Editing Alger Hiss (section)

==Later evidence, for and against==

===Testimony by Bullitt and Weyl===
In 1952, former U.S. Ambassador to France [[William Christian Bullitt Jr.|William C. Bullitt]] testified before the McCarran Committee (the [[Senate Internal Security Subcommittee]]) that in 1939, Premier [[Édouard Daladier]] had advised him of French intelligence reports that two State Department officials named Hiss were Soviet agents.<ref>{{cite news |author=Edward F. Ryan |title=French in 1939 Called Hiss Red, Bullitt Says |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/152469326 |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=April 9, 1952 |access-date=May 2, 2014 |archive-date=May 2, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140502231125/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/152469326.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Apr+9%2C+1952&author=By+Edward+F.+Ryan+Post+Reporter&pub=The+Washington+Post+%281923-1954%29&edition=&startpage=&desc=French+in+1939+Called+Hiss+Red%2C+Bullitt+Says |id={{ProQuest|152469326}} |url-status=live }}</ref> When asked about it the next day, Daladier, then 68 years old, told reporters that he did not recall this conversation from 13 years previously.<ref>{{cite news |title=Daladier Does Not Recollect Giving Bullitt a Report on Hiss |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/152429171 |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=April 10, 1952 |access-date=May 2, 2014 |archive-date=May 2, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140502225536/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/152429171.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Apr+10%2C+1952&author=&pub=The+Washington+Post+%281923-1954%29&edition=&startpage=&desc=Daladier+Does+Not+Recollect+Giving+Bullitt+a+Report+on+Hiss |id={{ProQuest|152429171}} |url-status=live }}</ref> Also called to testify before the McCarran committee was economist [[Nathaniel Weyl]], a former Communist Party member "at large" who had worked for the Department of Agriculture during the early days of the [[New Deal]] and had become disillusioned with what he considered the underhanded methods of the Communist Party. In 1950 Weyl had been interviewed by the FBI and had told them that in 1933 he had belonged to a secret Communist Party unit along with Harold Ware and [[Lee Pressman]] and confirmed that Alger Hiss had been present at some meetings held at Ware's sister's violin studio.<ref>According to Gilbert Gall, the FBI's 1950 report on Weyl states that he told the agency that when he participated in the Ware group, "Lee Pressman was present at about ninety percent of the meetings he attended, and that he has a fairly clear recollection of Alger Hiss being present at some of the meetings." See Gilbert J. Gall, ''Pursuing Justice: Lee Pressman, the New Deal, and the CIO'' (SUNY Press, 1999), p. 40.</ref> In 1950, Weyl published an anti-communist book, ''Treason: The Story of Disloyalty and Betrayal in American History'', that made no mention of the so-called "Ware Group" and expressed doubt that Hiss was guilty of espionage.<ref name = Cook/><ref>
{{Cite book
  | last = Weyl
  | first = Nathaniel
  | title = Treason: The Story of Disloyalty and Betrayal in American History
  | publisher = Public Affairs Press
  | year = 1950
  | isbn = 978-1-296-19279-2 }}</ref><ref>
{{Cite book
  | last = Weyl
  | first = Nathaniel
  | title = Encounters With Communism
  | publisher = Xlibris Corporation
  | year = 2003
  | pages = 30–31, 114–118
  | isbn = 978-1-4134-0747-1 }} One thing that would have been discussed at these meetings was the [https://books.google.com/books?id=xypn4djxVD4C&dq=organizing+sharecroppers+reeltown+incident&pg=RA3-PA265 New Deal's response to the plight of black tenant farm workers in Alabama]. Weyl told reporter [[I. F. Stone]] that "nothing improper" had happened in the unit, but that he (Weyl) was so uncomfortable with communist secrecy that he soon quit government to become a full-time organizer among agricultural workers. See J. J. Guttenplan, ''American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone'' (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), p. 105. Stone, though convinced Hiss had been railroaded by Nixon, said he didn't know whether Hiss had ever been a Soviet agent. Another celebrated liberal reporter, A. J. Liebling, who struck up a warm friendship with Hiss while covering the trial, came to similar conclusions. See Raymond Sokolov's ''Wayward Reporter: the Life of A. J. Liebling'' (New York: Creative Arts Book Company, 1984) p. 207.</ref>

