Alger Hiss

[Owen Parsons]

Owen, I read both articles. Haynes and Klehr are essentially refuting the Kai Bird thesis. I think their refutation is sound.

Yeah, they are essentially "refuting" an article they had not even read at the time. It was a preemptive strike. I find their "refutation" weak and facile, particularly their attempt to explain away Gorsky's placing Ales in Mexico while Hiss was in Washington, compare which to Kai and Chervonnaya. Jeff Kisseloff calls it "a quickly assembled, conjectural, truncated, inaccurate summary of Bird and Chervonnaya's findings included in a premature and hostile response to reports of "The Mystery of Ales" by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (see "Hiss Was Guilty," History News Network, April 16, 2007), which was posted on the Internet two months before the Bird and Chervonnaya paper was published or even available for review." http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/tanenhausresponse.html

Objective scholares who have looked at the evidence even before the appearence of the VENONA papers concluded that Hiss was indeed guilty.

By "objective scholars" I assume you mean Allen Weinstein, Bush's Chief Archivist and the man who said of the National Endowment for Democracy, which he helped create, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." He wrote a book almost entirely worthless called "Perjury." Since you are not dealing with any real issues, I will just direct you to some refutations and leave it at that. See here:

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/kissel.html

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/navasky.html

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/gaps.html

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/jones.html

Edited October 25, 2007 by Owen Parsons

[Tim Gratz]

Owen wrote:

Yeah, they are essentially "refuting" an article they had not even read at the time. It was a preemptive strike

This makes it clear he had not even read their article. Their article was based on a paper Bird and Chervonnaya presented at day-long conference at NYU:

There matters stood, more or less, until a day-long conference at New York University on April 5 to inaugurate the university's new Center for the United States and the Cold War. "Alger Hiss and History" was the featured topic, on the grounds that the Hiss trial was a "major moment in post-World War II American that reinforced Cold War ideology and accelerated America’s late-1940s turn to the right." Putting aside this tendentious framing, the dominant event of the conference was the presentation of a joint research paper by Kai Bird, a contributing editor for The Nation, and Svetlana Chervonnaya, a Moscow-based Russian historian.[8]The two arrived at the conference claiming to have dramatic new evidence and answers.[9]

[8] Strangely, Bird and Chervonnaya's paper, with its documentation, was not released. Instead, interested parties were told to be content with the verbal presentations until the paper was published at a later date.

[9] Lynne Duke, "Stepping Out of the Shadows," Washington Post, 5 April 2007; Richard Pyle, "Researcher Adds to Alger Hiss Debate," sfgate.com, 5 April 2007.

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© 2007 by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. T

Edited October 25, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Owen Parsons]

Owen wrote:

Yeah, they are essentially "refuting" an article they had not even read at the time. It was a preemptive strike

This makes it clear he had not even read their article. Their article was based on a paper Bird and Chervonnaya presented at day-long conference at NYU:

My eyes must have decieved me then, because I'm pretty sure I did read it.

There matters stood, more or less, until a day-long conference at New York University on April 5 to inaugurate the university's new Center for the United States and the Cold War. "Alger Hiss and History" was the featured topic, on the grounds that the Hiss trial was a "major moment in post-World War II American that reinforced Cold War ideology and accelerated America's late-1940s turn to the right." Putting aside this tendentious framing, the dominant event of the conference was the presentation of a joint research paper by Kai Bird, a contributing editor for The Nation, and Svetlana Chervonnaya, a Moscow-based Russian historian.[8]The two arrived at the conference claiming to have dramatic new evidence and answers.[9]

[8] Strangely, Bird and Chervonnaya's paper, with its documentation, was not released. Instead, interested parties were told to be content with the verbal presentations until the paper was published at a later date.

[9] Lynne Duke, "Stepping Out of the Shadows," Washington Post, 5 April 2007; Richard Pyle, "Researcher Adds to Alger Hiss Debate," sfgate.com, 5 April 2007.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2007 by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. T

Bingo, they weren't refuting the actual, unpublished, article, but an oral presentation, which, if I understand correctly, they did not even attend. Now let's actually address the paper, shall we?

[John Bevilaqua]

Owen, I read both articles. Haynes and Klehr are essentially refuting the Kai Bird thesis. I think their refutation is sound.

