Alger+Hiss

=Alger Hiss = Alger Hiss, former president of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was accused of espionage by Whittaker Chambers on August 3 of 1948 before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Chambers made numerous claims that Hiss released valuable American intelligence to theUSSR, though Hiss argued time and again that he did no such thing. Hiss later went to trial for perjury twice in May and November of 1949, being found guilty of two counts of perjury in January of 1950. __ ﻿ __ __Table of Contents__ Political Background Accusations and Trials of Espionage and Perjury Pumpkin Papers

__Political Background__ Alger Hiss worked under Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes after he graduated fromHarvardLawSchoolin 1929. Hiss then worked as an attorney with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration under the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. In 1934, Hiss started to work for the Nye Committee, investigating the munitions and arms industry. Hiss was thenRoosevelt’s adviser at the Yalta Conference – the conference that chartered the United Nations with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill – in 1945; Hiss was later accused by then Senator Richard Nixon of betraying American interests at the conference. Hiss became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1946 after he advised President Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference. Hiss and the Endowment focused on promoting positive international relations, especially between theSoviet Unionand theUnited States. In 1949, Hiss left his position as president of the Endowment as he was accused of espionage by Whittaker Chambers in 1948.

__Accusations and Trials of Espionage and Perjury__ It was on August 3 of 1948 that Whittaker Chambers appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and testified that Alger Hiss was leaking information to theSoviet Union. Chambers began his testimony by telling the Committee that he had been a part of the Communist Party but left in 1938 before going to Washington to report to “authorities what [he] knew about the infiltration of the United States Government by Communists,” with little follow up.  Chambers identified several members of an underground Communist group, saying that “Lee Pressman was. . . a member of this group, as was Alger Hiss.” Chambers asserted that he had a close, personal friendship with Hiss and frequently urged him to leave the Communist Party though Hiss refused.  Hiss denied Chambers’s claims as he had done in March of 1946 when an aide to the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover questioned Hiss about ties to the Communist Party; Hiss’s phones were tapped in 1945 after tips of his involvement in the Communist Party also. Five days the meeting withHoover’s aide, on March 30, a Soviet intelligence cable identified Hiss as “ALES,” a Soviet agent. More than a year later in June of 1946, Hiss signed a statement recognizing members of the Communist Party after two interrogations by the FBI and that he knew no one by the name of Whittaker Chambers in the signed statement. After Chambers testified the he was close friends with Hiss, Hiss sent a telegram to the Chairman of HUAC stating that he “d[id] not know Mr. Chambers and. . . ha[d] never laid eyes on him,” contradictory to all of Chambers’s testimony.  Two days after Whittaker Chambers provided testimony, Alger Hiss appeared before the Committee to testify; he denied all of Chambers’s charges. Nixon continued questioning Chambers, and Chambers testified that he had: stayed in Hiss’s home with Hiss and his wife for a week, and received a Ford from Hiss. Hiss testified that a man had indeed stayed in his home for a week and received a Ford from him but that the man was called George Crosley.  Hiss testified on August 17, 1948 that Chambers was “probably” George Crosley after seeing Chambers. Hiss also identified Chambers as Crosley by his “bad teeth.” Hiss and Chambers then confronted one another in a HUAC hearing where Hiss was questioned about his lease and car to Chambers. Throughout further questioning, numerous bits and pieces of “evidence” were brought to light such as a story published by the //Baltimore News-Post//; it reported that Chambers purchased a farmhouse in 1937 that he had driven out to visit with Hiss in the Ford he had given Chambers. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Over a month after the article in the //Baltimore// was published, Hiss filed a slander suit against Chambers on September 28 after Chambers asserted on //Meet the Press// that Hiss was a communist. Hiss’s attorneys found evidence of mental instability to discredit Chambers’s claims. Weeks later, Chambers was unable to identify anyone who had participated in espionage against theUnited States, but Chambers later testified that he had lied when providing that previous testimony to protect Hiss. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> On November 5 Chambers said that Hiss had given him access to State Department documents. Chambers released several of Hiss’s typed and handwritten documents, and developed and undeveloped film – later called the Pumpkin Papers – that proved Hiss had seen Chambers in 1938 and engaged in espionage. Chambers then turned over the State Department documents to Hiss’s attorneys, and the Papers were identified as having been typed on a typewriter owned by Alger Hiss. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> After the release of the Pumpkin Papers, Hiss denied the accusations that he had given any documents to Chambers and that he hadn’t had contact with Chambers after 1936 – contradictory to both Chamber’s testimony and Hiss’s. The first of Hiss’s perjury trials then began on May 31 of 1949 underneath Judge Samuel Kaufman. After hours of testimony and review of evidence, eight jurors were in favor of conviction of Hiss while four voted for his acquittal on July 7. In Hiss’s second trial for perjury, he was found guilty on two counts of perjury onJanuary 21, 1950. After his affirmed conviction, Hiss served five years at the federal penitentiary inLewisburg,Pennsylvania. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Alger Hiss was never convicted of espionage.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Pumpkin Papers__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The Pumpkin Papers were the collection of State Department documents that had allegedly been given to Chambers by Hiss. These stolen documents were used to confirm that Alger Hiss had indeed lied under oath about handing over documents to Chambers, thus proving that he had committed perjury. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The Papers were traced to the office of Francis Sayre at the Department of State where Hiss had worked in 1938. A witness testified that the identity and location of the stolen documents were kept as secret as possible. Experts identified the typing of certain documents had been done Hiss’s typewriter. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">It was decided by the jurors of each trial that the Papers were of the utmost relevance and importance in this case. In Hiss’s second trial, the prosecutor rested his case by saying, “Each of these documents. . . has the same message. . . : ‘Alger Hiss, you were the traitor.’” It was because of the Papers that Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">__Analysis__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> There have been countless acts of espionage both for and against the United States. Such acts include – quite obviously – the Alger Hiss affairs, the Gouzenko Affair that predated the Hiss trials by three years, those conducted by the German //Amt Auslands und Abwehr// during the Second World War, and Chinese acts of espionage among others. All such espionage inspired fear in the hearts of Americans, called for – in some eyes – protection against the prying eyes of foreign powers, or a demand for intelligence from other nations. Certain cases insisted upon protection for the rights of those suspected of espionage. The Gouzenko Affair specifically created a fear of Soviet espionage within the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) met the needs of American citizens in regards to gather foreign intelligence, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gave protection to persons suspected of espionage – all as a result of the Alger Hiss affairs. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> To start, the Gouzenko Affair was a case of espionage in Canada that was detected by British Security Service agents. I gor Gouzenko worked at the Soviet embassy in Canada encoding various information that came from or was going to Moscow. During Gouzenko’s career in Canada, British Security Service agents suspected him of relaying Canadian secrets to Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, which was later found to be true. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Gouzenko first announced evidence of a base for Soviet spies in Canada in a newsroom on September 5 of 1945. With Gouzenko were 109 documents of evidence of Soviet espionage within Canada. Gouzenko had information that identified and convicted 22 agents and spies of the Soviet Union. A British agent that had interrogated Gouzenko, Roger Hollis, was later suspected of being a mole for the USSR, and 70 other British agents were suspected of espionage and were expelled for such activity in the years that came up to 1983. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">As a result of the Gouzenko Affair, millions of North Americans, specifically Americans, grew fearful of espionage within their own country. Igor Gouzenko’s act of espionage spurred the drive for both protection and the demand for intelligence in foreign countries. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The demand for foreign intelligence was met by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), though the CIA was preceded by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The premier use of the OSS was to gather intelligence on foreign nations, though President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dismantled the agency as the Second World War was nearing an end. Soon after, however, President Truman established a new intelligence agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, as the desire for an intelligence agency was evident across the country. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">The Central Intelligence Agency was designed to “coordinate all the intelligence services and we will engage in subversive operations abroad, but no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad,” as William J. Donovan, the former head of the OSS, stated. Under the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA was responsible for discovering intelligence, verifying it, and deciding whether or not such information proposed a threat to American security. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">As far as most Americans are concerned, the CIA has upheld its task and has satisfied the demand for foreign intelligence though the legality of searches, collection of intelligence, and acts of monitoring have given rise to a need for protection of those accused of espionage in the United States. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, passed by Congress, was an act dedicated to the procedures that must be taken when electronically monitoring or physically searching persons suspected of espionage or terrorism against the United States. According to James G. McAdams, III, the act was a “response to. . . abuse. . . of U.S. persons’ privacy rights by. . . the United States government[, and t]hose abuses had occurred as part of [the United States government’s] efforts to counter purported threats to national security.” Further support of McAdams’s claim is seen in the United States v. United States District Court case as “it was passed after revelations of massive domestic spying abuses by the FBI, CIA and NSA were documented in reports issued. . . in the 1970s. In 1972, the United States Supreme Court had reviewed some of those abuses and declared that warrant-less wiretaps of domestic groups for national security reasons were a violation of the Fourth Amendment.” <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">An example of a protection of those suspected of espionage inside the United States, as stated by Jim McAdams (Senior Instructor in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Legal Division), was a “case a decade or more ago where a FISA surveillance recorded. . . two individuals who were [under] surveillance as they murdered their daughter. The FISA surveillance was found to be lawful, so as long as certain procedures were followed and the defendants were notified.” The FISA provides a court that meets in secret to determine whether or not certain searches are necessary, legal, or violate the Constitution or rights of American citizens; the FISA essentially protects American suspects of espionage within the United States’ borders. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Thanks largely to the Alger Hiss trials and other similar cases throughout American and North American history such as the Gouzenko Affair in Canada, a fear of homeland secrets and intelligence being spilled to foreign bodies grew, a demand for foreign intelligence was met by the CIA, and the FISA provided protection to suspects of espionage in the United States. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">