "Ales" had worked with "Ruble" ([[#refBLH05|Harold Glasser]]) as a member of a group run by "Karl" (Whittaker Chambers).<ref>[[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 39; Trans. 77; cf. [[#refBLH05|Bachman, Leich, Haynes 2005]]; [[#refLowCher|Lowenthal, Chervonnaya 2005]]</ref> The cable adds that "'Ruble' gives 'Ales' an exceptionally good political reference as a member of the [[Communist Party|Comparty]].... completely aware that he is Communist in an illegal position, with all the ensuing consequences," and recommends (according to the notes) that he be approached at the UN conference by "Sergei" (NKVD agent [[Vladimir Pravdin]],<ref>[[#refVStory|Benson 2001]]: 31 (PDF 34)</ref> then under cover as New York bureau chief of the Soviet news agency TASS)<ref>[[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokin 2000]]: 124; "Pravdin" was actually [[#refKlehr04|Rolland Abbiat, murderer of Ignace Reiss]].</ref> or Gorsky, "alluding either to the password, or to '[[Harold Glasser|Ruble]]', or simply to [[#refHK07|'Ales's' progressive attitudes]]."

[[Image:Hisscharter.jpg|thumb|300 px|left|Hiss arrives in Washington from San Francisco with UN Charter in fireproof [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,852292,00.html safe with parachute]. ''Image courtesy United States Air Force'']]In April 1945, at the UN conference, [[Harold Glasser|Glasser]] slipped [[Anatoly Gorsky|Gorsky]] a warning that the FBI had notified Stettinius that Bureau surveillance had followed a bundle of State Department documents from Washington to New York, where they were photographed, then returned within 24 hours to Washington. Only three people had access to these documents, one of whom was "Ales." Stettinius told "Ales": "I hope it is not you."<ref>[[#refHaunted|Weinstein, Vassiliev 1999]]: 267-268. The [[Communist Party]]'s ardor for the UN was evident that month, when the Party's [https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/157923/Eugene-Dennis general secretary] wrote in an [http://politicalaffairs.net/a-new-era-begins/ official organ] of the [[CPUSA]]: "Great popular support and enthusiasm for the United Nations policies should be built up, well organized and fully articulate. But it is necessary to do more than that. The opposition must be rendered so impotent that it will be unable to gather any significant support in the Senate against the United Nations Charter and the treaties which will follow." Eugene Dennis, "Yalta and America's National Unity," [https://books.google.com/books?id=T8kcAAAAIAAJ ''Political Affairs'', Vol. 24] (April 1945), p. 300</ref>

After the conference, Stettinius resigned to become the first [[U.S.]] Ambassador to the [[United Nations]]. His successor as [[Secretary of State]], [https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/byrnes-james-francis James Byrnes], was immediately "faced with the problem of what he would do with Alger."<ref>William Powell, [https://web.archive.org/web/20070316101732/https://www.un.org/depts/dhl/unationsday/docs/johnson10june85.pdf UN Interview, Joseph Johnson, June 10, 1985], p. 27 (PDF p. 29), UN Oral History Collection, Yale University Library (Archive)</ref> Byrnes had been "pushed out" of planning the UN conference, according to Stettinius, after [[FDR]] had signaled "that Alger Hiss and I should handle this entirely ourselves."<ref>[[#refStettinius75|Stettinius 1975]]: 249</ref>

Byrnes said that [[#refToledano97|despite his categorical instructions]] not to recommend any U.S. citizen for posts in the UN Secretariat, "Hiss forwarded to the UN the resumes of [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60E1EFE3D59107A93C6AB1788D85F478585F9&scp=130&sq=%22alger%20hiss%22&st=cse nearly 500] people, many of them his confreres at State, as prospective global staffers."<ref>"About 50 of these later showed up on the permanent UN payroll, while more than 200 others got part-time assignments." [[#refEvans07|Evans 2007]]: 159. A Senate Internal Security Subcommittee investigation found that Hiss recommended a total of 494 persons for positions as UN officials. Of these, 58 had passed through Hiss's Office of Special Political Affairs; 219 persons who had worked in Hiss's office were "loaned" to the UN, of whom 49 became permanent UN officials. Senator James Eastland (D-MO) commented: "I am appalled at the extensive evidence indicating that there is today in the UN among the American employees there, the greatest concentration of Communists that this Committee has ever encountered.... These people occupy high positions. They have very high salaries and almost all of these people have, in the past, been employees in the U.S. government in high and sensitive positions." (United States Senate. Committee on Internal Security. Activities of U.S. Citizens Employed by the UN. Hearings (1952), pp. 407-408; Report (1954), p. 12. Cf. [[#refSISS16|SISS Part 16]]: 1072 (PDF 12)</ref> Many were [[#refToledano97|members of Communist cells]] in the government, whose jobs were at risk under a tightened security program. [http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-friends-of-dalton-trumbo-11468 The Communist] [[#refGarvin04|Dalton]] [http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=9274 Trumbo], a [http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27810 thoroughgoing Stalinist], boasted that he had been Stettinius' [http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32073 ghost-writer] at the conference.<ref>"To Elsie McKeough," Helen Manfull, Ed., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=uJpbAAAAMAAJ&pgis=1 Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962]'' (New York: M. Evans and Company, 1970), p. 37</ref> Press accounts attributed the hiring of Trumbo (who would become infamous in 1947 as one of the "Hollywood Ten") [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=950&dat=19500703&id=SrILAAAAIBAJ&sjid=elUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1706,274693 to Hiss].<ref>[[#refTL50|de Toledano, Lasky 1950]]: 110</ref>

Hoping to obtain "control of the entire [[Mediterranean]]," the [[USSR|Soviets]] forced through a [[UN]] resolution demanding "an immediate boycott" of [[Spain]]. But as it gradually became clear that the Soviets were seeking "[[Communist]] expansion world-wide," the [[US]] sought the reversal of this UN resolution. According to William B. Dunham of the [[State Department]]'s Office of Western European Affairs:<ref>United States Civil Service Commission, ''[http://ia700502.us.archive.org/22/items/officialregister1955unit/officialregister1955unit_bw.pdf Official Register of the United States, 1955]'' (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1955), p. 26 (PDF p. 48)</ref>

{{cquote|[I]n the State Department... many, especially in the Bureau of UN Affairs.... took every opportunity, tried every dodge, to oppose or at least obstruct as best they could... reversing the UN resolution.... Deputy Assistant Secretary for UN Affairs, Alger Hiss... led the obstructionists there.<ref>William B. Dunham, "[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mfdip:@field%28DOCID+mfdip2004dun03%29 How Did You Get Here from There?: Memoir of a Diplomatic Career]," Foreign Affairs Series, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1996 (Library of Congress)</ref>}}

According to a State Department [[#refCapshaw07|internal security probe]] of Hiss ordered by Byrnes (and made public in 1993),<ref>Sam Tanenhaus, "New Reasons to Doubt Hiss," ''Wall Street Journal'', November 18, 1993</ref> in February 1945, Hiss requested top-secret files from the [[OSS]] on British, Soviet, French and Chinese internal security policies, as well as Far East policy.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 361-362</ref> FBI surveillance at this time found that Hiss also developed "a keen interest in atomic energy" and other matters relating to military intelligence<ref>[[#refTanenhaus97|Tanenhaus 1997]]: 519; [[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 172; [[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 321-322.</ref>&mdash;all of which were [[#refFoote|well outside]] the purview of his office.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 363</ref> This finding was congruent with a [[Venona]] cable dated the [[#refVenona1822|following month]], in which [[Anatoly Gorsky|Gorsky]] reported that "Ales" and his group were "working on obtaining only military information," since [[GRU|Soviet military intelligence]] "allegedly are not very interested" in "materials about the Bank [United States Department of State]."<ref>[[#refBenson95|Benson 1995]]</ref> Loy Henderson, director of the State Department Office of Near East Affairs (NEA), quietly ordered members of NEA to keep confidential materials and information from Hiss.<ref>H. W. Brands, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=L6V4AAAAMAAJ&pgis=1 Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918-1961]'' (Oxford University Press, 1991) ISBN 0-19-506707-X, pp. 297-298</ref>