Yeah, they are essentially "refuting" an article they had not even read at the time. It was a preemptive strike. I find their "refutation" weak and facile, particularly their attempt to explain away Gorsky's placing Ales in Mexico while Hiss was in Washington, compare which to Kai and Chervonnaya. Jeff Kisseloff calls it "a quickly assembled, conjectural, truncated, inaccurate summary of Bird and Chervonnaya's findings included in a premature and hostile response to reports of "The Mystery of Ales" by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr (see "Hiss Was Guilty," History News Network, April 16, 2007), which was posted on the Internet two months before the Bird and Chervonnaya paper was published or even available for review." http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/tanenhausresponse.html

Objective scholares who have looked at the evidence even before the appearence of the VENONA papers concluded that Hiss was indeed guilty.

By "objective scholars" I assume you mean Allen Weinstein, Bush's Chief Archivist and the man who said of the National Endowment for Democracy, which he helped create, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." He wrote a book almost entirely worthless called "Perjury." Since you are not dealing with any real issues, I will just direct you to some refutations and leave it at that. See here:

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/kissel.html

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/navasky.html

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/gaps.html

http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/jones.html

Nice job, Owen. You apparently are able to see through the thinly veiled subterfuges promulgated by the

efforts of those from the Far Right. Did you see where Nathaniel Weyl ended up? As a suspect in a violation

of The Neutrality Act and as a suspect as an accessory after the fact to murder for his role in the Bayo/Pawley

affair. I was told that if it were not for the fact that he was so old and infirm at the time that the cases

would have been pursued. What role do you think was played by Weyl in the Hiss case?

[John Bevilaqua]

Owen wrote:

Yeah, they are essentially "refuting" an article they had not even read at the time. It was a preemptive strike

This makes it clear he had not even read their article. Their article was based on a paper Bird and Chervonnaya presented at day-long conference at NYU:

My eyes must have decieved me then, because I'm pretty sure I did read it.

There matters stood, more or less, until a day-long conference at New York University on April 5 to inaugurate the university's new Center for the United States and the Cold War. "Alger Hiss and History" was the featured topic, on the grounds that the Hiss trial was a "major moment in post-World War II American that reinforced Cold War ideology and accelerated America's late-1940s turn to the right." Putting aside this tendentious framing, the dominant event of the conference was the presentation of a joint research paper by Kai Bird, a contributing editor for The Nation, and Svetlana Chervonnaya, a Moscow-based Russian historian.[8]The two arrived at the conference claiming to have dramatic new evidence and answers.[9]

[8] Strangely, Bird and Chervonnaya's paper, with its documentation, was not released. Instead, interested parties were told to be content with the verbal presentations until the paper was published at a later date.

[9] Lynne Duke, "Stepping Out of the Shadows," Washington Post, 5 April 2007; Richard Pyle, "Researcher Adds to Alger Hiss Debate," sfgate.com, 5 April 2007.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2007 by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. T

Bingo, they weren't refuting the actual, unpublished, article, but an oral presentation, which, if I understand correctly, they did not even attend. Now let's actually address the paper, shall we?

These Right Wing types don't like to confuse their opinions with the facts. My guess is that no matter how slowly it

was typed, it was still too fast and too complex for them. My other guess is that they are not capable of even

comprehending it.

[Evan Burton]

Is there a possibility the Russians did not want to name Hiss?

If the person mentioned in the cable was NOT Hiss, who were the other candidates?

They couldn't name Hiss if they did not even know him. The one telling fact which came out after the fact relates to the IBM analysis which concluded beyond the shadow of a doubt that the typewriter style or font used to produce the Pumpkin

Papers did NOT EVEN EXIST when these papers were allegedly found and typed.

Any other discussion, speculation or prevarication must first accept the fact of the forged papers as historical truth. The only discussion worth having in fact is WHO persecuted Hiss and why did they choose him as a target?

I think the answer is Wickliffe Preston Draper of The Pioneer Fund and his close crony Nathaniel Weyl who inadvertently admitted to me in a phone conversation that Weyl himself was guilty of a violation of the Neutrality Act during the Bayo

Pawley affair involving anti-Castro exiles. He lived out the rest of his life in the fear that he would be arrested and charged with this crime and others he admitted to in the course of the conversation including being an accessory after

the fact to murder as he watched some of the anti-Castro exiles being shot in front of his eyes.

He also denied knowing either Draper, Osborne or Vonsiatsky despite the fact that he co-authored a book with Osborne one of Drapers cronies.

That man was a paid, pathological xxxx and a mercenary beyond imagination.

John,

Thanks for the reply but I am a little confused. I don't understand your reasoning for saying they would not name him. I am looking at it like this... possible scenarios are:

- The Russian research was complete and accurate, and the statement made that there was no evidence (from Russian sources) of spying was accurate;

- The Russian research was incomplete and / or inaccurate, and the statement made was based on the best available information; or

- The Russian research was complete and accurate but for unknown reasons, the Russians are choosing to deny that Hiss was an agent when in fact he was.

I have no reason to believe the Russian are not being truthful - but can anyone else come up with a reason why they might want to deny his involvement?

I'd like to get clarification on the second part of my original questions, too. Your mentioning of font / typeface style doesn't answer my particular question, IMO. The cable that mentioned an agent being in the State Dept, accompanying FDR, and going to Russia... that came from a decoded SIGINT intercept (IIRC). You do mention two other names: Draper and Weyl. Where they also at State, accompanied FDR, etc? They also fitted the description of the agent mentioned in the cable?

Thanks.

[John Bevilaqua]

Owen, I read both articles. Haynes and Klehr are essentially refuting the Kai Bird thesis. I think their refutation is sound.

Objective scholares who have looked at the evidence even before the appearence of the VENONA papers concluded that Hiss was indeed guilty.

Objective scholares (sic)... What is that supposed to mean? Name one! And only non-objective scholares

conclude that he was innocent? Well, now we are beginning to get the picture. Ipso facto rides again.

[Evan Burton]

John,

Thanks for that article by Kai Bird and Svetlana Chervonnaya. That answers my question about other possible candidates.

[Evan Burton]

So we have at least one other candidate who fits the movements described by the cable.

Now, to play devil's advocate: once again, is there any reason why the Russians would want protect Hiss if it actually had been him? I can't think that there would be many people around who would want this, but this subject is not my forte.

Was the Russian researcher given access to all files? Do they have a bias?

[John Simkin]

Over the years I have had a large number of emails protesting about my page on Alger Hiss. They point out that I do not include information that appeared in The Secret World of American Communism, written by Professor Harvey Klehr, of Emory University, John Earl Haynes, of the Library of Congress, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, formerly of the Comintern Archives in Moscow at the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents in Recent History.

When the book came out it was reviewed by William A. Reuben who covered the Hiss appeals and the motion for a new trial in the 1950s. He worked for the American Civil Liberties Union at the time. Here is part of this review:

The authors claim to have put together a "massive documentary record" from the hitherto secret Comintern archives, revealing "the dark side of American communism." These documents establish, they say, proof both of "Soviet espionage in America" and of the American Communist Party's "inherent" connection with Soviet espionage operations and with its espionage services; and that such spy activities were considered, by both Soviet and the American CP leaders, "normal and proper."

Such assertions are not all that different from what J. Edgar Hoover (and his stooges) were saying half a century ago. But what reinforces the authors' statements are not only the documents from the Russian archives they claim to have uncovered, but also the imposing editorial advisory committee assembled to give this project an eminent scholarly cachet. This editorial advisory committee consists of 30 academics whose names are listed opposite the title page. They include seven Yale University professors, along with professors from Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago, Brandeis, Southern Methodist, Pittsburgh and Rochester universities. There are also an equal number of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences and of officials of various Russian archives.

Reproduced in the book are 92 documents offered by the authors as evidence of what they say is the United States Communist Party's continuous history of "covert activity." These documents, according to Professor Steven Merrit Minor in The New York Times Book Review, reveal that American Communists "relayed atomic secrets to the Kremlin" and also support the testimony of Whittaker Chambers and others that the American Communist Party was engaged in underground conspiracies against the American Government. The authors also say that the documents suggest that those "who continued to claim otherwise were either willfully naive or, more likely, dishonest."

In actuality, many of the documents are ambiguously worded or in some sort of code known only to the senders and recipients. They often contain illegible words, numbers and signatures; relate to unidentifiable persons, places and events; and are preoccupied with bookkeeping matters, inner-party hassles or with protective security measures against FBI and Trotskyite spies. Most importantly, not a single document reproduced in this volume provides evidence of espionage. Ignoring all evidence that contradicts their thesis, the authors attempt to make a case relying on assumption, speculation, and invention about the archival material and, especially, by equating secrecy with illegal spying.

The book's high points are sections relating to what the authors call atomic espionage and the CP Washington spy apparatus. As someone who has carefully examined the archives at the Russian Center, and who over the past four decades has studied the trial transcripts of the major Cold War "spy" cases, I can state that "The Secret World of American Communism," notwithstanding its scholarly accouterments, is a disgracefully shoddy work, replete with errors, distortions and outright lies. As a purported work of objective scholarship, it is nothing less than a fraud.

In this context, certain facts ought to be noted:

* The Moscow archives contain no material relating to these key figures in the Cold War "spy" cases: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, Ruth and David Greenglass, Harry Gold, Klaus Fuchs, Elizabeth Bentley, Hede Massing, Noel Field, Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Colonel Boris Bykov and J. Peters. In my possession is a document, responding to my request, and dated October 12, 1992, signed by Oleg Naumov, Deputy Director of the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History, attesting that the Center has no files on, or relating to, any of the above-named persons.

* Despite the authors' assertion that the documents in this volume show that the CPUSA's elaborate underground apparatus collaborated with Soviet espionage services and also engaged in stealing the secrets of America's atomic bomb project, not one of the 92 documents reproduced in this book supports such a conclusion.

* The authors claim the documents corroborate Whittaker Chambers' allegations about a Communist underground in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s, and while the authors concede that Alger Hiss's name does not appear in any of the documents, they assert that the "subsequent documentation has further substantiated the case that Hiss was a spy." Yet, not one document from the Russian archives supports any of these damning statements.

A total of 15 pages in "Secret World" have some reference either to Hiss or Chambers. By my count, these contain 73 separate misrepresentations of fact or downright lies. For example, the authors claim that J. Peters "played a key role in Chambers' story" that Hiss was a Soviet spy. Peters played no role in Chambers' story about espionage. Chambers said that the key figure in his espionage activities with Hiss was a Russian named "Colonel Boris Bykov," a character whose identity the FBI spent years futilely trying to establish.

The authors claim Chambers testified he worked in the Communist underground in the 1930s with groups of government employees who "provided the CPUSA with information about sensitive government activities." In fact, Chambers testified to the exact contrary on 12 separate occasions.

References to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and their case can be found on five pages. In those pages, by my tally, are 31 falsehoods or distortions of evidence. For example, the authors say the Rosenbergs' conviction was for "involvement in...atomic espionage." In fact they were convicted of conspiracy, and no evidence was ever produced that they ever handed over any information about anything to anyone.

The authors also say the Rosenbergs were arrested as a result of information the authorities obtained from Klaus Fuchs, which led to Harry Gold, who led them to David Greenglass, who implicated the Rosenbergs. All of these statements are based on an FBI press release. In fact, no evidence has ever been produced that indicates that Fuchs, Gold or Greenglass ever mentioned the Rosenbergs before their arrests.

Discussing one other "spy" case, that of Judith Coplon, against whom all charges were dismissed, the authors in typical contempt of official court records write that "there was not the slightest doubt of her guilt." In comments running no less than half a page, they invent a scenario of the Coplon case that contains 14 outright lies and distortions. For instance, the authors say she "stole" an FBI report and she was arrested when she handed over' the stolen report "to a Soviet citizen." All these statements are false; in her two trials, no evidence was ever adduced that she ever stole anything or that she ever handed over anything to anyone.

[Dawn Meredith]

This incredible film-"The Trials of Alger Hiss" - convinced me of the the framing of Hiss when I saw it in Cambridge MA in 1980.

Obviously, I disagree with the last part of this review.

Dawn

Review Summary

Kicking off the Red Scare in the 1950s and launching Richard Nixon's career, Alger Hiss, an important State Department official, was convicted of perjury in the spying charges raised against him by Time Magazine managing editor Whittaker Chambers and sent to prison until 1954. The case was notorious then and for years afterward. At the end of the 1970s, director John Lowenthal got his hands on documents that had been suppressed from Hiss's trials and spent a total of $400,000 making this documentary on Hiss. He interviews jurors and others connected with the case, provides a historical background of the Cold War, and details the suppressed evidence that the jurors never heard. Among these documents is the telling, hand-written statement by Whittaker Chambers that he was a homosexual and by his actions and words, a very depressed and unstable man. Though he himself does not say so in the statement, his behavior before and after the trial and other evidence suggests that he may have been infatuated with Hiss and angry when he was rejected. Lowenthal implies that this may have been the reason for Chambers's accusation. But time has, frankly, not been kind to Lowenthal's documentary on Hiss; Lowenthal claims that Chambers's confession of homosexuality and other more substantial evidence, such as FBI tampering with the results of a typewriter test and the statement of a Soviet official that no documentation on Hiss as a spy could be found in the archives of the former Soviet Union, make a case for Hiss' innocence. Lowenthal doubtless intended his film to become a tool for the exoneration of Hiss, much as Errol Morris would free Randall Dale Adams with The Thin Blue Line. But evidence discovered since 1980 (the year of this film's production), specifically the declassification of the Venona Papers by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the mid-nineties that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, demonstrate that Hiss was indeed a spy for the U.S.S.R - thus proving fallacious the claim made by this documentary. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Movie Details

