Alger Hiss fit comfortably into a role one would expect
coming from an East Coast, Ivy League background.
A graduate of both John Hopkins and Harvard Law,
he was chosen by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
to be his legal secretary at the Supreme Court .
Hiss was a successful New York lawyer before trading
it all in for doing public service in Roosevelt's New Deal.
By 1945 he worked his way up to be an assistant
to the President, personally briefing Roosevelt
at Yalta.
Who would have thought this man to be a communist?
Whittaker Chambers.
What a character. Appearing before the
House Un-American Activities Committee, HUAC,
Chambers looked like he had slept in his clothes
the night before. Everything about him was wrinkled
and out of order. And yet, here was Time magazine's
Senior Editor, a former communist, fingering Hiss as
part of his DC spy ring that was active during the war.
Hiss was the group's contact man with Colonel Bykov,
a Soviet spymaster.
Committee members were stunned.
That was unexpected. Hiss had powerful friends
in Washington, on both sides of the aisles.
Could Chambers be trusted?
Hiss demanded a retraction.
Prior to the war Stalin was a villainous dictator. Then,
as an ally against Hitler, he became good old Uncle Joe.
Now he was, once again, the treacherous thug he had
always been. Communists everywhere were Stalin's
subversive agents, preaching an alien gospel that
would bring an end to individual freedom.
It was up to the Congressional members of the HUAC
to prevent the government from harboring such communists.
Members of HUAC did not limit themselves to
overseeing government employment. Their
investigations ventured out into the general public,
checking on private citizens, who only appeared
to be going about their usual daily business.
Everyone enjoys a good motion picture.
In the 1940s there was nothing more popular
than going to the movies. And that was causing
concern among members of the Un-American
Activities Committee. The evidence grew daily
that communists in Hollywood were inserting
Leftist themes into American films.
A group of motion picture writers, producers and
actors called to testify before the committee,
became known as the Hollywood Ten.
They were found guilty of contempt of Congress
for not naming names of communists they knew.
They each served sentences and were subsequently
blacklisted from the entertainment industry.
Show biz was always sensitive to public opinion.
The case against Alger Hiss had stalled...
boiled down to Hiss denying Chamber's accusations
and Chambers calling him a liar. That is where the
story was likely to end, inconclusive and forgotten.
But Alger Hiss was stopped short of slipping away
by Richard Nixon, a first term congressman from
California. It took dogged hours of Nixon's cajoling
of members individually before the committee was
persuaded to continue its pursuit of branding Hiss
a spy.
The Hiss saga ends in a manner fit for a mystery
drama heard over the radio. It involved a long lost
spool of microfilm that was hidden by Chambers
in a pumpkin patch growing on a Maryland farm.
This evidence provided enough proof to convince
a jury of Hiss's guilt. He would spend the next
four years in prison for perjury, as the time allowed by
the statute of limitations for charging Hiss with spying
had passed
Nixon was suddenly a household name.
Here was a national hero.
Richard Nixon was a man in a hurry.
Elected to Congress in 1946 at age 33.
Four years later Nixon was elected a Senator of
California. Now in 1952 he was Eisenhower's
running mate in the General's campaign
for the presidency.
Everything was happening so fast.
* * * * *
OVER EASY
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