===Forgery by typewriter hypothesis===
At both trials, FBI typewriter experts testified that the Baltimore documents in Chambers's possession matched samples of typing done in the 1930s by Priscilla Hiss on the Hisses' home typewriter, a Woodstock brand. At both trials, the testimony was directed to comparing two sets of typed documents and not to the typewriter eventually submitted into evidence. As early as December 1948 the chief investigator for the Hiss defense, Horace W. Schmahl, set off a race to find Hiss's typewriter.<ref>
{{cite news
 | title =Sleuth "Hired by Hiss" Touched Off Hunt for Typewriter Here
 | work =Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0182.001
 | date = December 14, 1948}}
</ref> The FBI, with superior resources, was also searching for the typewriter, which the Hiss family had discarded some years earlier. Schmahl tracked it down first, and the Hiss defense introduced it with the intention of showing that its typeface would not be a match for that on the FBI's documents. It instead proved an excellent match and confirmed the FBI's evidence. Schmahl subsequently changed sides and went to work for the prosecution.

After Hiss had gone to prison, his lawyer, [[Chester T. Lane]], acting on a tip he had received from someone who had worked with Schmahl that Hiss might have been framed, filed a motion in January 1952 for a new trial.<ref>After Hiss had been jailed, his lawyer Chester Lane received a tip that "'Schmahl was implicated with the typewriter.' An investigator who had worked with Schmahl, Harold Bretnall, subsequently told the lawyer that Schmahl had been involved in forging the Hiss typewriter. 'Hiss', Bretnall said, 'was framed.' Schmahl, tracked down in 1973, admitted to a Hiss investigator he had been a 'consultant' on the typewriter forgery. He said the OSS had set Hiss up—just when was not clear—and the orders had come from through [OSS Director] [[William Joseph Donovan|Donovan]]'s law firm, Donovan, Leisure. Schmahl later retracted his statements and declined further interviews." (Summers (2000), p. 73).</ref> Lane sought to show that forgery by typewriter was feasible, and that such forgery had occurred in the Hiss case and was responsible for the incriminating documents. Unaware that the feasibility of such forgeries had already been established throughout the war by the military intelligence services that engaged in such practices, the Hiss defense team sought to establish feasibility directly by hiring a civilian typewriter expert, [[Martin Tytell]], to create a typewriter that would be indistinguishable from the one the Hisses owned. Tytell spent two years creating a facsimile Woodstock typewriter whose print characteristics would match the peculiarities of the Hiss typewriter.<ref>Squier, Michael. [https://www.nytimes.com/1952/02/03/archives/typewriter-evidence-alger-hiss-appeal-in-court-may-depend-on-the.html "Typewriter Evidence; Alger Hiss' appeal in court may depend on the credibility of a mute witness."], ''[[The New York Times]]'', February 3, 1952. Retrieved September 12, 2008.</ref>

To demonstrate that forgery by typewriter was not merely a theoretical possibility but had actually occurred in the Hiss case, the defense sought to show that Exhibit #UUU was not Hiss's old machine but a newer one altered to type like it. According to former Woodstock executives, the production date of a machine could be inferred from the machine's serial number. The serial number on the Exhibit #UUU typewriter indicated that it would have been ''manufactured after'' the man who sold the Hiss machine had retired from the company, and the salesman insisted that he did not sell any typewriters after his retirement. Decades later, when FBI files were disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, it turned out that the FBI had also doubted that the trial exhibit was Hiss's machine and for exactly the same reasons; although the FBI expressed these concerns internally as the first trial was about to begin, the public did not learn about the FBI's doubts until the mid-1970s.<ref>{{cite news
 | author =John Lowenthal
 | title =What the FBI knew and hid
 | work =The Nation
 | url =http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthaltyp.html
 | date =June 26, 1976
 | access-date =July 12, 2010
 | archive-date =June 20, 2010
 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20100620005502/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthaltyp.html
 | url-status =dead
 }}</ref>

