Levine also told [[David Dubinsky]], president of the [[International Ladies Garment Workers Union]], about Chambers' revelations. Dubinsky, wrote Levine, "took up the Chambers matter with the President at the first opportunity and was brushed off with an amiable slap on the back." Levine wrote that he told fellow journalist 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>Isaac Don Levine, ''Eyewitness To History: Memoirs and Reflections of a Foreign Correspondent for Half a Century'' (Stroud, Glos.: Hawthorn Books, 1973) ASIN B000ONBAW0, pp. 197-9</ref> Winchell's posthumously published memoir confirms Levine's story.<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), ISBN 0394495462, p. 331</ref>
Hiss was now among a handful of the Soviets' most important agents, who were run individually and not through spy networks, according to [[Oleg Gordievsky]]. Hiss' wartime controller, wrote Gordievsky, was the leading NKVD illegal in the United States, [[Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov]].,<ref>Douglas O. Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html The VENONA Files and the Alger Hiss Case]," Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law)</ref> who, in a lecture before a KGB audience, identified Hiss as a Soviet agent during World War II.<ref>Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, ''KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev'' (New York: Harpercollins, 1990) ISBN 0060166053, p. 287</ref>
In 1941, the [[Dies committee]] obtained the membership list of the [[Washington Committee for Democratic Action]], which would eventually be listed on Attorney General [[Tom Clark]]'s [[list of subversive organizations]] as a Communist front, per [[President Truman]]'s [[executive order 9835]]. Included was the name of Priscilla Hiss.,<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), ISBN 0394495462, p. 329</ref><ref>G. Edward White, ''Alger Hiss's Looking-glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0195182553, p. 48</ref> In 1942, with the notation appended, "Husband with State Department."<ref>http://ultra-secret.info/PDFs/splitfiles/splitprocessed/Silvermaster082_Folder/Silvermaster082_page120.pdf FBI interviewed Alger HissReport: Underground Soviet Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government, p. 109 (PDF p. 120)</ref> In 1941-42, per the FBI conducted a [[Hatch Act]]investigation of Hiss, in the course of which, one of Hiss' fellow employees in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration told investigators that Hiss and his associates in the AAA, if not Communists, were fellow travelers. Hiss denied all knowledge everything. In 1942, the FBI sent a report of this investigation to the groupSecretary of State.<ref>[httpFBI memorandum://www.lawLadd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-16testimony.html Testimony of Alger 2 (FBI file: Hiss before the House Committee on Un-American Activities] (August 16Chambers, 1948Vol. 44)</ref>
The same yearAlso in 1942, the Bureau interviewed Chambers for the first time.<ref>Douglas Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hisschronology.html The Trials of Alger Hiss: A Chronology], Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 2003)</ref> He repeated his identification of Hiss, among others, as a Communist. In 1943, the FBI obtained the notes Berle had taken during his dinner four years earlier with Chambers and Levine.<ref>John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 0300077718, p. 92</ref>
The following year, Hiss was promoted to become deputy director of the State Department's [[Office of Special Political Affairs]],<ref>[http://www.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1997), Appendix A]</ref> a policy-making office for postwar planning and international organization.<ref>Douglas Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hisschronology.html The Trials of Alger Hiss: A Chronology], Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 2003)</ref> In August 1944, he organized the [[Dumbarton Oaks Conference]],<ref>Douglas O. Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissaccount.html The Trials of Alger Hiss: A Commentary], Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 2003)</ref> where he served as executive secretary,<ref>Robert G. Whalen, "[http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/reviews/chambers-strange.html Hiss and Chambers: Strange Story of Two Men]," ''The New York Times'', December 12, 1948</ref><ref>"[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,811892.html The Case of Alger Hiss]," ''Time'', February 13, 1950</ref> presiding over the drafting of the proposed United Nations Charter.<ref>[http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/history/dumbarton.shtml History of the Charter of the United Nations: Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta]</ref>
[[Image:Hisstruman.jpg|thumb|300px|right|President Truman at the rostrum of the [[United Nations]] Charter Meeting with Secretary General of the Conference Alger Hiss seated second from Truman's left.]]
In February 1945, State Department security officer Raymond Murphy interviewed Chambers. Murphy's notes record that Chambers reiterated his identification of Hiss as a member of the Communist Party underground apparatus, but added that he was the leader of a cell within the Ware group, the members of which, said Chambers, were not merely Communists, but espionage agents who disclosed "much confidential material," as well as agents of influence who sought to shape U.S. policy "in keeping with the desires of the Communist Party."<ref>[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/break45.html Memorandum of Conversation], Tuesday, March 20, 1945, Westminster, Md.</ref> By then, with the backing of Secretary of State [[Edward Stettinius, Jr.]], Hiss had already been was selected to accompany FDR two months later to his meeting with [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] and [[Winston Churchill|Churchill]] at [[Yalta conference|Yalta]].
According to Sudoplatov, "One of the officials [at Yalta] we had established confidential relations with was Alger Hiss," who was "highly sympathetic to the interests of the Soviet Union."<ref>Anatoli Sudoplatov, Pavel Sudoplatov, Leona P. Schecter and Jerrold L. Schecter, ''Special Tasks'' (New York: Back Bay Books, 1995) ISBN 0316821152, p. , p. 227</ref> He added:
Former NSA analyst John R. Schindler, professor of strategy at the Naval War College, concurs that "the identification of ALES as Alger Hiss, made by the U.S. Government more than a half-century ago, seems exceptionally solid based on the evidence now available; message 1822 is only one piece of that evidence, yet a compelling one."<ref>John R. Schindler, "[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page61.html Hiss in VENONA: The Continuing Controversy]," Center for Cryptologic History Symposium, 27 October 2005</ref>
In April March 1945, State Department security officer Raymond Murphy interviewed Chambers. Murphy's notes record that Chambers reiterated his identification of Hiss as a member of the Communist Party underground apparatus, but added that he was the leader of a cell within the Ware group, the members of which, said Chambers, were not merely Communists, but espionage agents who disclosed "much confidential material," as well as agents of influence who sought to shape U.S. policy "in keeping with the desires of the Communist Party."<ref>[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/break45.html Memorandum of Conversation], Tuesday, March 20, 1945, Westminster, Md.</ref> 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 Chambers' allegations that Hiss had been a member of the underground organization of the [[Communist Party]], and to Hiss' links to [[Nathan Witt]] and [[Lee Pressman]]. Three days later, FBI official D.M. Ladd furnished Frederick B. Lyon, Chief of the Division of Foreign Activity Correlation of the Department of State, a summary memorandum outlining this information.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949 (FBI file: Hiss Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref> The following month, Hiss presided as Secretary General over the [[United Nations Conference on International Organization|United Nations Charter Conference]] in San Francisco, with [[Dalton Trumbo]] as his assistant. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes said that despite his categorical instructions not to recommend any U.S. citizen for posts in the UN secretariat, Hiss recommended several dozen federal employees—members of Communist cells in the government, whose jobs were at risk under a tightened security program.<ref>[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n3_v13/ai_19048238 Ralph de Toledano, “Embarrassment aided and abetted the Top Soviet spy - Alger Hiss,” ''Insight on the News'', January 27, 1997]</ref> After the conference, Hiss was promoted to become Director of the State Department Office of Special Political Affairs.
==Defections and Investigation==
Hiss became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served until May 5, 1949. Hiss also served as a trustee on the [[Institute of Pacific Relations]].<ref>Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments, [[SISS]] report (July 30, 1953), pp. 8-10.</ref>
In 1948, [[Alexander Barmine]], former Charge d'Affairs at the Soviet Embassy in Athens, Greece, who had defected in 1937, told FBI investigators "that he had heard Alger Hiss referred to as being an agent of Soviet military intelligence. A 1949 FBI report said, according to Barmine, his source was former GRU agent and [[Walter Krivitsky]], who defected in Paris in 1938 and was found dead in his Washington hotel room in 1941.<ref>FBI Report: Alger Hiss, February 4, 1949</ref>
== House Committee on Un-American Activities ==
In 1948, the House Committee on Un-American Activities called [[Whittaker Chambers]]. He testified that Alger Hiss, assisted by his wife Priscilla, had been a member of the underground apparatus of the [[Communist Party of the United States|Communist Party]] in the late 1930s, while he was a Federal official.<ref>[http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-3testimony.html Testimony of Whittaker Chambers before the House Committee on Un-American Activities] (August 3, 1948)</ref> The purpose of the [[Ware Group]], he testified, was to promote communist policies in U.S. government.When Whittaker Chambers testified against Hiss, wrote Sudoplatov, "we considered this to be a setback for GRU intelligence activities in the United States."<ref>Anatoli Sudoplatov, Pavel Sudoplatov, Leona P. Schecter and Jerrold L. Schecter, ''Special Tasks'' (New York: Back Bay Books, 1995) ISBN 0316821152, p. 228</ref> After ''Time'' magazine managing editor [[Whittaker Chambers]] charged him as being a [[Communist]], Alger Hiss voluntarily appeared before the [[House Committee on Un-American Activities]]. Some Committee members had misgivings at first about attacking Hiss, but Congressman [[Richard Nixon]], who was fed information by the Catholic Church's secretive Communist hunter, Father [[John Francis Cronin|John Cronin]], and using materials from the [[FBI]], claimed to have sensed that Hiss was hiding something and pressed the Committee to act. Initially, Hiss denied having ever known Chambers and dared Chambers to repeat the charge. After Chambers publicly reiterated his charge that Hiss was working for the Soviets on the radio program "Meet the Press," Hiss instituted an unsuccessful slander lawsuit against Chambers, but only after several of his supporters began to publicly question his curious reluctance to file an action. Chambers, in response, presented the "Baltimore Documents", which were copies of a series of government documents that he had obtained from Hiss in the 1930s. The government documents had first been re-typed by Hiss's wife, Priscilla, and these copies were then photographed and passed on to the spy network. Later Chambers produced highly incriminating microfilm evidence which was given to Nixon on December 2nd, from a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm (the so-called [[Pumpkin Papers]]).
That year, after reviewing Hiss’ FBI file, President Truman pronounced Hiss “guilty as hell,” telling White House Special Counsel Samuel Rosenman, “We shouldn't just indict this son of a bitch. We should hang him.” Five minutes later, Truman blustered to a press conference that the Hiss case was just an election-year “red herring.” 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 political view.”<ref>[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n3_v13/ai_19048238 Ralph de Toledano, “Embarrassment aided and abetted the Top Soviet spy - Alger Hiss,” ''Insight on the News'', January 27, 1997]</ref>
{{cquote|From a thoroughly reliable contact [Arnold Beichman, then publicity director for New York's Liberal Party, of which former Assistant Secretary of State Berle was chairman]: 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' hands and the leaks stopped. <ref>[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_n3_v13/ai_19048238 Ralph de Toledano, “Embarrassment aided and abetted the Top Soviet spy - Alger Hiss],” ''Insight on the News'', January 27, 1997</ref>}}
==The Trials==
In 1949, at Hiss’ first perjury trial, Hornbeck testified that an unnamed friend had warned him that Hiss was a Communist fellow-traveler, but he disregarded the warning.<ref>Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky, [http://www.americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/Seeds_Of_Treason-Ralph_de_Toledano_and_Victor_Lasky-1950-278pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=343&PHPSESSID=b964065077a1de19538c4c7b1cf9e825 ''Seeds of Treason: The True Story of the Hiss-Chambers Tragedy''], (NY: Funk and Wagnalls, 1950), ASIN B0007DS43A, p. 235</ref> At the second trial, Hornbeck testified that on at least two occasions he was warned that Hiss was a Communist, and named Bullitt as his source.<ref>Ralph de Toledano and Victor Lasky, [http://www.americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/Seeds_Of_Treason-Ralph_de_Toledano_and_Victor_Lasky-1950-278pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=343&PHPSESSID=b964065077a1de19538c4c7b1cf9e825 ''Seeds of Treason: The True Story of the Hiss-Chambers Tragedy''], (NY: Funk and Wagnalls, 1950), ASIN B0007DS43A, p. 258-259</ref> John Foster Dulles, who had recommended Hiss for the Carnegie Endowment, likewise testified at that trial that various people had warned him subsequently that Hiss was a Communist.<ref>"[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,806501-1,00.html The Alger Hiss Issue]," ''Time'', November 3, 1952</ref>
The prosecution called Hede Massing, a confessed OGPU recruiter, but at the first trial Judge Samuel H. Kaufman ruled that her testimony was irrelevant. At the second trial, Judge Henry W. Goddard allowed her to testify. Massing testified that at a 1935 Communist cell meeting at the home of State Department official Noel Field, Alger Hiss argued with her that Field should work with his GRU group, rather than her OGPU group. Field had fled to Czechoslovakia, then Hungary, from both of which would eventually come corroboration for Massing's testimony.
The interrogation of Noel Field by Czech secret police after his 1948 defection (reported in 1990 by Karel Kaplan, former archivist of the Central Committee of the Czech Communist Party) records that Field named Alger Hiss as a fellow Communist underground agent in the State Department during the mid-thirties, telling his interrogators that a primary reason for his defection was to avoid testifying in the Hiss’ trial.<ref>[Karel Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (London: I.B. Taurus & Co. Ltd., 1990), ISBN 1-85043-211-2 http://books.google.com/books?id=x3s6sBZw-YkC&pg=PA19&dq=%22noel+field%22&sig=d7XE7yhraGkrz6k4AP0ljIqXEvY#PPA19,M1, pp. 19-25]</ref>
In 1952, Bullitt testified before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee as to what French Premier Daladier had told him in 1938.<ref>Testimony of Ambassador William Bullitt, April 8, 1952, “Communist influence on U.S. policies in the Far East,” Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-Second Congress, Second Session. Hearings: March 13, 1951 to June 20, 1952; Report: July 2, 1952</ref>,<ref>Jim Caldwell, “[http://w4.pica.army.mil/voice/voice2002/020419/KoreaApr4-10.htm Korea - 50 years ago this week, April 4 - 10, 1952],” Army News Service, April 1, 2002]</ref> Also at that hearing, Nathaniel Weyl, a confessed former member of the Ware group, testified that he attended secret Communist meetings with Alger Hiss, and saw Hiss pay his party dues.<ref>“[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,890230,00.html Another Witness],” ''Time'', March 3, 1952]</ref>
Few serious historians still regard the matter of Hiss's guilt as unresolved, given the overwhelming evidence of his guilt compiled by, among others, Allen Weinstein, author of "Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case," who had begun his research intending to prove Hiss innocent before coming to the opposite conclusion as the facts mounted. As the [[Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy|Moynihan commission]] concluded, "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled.<ref>"[http://www.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy] (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1997), Appendix A, p. A-37 (PDF p. 39)</ref> More recently G. Edward White slammed the door on any serious question of Hiss's guilt with his meticulously researched "Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy," published in 2004.
