Alger Hiss

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Alger Hiss

Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was a U.S. State Department official and Secretary General to the founding charter conference of the United Nations. Following accusations that he spied on behalf of the Soviet Union, Hiss was convicted of perjury.

Childhood and Early Career

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he was educated at Baltimore City College high school and Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. In 1929 he received his law degree from Harvard Law School, where he was a protégé of Felix Frankfurter, the future Supreme Court justice. Before joining a Boston law firm, he served for a year as clerk to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.. The same year Hiss married the former Mrs. Priscilla Hobson, who later worked for the Library of Congress.

In 1933, he entered government service, working in several areas as an attorney in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, starting with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Hiss worked for the Nye Committee, which investigated wartime profiteering by military contractors during World War I. He served briefly in the Justice Department.

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President Harry Truman addresses the delegates at the United Nations Charter Conference 1945. Alger Hiss, Secretary General of the Conference, is seated bottom right next to Sec. of State Edward Stettinius, Jr.

In 1936, Hiss and his brother Donald Hiss began working in the United States Department of State, where he served as assistant to Francis B. Sayre, a son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, and later as an assistant to United States Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, Jr.. Hiss became special assistant to the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, then in 1944, he became a special assistant to the Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs (OSPA), a policy-making office that concentrated on postwar planning for international organization and later became its director. As such he was executive secretary at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference, which drafted plans for the organization that would become the United Nations.

In 1945 he went with several other officials to the meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Winston Churchill at Yalta, where the three national leaders drew the map of postwar Europe and set the stage for the Cold War. Both Yalta, and the nature of Hiss's involvement with the conference, have becomes sources of great controversy in the Cold War. Some have suggested parallels between Hiss and a Soviet operative known as ALES, based on the VENONA project. During his own trial, it was suggested that Hiss had helped the Soviet Union receive its 3 UN votes. Hiss himself denied the charges in his own Congressional testimony, asserting that he was opposed to giving the USSR any votes at all (http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-5testimony.html).

Hiss served as the secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (the United Nations Charter Conference) in San Francisco in 1945. Hiss afterwards became the full Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs.

In 1946 Hiss became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served until May 5, 1949.

House Committee on Un-American Activities

The public controversy was brought to light in 1948 over Whittaker Chambers's accusation that Alger Hiss, assisted by his wife Priscilla, had been a member of the Communist Party and a spy.

After Time managing editor Whittaker Chambers charged him with 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, covertly being fed information by the Roman Catholic Church's secretive "Commie" hunter, Father John Francis Cronin, and using materials which he had been secretly and illegally receiving 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, saying quite specifically "the name means nothing to me." After being asked to identify Chambers, whom he had not seen in at least a dozen years, from a photograph, Hiss indicated that his face "might look familiar" and requested to see him in person. When he later confronted Chambers in a hotel room, with HUAC representatives present, Hiss identified him as a person he had known as "George Crosley", whom Hiss had allowed to live in his home when Chambers was destitute in the mid-1930s. Later, Hiss claimed to have given Chambers an old car, which ended up in the hands of the American Communist party. All of Chamber's testimony however was given under congressional immunity, a fact which protected him from slander and libel suits. Hiss challenged him to repeat his charges in public without the benefit of such protection.

After Chambers publicly reiterated his charge that Hiss was working for the Soviets on the radio program Meet the Press, Hiss instituted an eventually unsuccessful slander lawsuit against Chambers. Chambers, in his defense, presented the "Baltimore Documents", which were copies of a series of government documents that he had allegedly obtained from Hiss in the 1930s. Both Chambers and Hiss had denied any act of espionage in their testimony to Congress. By introducing the "Baltimore Documents," Chambers subjected both Hiss and himself to perjury charges. Chambers claimed that the government documents had first been re-typed by Hiss's wife, Priscilla, and that these copies were then photographed and passed on to the spy network. Later Chambers produced four rolls of microfilm of State Department documents, which were given to Nixon on December 2, from a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm (the so-called Pumpkin Papers). Hiss was linked to these "papers" by the matching of the type to the Hiss family's old typewriter. There has been much subsequent controversy about the genuineness of this typewriter which was located after the event. Due to Nixon's pleading with the grand jury, Chambers was never indicted for his own perjury.