To explain why typing from Exhibit #UUU seemed indistinguishable from the typing on Hiss's old machine, Lane assembled experts prepared to testify that Exhibit #UUU had been tampered with in a way inconsistent with professional repair work to make it type like Hiss's old typewriter. In addition, experts were prepared to testify that Priscilla Hiss was not the typist of the Baltimore documents.<ref>
{{Cite book
 | author =Alger Hiss
 | title =In the Court of Public Opinion
 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/incourtofpublico00hiss/page/363 363]–409
 | publisher =Alfred Knopf
 | url =https://archive.org/details/incourtofpublico00hiss
 | url-access =registration
 | year =1957
 }}
</ref>
In summarizing the conclusions of the forensic experts he had assembled in his motion for a new trial, Lane told the court, "I no longer just question the authenticity of Woodstock N230099. I now say to the Court that Woodstock N230099—the typewriter in evidence at the trials—is a fake machine. I present in affidavit form, and will be able to produce at the hearing, expert testimony that this machine is a deliberately fabricated job, a new type face on an old body. This being so, it can only have been planted on the defense by or on behalf of Whittaker Chambers as part of his plot for the false incrimination of Alger Hiss."<ref>
{{Cite book
 | author =Alger Hiss
 | title =In the Court of Public Opinion
 | publisher =Alfred Knopf
 |page=[https://archive.org/details/incourtofpublico00hiss/page/401 401]
 | url =https://archive.org/details/incourtofpublico00hiss
 | url-access =registration
 | year =1957
 }}
</ref>

In July 1952 Judge Goddard denied Hiss's motion for a new trial, expressing great skepticism that Chambers had the resources, knew how to commit forgery by typewriter, and would have known where to plant such a fake machine so it would be found. In his decision, Goddard did not address the possibility, raised by Hiss's defenders, that someone other than Chambers, namely Horace Schmahl and/or his associates on the prosecution side, might have been involved in faking the typewriter.<ref>Allen Weinstein disparages such ideas at some length as far-fetched "[[conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]]," calling them "inconsistent and contradictory" (''Perjury'' [Vintage Books, 1979] p. 575 and passim).</ref>

In 1976, Hiss called ex-FBI official [[William C. Sullivan]], who recounted in his 1979 memoir:<blockquote>In 1976, five years after I left the FBI, I got a telephone call at my home in New Hampshire from Alger Hiss. Still working on his case, he wanted me to tell him whether the typewriter that helped convict him of a perjury charge was a fake which had been put together at the FBI Laboratory.<br>Although I never worked on the Hiss case myself, I knew that we were giving Richard Nixon, who was in charge of the investigation, every possible assistance. Had Nixon asked the FBI to manufacture evidence to provide his case against Hiss, Hoover would have been only too glad to oblige. I told Hiss that the typewriter was not made in the FBI Lab. What I didn't tell him was that even if we had wanted to, we simply wouldn't have been capable of it.<ref name=TheBureau>
{{cite book
| first1 = William C. 
| last1 = Sullivan
| author-link1 = William C. Sullivan
| first2 = Bill 
| last2 = Brown
| title = The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI
| publisher = WW Norton
| url = https://archive.org/details/bureaumythirtyye00sull/
| page = 95
| date = 1979
| isbn = 9780393012361
| access-date = 11 July 2020}}</ref></blockquote>Based on Justice Department documents released in 1976, the Hiss defense filed a petition in federal court in July 1978 for a writ of ''[[coram nobis]]'', asking that the guilty verdict be overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct. In 1982, the Federal Court denied the petition, and in 1983 the US Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. In the writ, Hiss's attorneys argued the following:

* The FBI illegally withheld important evidence from the Hiss defense team, specifically that typewritten documents could be forged. Unbeknownst to the defense, military intelligence operatives in World War II, a decade before the trials, "could reproduce faultlessly the imprint of any typewriter on earth."<ref>{{Cite news
  | last =Lowenthal
  | first =John
  | title =What the FBI Knew But Hid from Hiss and the Court
  | date =June 26, 1976
  | work =The Nation
  | url =http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthaltyp.html
  | access-date =August 13, 2007
  | archive-date =May 16, 2008
  | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20080516055838/http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Eth15/lowenthaltyp.html
  | url-status =dead
  }} <br>
See also:<br>
{{cite web
  | author1 = Bradford, Russell R.
  | author2 = Bradford, Ralph B.
  | title = A History of Forgery by Typewriter
  | work = An Introduction to Handwriting Examination and Identification
  | url = http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/bradford.html
  | year = 1992
  | access-date = March 1, 2007
  | archive-date = September 9, 2006
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060909041952/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/bradford.html
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref>
* With regard to the Woodstock No. 230099 typewriter introduced as Exhibit #UUU by the defense at the trial, the FBI knew there was an inconsistency between its serial number and the manufacture date of Hiss's machine but illegally withheld this information from Hiss.<ref name = Weins/>
* That the FBI had an informer on the Hiss defense team, a private detective named Horace W. Schmahl. Hired by the Hiss defense team, Schmahl reported on the Hiss defense strategy to the government.<ref>
{{Harvnb|Weinstein|1997|p=501}}</ref><ref>{{cite web
  | title = Horace W. Schmahl
  | work = The Alger Hiss Story
  | url = http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/schmahl.html
  | access-date = April 10, 2007
  | archive-date = September 9, 2006
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060909042346/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/schmahl.html
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref>
* That the FBI had conducted illegal surveillance of Hiss before and during the trials, including phone taps and mail openings. Also that the prosecution had withheld from Hiss and his lawyers the records of this surveillance, none of which provided any evidence that Hiss was a spy or a communist.<ref>{{Cite news
  | last = Cook
  | first = Fred J.
  | title = Alger Hiss — A Whole New Ball Game
  | date = October 11, 1980
  | work = The Nation
  | url = http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/cookcnbrief.html
  | access-date = August 7, 2007
  | archive-date = August 17, 2007
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070817132604/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/cookcnbrief.html
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref>
Federal Judge Owen, in denying Hiss's ''coram nobis'' petition, quoted verbatim two points made by Judge Goddard in denying Hiss's appeal for a new trial 30 years earlier, namely, that "there is not a trace of any evidence that Chambers had the mechanical skills, tools, equipment or material for such a difficult task [as typewriter forgery]," and that "If Chambers had constructed a duplicate machine, how would he have known where to plant it so that it would be found by Hiss?"