[John Bevilaqua]

This incredible film-"The Trials of Alger Hiss" - convinced me of the the framing of Hiss when I saw it in Cambridge MA in 1980.

Obviously, I disagree with the last part of this review.

Dawn

Review Summary

Kicking off the Red Scare in the 1950s and launching Richard Nixon's career, Alger Hiss, an important State Department official, was convicted of perjury in the spying charges raised against him by Time Magazine managing editor Whittaker Chambers and sent to prison until 1954. The case was notorious then and for years afterward. At the end of the 1970s, director John Lowenthal got his hands on documents that had been suppressed from Hiss's trials and spent a total of $400,000 making this documentary on Hiss. He interviews jurors and others connected with the case, provides a historical background of the Cold War, and details the suppressed evidence that the jurors never heard. Among these documents is the telling, hand-written statement by Whittaker Chambers that he was a homosexual and by his actions and words, a very depressed and unstable man. Though he himself does not say so in the statement, his behavior before and after the trial and other evidence suggests that he may have been infatuated with Hiss and angry when he was rejected. Lowenthal implies that this may have been the reason for Chambers's accusation. But time has, frankly, not been kind to Lowenthal's documentary on Hiss; Lowenthal claims that Chambers's confession of homosexuality and other more substantial evidence, such as FBI tampering with the results of a typewriter test and the statement of a Soviet official that no documentation on Hiss as a spy could be found in the archives of the former Soviet Union, make a case for Hiss' innocence. Lowenthal doubtless intended his film to become a tool for the exoneration of Hiss, much as Errol Morris would free Randall Dale Adams with The Thin Blue Line. But evidence discovered since 1980 (the year of this film's production), specifically the declassification of the Venona Papers by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the mid-nineties that occurred after the collapse of the Soviet Union, demonstrate that Hiss was indeed a spy for the U.S.S.R - thus proving fallacious the claim made by this documentary. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Movie Details

Dawn, not that this would change anyone's mind after all these years, but I am working on putting together a conclusive

statement about the participation of Wickliffe Draper via Nathaniel Weyl related to the framing of Alger Hiss. Weyl in fact

has not only admitted to the commisson of at least 2 felonies subsequent to the 1950's but he basically denied 3 times

even knowing either Draper or Vonsiatsky until I told him the evidence to the contrary. He wrote a book with an Osborne

who was part of the Pioneer Fund and he included Vonsiatsky in a chapter in a book called The Battle Against Disloyalty

I believe it was called. Bald face distortions like those perpetrated by Weyl are essentially evidence of a continuing trend.

At least going forward, the record might someday be set straight for future generations to study. Nathaniel Weyl was no

more or no less than a potential felon who got away with being an accessory after the fact to murder, and a violator of

The Neutrality Act while being part of the Bayo Pawley affair. Plus he used this event in an attempt to force the resignation

of the POTUS JFK, or to enhance the chances of Barry Goldwater. The latter is of questionable morality and the former

is of questionable legality. Either way Weyl will go down in history as a professional Character Assassin and this will

help exonerate Hiss. If you can find either of these 2 citations or others like them let me know.

[John Simkin]

So we have at least one other candidate who fits the movements described by the cable.

Now, to play devil's advocate: once again, is there any reason why the Russians would want protect Hiss if it actually had been him? I can't think that there would be many people around who would want this, but this subject is not my forte.

Was the Russian researcher given access to all files? Do they have a bias?

It is indeed important to question the motivation of the people examining the Soviet archives. All the major countries involved in the Cold War spied on each other. This is not in dispute. The vast majority of identified Soviet spies identified in the UK did it for ideological reasons. They became secret communists during the 1930s. As one commentator pointed out, most of the exposed Soviet agents in the United States did it for the money.

