Editing Alger Hiss (section)

==Perjury trials and conviction==
[[File:Alger Hiss, American statesman accused of espionage, mugs(14).jpg|thumb|Hiss in [[United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg]] in [[Kelly Township, Union County, Pennsylvania|Kelly Township, Pennsylvania]]]]
The grand jury charged Hiss with two counts of [[perjury]]. He was not indicted for espionage since the [[statute of limitations|period of limitations]] had run out. Chambers was never charged with a crime. Hiss went to trial twice. The first trial, presided over by Judge [[Samuel Kaufman]], started on May 31, 1949, and ended in a hung jury on July 7. Chambers admitted on the witness stand that he had previously committed perjury several times while he was under oath, including deliberately falsifying key dates in his story. Hiss's character witnesses at his first trial included such notables as future Democratic presidential candidate [[Adlai Stevenson II|Adlai Stevenson]], Supreme Court Justices [[Felix Frankfurter]] and [[Stanley Forman Reed|Stanley Reed]], and former Democratic presidential candidate [[John W. Davis]]. President Truman famously called the investigation "a red herring."<ref>"Truman thought the anti-communist hearings were 'a red herring to keep people from doing what they ought to do. They are slandering people who don't deserve it.'" ([[David McCullough]], ''[[Truman (book)|Truman]]'', [New York: Simon and Schuster], p. 652). Truman told oral biographer, Merle Miller, "What they were trying to do, all those birds," he said, "they were trying to get the Democrats. They were trying to get me out of the White House, and they would go to any lengths to do it.... They did do just about anything they could think of, all that witch hunting.... The constitution has never been in so much danger...." (quoted in Anthony Summers (2000), p. 65). Miller's accuracy in reporting Truman's statements has been questioned by some.</ref> The second trial, presided over by Judge [[Henry W. Goddard]], lasted from November 17, 1949, to January 21, 1950.

At both trials, a key to the prosecution's case was testimony from expert witnesses, stating that identifying characteristics of the typed [[Baltimore]] documents matched samples typed on a typewriter owned by the Hisses at the time of his alleged espionage work with Chambers. The prosecution also presented as evidence the typewriter itself. Given away years earlier, it had been located by defense investigators. This trial resulted in an eight-to-four deadlocked jury. "That, according to one of Hiss's friends and lawyers, [[Helen Lehman Buttenweiser|Helen Buttenweiser]], was the only time that she had ever seen Alger shocked—stunned by the fact that eight of his fellow citizens did not believe him."<ref>Halberstam, David. ''[[The Fifties (book)|The Fifties]]'', (New York: Random House, 1993), 16. Halberstam concludes that "Whether Hiss actually participated in espionage was never proved and the evidence was, at best, flawed" (14–25).</ref>

In the second trial, [[Hede Massing]], an [[Austria]]-born confessed Soviet spy who was being threatened with deportation, and whom the first judge had not permitted to testify, provided some slight corroboration of Chambers's story. She recounted meeting Hiss at a party in 1935.<ref name = Cook/> Massing also described how Hiss had tried to recruit [[Noel Field]], another Soviet spy at State, to switch from Massing's ring to his own.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v44i5a01p.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711114701/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v44i5a01p.htm|url-status=dead|archive-date=2007-07-11|title=The Alger Hiss Case — Central Intelligence Agency|date=2007-07-11|access-date=2018-09-12}}</ref><ref>Summers, Anthony. ''The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon'', (Penguin-Putnam Inc., 2000), pp. 73–77.</ref>

This time the jury found Hiss guilty. According to Anthony Summers, "Hiss spoke only two sentences in court after he had been found guilty. The first was to thank the judge. The second was to assert that one day in the future it would be disclosed how forgery by typewriter had been committed."<ref>Summers (2000), p. 71.</ref>

On January 25, 1950, Judge Goddard sentenced Hiss to five years' imprisonment on each of the two counts, to run concurrently.

At a subsequent press conference, Secretary of State Dean Acheson reacted emotionally, affirming, "I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss." Acheson quoted Jesus in the Bible: "I was a Stranger and ye took me in; Naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me." Acheson's remarks enraged Nixon, who called Acheson's words sacrilege.<ref>Perlstein, ''Nixonland'', p. 33.</ref> The verdict was upheld by the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit]],<ref>{{cite court |litigants=United States v. Hiss |vol=185 |reporter=F.2d |opinion=822 |court=2d Cir. |date=1950 |url=https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/185/822/50085/ |access-date=2018-01-06 }}</ref> and the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] denied a writ of [[certiorari]].<ref>{{ussc|340|948|1950|el=no}}.</ref>

The case heightened public concern about Soviet espionage penetration of the US government in the 1930s and 1940s. As a well-educated and highly connected government official from an old American family, Alger Hiss did not fit the profile of a typical spy.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

Publicity surrounding the case thrust Nixon into the public spotlight, helping him move from the [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. House of Representatives]] to the [[United States Senate|U.S. Senate]] in [[1950 United States Senate elections|1950]], to the vice-presidency of the United States in [[1952 United States presidential election|1952]], and finally to the presidency in [[1968 United States presidential election|1968]].{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}

Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]] made his famous [[Joseph McCarthy#"Enemies within"|speech at Wheeling, West Virginia]], two weeks after the Hiss verdict, launching his career as the nation's most visible anti-communist.{{citation needed|date=July 2022}}