Stephen Salant, whose FOIA requests had revealed to the public the contents of the "pumpkin papers," has documented that Schmahl was a trained Army "spy-catcher" (as they called themselves), a special agent in the [[Counter Intelligence Corps]] (CIC). While on the payroll of the Hiss defense and searching for Hiss's typewriter, Schmahl confided to the FBI that his "present employment" in December 1948 was with Military Intelligence; his claim has not yet been independently verified.<ref>{{cite web
 | author = Stephen W. Salant
 | title = Successful Strategic Deception: A Case Study
 | url = http://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/hiss/
 | year = 2010
 | access-date = July 12, 2010
 }}
</ref><ref>During the War, Schmahl graduated from the Military Intelligence Training Center. See:
 {{cite report
 | title =Graduates of Twenty-First Class
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0216.001
 | year = 2010}} He became a Special Agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps. See:
  {{cite report
 | title =Summary of St. Louis Personnel Record
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0144.002
 | year = 2010}} See also:
  {{cite report
 | title =FBI Memorandum re Horace Schmahl
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0161.002
 | year = 2010}}</ref>
At the [[Fort Ritchie|Military Intelligence Training Center]], CIC agents learned the rudiments of forgery and how to detect it through matching of typed samples with the typewriter that produced them.<ref>
For a class lecture on forgery, typewriting, and alteration of documents, see:
   {{cite report
 | author =Lieutenant Thompson
 | title =Handout on Questioned Documents (Handwriting, Typewriting)
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0222.001
 | year = 1942}} For a textbook clarifying counterintelligence techniques taught at the time of the first Hiss trial, see:
   {{cite book
 | title =Counter Intelligence Corps Investigator
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0224.001
 | date = June 1949}}
</ref> During the 1940s the CIC's domestic surveillance of civilians was extensive but so covert that it usually escaped notice. When detected, undercover CIC agents were often mistaken for FBI agents, since only the Bureau was authorized to investigate civilians.<ref>For the official rationale for such domestic activities despite delimitation agreements with the FBI, see the official history:
 {{cite book
 | title =CIC in the Zone of the Interior
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0220.001
 | year = 1942}} especially p. 1093.
For an academic historian's assessment of these violations, see:
   {{cite book
 | author =Joan Jensen
 | chapter =World War II: Expanding the Boundaries
 | title = Army Surveillance in America, 1775–1980
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0208.001
 | date =July 12, 2010}} especially p. 219. For the accounts of special agents surveiling civilians suspected of (1) aiding communists, see:
       {{Cite book
 | author =Special Agent Duval Edwards
 | title =Spy Catchers of the U.S. Army
 | publisher =Red Apple Publishing
 | year =1994}} especially p. 88; (2) aiding Nazis, see:
{{cite news
 | author = Anthony Karge
 | title =Memorial Day parade grand marshal returns to service
 | work = Westport News
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0234.001
 | year = 2009}}; and (3) aiding all political shades in between, see:
{{cite web
 | author = Isadore Zack
 | title = Isadore Zack-CIC Collection at the Milne Special Collection, University of New Hampshire Library
 | url = http://www.library.unh.edu/special/index.php/isadore-zack
 | date = July 12, 2010
 | access-date = July 12, 2010
 | archive-date = July 9, 2010
 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100709090105/http://www.library.unh.edu/special/index.php/isadore-zack
 | url-status = dead
 }}</ref>
During the 1930s Army counterintelligence monitored another suspected communist connected to Chambers, [[Vincent Reno|Franklin Vincent Reno]], a civilian employed at the [[Aberdeen Proving Ground]], who shortly afterwards passed information about US Army weapons to Chambers.<ref>
Franklin Victor Reno arrived on the Army base on July 26, 1937, and aroused enough suspicion that by August 5, the Army put him under surveillance. See:
{{cite report
 | title =Franklin Victor Reno, 1937 investigation and incomplete IRR file
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0221.001
 | date = July 12, 2010}}
</ref>
It is not known if US Army counterintelligence monitored Chambers' other associates, but when Hiss presided over the UN Charter Conference, more than a hundred undercover CIC agents were in attendance.<ref>For one agent's account of working undercover at the San Francisco conference and photos of fellow agents there, see:
{{cite journal
 | author = Leonard L. (Igor) Gorin
 | title =United Nations Formation 1945—CIC Security Role
 | journal =Golden Sphinx |issue=Serial Issue #2004–3 |date=Winter 2004{{ndash}}2005  |pages=16–20
 | hdl =2027/spo.hiss1111.0206.001
  }}
</ref>

