ALGER HISS DEFINITION TRIAL
The Hiss-Chambers trial was a national sensation. The so-called Pumpkin Papers, actually on microfilm, provided evidence proving that Hiss had in fact procured State Department documents and delivered them to Chambers.
ALGER HISS DEFINITION PATCH
Chambers’ testimony against Hiss-first in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1948, and then in federal court-became impossible to reject because of the legendary evidence he hid in a pumpkin patch on his farm. Hiss had lied about his efforts to aid the Soviet Union while a high-ranking State Department official in the 1930s. He was sentenced to five years in federal prison. 21, 1950, after almost two years of hearings, lawsuits, and two federal trials-the first ended in a mistrial-Alger Hiss was pronounced guilty on two counts of perjury about espionage. He died in 1996, never admitting that he engaged in espionage and insisting that he was framed by Chambers. That fact would remain true for Hiss’s entire life. But to no avail, as Hiss was firmly committed to the revolutionary cause.
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When Chambers left communism, he tried to bring Hiss with him in a fateful Christmas visit in 1937. He served in an array of federal government posts at the State Department, he was part of America’s Yalta delegation.Īs members of a communist cell, Chambers and Hiss became close friends, their families frequently socializing together. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Hiss clerked for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. director of the International Monetary Fund.Īnother prominent member was Alger Hiss. He then relayed this material to the Soviet Union’s intelligence handlers.Ĭhambers would exit communism in 1938 after a profound Christian conversion heightened his awareness of how the communist ideology persecuted and destroyed the human spirit.Ĭhambers’ spy network consisted of men such as Harry Dexter White, a senior Treasury Department official who would be appointed in 1946 as U.S. Members of this cell transferred to Chambers copies of government documents, reports, and plans.
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Upon publication 70 years ago, Whittaker Chambers’ autobiography, “Witness,” immediately became recognized as a stirring spiritual investigation of communism.Ĭhambers’ resounding verdict is that communist ideology corrupts the souls of its adherents, justifying violence to achieve ideological resolution of the total crisis of the modern world.Ī spy for Soviet military intelligence during the 1930s, Chambers would build a communist espionage ring in Washington, D.C., with numerous journalists and officials ensconced in the federal government during the New Deal.