[http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/index.php?action=chrono On June 26], The [https://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/index.shtml UN Charter] [http://zombietime.com/un60/IMG_1710.JPG was signed] in [[San Francisco]]. Two days later, State Department liaison Lt. [[Andrew Roth]] of the Office of Naval Intelligence was arrested in the ''[[Amerasia]]'' spy case. [[Communist Party]] General Secretary [[Eugene Dennis]] told [[CPUSA]] National Committee member Jack Stachel<ref>[[#refKHA98|Klehr, Haynes, Anderson 1998]]: 45</ref> that Roth suggested that Alger Hiss might be used to quash the case, according to former CPUSA Politburo member Louis Budenz.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44), p. 30. See also FBI Report: (REDACTED), Security Matter&mdash;C, June 8, 1950, p. 9 ([http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/IPR29.pdf FBI file: Institute of Pacific Relations, Vol 29], PDF p. 16)</ref>

[[Image:StetHiss.jpg|thumb|300 px|Stettinius (foreground left) with Alger Hiss (center), ca. January 1945. ''Courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, National Archives and Records Administration'']]On September 5, 1945, [[GRU]] code clerk Igor Gouzenko defected from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, telling the [http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ Royal Canadian Mounted Police] that one Lt. Kulakov in the office of the Soviet military attaché told him that he had learned in Moscow prior to his departure in May 1945 that an assistant to then U.S. Secretary of State Stettinius was a Soviet spy.<ref>Amy W. Knight, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=29Iq1f_dNekC How the Cold War Began: The Igor Gouzenko Affair and the Hunt for Soviet Spies]'' (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006) ISBN 0786718161, p. 33; FBI letter: [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/14d.gif Hoover to Lyon, September 24, 1945] (CIA file: Igor Guzenko), reproduced (as [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/14.gif Document 14]) at [[#refBW96|Benson, Warner 1996]]: [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/14d.gif 67]. Asked in 1954 by [[SISS|Jenner subcommittee]] council Jay Sourwine to identify "the American source of the confidential American policy decisions which were communicated to you [and] through you to Moscow," Gouzenko would repeat that "there was one particular most definite assistant to Stettinius." Bruce Craig, "Matter of Espionage: Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White and Igor Gouzenko Reassessed," David Stafford and Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, eds., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=4iob0kBAVGAC American-British-Canadian Intelligence Relations, 1939-2000]: Intelligence and National Security'', Vol. 15, Issue 2 (London: Routledge, 2000) ISBN 0714651036, p. 218</ref> Stettinius' aide at the time was Alger Hiss.<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 49 According to Pulitzer Prize winner ([http://takimag.com/article/on_ted_morgan_piers_paul_reads_and_other_greats under the name] [http://www.pulitzer.org/awards/1961 Sanche de Gramont]) Ted Morgan, "We now know, thanks to Venona, that this... was Alger Hiss." [[#refMorgan04|Morgan 2004]]: 267</ref>

Two days later, Canadian Prime Minister [[William Lyon Mackenzie King]] wrote that acting under-secretary of state for external affairs [http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/pam_archives/index.php?fuseaction=genitem.displayItem&lang=eng&rec_nbr=104027&rec_nbr_list=104027,9404,3194639,97961,2675021&back_url=%28http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/lac-bac/result/all-tout.php?module=all&Language=eng&FormName=Fed+Simple+Search&SourceQuery=&ResultCount=5&PageNum=1&MaxDocs=-1&SortSpec=score+desc&Language=eng&SearchIn_1=&Operator_1=AND&SearchIn_2=&SearchInText_2=&Operator_2=AND&SearchIn_3=&SearchInText_3=&Sources_1=amicus&Sources_2=mikan&Sources_3=genapp&Sources_4=web&soundex=on&cainInd=&SearchInText_1=norman+robertson%29 Norman Robertson] told him that Gouzenko’s documents disclosed that “everything was much worse than we would have believed…. Stettinius [had] been surrounded by spies, etc., and the Russian Government [had] been kept informed of all that was being done from that source...”<ref>[[#refPickersgill70|Pickersgill 1970]]: 11</ref>

That same day, [[Soviet]] [[UN]] [[Ambassador]] [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947456,00.html Andrei Gromyko], in London, told Stettinius, now the new U.S. Ambassador to the UN, that he "would be very happy to see Alger Hiss appointed temporary secretary general"&mdash;and thus a [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,164282,00.html candidate for] the [[#refBogdanor08|first permanent Secretary General]]&mdash;of the [[United Nations]].<ref>[[#refStettinius75|Stettinius 1975]]: 416. Weinstein observes, "The endorsement of a leading American official by the Russians remains practically unique in the annals of Soviet-American diplomacy at this time." [[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 361</ref> Gromyko was reiterating a suggestion he had made at the [[San Francisco]] conference the previous April.<ref>[[#refRafalko2-1|Rafalko Vol. 2, Ch. 1]]: 110 (PDF 111). As one scholar comments, "It was astonishing for a Soviet diplomat to propose an [[American]] for what was then the [[UN]]'s highest and most sensitive diplomatic post." Stephen J. Whitfield, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=irSQLb4xiJ8C The Culture of the Cold War]'' (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) ISBN 0801851955, p. 28</ref>  

Also that day, Hiss made an extraordinary proposal that the [[State Department]] create a new post, that of "special assistant for military affairs," linked to his Office of Special Political Affairs,<ref>[[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 172; [[#refTanenhaus97|Tanenhaus 1997]]: 519; [[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 321-322.</ref> thus giving Hiss access to information regarding atomic energy, arms procurement and military intelligence.<ref>[[#refHerman99|Herman 1999]]: 86 (fn)</ref> Hiss also proposed a State Department reorganization scheme, under which, wrote Panuch, Hiss would acquire "working control" over the flow of papers within the department. "If this ambitious project should be approved," warned Panuch, "the Hiss group will have achieved infiltration in, or control of" what he identified as "critically strategic points" within State.<ref>[[#refSISS53|SISS 1953]]: 9-10 (PDF 15-16). De Toledano observes that this plan would have given Hiss "[http://www.aim.org/aim-report/aim-report-media-wont-give-up-on-red-spy-alger-hiss-july-b/ virtual control of the State Department]," which would thus, note two commentators, "have taken a long step forward in the direction of becoming an adjunct to the Soviet Foreign Office." William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell, ''[http://www.americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/McCarthy_and_His_Enemies-Wm_F_Buckley_Jr-L_Brent_Bozell-1954-421pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=237 McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning]'' (Washington: Regnery, 1954) ISBN 0895264722, p. 10 (PDF p. 23)</ref>

On September 29, the Canadian Prime Minister met with Truman and Acheson in the White House, telling them that, according to Gouzenko, "an assistant secretary of the Secretary of State's department was supposed to be implicated" in GRU espionage. According to King, Truman "turned to Acheson and said something to the effect that it would not be surprising."<ref>[[#refPickersgill70|Pickersgill 1970]]: 41</ref> Following up on Gouzenko's revelations, Raymond Murphy of the State Department again interviewed Chambers, who stated that Hiss's assignment was "to mess up policy."<ref>[[#refSISS16|SISS Part 16]], p. 1181 (PDF p. 121)</ref> On September 25, Walter Winchell again broached the subject on his broadcast, reporting, "It can be categorically stated that the question of the loyalty and integrity of one high American official has been called to the attention of the President."<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 366. Weinstein calls this "a clear reference to Hiss," adding that Winchell was FBI Director [[J. Edgar Hoover]]'s "most intimate journalistic confidante."</ref>

On November 27, the FBI disseminated a secret report to the State Department, the Attorney General, and the Truman White House, reporting Chambers' identification of Hiss as a secret member of the Communist underground apparatus in contact with the Ware group.<ref>FBI Report: [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/SOVIET%20REPORT.pdf Soviet Espionage Activities in the United States Between World War I and World War II], November 27, 1945, p. 13</ref> Three days later, defecting Soviet courier [[Elizabeth Bentley]] advised FBI investigators that [[Victor Perlo]] told her that [[Harold Glasser]] had been taken away from the “[[Perlo group]]” and turned over to a Russian “by some American in some governmental agency in Washington.”<ref>Statement of Elizabeth Terrell Bentley (FBI file: [[#refSilv6|Silvermaster, Vol. 6]]), [[#refSilv6.106|p. 105 (PDF p. 106)]]. Cf. [[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 173</ref>