In his 1976 memoir, former [[White House]] counsel [[John Dean]] states that President Nixon's chief counsel [[Charles Colson]] told him that Nixon had admitted in a conversation that HUAC had fabricated a typewriter, saying, "We built one on the Hiss case."<ref>
{{Cite book
  | last =Dean
  | first = John
  | title =Blind Ambition: The White House Years
  | url =https://archive.org/details/blindam_dea_1976_00_8452
  | url-access =registration
  | publisher =Simon & Schuster
  | year =1976
  | isbn = 978-0-671-22438-7 }}</ref>
According to Anthony Summers: "When Dean's book was published, Colson protested that he had 'no recollection of Nixon's having said the typewriter was 'phonied.'" Nixon called the claim "totally false." Dean insisted that his contemporaneous notes confirmed that Colson had quoted the President as he indicated and seemed serious when he did so.<ref>{{Cite book
  | last =Summers
  | first =Anthony
  | title =The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon
  | publisher =Penguin-Putnam Inc
  | year =2000
  | isbn =978-0-670-87151-3
  | page =[https://archive.org/details/arroganceofpower00summ/page/73 73]
  | url =https://archive.org/details/arroganceofpower00summ/page/73
  }}</ref>
Summers and others suggest that Dean's version of events is plausible: "'Had Nixon asked the FBI to manufacture evidence to prove his case against Hiss,' opined former FBI Assistant Director Sullivan, 'Hoover would actually been only too glad to oblige.'" As to whether Nixon would actually have gone as far as to frame Hiss, Summers notes, "the later record includes disquieting instances of forgery or planting false information."<ref>Summers (2000), p. 75)</ref>
Cold War historian John V. Fleming disagrees, arguing that on the White House tapes Nixon never says anything that would have corroborated Colson's statement to [[John Dean]] about forging a typewriter in the Hiss case. Fleming and others maintain that the indistinct phrase during a conversation with John Dean that sounded to certain transcribers like "we made a typewriter" is actually a reference to Hiss's legal team.<ref>
{{Cite book
  | last=Fleming
  | first=John F.
  | title=The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books that Shaped the Cold War
  | year=2009
  | isbn=978-0-393-06925-9
  | pages=292–93| publisher=W. W. Norton & Company
 }}. When first issued by the White House the phrase had been transcribed as "we got a typewriter," the official transcript was subsequently amended to read "We got Piper [the name of Hiss's lawyer's law firm]." The context for the remark was a conversation with John Dean in which Nixon states that [[J. Edgar Hoover]] had been ordered not to help him. He says, "But we broke that thing ... without any help. The FBI got the evidence which eventually—See, we got the [typewriter (?)/Piper(?)] who—We got the, the, oh, Pumpkin Papers, for instance. We got all of that ourselves.... The FBI did not cooperate. The Justice Department did not cooperate." [February 28, 1973]</ref> Throughout the tapes Nixon stresses how he had tried Hiss in the press, not the law courts, because that's how these things were done:<blockquote>We won the Hiss case in the papers. We did. I had to leak stuff all over the place. Because the Justice Department would not prosecute it. Hoover didn't even cooperate.... It was won in the papers. I leaked out the papers.... I leaked out the testimony. I had Hiss convicted before he ever got to the grand jury.... Go back and read the chapter on the Hiss case in ''[[Six Crises]]'' and you'll see how it was done. It wasn't done waiting for the goddamn courts or the attorney general or the FBI.<ref>See Barry Werth, ''31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today'' (New York: Nan Talese, 2006), pp. 84–87; and Stanley I Kutler, ''Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes'' (New York: Touchstone, 1998), pp. 338–39, where Nixon says: "Don't worry about his trial.... Just get everything out. Try him in the press. Try him in the press ... leak it out. We want to destroy him in the press. Press. Is that clear.... I want somebody to take it just like I took the Hiss case"</ref></blockquote>

According to Anthony Summers:<ref>Summers (2000), p. 73</ref><blockquote> The one substantive piece of information indicating typewriter forgery features the OSS and its chief, William Donovan. In late 1948, when the Hiss defense and the FBI began hunting for the Woodstock typewriter, a man named Horace Schmahl joined the defense team as an investigator. Schmahl had worked for either the OSS or army intelligence during the war, then joined the Central Intelligence Group, which operated between the closedown of the OSS and the inception of the CIA. After his stint for the Hiss side, Schmahl defected to the prosecution team.<ref>In the decades that followed Schmahl and his associates were to be linked to the CIA and with Richard Nixon (Summers (2000), p. 491).</ref></blockquote>

Against the forged typewriter theory Allen Weinstein writes:<blockquote> [I]f there existed any persons with the means, motive, and opportunity to "substitute" a different Woodstock for the Hiss machine in the months after Hiss's indictment, the evidence ... indicates the possible conspirators, Mike Catlett and Donald Hiss, who for two months withheld knowledge from Alger's lawyers that the typewriter had been traced to Ira Lockey.<ref>Allen Weinstein, ''Perjury'' (1978), p. 578.</ref> </blockquote>