In the UK Soviet spies never really became a political issue although MI5 successfully convinced Harold Wilson in 1964 that some of his party members were Soviet spies and this resulted in them not becoming government ministers.

This is not true of the United States where the identification of spies has become a major political issue. The Cold War got started with the claim by the Republicans that Truman’s Democratic administration had betrayed the country. Joe McCarthy attempted to convince the American public that the Truman administration was full of secret communists. Alger Hiss was just one of many who were smeared in this way in order to gain political advantage and it was one of the factors in helping Eisenhower get elected in 1952.

McCarthyism is in most people’s view, a dirty word. It ruined the careers of thousands of people. Their only crime was to hold left of centre views in their youth. The only way they could survive was to name those who also shared these political opinions in the 1930s. Some did while others, although in many cases they now rejected the left-wing views of their youth, refused to cause problems for their former comrades. The situation brought out the best and worst in people.

Republicans with moral integrity feel ashamed about McCarthyism. However, others still feel good about using dirty tricks to gain power in 1952. (They also feel the same about Nixon’s wins in 1968 and 1972 and George Bush’s stolen election.)

Republicans who follow in the tradition of McCarthy are trying desperately to show that some of the Democrats named in the early 1950s were really spies. Therefore, they have desperately searched the Soviet archives looking for evidence that people like Alger Hiss was spying on the United States. The same thing is going on in a search for evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was really a KGB agent. They are willing to offer KGB agents money in order to come up with this evidence. No doubt, for the right price, documents will be manufactured, showing that Oswald was in the employment of the Soviet Union when he killed JFK. However, I for one will not believe this evidence unless these documents are authenticated. In the recent documentary claiming that Oswald was working for the KGB, the evidence took the form of photocopied documents that were only shown to the researchers.

[John Simkin]

I'm not saying Hiss was evil, or even a spy. He was "involved" with an NKVD functionary and "pro-Communist" as a young man. When the 1948 atmosphere was poisoned by anti-Communist fervor, Hiss was trapped in a lie. But that make him a traitor? A spy? A risk to internal security? Someone who should be remembered for all time as some sort of evil person intent on the destruction of our way of life? NO. Yet that is how most people are being made to feel about him. His accusers were paid to inform on him. Chambers and Weyl should be remembered for all time as sleaze bags and scum balls. And that is my point here. Weyl committed 3 felonies and watched as several people drowned or died from gunshot wounds in front of him. He violated The Neutrality Act. He provided guns, ammo and munitions to attack a foreign power. Now THIS GUY was a person who should be reviled, despised, shunned, abhorred and castigated, not Hiss. McCarthy, Otepks and Morris should be reviled, despised, shunned, abhorred and castigated, not Hiss. And THAT is one of my goals here. To set the record straight. I despise YAFers, Birchers and McCarthyites.

In answer to your first rhetorical, no. I think I made that clear. As were many during the depression, Hiss was drawn to the potential of socialism or communism as a possible solution. In restrospect, it was not, but many well-intentioned people held out such hope, at least until the dark side of Stalinism became apparent.

By 1948, the US was whooped into anti-Communist fervor, in part by some of the people you mention. In that atmosphere, the charges by Chambers seemed very sinister, perhaps more so than the reality of his relationship with Hiss. I understand why Hiss sought to minimize his relationship with Chambers. And the world situation became even more polarized during the Hiss trials. And I don't doubt that Weyl, Levine, Massing, Bentley, Chambers and others constituted a dangerous cadre of professional ex-commies who were very loose in their charges.

All of this having been said, I believe Hiss lied when he initially said he did not recognize Chambers; and that is what constituted the legal charge of perjury.

A person who knew Hiss well confirms that he was very sympathetic to communism in the 1930s.

As to the substance of Chambers's charges that Hiss was an agent, the evidence is unclear. There are others named by Chambers who later suggested that Hiss was sympathetic to what they were doing; and there is a person in the Venona messages who MAY have been Hiss. But Hiss gets a presumption of innocence in the absence of proof.

So I agree that the professional ex-communists were an untrustworthy bunch, and that Hiss got caught up in an era of such fervor, but his attempt to minimize his connection with Chambers cost him dearly.