Alger Hiss in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary
(Photos courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons)

Conviction on perjury

Hiss was charged with two counts of perjury; the grand jury could not indict him for espionage, as the statute of limitations had run out. Hiss went to trial twice. The first trial started on May 31, 1949, but ended in a hung jury on July 7, 1949. Hiss's character witnesses at his first trial included such notables as former Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, Justice Felix Frankfurter, and John W. Davis. The second trial lasted from November 17, 1949, to January 21, 1950, and the jury found Hiss guilty on two counts of perjury. Some of the Baltimore Documents were indeed classified (though of trival trade regulations rather than military affairs), and four handwritten notes were in Hiss's own handwriting. The verdict was upheld at the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States. Hiss was sentenced to five years on January 25, 1950, and served 44 months at the Lewisburg Federal Prison before being released November 27, 1954.

Later developments

Hiss was disbarred and became a salesman for a time. He was later readmitted to the Massachusetts bar and in 1972, he even enjoyed a rare victory in the courts. A federal court overturned the so-called Hiss Act, the law that Congress had passed to bar him from collecting his pension. The act had been applied in an unconstitutional manner, the court ruled, ordering the government to pay Hiss his pension retroactive to November 1966 -- $61 a month.

The case heightened public concern about Soviet espionage penetration of the US Government in the 1930s and 1940s. As a native-born, well-educated, and highly connected government official, Alger Hiss did not have the profile of a typical spy. His conviction therefore sent the public in panic about loyalty of the entire government, fueling the rise of Joe McCarthy and the "Red Scare". Publicity surrounding the case also fed the early political career of Richard M. Nixon, helping him move from the House of Representatives to the United States Senate in 1950, and to the Vice Presidency of the United States in 1952. Nixon's downfall in the Watergate scandal would cast new doubts on the Alger Hiss trial, and whether "dirty tricks" by the prosecution had yielded an unfair verdict.

Subsequent years yielded important developments for both the supporters and detractors of Alger Hiss. Access to FBI files, the Venona Project, revelations on Nixon, the partial opening of Soviet Union intel files, and countless new testimony and recantation added further fuel to the debate.

As for Hiss, he maintained his innocence until his death at the age of 92 on November 15, 1996.

The Case for Alger Hiss's Innocence

The Typewriter

The Woodstock typewriter was a key part of the prosecution's case against Hiss, the "smoking gun" that physically linked the Hiss family to the Baltimore documents in Chamber's possession. Ironically, the defense investigators had tracked the family's old typewriter on their own, believing that the machine would vindicate Alger Hiss from the allegations. Expert testimony however showed the documents originated from the typewriter.

Hiss continued for the rest of his life strenuously to protest his innocence, going so far as to file a petition of coram nobis, in which he presented his defense team's documented, putatively scientific evidence indicating that the typewriter used to convict him had been fabricated, that is, remanufactured, and that the so-called Baltimore Documents, papers which Chambers claimed that Hiss or his wife Priscilla had typed, were forgeries. At the time, few people suspected that remanufacturing of typewriters was possible, and an FBI agent testified at the Hiss trial that it was impossible. In fact, during WWII J. Edgar Hoover arranged for his own FBI agents to be trained at a British intelligence base called Camp X 100 miles east of Toronto, where one of the specialties was the remanufacture of typewriters and document forgery.

Former White House counsel John Dean, alleged in his memoir Blinded by Ambition that the typewriter had been forged. Dean asserted that he was informed that Nixon at one point in his Presidency told Charles Colson, "The typewriters are always the key. We built one (i.e., a legal case) in the Hiss case." Colson denied ever having such a conversation with Nixon, and it has never been found in Nixon's tapes.

Evidence of Judicial Misconduct

As a result of a Freedom of Information Act suit by Hiss, it was revealed in 1975 that: 1) an FBI agent knowingly committed perjury at the Hiss trial, testifying it was impossible to forge a document by typewriter, 2) the FBI knew that the typewriter introduced as evidence at the trial could not have been the Hiss typewriter, but withheld this information from Hiss, and 3) the FBI had an informer, Horace W. Schmahl, a private detective who was hired by the Hiss defense team, who reported on the Hiss defense strategy to the government. Other information which had been withheld from Hiss and his lawyers included the FBI's knowledge of Chambers' homosexuality and the intensive FBI surveillance of Hiss, which included phone taps and mail openings (none of which showed any indication that Hiss was a spy or a Communist.)

As for the "Pumpkin Papers," the five rolls of microfilm that Nixon had described as evidence of the "most serious series of treasonable activities … in the history of America," the FOIA releases showed one roll of microfilm was completely blank, and information on two rolls of microfilm were largely not only unclassified but were about topics such as life rafts and fire extinguishers, information which was easily obtainable at any time from the open shelves at the Bureau of Standards.

Hiss was readmitted to the bar in Massachusetts in 1975, without an admission of guilt, after the government's misconduct was revealed. The Supreme Court, which by this time contained several Nixon appointments, including Chief Justice Warren Burger, refused to nullify the Hiss perjury conviction.

The Soviet Archives

After the end of the Cold war and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Alger Hiss petitioned General Dimitry Antonovich Volkogonov, who had become President Yeltsin's military advisor and the overseer of all the Soviet intelligence archives, to request the release of any Soviet files on the Hiss case. Interestingly, both former President Richard M. Nixon and the director of his presidential library, John H. Taylor, wrote a similar letter, though the actual contents of that writing are not publically available.

Russian archivists and researchers responded by reviewing their files, and in the fall of 1992 reported back that they had found no evidence that Alger Hiss had ever been a member of a Soviet agency. They found no proof that Hiss was part of the Communist Party USA; and, similarly, that they had found no evidence that he had ever been an agent for the KGB, or for any other intelligence agency of the USSR as well.

Many conservatives and other Hiss detractors were shocked, and quickly questioned Volkogonov's analysis. Though Volkogonov admitted that it was possible some evidence had been lost or destroyed, he ultimately stood by his assessment. General-Lieutenant Vitaly Pavlov, who ran Soviet intelligence work in North America in the late 1930s and early 1940s, also corrobated Volkogonov in his memoirs, stating that Hiss never worked for the USSR as one of his agents. ^11

Alger and ALES

Many of those who believed in Alger Hiss's innocence have maintained that ALES could have never been Alger Hiss. The late John Lowenthal, a Hiss lawyer and longtime supporter, is one of chief proponents of this view.

FBI Special Agent Robert Lamphere was the official who surmised in a footnote to the cable that ALES was "Probably Alger Hiss." But Lowenthal challenges much of Lamphere's reasoning by the following:

• Ales was said in the message to have been active for 11 years, 1935 through the date of the message, 1945; Alger Hiss was accused of spying in the mid-30's and not later than 1938.

• Ales was said to be the leader of a small group of espionage agents; Hiss was accused of having acted alone, aside from his wife as a typist and Chambers as courier.

• Ales was a GRU (military intelligence) agent who obtained military intelligence, and only rarely provided State Department material; Alger Hiss was accused of obtaining only non-military information and the papers used against him were non-military State Department materials that he allegedly produced on a regular basis.

• Even if Hiss was the spy he was accused of being, he could not have continued being so after 1938, as Ales did, because in that year Hiss would have become too great a risk for any Soviet agency to use. In that year, Whittaker Chambers had allegedly obtained the incriminating papers from Hiss and broke with the Communist Party and then went into hiding, telling his Communist Party colleagues he would denounce them if they did not follow suit. At this point therefore, ALES's cover would be in exterme jeopardy if he were Alger Hiss.

Lowenthal also suggests an interepretation of the transcript that differs from Lamphere's reading. Lowenthal's reading puts Ales not at the conference but "a Soviet personage in a very responsible position," Comrade Vyshinski, the deputy foreign minister. Vyshinski was at Yalta, and did go on to Moscow, as did Alger Hiss (for a day with Sec. of State Stettinus). According to Lowenthal , the entire point of paragraph 6 (#1822), that the GRU asked Vyshinski to get in touch with Ales to convey the GRU's thanks for a job well done, would have been moot if Ales had actually been in Moscow, for once there the GRU could have easily contacted Ales with no need of Vyshinski.

Venona #1579 is only other cable to mention Hiss, and is largely fragments of a 1943 message from the GRU chief in New York to GRU in Moscow. The reference reads: ". . . from the State Department by name of HISS . . ." The name "Hiss" was not translated by the Venona cryptanalysts, but rather appeared just that way in the orginal: "Spelled out in the Latin alphabet" according to footnote iv. A possible reason for the GRU to switch from the Russin Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, just for a name, is for the sake of accuracy in rendering an unfamiliar name in a non-Russian, Latin-alphabet language. The name "Hiss" also goes without a first name, so it could refer to either Alger or Donald, both who were at State in 1943.

But for the GRU to name Hiss openly and directly, not by a covername, would be radically unorthodox for Soviet espoinage protocols. Both the NSA and the FBI have insisted that once a covername was assigned it was used to the exclusion of the real name.

Some historians, the most well-known being Eduard Mark, dispute this analysis. See References for more information.

Critique of the Critics

The historian Allen Weinstein and the journalist Alexander Vassiliev are often critized for the nature of their work in The Haunted Wood. Through exclusive access to several Soviet intel files (reported to cost the publisher Random House over 1 million dollars in payment to ex-KGB agents), the authors quoted several memos which they believed proved Hiss's guilt. These memos, however, have been questioned in that they were discovered in Soviet Archives on a lucrative "cash-for-documents" access rights basis . All other historians were denied access to the same archives, making it impossible for others to check Weinstein's and Vassiliev's work.

Allen Weinstein has also been accused of misquoting, misrepresenting, or misconstruing some of his interview subjects for his book Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. One of his sources, Samuel Krieger, sued Weinstein for libel in 1979. Weinstein settled out of court, issuing a public apology and paying Krieger an undisclosed sum for his error.

The Case Against Alger Hiss

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was instrumental in securing the release of the long-awaited FBI files relating to the Venona project, in his 1998 book, Secrecy: The American Experience wrote, "Belief in the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss became a defining issue in American intellectual life. Parts of the American government had conclusive evidence of his guilt, but they never told."

The Venona Project and ALES

One of the strongest pieces of evidence against Hiss is his close association with the Soviet operative known as ALES by the Venona cable wires. The details describing ALES seem to closely match Hiss's own profile during the Yalta Conference. ALES was a military information spy, who was described as being a high-level official of the State Department attending the summit at Yalta.

Venona project transcript #1822 dated March 30, 1945, reads in part

"For some years past he has been the leader of a small group of probatiners (STAZhERY), for the most part consisting of his relations.

"After the Yalta Conference, when he had gone on to MOSCOW, a Soviet personage in a very responsible position (ALES gave to understand that it was Comrade VYShINSKIJ) allegedly got in touch with ALES and at the behest of the Military NEIGHBORS passed on to him their gratitude and so on. [1]

The 1997 Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, echoing the sentiments of former FBI agents, wrote in its final report, "[t]his could only be Alger Hiss" (see [[2]]).

Alleged Spying Activity

Beyond the "Pumpkin Papers," many Hiss detractors have suggested further acts of spying by Hiss.

On September 7, 1945, Hiss proposed that the State Department create a new post, that of 'special assistant for military affairs' linked to his Office of Special Political Affairs. When Hiss was investigated in 1946 it was discovered he had obtained top secret reports "on atomic energy ... and other matters relating to military intelligence" that were outside the scope of his Office of Special Political Affairs, which dealt largely with United Nations diplomacy."

The following is a reconstruction of Hiss's activities according to subsequent accusations by his contemporaries. Hiss became a member of the Ware group of underground Communists, a Soviet espionage group. In August or September of 1934, Hiss met Whittaker Chambers and started paying Communist Party dues. He began working with the GRU in 1935 and Chambers acted as courier. GRU Illegal Rezident Boris Bykov recommended espionage procedures, followed by Hiss, that included bringing files home nightly and retyping them. Harold Glasser was transferred to GRU in 1937. Hiss's membership was later corroborated by Nathaniel Weyl who also worked in the AAA and was a member of the Ware group in testimony before the McCarran Committee.

Testimony By Chambers and Others

In February 1952, Nathaniel Weyl testified before the 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 with Whittaker Chambers'.

Soviet Archives Revisited

Subsequently much evidence of Hiss's guilt has been compiled by several historians including 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. More recently, G. Edward White produced a meticulously researched case against Hiss in Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy, published in 2004.

In the course of this research, the following two Soviet memos have come to light.

An April 25, 1945, memo from KGB General Pavel Fitin, head of foreign intelligence, to Vsevolod Merkulov, overall head of the KGB, explained that Harold Glasser moved back and forth, sometimes working for the KGB, but at times also the GRU. Glasser learned from his friend Hiss that the latter's group had been decorated with honors. Glasser felt slighted, as the others in Hiss's group were decorated, but Glasser himself was not.