===Noel Field===

In 1992, records were found in Hungarian Interior Ministry archives in which self-confessed Soviet spy [[Noel Field]] named Alger Hiss as a fellow agent. An American citizen from a Quaker family who had grown up in Switzerland, Field attended Harvard and worked in the US Foreign Service from 1929 until 1936, when he left the State Department for a job at the League of Nations in Geneva, helping refugees from the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, Field, who never concealed he was a communist, headed a [[Unitarian Universalist Service Committee]] organization to aid displaced persons in Marseilles, before fleeing to Geneva, where he collaborated with [[Allen Dulles]] of the OSS (who was based in Bern). In 1948, when the Hiss trials started, Field and his German wife were still living in Switzerland. By 1949 Field was broke, having been fired from the US-based Unitarian Service Committee for his communist associations. Wishing to avoid returning to the United States and possibly having to testify before Congress, Field traveled to [[Prague]], hoping to be hired as a lecturer at the [[Charles University in Prague|Charles University]].<ref>Field lacked confidence he could stand up under testimony: "Alger defended himself ... with great intelligence. He had been trained as a lawyer and knew all the phrases and tricks. I, on the other hand, had no such experience.... I did not trust myself to stand before my accusers and shout 'innocent' in their faces.... I also understood the same from a short letter from Hiss, who obviously could not write openly," he stated. [https://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/15/opinion/hiss-case-smoking-gun.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Sam Tanenhaus, ''Hiss Case 'Smoking Gun'?'', ''The New York Times'', Oct. 15, 1993.]</ref> Instead, he was seized by Stalinist security services from Poland and Czechoslovakia and secretly imprisoned in Hungary. Field was accused of having organized an anti-communist resistance network in Eastern Europe for the OSS during the war and later for the new CIA<ref>James Srodes, ''Allen Dulles: Master of Spies'' (Regnery, 2000), p. 412.</ref> and was held for five years in solitary confinement.<ref>It has been suggested that Field was a victim of a disinformation campaign by Allen Dulles called [https://archive.org/details/operationsplinte00stev "Operation Splinter Factor"], see [https://archive.org/details/pdfy-q0ULBH2DJICRS3Vg <!-- quote=Field. --> William Blum, ''Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II'' (London: Zed Books, 2003) p. 58], and even the inspiration for John le Carré's thriller, ''[[The Spy Who Came In From the Cold]]'', but the CIA disputes these theories. See [https://archive.org/details/mi6insidecovertw00dorr/page/484 Stephen Dorril, ''MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service'' (Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 484]. The narrator in Norman Mailer's fictional chronicle about the CIA, ''[[Harlot's Ghost]]'', refers to Noel Field as [https://books.google.com/books?id=MR2hnexXo2cC&q=Martyr "the American Martyr"].</ref> Repeatedly interrogated under rigorous torture, Field broke down and confessed to being "head of the U.S. Secret Service," under his controller, Allen Dulles, "the famous pro-Nazi OSS spymaster."<ref>Srodes, [https://books.google.com/books?id=RIaw7GYDFmwC&pg=PA413 ''Allen Dulles'', p. 413.]/</ref>

