Alger Hiss

November 11, 1904 — November 15, 1996

Alger Hiss, a handsome young man with a sterling résumé, was not all he seemed. After graduating from Harvard Law School and clerking for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Hiss quickly rose through the ranks at the State Department, impressing his superiors, including President Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law. Those at the State Department were not the only people to take notice of this young man in a hurry. One evening, Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle received a visitor, a former Communist-turned-journalist named Whittaker Chambers, who warned that Alger Hiss was not the golden boy the State Department thought he was. Amidst the daily chaos of World War II and doubt surrounding Chambers’ credibility as a former Communist, this message never made its way up the ladder, and Hiss continued to rise. By late 1944, Hiss had been named executive secretary of the Dumbarton Oaks conference and was responsible for laying the groundwork for Roosevelt’s brand new peace organization of United Nations. It was this expertise that endeared him to the new Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinius, in January 1945, when Roosevelt was assembling a small team from the State Department to travel to Yalta. Decades later, the name Alger Hiss remains one of the most controversial in the history of American espionage. Who was Hiss really working for at Yalta, and how might history have been different had someone heeded Chambers’ warning?

Photograph: https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/alger-hiss