[John Bevilaqua]

Why was Hiss framed and by whom? All you have to do is consider Hiss' efforts within The Nye

Committees and when he helped frame the UN Charter and you will have the answers right in

front of your nose. The purpose of Joe McCarthy's campaign after World War II was to minimize

the examination of war profiteering by his friends and to change the focus to concentrate on those

who kept Germany out of the UN Security Council, chief among those was Alger Hiss. So far I have

seen nothing about the discussion of Hiss' roles in these 2 major events. Nothing.

Who Was Alger Hiss?

A Brief Biography

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alger Hiss was born on November 11, 1904 in Baltimore, Maryland. He was the fourth of five children. In 1907, his father, an executive with a dry goods firm, committed suicide, leaving the children to be raised by their mother and aunt.

Alger Hiss and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Hiss attended Johns Hopkins University and then Harvard Law School, where he came under the influence of future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. He graduated from the law school in 1929. On Frankfurter's recommendation, Hiss received the honor of becoming Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's private secretary. Hiss would later say Holmes was the most profound influence in his life.

After his one-year appointment, Hiss joined the law firm of Choate, Hall & Stewart in Boston, Massachusetts. The next year, he and his wife Priscilla moved to New York, where she worked on a book while he joined another law firm. He stayed with the firm until 1933, when he received a telegram from Frankfurter, saying the country needed him. The telegram urged him to join the New Deal as an attorney with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, a program set up by FDR to help farmers who had been hurt by the Depression.

In 1934, Hiss's services were loaned out to the Nye Committee of the U.S. Senate, which was investigating profiteering by the munitions industry. During this time, New Deal legislation was constantly under attack by conservatives, and, as a lawyer, Hiss became a point man whose specialty was defending the constitutionality of the new reforms. When the Nye Committee work was completed, he joined the Justice Department as special assistant to the Solictor General to help defend the AAA before the Supreme Court. The following year, he entered the Trade Agreements division of the State Department, as special assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Sayre, to gain firsthand experience that would help the government defend the constitutionality of the Trade Agreements Act.

In 1941, Hiss's son Tony was born. That same year, Hiss became assistant to Stanley Hornbeck, the State Department's Political Adviser in Charge of Far Eastern Affairs, and, in 1944, as World War II was drawing to a close, he helped plan for peace. As deputy director of the Department's Office of Special Political Affairs, he was in charge of setting up the United Nations. Later that year, he headed the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, which formally drew up the U.N. Charter.

In 1945, while serving as a member of the American delegation to the Yalta Conference, Hiss was named Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs. Later that year, he was Secretary General of the San Francisco Conference that organized the United Nations. After the conference - as the highlight of his government career - Hiss was asked to fly the new U.N. charter back to Washington in a special plane for President Truman's signature. "That was the day," Hiss said later, "when I realized exactly how important I really was - the charter had a parachute and I didn't."

Hiss left the government in 1946 to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a foundation which under his leadership became a leading supporter of the U.N. He was serving in that capacity when before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948, Whittaker Chambers first made his public charges that Hiss was a secret communist. Hiss denied the charge and filed a libel suit against Chambers, but after Chambers produced a number of copies of State Department documents and said they were given to him by Hiss for transmission to the Soviet Union, perjury charges were brought against Hiss when he denied before a grand jury that he had committed espionage. The Hiss-Chambers affair would prove to be the watershed case of the McCarthy period and one of the most important of the century.

Alger Hiss in handcuffs

A first trial ended in a hung jury, but Hiss, who firmly maintained his innocence, was convicted in a second trial. He served 44 months in jail before his release in November 1954.

When he left prison, the other inmates stood at the windows to cheer him, something that had happened only once before, when Eugene V. Debs left jail in 1921. Hiss in later years reported that, for him, prison had been a place of learning and growing, saying that "three years in jail is a good corrective for three years at Harvard."

Disbarred, Hiss took a job as a salesman and wrote "In the Court of Public Opinion," in which he rebutted the government's case point by point. (continued in the next column)

Alger Hiss's book, In the Court of Public Opinion.

Hiss and his wife separated in 1959. He continued to assert his innocence, and over the years evidence surfaced to back his claim, including some 40,000 pages of FBI documents released to him in the 1970s. Based on information in the documents which indicated that the FBI hid evidence that would have helped clear him, Hiss filed a petition of coram nobis, asking that the verdict be overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct. The petition was turned down in Federal Court. Appeals were unsuccessful. In 1975, however, to his enormous personal satisfaction, Hiss was readmitted to the Massachusetts bar.

