America during the red scare was a very different place. The main fears of the day were not the goings on of the Middle East or the walls between countries; rather, people feared the loyalties of their own neighbors. As the Cold War with Russia emerged at the end of World War II, the lure of communistic thought sent shivers down the spines of patriotic Americans. Everywhere one looked someone was being accused of socialist ties, communist sentiments and worst of all, spying for the Russians. One of the most highlighted cases from the post war period was that of Alger Hiss.

Born in Baltimore in 1904, Hiss studied law at John Hopkins and Harvard and began a promising career as law clerk for the prestigious Oliver Wendell Holmes. From this esteemed beginning, Hiss went on to hold a number of positions in the Roosevelt Administration. America in the 1930s was a nation of unrest and uncertainty about the viability and longevity of the capitalist system. The stock market crash of 1929 coupled with the Dust Bowl in the mid west, left many searching for alternative ideologies.

One of these searchers was Whittaker Chambers. Chambers came from a broken Philadelphia home and in 1924 began to see the failure of his home life as an analogy for the failure of the capitalist system. In 1925, he became a devout Marxists and joined the communist party. Later, Chambers would defect from the party and become one of its biggest enemies.

As Chambers affirmed his commitment to the Communist ideology, Hiss held a number of important offices in the United States government. Work with the department of Agriculture and State Department led Hiss to serve as Roosevelt’s assistant during the Yalta Conference in 1945 and Secretary General of the newly formed United Nations. In 1949, Hiss left public office to work towards international peace as the president of the Carnegie Endowment. A rich and diverse career would have been Hiss legacy if Chambers and his associates hadn’t made him the target of an FBI espionage investigation.

Whittaker Chambers was a writer and editor who while working for TIME magazine confessed to being a communist during the 1930s before the House on Un American Activities. He chose to point to Hiss as a fellow believer who had worked actively in the party from 1933 to 1938. The FBI and NSA investigated the State department during the time Hiss served and found what they believed to be evidence of Hiss disloyalty.

After two grand jury trials, the first resulting in a hung jury, Hiss was sentence to five years in prison after being found guilty of spying for the Russians. Documents from the Yalta conference in 1945 indicated a Russian American spy was with FDR at the conference. This coupled with Chambers’ accusation was enough to put Hiss away for five years and destroy the reputation of one of America’s dedicated civil servants. Hiss tried to prove his innocence throughout his life, suing both Chambers for libel and the United States government fort wrongful imprisonment.

It would take until 1992 for Russian documents that showed Hiss had no involvement with espionage to surface. Hiss passed away just four years later in 1996. And even after his death and the lack of material evidence, historians still remain divided on the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss.

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The trial set the precedent for many things to come including by some accounts, the McCarthy era, the election of Richard Nixon, the founding principals of the modern conservative movement and even the election of Ronald Reagan. The story of Alger Hiss does show the gravity of accusation and the means by which fear of other ideologies can be carried to extremes.

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