{{cquote|Our agent RUBLE, drawn to work for the Soviet Union in May 1937, passed initially through the [[GRU|military "neighbors"]] and then through our station ([[NKVD]]) valuable information on political and economic issues.<ref>[[#refHaunted|Weinstein, Vassiliev 1999]]: 268-269; [[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 226</ref>}}

Bentley said that [[Charles Kramer]] (who would be identified by both [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,856648,00.html Lee Pressman] and [[#refTime3.3.52|Nathaniel Weyl]] as a member of the [[Ware group]]) told her that the person who had done this “was named Hiss and that he was in the U.S. State Department.”<ref>Statement of Elizabeth Terrell Bentley ([[#refSilv6|Silvermaster file, Vol. 6]]), [[#refSilv6.106|p. 105 (PDF p. 106)]]. Cf. [[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 23</ref> She said after "Jack" (Soviet agent Joseph Katz)<ref>Robert J. Lamphere and Tom Shachtman, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=IB_ShD9fTcsC The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent's Story]'' (Atlanta: Mercer University Press, 1995) ISBN 0865544778, p. 296</ref> asked her who Hiss was, she clipped an article in which Hiss was mentioned from the New York daily ''PM'', whose [http://www.ifstone.org/pm.php Washington correspondent], [[I.F. Stone]], was (according to Oleg Kalugin, former head of [[KGB]] operations in the United States) a [[fellow traveller|fellow traveler]]<ref>Oleg Kalugin and Fen Montaigne, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=OqkNAAAACAAJ The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence & Espionage Against the West]'' (Darby, Penn.: Diane Publishing Company, 1994), ISBN 0788151118, p. 74. According to Stone [http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/06/14/robert-fulford-two-views-on-i-f-stone.aspx hagiographer] D.D. Guttenplan, Stone [[#refGuttenplan09|admitted as much]] himself. As Stone put it in 1989, "In a way, I was half a Jeffersonian and half a [[Marxist]]. I never saw a contradiction between the two, and [http://archive.mrc.org/notablequotables/1989/nq19890710.asp I still don't]."</ref> who [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/books/review/Berman.t.htm?pagewanted=all cooperated with Soviet intelligence] as an "agent of influence."<ref>Myra MacPherson, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=kP3i6WsQBtsC 'All Governments Lie!': The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone]'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006) ISBN 0684807130, p. 327. MacPherson goes on to quote Kalugin explaining that such agents "could shape public opinion, manipulate public opinion," and that Stone "was willing to perform tasks." Stone was identified in the Venona project with the code name "Blin" (Pancake) ([http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/undated/kgb_ny_moscow.pdf Index of Cover Names, New York-Moscow Communications], p. 10), an identification confirmed by a 13 April 1936 KGB New York station report. The following month, the station reported that relations with "Pancake" had entered "the channel of normal operational work," meaning that Stone had become a "[[#refHKV5.09|fully active agent]]." ([[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 150) Stone also [[#refVenona1506|met with "Sergei"]], who, under cover as "[[Vladimir Pravdin]]," ([[#refVStory|Benson 2001]]: 31 [PDF 34]) New York bureau chief of the Soviet government news agency TASS ([[#refSword|Andrew, Mitrokin 2000]]: 124), was actually [[NKVD]] agent [[#refKlehr04|Roland Abbiat]], murderer of Ignace Reiss. [[#refKriv39|Krivitsky 1939]]: 261-263 (PDF 285-287)</ref> Bentley said “It is my present recollection that this newspaper article stated Hiss’ full name was Eugene [sic] Hiss and that he was an adviser to [[Dean Acheson]] in the State Department.”<ref>[http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster006_Folder/Silvermaster006_page106.pdf Silvermaster file, Vol. 6, p. 105 (PDF p. 106)]. According to Foreign Service Officer Jacques J. Reinstein, Hiss served as assistant to Acheson. Thomas Dunnigan, [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?mfdip:7:./temp/~ammem_JLez:: Interview with Jacques J. Reinstein], Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, February 5, 2001</ref> FBI investigation quickly closed in on Alger Hiss.<ref>[[#refNKVD|NKVD]]: [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster082_Folder/Silvermaster082_page119.pdf 108 (PDF 119)]</ref> This was consistent with the above-cited March 5, 1945 cable,<ref>Alexander Vassiliev’s notes on a cipher telegram from Vadim [Anatoly Gorsky], 5 March 1945, cited in [[#refFoote|Haynes 2007]]</ref> in which Gorsky reports: "‘Ales’ and ‘Ruble’ [Harold Glasser]<ref>[http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/undated/kgb_wash_moscow.pdf Index of KGB Covernames: Washington-Moscow Communications], p. 3 (National Security Agency)</ref> used to work in ‘Karl’s’ (Whittaker Chambers)<ref>[[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 39; Trans. 77; cf. [[#refBLH05|Bachman, Leich, Haynes 2005]]; [[#refLowCher|Lowenthal, Chervonnaya 2005]]</ref> informational group, which was affiliated with the neighbors [GRU]."<ref>[[#refVStory|Benson 2001]]: 29 (PDF 31)</ref> Before the end of 1945, a State Department Security memorandum summarized:

On February 9, 1946, [[Stalin]] declared that war was inevitable as long as [[capitalism]] existed, in [http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1946/02/09.htm a speech] regarded by some as the open declaration of [[Cold War]].<ref>"In 1946, Stalin declared that the world would never be safe from war so long as capitalism survived. This inaugurated the cold war period." [http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/CIA%20Murphy%20Collection%20Pt1-1.pdf Fact sheet], Records of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Raymond E. Murphy Collection on International Communism, 1917–1958. Part 1: Eastern Europe. Cf. Walter LaFeber, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=WelaCRwAEo4C America, Russia, and the Cold War: 1945-1984]'' (New York: Knopf, 1985) ISBN 0394343913, p. 38. "The West never chose to have a Cold War, and never would," write Soviet dissident/exiles Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov. "[I]t was always imposed on us [http://archive.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=32645 by the Kremlin aggressors]." “The Cold War was [http://www.raleighspyconference.com/wrapup/2003.aspx caused by the Soviet Union], was sustained by the Soviet Union, and was ended by the Soviet Union when it collapsed,” according to Christopher Andrew (so-called “[http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/08/10/the-debate-over-soviet-espionage-what-nicholas-lemann-of-the-new-yorker-gets-wrong/ dean of British intelligence historians]”). “It was and is as simple as that.”</ref> Two days later, ex-[[Communist]] Benjamin Mandel, former manager of the ''Daily Worker'',<ref>Conrad Black, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=0wRK-WPEcfwC Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full]'' (Jackson, Tenn.: PublicAffairs, 2008), ISBN 1586486748, p. 93</ref> identified Alger Hiss to the [[FBI]] as "a [[Communist Party]] member," and one of a "high level group of [[government]] employees who would not be found openly connected with the Party or with any Front organizations and who were specifically instructed not to display such connections."<ref>FBI memo: Hottel to Hoover, February 11, 1946, pp. [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster042_Folder/Silvermaster042_page55.pdf 2]-[http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster042_Folder/Silvermaster042_page56.pdf 3] ([http://www.education-research.org/CSR/Holdings/Silvermaster/Silvermaster.htm FBI file: Silvermaster], [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/Silvermaster042.pdf Vol. 42], pp. 55-56)</ref> The Bureau again interviewed Hiss, who denied ever being a Communist, and denied knowledge of any of his friends being Communists. He did, however, add that he had heard it said that [[Lee Pressman]] was either a Party member or followed the Party line.<ref>[[#refNKVD|NKVD]]: [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster082_Folder/Silvermaster082_page121.pdf 110 (PDF 121)]</ref>