While being "rehabilitated" after the torture had ceased, Field referred four times to Hiss as a Soviet agent, for example: "Around the summer of 1935 Alger Hiss tried to induce me to do service for the Soviets. I was indiscreet enough to tell him he had come too late." This agreed with [[Hede Massing]]'s assertion to US authorities in 1947 that when she attempted to recruit Noel Field for one Soviet spy network (the [[OGPU]]), Field had replied that he already worked for another (the [[Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye|GRU]]). (Massing repeated this story at Hiss's second trial when she testified that at a party at Noel Field's house in 1935 she had obliquely joked with Hiss about recruiting Noel Field.<ref>[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/hedem.html ''The Alger Hiss Story: The Cast: Hede Massing''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080302181102/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/hedem.html |date=March 2, 2008 }}. For more on the dinner party story from newly available Soviet and Hungarian documents see the website, [http://www.documentstalk.com/wp/the-dinner-party-at-the-fields-ii#fn-5687-31 ''Documents Talk'', maintained by Svetlana Chervonnaya] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130602102716/http://www.documentstalk.com/wp/the-dinner-party-at-the-fields-ii#fn-5687-31 |date=June 2, 2013 }}.</ref>)
In 1954, the Hungarian secret police released Field, exonerating him. He then formally wrote to the Communist Party's [[Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Central Committee]] in Moscow stating for the record that the tortures he had undergone in captivity had made him "confess more and more lies as truth." Hiss's defenders argue that Field's implications of Hiss may well have been among those lies.<ref name = SamT/><ref>{{Cite news
  | last = Klingsberg
  | first = Ethan
  | title = Case Closed on Alger Hiss?
  | journal = The Nation
  | date = November 8, 1993
  | url = http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/klings2.html
  | access-date = December 15, 2006
  | archive-date = September 9, 2006
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060909041037/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/klings2.html
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref> Field remained in communist Hungary until his death in 1970. In public, Field continued to maintain Hiss was innocent and, in 1957, wrote Hiss a letter calling Hede Massing's dinner party story "the false testimony of a perjured witness" and an "outrageous lie."<ref name = VeHi>{{cite web
  | last =Lowenthal
  | first =John
  | title =Venona and Alger Hiss
  | work =The Alger Hiss Story
  | date =Autumn 2000
  | url =http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthal.pdf
  | access-date =November 28, 2005
  | archive-date =September 9, 2006
  | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20060909042031/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthal.pdf
  | url-status =dead
  }} note #76 and pg. 119,</ref>

===Venona and "ALES"===
[[File:LamphereRJ.JPG|thumb|[[Robert J. Lamphere]]]]

In 1995, the CIA and the [[National Security Agency|NSA]] for the first time confirmed the existence of the World War II [[Venona project]], which, beginning in 1943, had decrypted or partially decrypted thousands of telegrams sent from 1940 to 1948 to the primary Soviet foreign intelligence agency—for most of that period, the [[People's Commissariat for State Security|NKVD]]—by its operatives in the US and elsewhere. Although known to the FBI, Venona had been kept secret even from President Truman. One cable, Venona #1822, mentioned a Soviet spy codenamed "ALES" who worked with a group of "Neighbors" — members of other Soviet intelligence organizations, such as the military's GRU. FBI Special Agent [[Robert J. Lamphere]],<ref>{{cite web|author=Douglas Martin |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/11/us/robert-j-lamphere-83-spy-chaser-for-the-fbi-dies.html |title=Robert J. Lamphere, 83, Spy Chaser for the F.B.I., Dies |newspaper=The New York Times |date=February 11, 2002 |access-date=May 2, 2014}}</ref> who supervised the FBI's spy chasing squad, concluded that the codename "ALES" was "probably Alger Hiss."<ref>[http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/venona5.html Venona 1822] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101125211609/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/venona5.html |date=November 25, 2010 }}.</ref><ref name=Venona1822>{{cite web
 |title       = Venona transcript #1822, with commentary by Douglas Linder
 |work        = The Trials of Alger Hiss: A Commentary
 |url         = http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20060619201454/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html
 |archive-date = June 19, 2006
 |df          = mdy-all
}}</ref>

In 1997, [[Allen Weinstein]], in the second edition of his 1978 book ''[[Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case]]'', calls the Venona evidence "persuasive but not conclusive."<ref name = Weins /> The bipartisan Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, chaired by Democratic Senator [[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]], stated in its findings that year: "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of [[Harry Dexter White]] of the Treasury Department."<ref>{{cite web
 |title=Appendix A; SECRECY; A Brief Account of the American Experience
 |work=Report Of The Commission On Protecting And Reducing Government Secrecy
 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office
 |year=1997
 |url=http://origin.www.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf
 |pages=A–37
 |url-status=dead
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070629055716/http://origin.www.gpo.gov/congress/commissions/secrecy/pdf/12hist1.pdf
 |archive-date=June 29, 2007
}}</ref> In his 1998 book ''Secrecy: The American Experience'', Moynihan wrote, "Belief in the guilt or innocence of Alger Hiss became a defining issue in American intellectual life. Parts of the American government had conclusive evidence of his guilt, but they never told."<ref>{{Cite book
  | last = