X-Nico

8 unusual facts about Alger Hiss


Arthur Krock

For example, amid the HissChambers and Coplon spy cases and the investigation of David E. Lilienthal's management of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Krock observed: The persons whose names have entered the trials and investigations, fairly and unfairly, include none who was affiliated with the Republican party ...

Concealed Enemies

Concealed Enemies is an American television docudrama of the events leading to the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of former U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss.

Dunked in the Deep

In 1948, Time managing editor Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist spy-turned government informer, accused Alger Hiss of being a member of the Communist Party and a spy for the Soviet Union.

John Herrmann

John Theodore Herrmann was the person who introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss.

Margaret Halsey

The Pseudo-Ethic: A Speculation on American Politics and Morals was a defense of Alger Hiss.

Martin Tytell

Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury in 1950 based on evidence that extensively relied on claims that documents passed to Soviet agent Whittaker Chambers had been created on a typewriter Hiss and his wife had owned, after the prosecution showed that the typewriter's unique combination of printing pattern and flaws matched those on the documents in question.

Milton S. Gould

The founders of that firm included Emanuel Celler, who later became a U.S. Congressman from Brooklyn, and Samuel H. Kaufman, who later served as a federal judge and presided over the first trial of Alger Hiss.

Prothonotary Warbler

The Prothonotary Warbler became known in the 1940s as the bird that, in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, established a connection between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.


Carl Binger

In the 1950 Alger Hiss trials prosecuting attorney Thomas Francis Murphy cross-examined Binger who served as a defense witness by analyzing Whittaker Chambers's activities and writings.

Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders

-- the University of California required all faculty members to take an oath asserting that they were not communists; --> former government employee Alger Hiss was tried for perjury stemming from accusations that he was a communist (a trial also held at the Foley Square courthouse); labor leader Harry Bridges was accused of perjury when he denied being a communist; and the ACLU passed an anti-communist resolution.


see also