Hiss Case
Hiss Case , in United States history, one of the most controversial cases in the postwar period of Communist scares. In 1948 Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist courier, testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Alger Hiss, a former State Department counsel and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was a Communist and had given him secret State Department documents in the 1930's. A federal grand jury investigated these charges and indicted Hiss for perjury when he denied them. Hiss was convicted in 1950 and imprisoned, 1951–54. He insisted that he was innocent and wrote In the Court of Public Opinion (1954) in his defense. One result of the affair was the rise to prominence of Richard M. Nixon, who played a leading role in the 1948 congressional hearings.
In 1992 a Russian official declared after reviewing Soviet archives that he could find no evidence of Hiss ever having been used as a spy. Hiss said this declaration proved his innocence, but many political observers believed it was insufficient to resolve all doubts about his guilt or innocence.
Hiss died in 1996 in New York.