[[Image:Roach_to_Ladd_3-14-46.jpg|thumb|300px|FBI reports Byrnes' desire to dismiss Hiss, two years before Chambers' testimony. ''Source: [[#refSilv|FBI Silvermaster file]] [[#refSilv149|Vol. 149]], [[#refSilv149.40|p. 40]]'']]An extensive [[FBI]] investigation helped develop a great deal of evidence verifying Chambers’ statements and [http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2013/january/a-byte-out-of-history-the-alger-hiss-story revealing Hiss’ cover-ups]. [[Secretary of State]] Byrnes took seriously warnings from [[State Department]] security and the Bureau that evidence existed suggesting that Hiss might be a security risk.<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes, Klehr 2006]]: 98-99</ref> By that spring, Byrnes was persuaded that Hiss was [[#refBogdanor08|working for the Communist Party]]. An FBI memo of March 14 relates a report that Byrnes "stated that HISS is to be given no further consideration for promotion or assignment to responsible duties in the Department," and that he wanted to know whether Hiss could be "dismissed summarily," adding, "Secretary BYRNES is of the definite opinion that ALGER HISS should be disposed of..."<ref>FBI memo: [[#refSilv149.40|Roach to Ladd, RE: Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, et al.]], March 14, 1946. Summary of File References to Alger Hiss, November 8, 1949, p. 20 (FBI file: [[#refSilv|Silvermaster]], [[#refSilv149|Vol. 149]], p. 40)</ref>

On May 15, the State Department prepared a Top Secret chart identifying 124 loyalty or security cases on the department payroll, broken down into categories: 77 "suspects," another 13 "[[Communist]]s," an additional 14 "sympathizers," and, most ominously, a further 20 personnel identified as "agents"&mdash;one of whom was Alger Hiss. Two weeks later, FBI Special Agent Mickey Ladd reported to Director Hoover that Panuch reported to the bureau that Alger Hiss was part of “an enormous espionage ring in Washington” working for the Soviets.<ref>[[#refMoynihan98|Moynihan 1998]]: 69</ref> On July 26, Secretary of State Byrnes wrote to Congressman Adolph J. Sabath (D-Ill.) that security screeners had identified 284 State Department employees as unfit for permanent employent; he added that 79 of these had since left the department<ref>[[#refHerman99|Herman 1999]]: 94</ref>&mdash;leaving [http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23388 205 still on the payroll]. On August 3, State Department official Samuel Klaus prepared a [http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23478 106-page confidential memo] summarizing security data on each of the cases listed on the May 15 chart.<ref>[[#refEvans07|Evans 2007]]: 152-154</ref>

That year, [[British]] intelligence supplied its order of battle against [[Soviet]]-led guerrillas in [[Greece]] to the [[Pentagon]]. Shortly thereafter, this top-secret information appeared in the column of Drew Pearson<ref>Jim Heintze, [http://www.library.american.edu/pearson/biography.html Biography of Drew Pearson], February 9, 2006 (Drew Pearson Papers, American University Library Collections)</ref> (whose reporter, [[David Karr]], was a "competent KGB source"),<ref>Yevgenia Albats, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=9PBjk03E814C The State Within a State: The KGB And Its Hold on Russia Past, Present and Future]'' (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1994), pp. 250-251; Yevgenia Albats, "Senator Edward Kennedy Requested KGB Assistance With a Profitable Contract for his Businessman-Friend," ''Izvestia'', June 24, 1992, p. 5. Albats adds that Karr "submitted information to the KGB on the technical capabilities of the United States and other capitalist countries." Cf. [[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 139; [[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 247. See also Venona decrypt [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/15jul_sammuel_krafsur.pdf 998 KGB New York to Moscow 15 July 1944]. Another Pearson legman, Andrew Older, was identified under oath by FBI undercover operative Mary Markward as a secret member of the Communist Party in Washington, DC. [http://ia600508.us.archive.org/12/items/securitygovernme0102unit/securitygovernme0102unit_bw.pdf Security Hearings Pursuant to S. Res. 40, Part 1], Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Government Operations, United States Senate, 83rd Cong., 1st Sess., August 17–18, 1953 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1953), p. 16 (PDF p. 20); cf. Westbrook Pegler, "Close Scansion of Record Discovers Curious Matter," King Features Syndicate and [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&dat=19510721&id=rs0KAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jE4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=3702,4106542 ''The Deseret News'', July 21, 1951, p. 2B]</ref> forcing the British army to withdraw, a move that would have delivered Greece to the [[Kremlin]] had not the U.S. intervened. According to de Toledano, “Deputy Assistant Secretary of State J. Anthony Panuch, in charge of security, tracked down the source of the [[leak]]. He discovered that Hiss had asked the Pentagon for this information, though it had [[#refToledano97|nothing to do]] with his work as director of the Office of Special Political Affairs.” For his diligence, Panuch would be forced out of the State Department by Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson.<ref>Panuch would testify that "...Under Secretary Acheson called me into his office... and he said... '...I would like your resignation.'" As the [[SISS|Jenner subcommittee]] observed, after Panuch warned his superiors about Hiss, "it was Panuch and not Hiss who was dismissed from the State Department." [[#refSISS53|SISS 1953]]: 10; 10n.15</ref>

State Department security officers discovered that Hiss's desk calendar for September 14, 1946, recorded a meeting Hiss did not schedule through the department (and for which he made no official record) with "McLean [sic], British Emb."<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 363-364</ref> Donald Maclean<ref>[http://www.spymuseum.com/pages/agent-maclean-donald.html Donald Maclean], The Spy Museum</ref> was a diplomat at the British Embassy in Washington who was also a [[Soviet]] agent<ref>Exhibit No. 285, Enclosure No. 2 To Despatch No. 418, April 26, 1956, From American Embassy, Canberra, Australia, LS. 1352: Statement of Vladimir Petrov, [http://ia700309.us.archive.org/24/items/scopeofsovietact2730unit/scopeofsovietact2730unit_bw.pdf Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States, Part 28]," Subcommittee To Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, June 6, 1956, p. 1521 (PDF p. 79)</ref> and member of the [[Cambridge Five|Cambridge spy ring]]. He would defect in 1951 to the [[Soviet Union]],<ref>"[https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/355048/Donald-Maclean Donald Maclean]," ''The Encyclopedia Britannica'', 2008</ref> where he would be rewarded with the rank of Colonel in the KGB.<ref>"[http://www.spymuseum.com/pages/agent-maclean-donald3.html Agent: Maclean, D.]," The Spy Museum</ref> Another member of that ring, [[Kim Philby]], would likewise defect to [[Moscow]], later writing in his memoir, "it was also the era of '''Hiss''', [[Judith Coplon|Coplon]],<ref>Hayden B. Peake, "[https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol47no2_2003/article09.html The Judith Coplon Story]," ''Studies in Intelligence'', vol. 47, no. 2, 2003; [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1945/8jan_judith_coplon.pdf 27 New York to Moscow 8 January 1945]</ref> [[Klaus Fuchs|Fuchs]],<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/filmmore/reference/primary/fuchsstatement.html Fuchs' confession], "Race for the Bomb" ''The American Experience'' (PBS); [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/15jun_departure_agent_rest.pdf 850 New York to Moscow, 15 June 1944];</ref> [[Harry Gold|Gold]],<ref>Greg Barker, Director, "[https://www.pbs.org/redfiles/kgb/deep/kgb_deep_bios_detail.htm#Gold The Red Files: Secrets of the Russian Archives Revealed]" (PBS, 1999), ISBN 0-7806-2796-2. Cf. [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/16nov_klaus_fuchs_harry_gold.pdf Venona 1606(a) KGB New York to Moscow 16 November 1944]</ref> [[David Greenglass|Greenglass]],<ref>Rebecca Leung, "[https://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/14/60II/main563126.shtml The Traitor: David Greenglass Testified Against His Own Sister]," CBS News, July 16, 2003</ref> and [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html?pagewanted=all the brave] [[Julius Rosenberg|Rosenbergs]]<ref>Even the Rosenbergs' sons now accept that their father was [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/nyregion/17rosenbergs.html?_r=3&hp&oref=slogin guilty]. Cf. [http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/the-atom-spy-case The Atom Spy Case], Federal Bureau of Investigation; Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=QpKjGSHAcaYC The Rosenberg File]'' (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997) ISBN 0300072058, pp. 53-58; [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/21sep_recruitment_by_rosenbergs.pdf Venona 1340 KGB New York to Moscow 21 September 1944]</ref>&mdash;not to mention others who are still nameless."<ref>Kim Philby, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=duU2kp3RS0gC My Silent War]'' (New York: Random House, Inc., 2002) ISBN 0375759832, p. 150. If Hiss was not a Soviet agent, he was the only one on this list who was not. For Philby to grant him primacy on such a roll of honor (or rogue's gallery) is "suggestive," writes Weinstein, that this [http://www.deseretnews.com/article/4426/ master spy] "evidently either knew or believed" that Hiss was a fellow agent. [[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 360, footnote</ref>

In November 1946, an investigation concluded that Hiss had taken home top-secret reports he was not cleared to see.<ref>Ted Morgan, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=hQjvrgC_zAgC A Covert Life - Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist and Spymaster]'' (House, 1999) ISBN 0307805662, p. 146</ref> That month the Bureau disseminated to the State Department, Attorney General and Truman White House yet another secret report, this time reporting Bentley's allegations regarding "Eugene Hiss," suggesting that this might actually be a reference to Alger Hiss.<ref>[[#refNKVD|NKVD]]: [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster082_Folder/Silvermaster082_page120.pdf 109 (PDF 1 20)]</ref> Hoover asked President Truman for permission to take action against Hiss, but Truman (according to a former chief of [[CIA]] [[Soviet]] bloc counterintelligence)<ref>[http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300121988 Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games], Yale University Press</ref> remained "stubbornly antagonistic" to the allegations.<ref>[[#refBagley07|Bagley 2007]]: 273</ref>

That month, for the first time since the [http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/oped/busch/06/1946.html elections of 1928], the [[Republican Party|Republicans]] had won control of both houses of Congress, in a campaign charging the [[Democratic Party|Democrats]] with being "[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BUE/is_3_136/ai_n18616442/ soft on Communism]." During the campaign, House Republican leader Joe Martin pledged, "first we will give our efforts to cleaning out the Communists, their fellow travelers and parlor pinks from [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19460921&id=nNtXAAAAIBAJ&sjid=g_UDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1774,4765653 high positions in our Government]." "More than one Congressman," reported ''The Christian Science Monitor'', "whenever the subject of leftist activity in the State Department is mentioned, pulled out a list of suspects that was invariably headed by Mr. Hiss."<ref>[[#refTL50|de Toledano, Lasky 1950]]: 115; [[#refZeligs67|Zeligs 1967]]: 341</ref> This congressional interest finally forced the [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] Truman administration to act: the State Department removed Hiss from access to secrets,<ref>[[#refBagley07|Bagley 2007]]: 273</ref> while the Justice Department planned a [[#refBentleyGJ|grand jury to look into Soviet espionage]].  

Two weeks after the election, Truman established the President's Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty, to determine federal loyalty standards and establish procedures to remove or disqualify "any disloyal or subversive person" from federal service. Truman's actions "left both contemporary observers and historians with the conviction that he acted primarily to preempt further moves on the loyalty issue from the incoming Republican Congress," according to the journal of the National Archives. "Truman's concern about 'subversive' infiltration of the government was likely [[#refRJG06|more political than substantive]]."

In January 1947, Byrnes [[#refCapshaw07|quietly eased Hiss out]] of the State Department. Byrnes would later refuse to testify as a character witness on behalf of Hiss.<ref>[[#refWhite04|White 2004]]: 68</ref> Hiss became president&mdash;[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,798920,00.html at $20,000 a year] (the equivalent of [[#refBLS|more than $190,000]] per year today)&mdash;of the [[Carnegie Endowment for International Peace]], serving also as a trustee of the closely-related<ref>[[Carroll Quigley]], ''[https://www.scribd.com/doc/405200/Carroll-Quigley-The-Anglo-American-Establishment The Anglo-American Establishment]'' (G.S.G. & Associates, Incorporated, 1981) ISBN 0945001010, p. 160. Quigley was reportedly an [http://www.4president.org/speeches/billclinton1992acceptance.htm important influence] on President [[Bill Clinton]]. Scott McLemee, "The Quigley Cult," ''George Magazine'' Vol. 1, No. 10 (December 1996)</ref> [[Institute of Pacific Relations]],<ref>[[#refSISS53|SISS 1953]]: 8-10 (PDF 14-16)</ref> which would later be identified by the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] as "a vehicle used by the Communists to orientate American far eastern policies toward Communist objectives."<ref>[[#refIPR52|S. Rept. 2050]]: 225 (PDF 233)</ref>

That March, in a bid to steal the [[GOP]]'s thunder,<ref>[[#refOlmstead02|Olmstead 2002]]: 114</ref> Truman enacted a "[http://www.trumanlibrary.org/executiveorders/index.php?pid=502 loyalty program]," but no action was taken for three months. Finally, on June 10, members of the newly Republican-controlled Senate sent a secret report to Truman's new Secretary of State, [[George Marshall]], warning him about Undersecretary Dean Acheson, who had fired Panuch:

{{cquote|It becomes necessary due to the gravity of the situation to call your attention to a condition that developed and still flourishes in the State Department under the administration of Dean Acheson. It is evident that there is a deliberate calculated program being carried out not only to protect communist personnel in high places but to reduce security and intelligence protection to a nullity … On file in the department is a copy of a preliminary report of the FBI on Soviet espionage activities in the United States which involves a large number of State Department employees, some in high official positions. This report has been challenged and ignored by those charged with the responsibility of administering the department with the apparent tacit approval of Mr. Acheson.<ref>David Lawrence, "Stevenson Held Unfamiliar with Red Issue," [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1338&dat=19520917&id=gflXAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Z_YDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3180,2556457 ''Spokane Daily Chronicle,'' September 17, 1952, p. 4]</ref>}}

 

Even before the [[#refBentleyGJ|grand jury]] convened, the [[FBI]] learned that the [[Harry S. Truman|Truman]] administration, acutely aware that "an untimely public disclosure about Hiss could easily have torpedoed Truman's hopes for the 1948 Presidential election,"<ref>Charles Stuart Kennedy, [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?mfdip:2:./temp/~ammem_GoLZ:: Interview with Thomas L. Hughes], Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, July 7, 1999</ref> conspired to subvert the grand jury process in order to cover up the [[USSR|Soviet]] penetration problem.<ref>One FBI memo reports that [[Harry S. Truman|Truman]] [[Department of Justice|Justice]] wanted the FBI to interview the [[Elizabeth Bentley|Bentley]] suspects, with an eye to “presenting the evidence to a grand jury with the idea of letting them [https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/No+Bill no bill] the case. Further that in the event [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=T000175 Congressman Thomas] of the [[HUAC|Un-American Committee]] should ever [http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/highlights.html?action=view&intID=169 raise a question], it would be possible to answer by saying that the grand jury had considered the evidence and it had not deemed it sufficient to justify criminal action.” (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 96)</ref> The grand jury sat for nearly a year (July 22, 1947 to July 20, 1948), during which the Justice Department never called Whittaker Chambers to testify. Without his testimony, the grand jury had no corroboration of Bentley. As a result, it did not indict a [https://archive.is/5BcPM single federal official] for espionage; instead, Truman Justice obtained indictments of the open leaders of the above-ground [[Communist Party]]&mdash;not for espionage, but for violations of the [[Smith Act]].<ref>[[#refEvans07|Evans 2007]]: 171, fn</ref>

::"Any [https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/subpena subpena] or demand or request for information, reports, or files of the nature described, received from sources other than those persons in the executive branch of the Government... shall be [https://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1415&st=&st1=%2050. respectfully declined]..."<ref>Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, United States Congress, ''[http://ia700404.us.archive.org/13/items/annualreportfory1953unit/annualreportfory1953unit_bw.pdf Annual Report for the Year 1953]'' (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1954), pp. 186-187 (PDF pp. 194-195) Following Hiss's HUAC testimony on August 5, Truman would read to the press a statement amplifying this order:

[[Image:HissSig.png|thumb|300px|right|The name “Alger Hiss” in Cyrillic (Элджер Хисс) from Vassiliev's notes on the “[[Gorsky memo]].” ''Source: [[#refVas|Cold War International History Project]], Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars'']]When Chambers testified against Hiss, wrote Sudoplatov, "we considered this to be a setback for [[GRU]] intelligence activities in the United States."<ref>[[#refSudoplatov95|Sudoplatov 1995]]: 228</ref> Four months later, [[Anatoly Gorsky]], chief of Soviet intelligence in the U.S. during World War II, would author an internal [[KI|Soviet secret police]] memorandum, entitled "[[Gorsky memo|Failures in the USA (1938-48)]]," listing 43 Soviet sources and intelligence officers likely to have been identified to U.S. authorities. Included on the list, under the heading, "'Karl’s' group," was "Alger Hiss, former employee of the State Dept."<ref>[[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 39; Trans. 77; cf. [[#refBLH05|Bachman, Leich, Haynes 2005]]; [[#refLowCher|Lowenthal, Chervonnaya 2005]]</ref> That same month, Piotr Fedotov and Konstantin Kukin, two other senior Soviet intelligence officials, [http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page73.html reported] to the chairman of Soviet intelligence about “our former agents who were betrayed by Chambers ('''A. Hiss''', [[Donald Hiss|D. Hiss]], [[Julian Wadleigh|Wadleigh]], [[Ward Pigman|Pigman]], [[Vincent Reno|Reno]]).”<ref>[[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 37; Trans. 73; cf. [[#refSpies09|Haynes, Klehr, Vassiliev 2009]]: 553, 555</ref>

The day of Hiss's testimony, President Truman finally reviewed Hiss's FBI file. Pronouncing Hiss “guilty as hell,” Truman told White House Special Counsel Samuel Rosenman, “We shouldn't just indict this son of a bitch. We should [[#refToledano97|hang him]].” Five minutes later, Truman blustered to a press conference that the Hiss case was just an election-year “[[#refTruman8.5.48|red]] [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,819396,00.html herring],”<ref>Alonzo L. Hamby, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=oyx3AAAAMAAJ Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman]'' (Oxford University Press, 1998) ISBN 0195124979, p. 453; See also [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/22.gif (Harry S. Truman) to the Attorney General, 16 December 1948], Harry S. Truman Library, Tom Clark Papers, "Attorney General&mdash;White House/President, 1948," box 83, reproduced (as Document 22) at [[#refBW96|Benson, Warner 1996]]: 119</ref> a characterization he would repeat [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,893525,00.html as late as 1956]. When Rosenman later asked why he had lied, Truman explained, “You don't understand. The Republicans aren't after Alger Hiss. They're after me. I had to take the [[#refToledano97|political view]].”<ref>Truman "wasn't fronting for Alger Hiss, per se, he thought they were attacking him through Hiss... Mr. Truman figured that that was a fight on him, so he supported Hiss whom he didn't really like; thought he was a terrible fellow." [[#refTrohan1970|Trohan 1970]]: 14</ref> (That year, Truman told Secretary of Defense James Forrestal there were "[[#refNovak03|too many unknowns]]" in the partially decoded Venona messages,<ref>[[#refSchecter02|Schecter 2002]]: 148</ref> saying, "Even if part of this is true, [[#refRusher04|it would open up the whole red panic again]].")<ref>The next year, Forrestal would be found dead from a fall from the tower of Bethesda Naval Hospital. Admiral M.D. Willcutts, [http://www.princeton.edu/~mudd/finding_aids/willcutts/report1.pdf Report on the Death of James V. Forrestal] (Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University), PDF p. 22; [http://jamesforrestal.ariwatch.com/WillcuttsReport.htm#Page0 HTML version].</ref>  In her [http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/who-is-er/q-and-a/q24.htm newspaper column], [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] set the tone of respectable opinion, writing, "Smearing good people like [[Lauchlin Currie]], Alger Hiss and others is, I think, unforgiveable.... Anyone knowing either Mr. Currie or Mr. Hiss, who are the two people whom I happen to know fairly well, would not need any denial on their part to know they are not Communists. Their records prove it."<ref>[[#refER48|Eleanor Roosevelt 1948]]. Currie was an [[NKVD]] agent in the [[White House]], code-named "PAZh/Page." [[#refNSA05|Hanyok 2005]]: 118-119 (PDF 123-124), n. 185; [[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 146; [[Gorsky memo]] ([[#refVasBlack|Vassiliev Black Notebook]]: Orig. 39; Trans. 77. Cf. [[#refBLH05|Bachman, Leich, Haynes 2005]]; [[#refLowCher|Lowenthal, Chervonnaya 2005]])</ref>

When Hiss testified, most of those watching, including members of the press, appeared to be on Hiss's side, even giving him [http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/spies/hiss/3.html a round of applause] when he finished. So strong was Hiss's denial that the committee wanted to drop the investigation.<ref>[http://www.usembassy.ru/files/All%20the%20President's%20Men.pdf American Values through Film] (English Language Office, Public Affairs section, U.S. Embassy, Moscow), p. 81 (PDF p. 82)</ref> But one member, freshman Congressman [[Richard M. Nixon]] (R-Calif.) insisted that either [[#refLinder03|Chambers or Hiss was lying]] about whether they had known one another; he asked the committee to appoint him [http://www.departments.dsu.edu/LIBRARY/archive/unamerican.htm to head a subcommittee] to find out which one.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 15-16</ref> The Truman administration fixed its sights, not on Hiss, but on Chambers, Truman aide George Elsie advising White House Counsel [http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/un/large/general_assembly/general_assembly3-1.jpg Clark Clifford] on August 16, "Justice should make every effort to ascertain if Whittaker Chambers is guilty of perjury."<ref>[[#refBW96|Benson, Warner 1996]]: 117</ref> No suggestion was made that Justice make any effort at all to ascertain if ''Hiss'' might be guilty of perjury.

The Hiss forces launched a "frightful campaign of vilification"<ref>Hilton Kramer, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=yPZ3AAAAMAAJ The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War]'' (I.R. Dee, 1999) ISBN 1566632226, p. 6</ref> against [[Whittaker Chambers|Chambers]], a whispering campaign of lies and innuendos. Many editorialists and columnists violently attacked him and defended Hiss.<ref>James Keogh, ''[http://ia700300.us.archive.org/0/items/thisisnixon017711mbp/thisisnixon017711mbp.pdf This Is Nixon]'' (New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 1956) ASIN B000MXH0XA, p. 40</ref>

Nixon brought Hiss face-to-face with his accuser on August 25. "Hiss stoutly continued to deny the charge," reported ''Time'', but "it was clear to everyone" that he and Chambers "had known each other quite well in the mid-'30s." The magazine added that Hiss's "favorite phrase, as he fenced tediously with the committee, was: 'To the best of my recollection.' He used it and similar phrases [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,779940,00.html 198 times]." Chambers [[#refWhalen48|offered to take]] a lie-detector test; [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,799060,00.html Hiss refused]&mdash;a refusal he kept up for the rest of his life.

Trying to explain Chambers' charges, Hiss suggested that his accuser was crazy, asking, "is he a man of consistent reliability, truthfulness and honor?... Indeed, is he a man of sanity?"<ref>[[#refHUAC48|HUAC 1948]]: 1164 (PDF 674)</ref> He demanded that the committee ask his accuser if he had ever been treated for a mental illness. The committee obliged, and Chambers answered: "[http://www.thenation.com/article/case-alger-hiss I have not, period]." On the White House memo advising that Chambers be investigated for perjury was inserted a handwritten line: "Investigation of Chambers' [https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/21.gif/image.gif confinement in mental institution]."<ref>[[#refBW96|Benson, Warner 1996]]: 117.</ref> (Again, no suggestion was made that Hiss's mental health history might be subject to investigation.) The FBI had already checked into this, and [[J. Edgar Hoover|Hoover]] had reported to [[Attorney General]] [[Tom Clark]], "With regard to [[Whittaker Chambers]], there is nothing indicated in the files of the [[FBI|Bureau]], or in the files of the New York office that Chambers has been institutionalized."<ref>[[#refEvans07|Evans 2007]]: 322</ref> In falling for the fiction that Chambers had been committed to an insane asylum, the Truman administration was "taken in by disinformation being spread by the American Communist party and Alger Hiss's partisans."<ref>[[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 15</ref>

In an act of supreme hubris, Hiss [[#refWard88|dared]] Chambers to repeat his charges outside of the immunity afforded in congressional hearings, so Hiss could sue him, taunting, "and I hope you will do it [[#refHUAC8-17-48|damned quickly]]." Just two days after their public testimony,<ref>Stephen D. Easton, ed., ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=BwtJgD-stVIC The Irving Younger Collection: Wisdom and Wit from the Master of Trial Advocacy]'' (American Bar Association, 2010) ISBN 1604426004, p. 533</ref> Chambers called Hiss's bluff on NBC's ''Meet the Press,'' saying, "[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17982730/page/5/ Alger Hiss was a Communist] and may be now."

