Alger Hiss

Alger Hiss (1904-1996) was high-level United States government official in the 1940s who was accused of being a communist spy. He denied he knew Whittaker Chambers, a former American communist who claimed that Hiss had been passing him State Department secrets for years. Congressman Richard Nixon was convinced that Hiss was lying and questioned him when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Cold War in 1948.

Nixon disliked Hiss, who came from the wealthy background of political connections that Nixon initially lacked. Nixon's pursuit of Hiss catapulted Nixon's career on a path that would eventually land him in the White House.

Both Hiss and Chambers testified before the House Committee, contradicting each other. One had to be lying. When Chambers ultimately produced typed documents of State Department information and claimed they came from Hiss, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan indicted Hiss for perjury in the early 1950s.

But Hiss could afford the best attorney and had the most impressive array of character witnesses ever assembled. It included two U. S. Supreme Court justices, a former Solicitor General, a former Democratic presidential candidate (John W. Davis) and a future one (Adlai Stevenson). Hiss' jury selection was also superb for him: the foreman proved to be sympathetic to the liberal and perhaps even communist movement in America.

Hiss did well on the witness stand in his defense, but his attorney probably erred in putting his wife on. His defense counsel was scathing in his attack on the prosecution's star witness, Chambers himself, who admitted that he worked for the communist cause in America.

The jury could not agree on a verdict, splitting with eight in favor of conviction and four against it. Despite testimony that the unlawfully leaked documents were typed on Hiss' typewriter, the four were not convinced beyond reasonable doubt.

As is typical, the government then brought the case for retrial. Prosecutions typically do better the second time, learning from its mistakes. The judge allowed a broader range of questioning. New defense counsel was weaker, conceding that the leaked documents were typed by the typewriter found in Hiss' possession, but disputing that he typed them. Inexplicably, Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter did not testify for Hiss in the second case.

The defense relied heavily on testimony by a expert witness who was a psychiatrist, who painted Chambers as a pathological liar. But the prosecutor destroyed the witness in one of the most famous cross-examinations in American legal history.

Hiss maintained his innocence until he died, despite the eventual release of secret Soviet files apparently identifying him as a spy. Perhaps Hiss felt he could not go back on his prior statements, or perhaps he remained true to communism in protecting the movement. The case helped define American politics for forty years, propelling Nixon to the Vice Presidency in 1952, Barry Goldwater to the Republican nomination for president in 1964, Nixon to the White House in 1968, and ultimately Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980, where he awarded Chambers a posthumous Medal of Freedom.