Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was a high-ranking[1] U.S. State Department official and Secretary-General[2] of the founding conference of the United Nations. Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950, after denying involvement in Soviet espionage. For decades, a great number of Americans saw Hiss, a liberal[3] Democrat,[4] as an innocent victim of McCarthyism.[5]
"Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important," wrote Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D.-N.Y.), who was instrumental in the declassification of Venona decrypts and FBI files on the case,[6] which had been classified for half a century. "Parts of the American government had conclusive evidence of his guilt," concluded the liberal Democrat[7] in 1998, "but they never told."[8]