Hiss married his second wife, Isabel Johnson, in 1986. Two years later, he wrote his autobiography, "Recollections of a Life." His grandson, Jacob Hiss, was born in 1991. Alger Hiss died at the age of 92 on Nov. 15, 1996, still fighting for vindication.

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We Remember Alger Hiss

What do friends and supporters have to say about Alger Hiss? Click here to find out.

Alger Hiss in 1957

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Photo Album

Browse the photo album to see images of Alger Hiss drawn from throughout his life.

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In His Own Words: Interviews With Alger Hiss and His Own Writings

Between 1951 and 1954, Alger Hiss poured forth many of his deepest reflections on life, literature, art, politics, nature, human nature, and the state of the world in the hundreds of letters he wrote home from prison to his wife and young son. Extracts from dozens of these previously unpublished letters, which also include the games, puzzles, and stories he created for his son, form the core of "The View from Alger's Window," Tony Hiss's 1999 memoir about his father. Click here for further information on this book.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Alger Hiss began working on a history of the New Deal. The book was never completed. Among his notes for the book, however, was this remarkable essay on his own political journey that was intended to serve as the book's introduction. This piece, which is of major historical importance, tells not only Hiss's personal story, but in a larger sense it speaks for a whole generation of Americans who joined or supported the New Deal and its values. Click here to read Alger Hiss's "Liberal Manifesto."

In 1974, Alger Hiss was interviewed by James Day for the public television series Day At Night. Click here to read the transcript of this wide-ranging interview which, among other things, reveals Hiss's long-held faith in democracy as inspired by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

In 1978, Alger Hiss was interviewed by Judah and Alice V. Graubart for their oral history of the 1930s, "Decade of Destiny" (Contemporary Books). Click here to read Hiss's recollections of the New Deal and of the 1930s, a decade that was crucial to Hiss's life and career.

In 1980, as tension ran high in America with the presidential elections playing out over the long running Iranian hostage crisis, Alger Hiss took a look back at the McCarthy period for Barrister magazine, a publication of the American Bar Association. Hiss examines the roots of witch hunting and addresses the question, "Could it happen again?" Click here to read the article.

As one of the last surviving participants in the Yalta Conference and a lightning rod for criticism aimed at FDR's foreign policies, Hiss made a point of defending the agreements between the U.S. and Russia at Yalta in 1945. Click here to read his article, "Yalta: Modern American Myth," which appeared in The Pocket Book Magazine in 1955. Click here to read a brief article on Yalta he wrote for The Nation in 1982.

Alger Hiss was frequently accused of secretly having secretly forged a pro-Soviet policy at Yalta. In fact, Hiss argued for a tough anti-Soviet stance, as this story based on Hiss's notes from the conference indicates. Click here to read the article, as it appeared in The New York Times when the notes were released in 1955.

In a lengthy, candid 1978 interview for The Advocate, a news publication of the Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Alger Hiss discussed his coram nobis petition and other legal aspects of his case. Click here to read the interview.

Nine months before Whittaker Chambers made his first public charges that Alger Hiss had been, and perhaps still was, a Communist, Hiss wrote an influential article for The New York Times Sunday Magazine on behalf of the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe. Because the Soviets strongly opposed the plan, this article was presented at Hiss's second perjury trial as evidence of his clear anti-communist leanings. More than a half century later, the article provides insight into Hiss's political thinking and his strong humanitarianism. Click here to read the article and an introduction by the editors of this site.

Richard Nixon wrote about his "Six Crises" in his 1962 autobiography. Eleven years later during the Watergate hearings, Alger Hiss followed with "My Six Parallels," an article for The New York Times op ed page.

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Alger Hiss's Correspondence

Alger Hiss corresponded with thousands of people during his life. His correspondents ran the gamut from prominent government officials, journalists and literary and academic figures to relatives, students, researchers ex-convicts, friends and enemies. The letters, to-and-from Hiss, provide a unique window onto his life and character.

This section will be updated regularly. Readers' contributions are welcome. Anyone willing to provide copies of Hiss's letters should contact the site at hiss.info@nyu.edu

Click here to read Alger Hiss's correspondence.

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Alger Hiss: As the Press Saw Him

In 1960, journalist Brock Brower wrote an in-depth account of Alger Hiss's post-prison life and career for Esquire magazine. Click here to read his article.

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