Hiss's case heightened public concern about Soviet espionage penetration of the US Government in the 1930s and 1940s. Congressman [[Richard M. Nixon|Richard Nixon]] was instrumental in securing a perjury conviction for the rising star of the Democratic party, a fact that was to later play an important role in a political vendetta against Nixon. Publicity surrounding the case fed Nixon's career, helping him move from the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] to the [[United States Senate|Senate]] in 1950 to the Vice Presidency of the United States in 1952, and ultimatley the Presidency in 1968.
In February 1952 [[Nathaniel Weyl]] testified before the [[Senate Internal Security Subcommittee|McCarran Committee]] that in 1933 he and Alger Hiss were in the Ware group, a group that operated within the [[Agricultural Adjustment Administration]]. The testimony corroborated Whittaker Chambers, although why Weyl didn't testify at the Hiss trial is a mystery. Hiss was later proven to be a spy through the declassification of the VENONA project.
== Hiss and Chambers ==
After ''Time'' magazine managing editor [[Whittaker Chambers]] charged him as being a [[Communist]], Alger Hiss voluntarily appeared before the [[House Committee on Un-American Activities]]. Some Committee members had misgivings at first about attacking Hiss, but Congressman [[Richard Nixon]], who was fed information by the Catholic Church's secretive Communist hunter, Father [[John Francis Cronin|John Cronin]], and using materials from the [[FBI]], claimed to have sensed that Hiss was hiding something and pressed the Committee to act. Initially, Hiss denied having ever known Chambers.
After Chambers publicly reiterated his charge that Hiss was working for the Soviets on the radio program "Meet the Press," Hiss instituted an unsuccessful slander lawsuit against Chambers, but only after several of his supporters began to publicly question his curious reluctance to file an action. Chambers, in response, presented the "Baltimore Documents", which were copies of a series of government documents that he had obtained from Hiss in the 1930s. The government documents had first been re-typed by Hiss's wife, Priscilla, and these copies were then photographed and passed on to the spy network. Later Chambers produced highly incriminating microfilm evidence which was given to Nixon on December 2nd, from a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm (the so-called [[Pumpkin Papers]]).
== Conviction on perjury ==
Alger Hiss's known [[cryptonym]]s were "Lawyer" <ref> Whittaker Chambers, ''Witness'' New York: Random House, (1952); Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'', New York: Random House, (ed. 1997); "Lawyer" in 1936, Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America�the Stalin Era'', New York: Random House, (1999), pg. 43.</ref> ("Advocate" <ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'', New York: Random House, (ed. 1997)</ref> or "Advokat" <ref>Whittaker Chambers, ''Witness'', New York: Random House, (1952).</ref> which was assigned during his brief time at the [[United States Department of Justice]] between 1935 and 1936, and "Ales" <ref>Venona; Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America�the Stalin Era'', New York: Random House, (1999); Eduard Mark, ''Who Was Venona's Ales? Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case'', Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2003).</ref> in 1945. "Leonard" <ref>KGB file 43173 vol.2 (v) pp. 49-55, ''The Gorsky Memo'', 1948.</ref> did not occur as a cover name in the World War II deciphered KGB Venona traffic and may be a later (or possibly earlier) cryptonym, or a GRU covername.
Few serious historians still regard the matter of Hiss's guilt as unresolved. Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein, author of who had begun his research intending to prove Hiss innocent, concluded, "the body of available evidence proves that Hiss perjured himself when describing his secret dealings with Chambers, so that the jury in his second trial made no mistake in finding Alger Hiss guilty as charged."<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case'' (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), ISBN 0394495462, p. 513</ref> The bipartisan [[Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy|Moynihan commission]] went further -- not just on perjury, but on espionage, the commission's unanimous Final Report concluding, "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled.<ref>"[http://www.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy] (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1997), Appendix A, p. A-37 (PDF p. 39)</ref> More recently G. Edward White slammed the door on any serious question of Hiss's guilt with his meticulously researched "Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy," published in 2004.
==References==