Alger Hiss

Last month, the chairman of the Russian military intelligence archives said his review of the newly-opened files disclosed "not a single document" that substantiates the charge that Alger Hiss spied for the Soviet Union. He called the ancient charge against Mr. Hiss "completely groundless."Recently, on the Opinion * Commentary page, Mr. Hiss, a native of Baltimore, expressed his "gratification and joy at the end of an ordeal." He said the announcement from Russia was his "vindication." Today, syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick writes on that page, "Don't believe it for a minute."

I was amazed to read in Frederick N. Rasmussen's "Alger Hiss' trial still stirs readers" (June 26) the opinion expressed by Timmerman Daughtery that Hiss made a major blunder in hiring William L. Marbury as his counsel. As Ms. Daughtery put it, "if he'd gotten a 'real' lawyer, not a society boy in the beginning, the story would be a different one. " At the time, Mr. Marbury was approaching 50 years of age with 20 years experience as a trial lawyer. He had just completed service as chief counsel of the War Department in charge of procurement for the entire duration of World War II, and was the senior partner of one of Baltimore's most prominent law firms.

Dear Editor,I appreciate the opportunity to tell your readers something of my joyous feelings about the recent information from Russia that their official archives provide the vindication I have sought for so long. And this particular date [the letter was written Wednesday, the day after Election Day] lets me express my pleasure, as a life-long Democrat, at another long-delayed triumphant event, the decisive victory of Governor Clinton.A native of Baltimore, I grew up as a constant reader of the Sun papers.

"The other curious thing about the Hiss case is the psychology of believing that Hiss was a spy, which requires abandoning much of what we know about rational thought. " — Newspaper columnist Molly Ivins in 1996 I knew that my Alger Hiss column from a few weeks back would elicit plenty of mail, and I wasn't disappointed. The power of the Hiss story continues to arouse strong emotions even after the passage of more than 60 years. Some who contacted me by phone or email accused me of propagating the idea that Hiss' guilt was still in doubt.

"The other curious thing about the Hiss case is the psychology of believing that Hiss was a spy, which requires abandoning much of what we know about rational thought. " — Newspaper columnist Molly Ivins in 1996 I knew that my Alger Hiss column from a few weeks back would elicit plenty of mail, and I wasn't disappointed. The power of the Hiss story continues to arouse strong emotions even after the passage of more than 60 years. Some who contacted me by phone or email accused me of propagating the idea that Hiss' guilt was still in doubt.

Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy, by G. Edward White. Oxford University Press. 297 pages. $30. The facts in the case of United States of America v. Alger Hiss have never been in serious doubt. Hiss, a lawyer from Baltimore, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., worked in the State Department under Roosevelt and Truman, ran the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- and spent his off hours spying for the Soviet Union. Whittaker Chambers, another Soviet spy, who broke with his masters and became a top editor at Time magazine, confessed his sins to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948 and named Hiss as one of his agents.

"The View from Alger's Window: A Son's Memoir," by Tony Hiss. Knopf. 241 pages. $24. Fifty years after his perjury conviction, the mention of the communist spy Alger Hiss still has the power to ruin a dinner party. To disclose where one stands on the Hiss case is to instantly take a position on the role of Communism in the history of the 20th century. Following a federal judge's order on May 13 to release the secret grand jury testimony that led to the trials in 1949 and 1950, it is clear that doubts and rationalizations of Hiss' guilt persist among "right-thinking" folks on the political left.

I was in the audience that gathered on a warm May evening in 1974 on the campus of the Johns Hopkins University to listen to a lecture by Alger Hiss, the Baltimore-born diplomat turned spy who had spent 31/2 years in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., after being convicted of perjury in 1950. Here standing before us, dressed in a three-piece suit and carrying an unlit pipe, was one of the most important living Cold War figures, whose guilt or innocence could still divide Baltimore dinner parties nearly three decades after the celebrated case drifted off front pages and into history.

ALGER HISS goes to his grave in sole possession of the definitive answers to the spy case that rocked the country when anti-Soviet hysteria raged at the beginning of the Cold War.He goes to his grave proclaiming his innocence of charges by his storied antagonist, Whitaker Chambers, that he passed State Department secrets to Moscow even as evidence from long-secret KGB files piles up to the contrary. He goes to his grave with history's final verdict still out and his supporters and detractors still vehemently at odds.

I was finishing a new book about the same time my backyard got planted for summer. The deadline I faced for Sunday's Charles Village Festival garden walk worked wonders to motivate me. Reservoir Hill is also holding its garden tour this weekend. Both tours offer ways to snoop around and not be chased away, and both neighborhoods have a rich history of international intrigue. My reading mentioned one of the 20th-century's biggest spymasters, Allen Dulles, who operated a station in Bern, Switzerland, during World War II and was married to a Baltimorean, Clover Todd.

