Editing Alger Hiss (section)

==Career==
During the era of President [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]]'s [[New Deal]], Hiss became a government attorney. In 1933, he served briefly at the [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] and then became a temporary assistant on the Senate's [[Nye Committee]], investigating cost overruns and alleged profiteering by military contractors during [[World War I]].<ref>See [https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/merchants_of_death.htm "Merchants of Death"], on the U.S. Senate website.</ref> During this period, Hiss was also a member of the liberal legal team headed by [[Jerome Frank (lawyer)|Jerome Frank]] that defended the [[Agricultural Adjustment Administration]] (AAA) against challenges to its legitimacy. Because of intense opposition from agribusiness in Arkansas, Frank and his left-wing assistants, who included future labor lawyer [[Lee Pressman]], were fired in 1935 in what came to be known as "the purge of liberals."<ref>The following year the Supreme Court ruled the AAA unconstitutional, though Congress reinstated it in 1938. See John C. Culver, John Hyde, ''American Dreamer, a Life of Henry A. Wallace'' (New York: W. W. Norton) pp. 143–57.</ref> Hiss was not fired, but allegations that during this period he was connected with radicals on the [[United States Department of Agriculture|Agriculture Department]]'s legal team were to be the source of future controversy.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

In the meantime, Hiss also served initially as "investigator"<ref>

{{cite web
| title = Munitions industry, naval shipbuilding: Preliminary Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry
| publisher = [[United States Government Publishing Office|U.S. Government Printing Office]]
| place = Washington
| url = https://archive.org/stream/munitionsindustr46unit
| pages = 691
| date = September 1934
| access-date = 23 November 2016}}</ref> and then "legal assistant"<ref>
{{cite web
| title = Munitions industry, naval shipbuilding: Preliminary Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry
| publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office
| place = Washington
| url = https://archive.org/stream/munitionsindustr1114unit
| pages = ii
| date = 10 December 1934
| access-date = 23 November 2016}}</ref><ref>
{{cite web| title = Munitions industry, naval shipbuilding: Preliminary Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry
| publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office
| place = Washington
| url = https://archive.org/details/munitionsindustr1519unit
| pages = ii
| date = 18 December 1934
| access-date = 23 November 2016}}</ref><ref>
{{cite web| title = Munitions industry, naval shipbuilding: Preliminary Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry
| publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office
| place = Washington
| url = https://archive.org/stream/munitionsindustr13unit
| pages = ii
| date = 1935
| access-date = 23 November 2016}}</ref> (counsel) to the [[Nye Committee]] from July 1934 to August 1935.<ref>
{{cite book
| first = Allen
| last = Weinstein
| title = Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case
| place = New York
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=a86i_Di4X8sC
| date = 1978
| access-date = 23 November 2016| isbn = 9780817912260
}}</ref> He "badgered" DuPont officials and questioned and cross-examined [[Bernard Baruch]] on March 29, 1935.<ref>
{{cite web
| title = Munitions industry. Preliminary report on wartime taxation and price control
| publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office
| url = https://archive.org/stream/munitionsindustr35unit
| pages = 23, 28, 60, 113–115, 127
| date = 20 August 1935
| access-date = 23 November 2016}}</ref><ref>
{{cite book
| first = John Chabot
| last = Smith
| title = Alger Hiss, the true story
| publisher = Holt, Rinehart and Winston
| place = New York
| url = https://archive.org/details/algerhisstruesto00smit
| url-access = registration
| pages = [https://archive.org/details/algerhisstruesto00smit/page/83 83]–84
| date = 1976
| access-date = 23 November 2016| isbn = 9780030137761
}}</ref><ref>
{{cite book
| first = Arthur 
| last = Herman 
| title = Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator
| publisher = Simon & Schuster
| place = New York
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=DIibZoDyADEC
| pages = 220–221 
| date = 2002
| access-date = 23 November 2016| isbn = 9780684836256 
}}</ref><ref name=catbird>
{{cite book
| first = William L.
| last = Marbury Jr.
| author-link = William L. Marbury Jr.
| title = In the Catbird Seat
| publisher = Maryland Historic Society
| page = 253 (award), 263 (Baruch)
| date = 1988
 }}</ref> In 1947, Baruch and Hiss both attended the burial of [[Nicholas Murray Butler]]. In 1988, he called Baruch a "vain and overrated [[Polonius]] much given to trite pronouncements about the nation."<ref>
{{cite book
| first = Alger
| last = Hiss
| title = Recollections of a Life
| publisher = Seaver/Henry Holt
| place = New York
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=d65QAQAAIAAJ
| pages = 82
| date = 1988
| access-date = 23 November 2016| isbn = 9780805006124
}}</ref>

In 1936, Alger Hiss and his younger brother [[Donald Hiss]] began working under [[Cordell Hull]] in the [[United States Department of State|State Department]]. Alger was an assistant to Assistant Secretary of State [[Francis Bowes Sayre Sr.|Francis B. Sayre]] (son-in-law of [[Woodrow Wilson]]) and then special assistant to the director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs. From 1939 to 1944, Hiss was an assistant to [[Stanley Hornbeck]], a special adviser to Cordell Hull on Far Eastern affairs.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

In 1944, Hiss was named Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, a policy-making entity devoted to planning for post-war international organizations. Hiss served as executive secretary<ref>{{cite web |url=http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/tamwag/tam_314/bioghist.html |title=Guide to the Alger Hiss Family Papers TAM.314: Historical/Biographical Note |publisher=The Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives |date= 2015 |website=New York University Digital Library Technology Services |access-date=June 4, 2017 |quote=...&nbsp;he was named executive secretary of the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks Conference&nbsp;...'}}</ref> of the [[Dumbarton Oaks Conference]], which drew up plans for the future United Nations. In November 1944, Hull, who had led the United Nations project, retired as Secretary of State due to poor health and was succeeded by Undersecretary of State [[Edward Stettinius]].{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

[[File:UnitedNationsconference.jpg|thumb|President [[Harry S. Truman]] addresses the first UN Conference in San Francisco (from left: unknown person, Truman, Harry Vaughan, [[Edward Stettinius]], Hiss) on [[United Nations Charter|June 26, 1945]].]]

In February 1945, as a member of the US delegation headed by Stettinius, Hiss attended the [[Yalta Conference]], where the Big Three, Franklin D. Roosevelt, [[Joseph Stalin]], and [[Winston Churchill]], met to consolidate their alliance to forestall any possibility, now that the Soviets had entered German territory, that any of them might make a separate peace with the Nazi regime. Negotiations addressed the postwar division of Europe and configuration of its borders; reparations and de-Nazification; and the still unfinished plans, carried over from Dumbarton Oaks, for the United Nations. Before the conference took place, Hiss participated in the meetings where the American draft of the "Declaration of Liberated Europe" was created. The Declaration concerned the political future of Eastern Europe and critics on the right later charged that it made damaging concessions to the Soviets.<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury'' (New York: Knopf, 1978), p. 353.</ref>

Hiss stated that he was responsible for assembling background papers and documentation for the conference "and any general matters that might come up relating to the Far East or the Near East."<ref>Weinstein, ''Perjury'' (1978), pp. 353–54.</ref>

Hiss drafted a memorandum arguing against Stalin's proposal (made at Dumbarton Oaks)<ref>{{cite news
  | title = Hiss Identifies Yalta Notation
  | newspaper = The New York Times
  | year = 1955
  | url = http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/yalta2.html
  | access-date = August 5, 2007
  | archive-date = August 12, 2007
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070812163553/http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Eth15/yalta2.html
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref> to give one vote to each of the sixteen [[Soviet republics]] in the [[United Nations General Assembly]]. Fearing isolation, Stalin hoped thus to counterbalance the votes of the many countries of the British Empire, who he anticipated would vote with Britain, and those of Latin America, who could be expected to vote in lockstep with the United States.<ref>Historian Fraser J. Harbutt recounts that at Dumbarton Oaks, "The consternation aroused by this Soviet demand (Stettinius recalled that it burst upon the British and Americans 'like a bombshell') is a telling illustration of the State Department's lack of imagination and foresight in this area." Harbutt points out that FDR had been present in April 1917 when pre-Lenin Russia brought up the same issue during negotiations for the [[League of Nations]] and argues that he and Stettinius ought to have anticipated and been prepared for it. See Fraser J. Harbutt, ''Yalta 1945: Europe and America at the Crossroads'' (Cambridge University Press, 2010) p. 261.</ref> In the final compromise offered by Roosevelt and Stettinius and accepted by Stalin, the Soviets obtained three votes: one each for the Soviet Union itself, the [[Ukrainian SSR]], and the [[Byelorussian SSR]].<ref>Details of the final Yalta agreements on spheres of influence, hammered out at [[Tehran Conference|Tehran]] (1943), [[Moscow Conference (1944)]], and earlier, were kept secret, even from Vice President [[Harry Truman]]. Instead, Roosevelt, aiming at getting domestic public opinion to support American [[Internationalism (politics)|internationalism]] and the establishment of the United Nations, chose to publicize the deceptively optimistic "Declaration on Liberated Europe," which pledged the three allies to establishing free elections and democratic governments, in accordance with the principles of the 1941 [[Atlantic Charter]]) in the nations they had liberated. See Harbutt.</ref>

Hiss was Secretary-General of the [[United Nations Conference on International Organization]] (the convention that created the [[Charter of the United Nations|UN Charter]]),<ref name= sutterlin0 /> which was held in San Francisco from April 25, 1945 to June 26, 1945.  Allen Weinstein wrote that [[Andrei Gromyko]], the Soviet delegate to the conference, praised Hiss to his superior Stettinius for his "impartiality and fairness."<ref>Weinstein, ''Perjury'' (1978), p.&nbsp;361.</ref> Hiss later became full Director of the State Department's Office of Special Political Affairs.<ref name=sutterlin0>{{cite journal
 |title        = The Founding of the United Nations : an Interview with Alger Hiss by James S. Sutterlin
 |first        = Alger
 |last         = Hiss
 |interviewer  = James S. Sutterlin
 |publisher    = United Nations
 |journal      = DAG Repository
 |url          = http://dag.un.org/handle/11176/89612
 |date         = 1990
 |access-date  = 7 August 2017
 |archive-date = December 18, 2018
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20181218113300/http://dag.un.org/handle/11176/89612
 |url-status   = dead
}}</ref> In late 1946, Hiss left government service to become president of the [[Carnegie Endowment for International Peace]], where he served until May 5, 1949, the end of the presidential term to which he had been elected, when he was forced to step down.