After the exposure of several Soviet espionage networks in the United States, Stalin created the KI, a centralized bureaucracy, modelled on the CIA, to funnel information from both KGB and GRU to intelligence users. During the KI's short existence (1947 - 1951), Anatoly Gorsky, who served in the United States and Great Britain, wrote a memorandum on Compromised American Sources and Networks. This memo incontrovertibly identifies Alger Hiss as a longtime Soviet agent who worked at the U.S. State Department.

In 1996, the United States government released the Venona papers, decoded Russian intelligence intercepts dating from the mid-1940s. These documents briefly reference a Soviet spy at the State Department, code-named "Ales", whose biographical details matched those of Hiss. Ales was described as a military information spy, which explains why Hiss proposed that the State Department create a new post, that of 'special assistant for military affairs' linked to his Office of Special Political Affairs.

Alger Hiss's alleged cryptonyms were "Lawyer" ("Advocate" or "Advokat" ) which was assigned during his brief time at the United States Department of Justice, between 1935 and 1936, and "Ales" in 1945. "Leonard" 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.

Notes

• ^1 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, Secrecy: The American Experience, New Haven: Yale University Press (1998), pg. 146
• ^2 Nathaniel Weyl testimony, Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, 23 February 1953
• ^3 Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, New York : Modern Library, (1998), p. 519; Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, New York: Random House, (ed. 1997), pgs. 321-322.
• ^4 Anthony Summers,The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, London: Phoenix Press (2000), pgs. 69-73.
• ^5 Summers, pgs. 76-77.
• ^6 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.
• ^7 Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, New York: Random House, (ed. 1997)
• ^8 Whittaker Chambers, Witness, New York: Random House, (1952)
• ^9 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).
• ^10 KGB file 43173 vol.2 (v) pp. 49-55, The Gorsky Memo, 1948.
• ^11 'Russians Say Hiss Was Not a Soviet Spy' http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/venona.html
• ^12 John Lowenthal, Venona and Alger Hiss, Intelligence and National Security, (Autumn 2000). http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthal.pdf
• ^13 Testimony of Francis B. Sayre and Sumner Welles, House Un-American Activities Committee, Washington D.C., 7 December 1948.
• ^14 Secrets, Lies, and Atomic, PBS NOVA Transcript, 5 February 2002. "The Rosenbergs, Theodore Hall and Alger Hiss did spy for the Soviets, and I saw their real names in the documents, their code names, a lot of documents about that. How you judge them is up to you. To me they're heroes."

References

• Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments, Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security (SISS report July 30, 1953).
• Adolf Berle notes Underground Espionage Agent, (1939), reprinted in the Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments, 6 May 1953, part 6, 329–330.
• The Alger Hiss Story: Search for the Truth
• Gay, James Thomas. "The Alger Hiss Spy Case." American History (May-June 1998)
• John Lowenthal, "Venona and Alger Hiss," Intelligence and National Security 15, no. 3 (Autumn 2000)
• Eduard Mark, "Who Was 'Venona's' 'Ales?' Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case," Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2003).
• Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America--the Stalin Era (New York: Random House, 1999).
• Weinstein, Allen "Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case" (Random House, 1997) ISBN 0394495462.
• Alexander Vassiliev's Notes on Anatoly Gorsky's December 1948 Memo on Compromised American Sources and Networks (Annotated)
• Nathaniel Weyl testimony corroborating Alger Hiss as member of CPUSA secret apparatus, 23 February 1953
• Fitin to Merkulov 25 April 1945, File #43072, Vol. 1, pp. 96-97, KGB Archives.
• Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. Secrecy: Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. VI. Appendices: A. Secrecy: A Brief Account of the American Experience. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1997, pgs. 36, 39. (PDF 746K) [3]

External links

• Crime Library
• The Alger Hiss Trials: An Account
• Cold War Counterintelligence
• VENONA Files and the Alger Hiss Case
• 1579 New York to Moscow 29 September 1943 Five GRU sources are named. Milton Schwartz needs a loan to pay off debts. KGB (or perhaps Naval GRU) has mentioned a person from State Department named Hiss.
• The Hiss-Chambers Case, New York Times, June 12, 1949