I was in the audience that gathered on a warm May evening in 1974 on the campus of the Johns Hopkins University to listen to a lecture by Alger Hiss, the Baltimore-born diplomat turned spy who had spent 31/2 years in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., after being convicted of perjury in 1950. Here standing before us, dressed in a three-piece suit and carrying an unlit pipe, was one of the most important living Cold War figures, whose guilt or innocence could still divide Baltimore dinner parties nearly three decades after the celebrated case drifted off front pages and into history.

I was finishing a new book about the same time my backyard got planted for summer. The deadline I faced for Sunday's Charles Village Festival garden walk worked wonders to motivate me. Reservoir Hill is also holding its garden tour this weekend. Both tours offer ways to snoop around and not be chased away, and both neighborhoods have a rich history of international intrigue. My reading mentioned one of the 20th-century's biggest spymasters, Allen Dulles, who operated a station in Bern, Switzerland, during World War II and was married to a Baltimorean, Clover Todd.

WHILE THE MEDIA have been focusing on the flap at Harvard University growing out of its president's statement about the reasons for the underrepresentation of women in the sciences, a much worse and more revealing scandal has unfolded at the University of Seattle, where a student mob prevented a military recruiter from meeting with those students who wanted to talk with him. At first, the university president said that the student rioters should apologize....

Baltimore-born Alger Hiss (1904-1996) was the central figure in one of the Cold War's most sensational espionage cases. Raised in Bolton Hill and educated at City College, Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School, Hiss was a New Dealer who served in the departments of Agriculture, Justice and State. After World War II, he helped draft the United Nations charter and was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a self-professed one-time communist spy, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Hiss had been a member of his espionage ring and had given him classified State Department documents.

Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy, by G. Edward White. Oxford University Press. 297 pages. $30. The facts in the case of United States of America v. Alger Hiss have never been in serious doubt. Hiss, a lawyer from Baltimore, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., worked in the State Department under Roosevelt and Truman, ran the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- and spent his off hours spying for the Soviet Union. Whittaker Chambers, another Soviet spy, who broke with his masters and became a top editor at Time magazine, confessed his sins to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948 and named Hiss as one of his agents.

WASHINGTON -- Newly released, the latest batch of conversations secretly taped by President Nixon depicts him again as unself-consciously anti-Semitic, informing his aides at one point that the communist conspiracy against the United States was entirely composed of Jews except for Whitaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.The tapes also show the depth of his anger against the New York Times for its publication in 1971 of the Pentagon Papers, the government's secret history of activities that led to America's involvement in the Vietnam War.Nixon's anti-Semitism and his anger at the Times came together when he demanded that no one in the White House provide any information to the paper's Washington bureau, which was headed at the time by Max Frankel.

For nearly five decades, the life of disgraced American diplomat Alger Hiss has been defined by seemingly mundane objects. A borrowed car. A typewriter. A pumpkin on a Carroll County farm.All these items were used to accuse him in the late 1940s of betraying his country.Hiss' formative years, spent in Baltimore, were defined instead by a series of crowning accomplishments, each, it would later seem, inexorably leading to another. By the time he graduated from the Johns Hopkins University, a former classmate said yesterday, Hiss already had been anointed as one of the future greats -- the most popular and most respected of his peers.

NEW YORK -- Tony Hiss' Greenwich Village apartment is furnished much as it was when his parents moved in nearly 50 years ago: the same ancient mahogany desk, upright piano, couch, settee. And the mirror Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes left to his young law clerk, Alger Hiss, the mirror that came from a house used by the British army during theAmerican Revolution. Holmes used to say he could sometimes see in the looking glass the face of British commander Lord William Howe."Can you see it, sonny?"

NOW that The Sun's editorial page has embarked on its "Marylanders of the Century" series, debate will commence over the choices. What constitutes the kind of contribution that entitles one to make the final cut? Here's one compilation of Marylanders from the political arena who, for a variety of reasons, won't be on The Sun's list. Some were flawed figures; others had a substantial negative impact. In a few cases, time has obscured their contributions. Spiro Agnew and Marvin Mandel.

NEW YORK -- The visitor shows up a couple minutes early for the morning appointment in Greenwich Village; Tony Hiss is still shaving.He comes to the door in khaki slacks, T-shirt and partially lathered face, displaying the friendliness one comes to expect from him. He's a gentle, 57-year-old man with light eyes and mostly gray hair who bears a resemblance to his father, Alger Hiss, the Baltimore native infamous for his conviction in a Cold War spy case,...