Embarrassment mounted among Hiss partisans as weeks dragged by with no suit filed.<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes, Klehr 2006]]: 103</ref> The New York ''Daily News'' asked, "Well Alger, where's that suit?"<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 281. Cf. Lloyd Chiasson, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=LBC1QaeWyDAC The press on trial: crimes and trials as media events]'' (ABC-CLIO, 1997) ISBN 0275959368, p. 137</ref> Even the ''Washington Post''&mdash;"the most implacable of the pro-Hiss newspapers," according to Chambers<ref>[[#refChambers52|Chambers 1952]]: 710. "The ''Post''... seemed to redouble its pro-Hiss efforts as the goal of finding him legally guiltless was receding." Marvin N. Olasky, "[http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED285187.pdf Liberal Boosterism and Conservative Distancing: Newspaper Coverage of the Chambers-Hiss Affair, 1948-1950]," Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (70th, San Antonio, TX, August 1–4, 1987), p. 13</ref>&mdash;began to have doubts,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 162</ref> writing:

{{cquote|As yet, no formal action to initiate a suit for slander has publicly been taken by Mr. Hiss ... Mr. Hiss himself has created a situation in which he is obliged to put up or shut up ... Mr. Hiss has left himself no alternative. And each day of delay in making it known that he will avail himself of the opportunity Mr. Chambers has accorded him does incalculable damage to his reputation.<ref>Chalmers McGeagh Roberts, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=SRhlAAAAMAAJ The Washington post: the first 100 years]'' (Houghton Mifflin, 1977) ISBN 0395258545, p. 277</ref>}}

Finally, [[#refChronology|after a month]], Hiss filed his long-threatened slander suit against Chambers on September 27, 1948.<ref>"Hiss Brings Libel Suit for $50,000", Associated Press, The Oil City Derrick, September 28, 1948, P. 1| https://www.newspapers.com/image/27199773/?clipping_id=149854339</ref>

==Hiss's suit against Chambers==

In a pre-trial "discovery" deposition for the suit, Hiss's attorney William L. Marbury asked Chambers if he had "any correspondence, either typewritten or in handwriting" from Hiss&mdash;"one of the most disastrous questions ever asked at a deposition."<ref>[[#refBerresford92|Berresford 1992]]: 98</ref> Marbury "never expected ([[#refLindPump|nor would he have asked]] for, had he known) the response that he received." Chambers retrieved [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/envelope.jpg the packet] he had given his wife's nephew in 1938, which had been hidden [[#refTime12.20.48|in a dumbwaiter shaft]]. Three days later, Chambers turned over to Hiss's attorneys 65 pages of typewritten documents and [http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=source%3Alife%20%22pumpkin%20papers%22&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi handwritten memoranda], some so sensitive that for security reasons they could [[#refHissAppellate|not safely be made public]], though already a decade old. Chambers' attorney introduced the documents:

{{cquote|Let's identify these papers by reading the first and last words of each one into the record... 'Tokyo... February 12, KENNEDY.' 'Paris... February 15, 1938... Secretary of State...  Signed BULLITT.' 'Vienna... February 13, 1938... Secretary of State... Signed WILEY.' 'Rome... March 29... The Embassy learns... Signed PHILLIPS.' 'Warsaw... March 29... I learn following in strictest [[confidence]]... Signed BIDDLE.'<ref>[[#refTL50|de Toledano, Lasky 1950]]: 214-215</ref>}}

Hiss conceded that the typed pages appeared to be copies of authentic State Department documents, and admitted that all but one of the handwritten memos appeared to be in his handwriting.<ref>FBI "By Special Messenger": SAC, Washington Field to Hoover, December 1, 1948 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 1) The FBI laboratory determined that the remaining [http://www.life.com/image/72404528 handwritten memorandum] supplied by Chambers was [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/FBI_Memorandum_identifying_Harry_Dexter_White_as_agent_Jurist in the handwriting] of [[Harry Dexter White]], just as [https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19491129&id=CocNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=KE4DAAAAIBAJ&pg=3777,2653357 Chambers testified].</ref> Among the documents confirmed by Hiss's own documents experts to be in his handwriting (contradicting [[#refNYRB2|his denial]]) was a [http://www.documentstalk.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/bdocs_hiss_note_to_martin.jpg summary of a telegram]<ref>This image is hosted on DocumentsTalk.com, a Web site "underwritten, [http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2009/06/in-denial-round-11.html perhaps entirely], by THE NATION INSTITUTE," which is [[#refDTN:OSI|in turn funded]] by [[George Soros]].</ref> that Chambers had [[#refNYRB|quoted almost verbatim]] in an article he gave Herbert Solow in 1938.

[[Image:09905 2004 001 a.jpg|thumb|300px|right|One of the 'pumpkin papers,' marked 'STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL FOR THE SECRETARY.' Bullitt relates to Hull report of Litvinov's private comments on Soviet intentions regarding war with Japan, 1938. ''Image courtesy [https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/telegram-from-ambassador-william-c-bullitt-regarding-the-sinojapanese-war National Archives and Records Administration]'']]Hoping that they would lead to an indictment of Chambers,<ref>"Hiss had his attorney William Marbury surrender the papers to the U.S. Department of Justice.... Hiss hoped that Justice would indict Chambers." David Chambers, [http://www.whittakerchambers.org/pumpkinpapers.html Pumpkin Papers], whittakerchambers.org</ref> Hiss turned over the documents to the [[Harry Truman|Truman]] [[Justice Department]], which immediately impounded and sequestered them. [[HUAC]] requested copies, but Truman stonewalled. On December 1, the United Press reported, "the Justice Department is about ready to drop its investigation of the celebrated Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers controversy."<ref>Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, United States Congress, [https://books.google.com/books?id=QhcWAAAAIAAJ Soviet Espionage within the United States Government: Hearings Pursuant to Public Law 601 (Section 121, Subsection Q (2))], December 31, 1948 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1949), p. 4. Cf. [[#refTL50|Toledano Lasky]]: 216</ref> The Truman administration may have thought it was done with Hiss, but it wasn't quite finished with Chambers. The next day, an FBI memo reiterated that Justice wanted "an immediate investigation by the Bureau to determine whether Chambers committed perjury."<ref>[[#refEvans07|Evans 2007]]: 322</ref> Hoover penned, "I can't understand why such effort is being made to indict Chambers to the exclusion of Hiss."<ref>FBI memorandum: Fletcher to Ladd, December 2, 1948 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 2)</ref>

Meanwhile, rebuffed in his attempts to see the documents, [[Richard Nixon|Nixon]] asked Chambers on December 1 whether he had any other such material in his possession. The answer was yes. The next day, in response to a subpoena, Chambers led HUAC chief investigator Robert Stripling on his Maryland farm to a [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/pumpkin.jpg pumpkin he had hollowed out] the night before and in which he had secreted [[#refTime75|five rolls]] (two developed strips and three undeveloped rolls, one of which later proved to have been [[#refHissAppellate|light struck]]) of [[#refTime75|35 millimeter film]]. The film included fifty-eight frames, mostly photos of State and Navy Department documents, dated January 5 through April 1, 1938 (the so-called "Pumpkin Papers").<ref>National Archives and Records Administration, [https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/060.html General Records of the Department of Justice (Record Group 60) 1790-1989, 1991]: 60.3.5 Miscellaneous records: Microfilm copy of evidence ("Pumpkin Papers") used in U.S. v. Alger Hiss, 1948-51 (5 rolls). Microfilm Publications: M1491. Photographs (263 images: Documents reproduced from the "Pumpkin Papers," and used in U.S. v. Alger Hiss, 1948-51)</ref> The State Department documents dealt with a [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/ppboyce.jpg wide] [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/pphissnote.jpg variety] of [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/pplockhart.jpg subjects], including [[#refLindPump|U.S. intentions with respect to the Soviet Union]], the Spanish Civil War, and Germany's takeover of Austria. Some of the documents on the film were [[#refNYRB|initialed by Hiss and came from his office]]. Some were of a [http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/spies/hiss/7.html highly sensitive, classified nature]. Some State Department cables bearing Hiss's handwritten initials had direct bearing on matters of major Soviet interest, including Chinese Communist strategy during the war with Japan and Chinese-Soviet relations.<ref>[[#refHK06|Haynes, Klehr 2006]]: 116</ref>

