==New Deal==
In 1933, Frankfurter sent Hiss a telegram urging him to join President [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]]'s [[New Deal]] under Secretary of Agriculture [[Henry A. Wallace]] as an attorney with the new [[Agricultural Adjustment Administration]] (AAA).<ref>Dan Cryer, "[http://www.salon.com/books/feature/1999/06/01/hiss/index.html We're a long way from the end of this]," Salon.com, June 1, 1999</ref> At AAA, Hiss reunited with his boyhood friend [[Henry Collins]], Harvard Law School classmate [[Lee Pressman]] and IJA colleague [[Nathan Witt]], and became acquainted with [[Harold Ware]].<ref>[http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-5testimony.html Testimony of Alger Hiss before the House Committee on Un-American Activities] (August 5, 1948)</ref> Even before the FBI would learn of [[Whittaker Chambers]]'s charges, one of Hiss' colleagues at the AAA would tip off FBI investigators that Hiss and his circle were fellow travelers, if not Communists.<ref>FBI memorandum: Ladd to Hoover, January 28, 1949, p. 2 (FBI file: Hiss-Chambers, Vol. 44)</ref>
In 1934, Hiss was appointed became General Counsel for the [[U.S. Senate]]'s [[Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry|Nye committe]],<ref>[http://www.mdhs.org/library/Mss/ms002504.html Biographical Sketch. Alger Hiss Collection, 1934-1979] (Maryland Historical Society)</ref> which investigated charges people Chairman [[Gerald P. Nye]] (Rep.-N.D.) called [[Wall Street]]'s "merchants of death,"warmongering" and "profiteering" by the munitions industry in World War I.<ref>[http://www.archivessenate.gov/legislativeartandhistory/guidehistory/senateminute/chapter-18-merchants_of_death.htm 1921-1946.html#18D-1940: September 4 Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry] (April 12, 1934). Guide , "Merchants of Death"]</ref> whom he accused of conspiracy to the Records of lead the U.S. Senate at into war. One scholar has dubbed this a "witch-hunt" for "subversive capitalists," in which Hiss was to Nye what [[Roy Cohn]] would later be to [[Senator]] [[Joe McCarthy]] (Rep.-Wisc.)<ref>Peter Viereck, ''Unadjusted Man in the National ArchivesAge of Overadjustment: Where History and Literature Intersect'' (Edison, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2004) ISBN:0765808064, pp. 156-157</ref> It was here in this role that Hiss met [[Whittaker Chambers]].<ref>William Fitzgibbon, "[http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/reviews/chambers-chronology.html The Hiss-Chambers Case: A Chronology Since 1934]," ''The New York Times'', June 12, 1949</ref>
The following year, Hiss transferred into the [[Justice Department]] as special assistant to the [[Solictor General of the United States|Solictor General]], where he tried unsuccessfully to defend defended the [[Agricultural Adjustment Act]] before the [[United States Supreme Court]]<ref>[http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-5testimony.html Testimony of Alger Hiss before the House Committee on Un-American Activities] (August 5, 1948)</ref> (which ruled the AAA unconstitutional in 1936).<ref>[http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct-cgi/get-us-cite?297+1 United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936)]</ref>
During the early and middle thirties, Hiss was a source of agent information for a Soviet spy ring in Washington, the [[Silvermaster group]], according to a former [[GRU]] ''rezident'' in London and New York, as reported by [[Pavel Sudoplatov]], former deputy director of Foreign Intelligence for the [[USSR]].<ref>Anatoli Sudoplatov, Pavel Sudoplatov, Leona P. Schecter and Jerrold L. Schecter, ''Special Tasks'' (New York: Back Bay Books, 1995) ISBN 0316821152, p. 227-228</ref>
The transcripts also record Field 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. 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</ref><ref>Sam Tanenhaus, "Hiss Case 'Smoing Gun'?" ''New York Times'', October 15, 1993; Sam Tanenhaus, "New Reasons to Doubt Hiss," ''Wall Street Journal'', November 18, 1993</ref>
A In a 1936 memorandum by Massing, found in the [[NKVD]] archives by Weinstein and Vassiliev, Massing complains to Moscow about Hiss (using his real name) talking to Field (whom she refers to by his code name "Ernst"): "Alger told him that he was a Communist," complains Massing—a serious breach of discipline—and asked Field to use his connections to help Hiss get into the State Department.<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. 228</ref>
==State Department==