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.

Yalta & the UN

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.

Related Topics:
Baltimore, Maryland - Baltimore City College - Johns Hopkins University - Alpha Delta Phi - 1929 - Harvard Law School - Felix Frankfurter - Supreme Court Justice - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. - Priscilla Hobson - Library of Congress

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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, and became a member of the Ware group of underground Communists, a sort of Marxist study 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 transfered 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.{{NamedRef|Weyl|2}}

Related Topics:
1933 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt - New Deal - Agricultural Adjustment Administration - Nye Committee - Justice Department - Ware group - Whittaker Chambers - GRU - Boris Bykov - Harold Glasser - Nathaniel Weyl - McCarran Committee

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In 1936, Hiss and his brother Donald began working in the State Department, where he served as assistant to Francis B. Sayre, a son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, and later as an assistant to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr. Hiss became special assistant to the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs, then in 1944 special assitant 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.

Related Topics:
1936 - Donald - State Department - Francis B. Sayre - Woodrow Wilson - Secretary of State - Edward Stettinius, Jr. - 1944 - Dumbarton Oaks Conference - United Nations

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In 1945 he went with the president to the meeting of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill in Yalta, which precipitated the Western betrayal of Eastern Europe. At Yalta, Hiss negotiated the final agreement to give the Soviet Union three seats in the United Nations. After the Yalta conference Hiss traveled on to Moscow with Secretary of State Stettinius, Venona project transcript #1822 dated 30 March 1945 reads in part

Related Topics:
Stalin - Churchill - Yalta - Western betrayal - Venona project - 30 March - 1945

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

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:"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. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html

Related Topics:
VYShINSKIJ - Military NEIGHBORS

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The 1997 Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, empowered by statute, wrote in its final report,

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:"This could only be Alger Hiss" http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/moynihan/appa6.html

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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 was 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 5 May 1949.

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