The Truman administration demanded that HUAC turn over the film, but Nixon refused. He allowed Justice Department officials to view the film, and gave them copies, but would not surrender the film until Justice supplied HUAC with copies of the sequestered Baltimore documents. With no other option, Truman Justice finally called Chambers to testify before a hastily-reconvened [[#refBentleyGJ|grand jury]] on December 6&mdash;more than 16 months after it had originally convened. That day, Hiss's attorney Edward McLean gave the defense's documents examiner, J. Howard Haring, a batch of old Hiss family letters that Hiss had given him the previous September, two months before Chambers produced the documents. Immediately identifying the typeface as that of a [http://www.whittakerchambers.org/images/woodstocktypewriterno5_300dpi250x200pxl.png Woodstock typewriter], Haring reported that one of Mrs. Hiss's 1933 letters "was typed on the same machine as the Chambers documents." McLean informed the Hisses of this finding the same day. The next day, according to another of Hiss's lawyers, John F. Davis: "Alger ... asked [me to] check on an old machine which he remembers he gave to Pat, the son of Claudia Catlett...." Yet Hiss swore under oath that he remembered neither the make nor disposition [[#refNYRB|of the typewriter]]. While the FBI was off on a wild-goose chase searching used-typewriter stores, on the basis of false information furnished by Hiss,<ref>John J. Danahy, "The Alger Hiss Case," Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, 2nd Ed. (Turner Publishing Company, 1998) ISBN 1563114739, p. 74</ref> his brother Donald tracked down the Catletts and retrieved the typewriter.

On December 13, the FBI independently located specimens of Priscilla Hiss's typing from the 1930s. The FBI laboratory concluded, like Haring, that all the papers in question had been typed on the same typewriter, [[#refNYRB|a Woodstock]].

Another defense expert, Harry E. Cassidy, concluded that Priscilla Hiss not only typed the Chambers documents, but wrote all the handwritten corrections on the typed documents. Asked by Hiss's attorneys whether it was more likely that Hiss or Chambers had written these corrections, Haring responded: "I am inclined to the opinion that the AH [Alger Hiss] corrections more closely resemble the QUESTIONED writing, than do the writings of WC [Whittaker Chambers]." A third defense expert, Edwin Fearon, agreed, reporting to the Hiss lawyers: "The corrections appearing in Exhibits 5-47 inclusive (exception—Exhibit 10) bear a closer resemblence [sic] to the handwritten corrections made by AH than to those made by WC." Fearon added that all but one of the documents were "[[#refNYRB2|typed on Woodstock typewriter no.N230099]]"&mdash;the Hiss's machine.

On December 15, Alger Hiss proposed to the grand jury a theory that someone (perhaps Chambers)<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 270</ref> had sneaked into the State Department and stolen the documents from his desk<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 178, 253, 257, 299, 397</ref> then, having somehow obtained access to Hiss's typewriter,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 298, 300</ref> typed some of the documents on it<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 281, 298</ref> and microfilmed others, and then sneaked back into the State Department and replaced the originals,<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 254</ref> all in an elaborate plot to frame Hiss<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 299</ref> a decade later.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: p. 281</ref> Even Hiss admitted that his theory was "fantastic,"<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 299</ref> stating, "Until the day I die, I shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got into my house to use my typewriter," a statement provoking outright laughter among jurors.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 300</ref>

Just as Chambers had gained the upper hand by voluntarily waiving immunity from slander, the influential<ref>Lippmann has been called “the most influential journalist in American history.” Jacqueline Foertsch, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=mao9DJoAlhAC American Culture in the 1940s]'' (Edinburgh University Press, 2008) ISBN 0748624139, p. 56</ref> columnist Walter Lippmann, a [[Socialist]]<ref>"Joined the Harvard Socialist Club and later became president... Elected to Executive Committee, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2v9aAAAAMAAJ Intercollegiate Socialist Society]... Joined [http://microformguides.gale.com/Data/Download/9034000C.rtf the Socialist Party], New York County, and the Socialist Press Club of New York City." In the midst of the [[Nazi-Soviet Pact]], "WJL" (Walter J. Lippmann) wrote to "ECC" (Edward C. Carter, head of the [[Attorney General's list|Communist-front]] "[[American Russian Institute]]" and [[Institute of Pacific Relations]]&mdash;"a vehicle used by the Communists to orientate American far eastern policies toward Communist objectives," according to the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] {[[#refIPR52|S. Rept. 2050]]: 225 [PDF 233]}), urging "cooperation with the European revolutionaries and the Soviet Union in their attempt to build a socialist Europe as a nucleus for a world socialist order, with the obvious corollary of the establishment of socialism in this country." Walter Lippmann to Edward C. Carter, June 10, 1940, p. 5 (PDF p. 100), FBI file: [http://www.education-research.org/PDFs/IPR54.11.pdf  Institute of Pacific Relations, Section 54, Part 11],  pp. 96-101.</ref> and [[#refVenona1289|Soviet intelligence source]],<ref>According to Eric Alterman, a [http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/eric_alterman columnist] and [http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation blogger] for ''The Nation'', Lippmann "offered much more [http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=stone_cold_untruths useful information to the Soviets] than [[#refHKV5.09|Stone]] ever did."</ref> (whose secretary, [[Mary Price]], was a [http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1943/8jun_dir_courier.pdf Soviet agent])<ref>[http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1944/29apr_recruits.pdf 588 New York to Moscow, 29 April 1944]; cf. [http://ia700308.us.archive.org/16/items/instituteofpacif02unit/instituteofpacif02unit_bw.pdf Institute of Pacific Relations Hearings, Part 2], Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 82d Cong., 1st Sess. (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1951), p. 406 (PDF p. 62); [[#refRomerstein01|Romerstein, Breindel 2001]]: 439 and [[#refHK99|Haynes, Klehr 1999]]: 99</ref> suggested that Hiss turn the tables by waiving the statute of limitations on espionage. Hiss never took him up on that suggestion.<ref>[[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 384</ref>

On May 31, 1949, Alger [[#refTruChron|Hiss went on trial]] for perjury in New York City. At trial, Hiss provided an all-star cast of character witnesses, including such notables as [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=S000890 Adlai Stevenson], Justice [[Felix Frankfurter]], and former Democratic presidential candidate [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=D000121 John W. Davis], fresh from his [http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/5-decision/defenders.html defeated defense of segregation] in ''Brown v. Board of Education''. However, both Under Secretary Welles and Sayre testified that delivering the classified documents to a foreign power would enable them to break America's most secret codes.<ref>Mr. Welles. All of these messages, Mr. Stripling, originally were sent in code and undoubtedly those marked "strictly confidential" or "strictly confidential, for the Secretary," would presumably be sent in one of the most secret codes then in our possession. Mr. Stripling. Would the possession of the document as written, along with the original document as it appeared in code, furnish an individual with the necessary information to break the code? Mr. Welles. In my judgment, decidedly yes. ([[#refHUAC48.2|HUAC 1948, Part 2]]: 1388 [PDF 16]) SAYRE: [T]hey didn't have these highly confidential codes; and for these telegrams to get out at the time they did meant that other governments could crack our codes. [[#refHUAC48-2R|HUAC 1948, 2nd Rept.]], p. 6; cf. C.P. Trussel, "[http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50A11F83D5B157A93CAA91789D95F4C8485F9&scp=1&sq=Spy%20Papers%20Show%20U.S.%20Codes%20Were%20Broken,%20Official%20Says&st=cse Spy Papers Show U.S. Codes Were Broken, Official Says]," ''The New York Times'', December 8, 1948; [[#refTL50|de Toledano, Lasky 1950]]: 221-223; [[#refWeinstein78|Weinstein 1978]]: 232</ref>

At Hiss’ first perjury trial, Hornbeck testified that an unnamed friend had warned him that Hiss was a Communist [[fellow traveller]], but he disregarded the warning.<ref>[[#refTL50|de Toledano, Lasky 1950]]: 235</ref> At the second trial, Hornbeck testified that on at least two occasions he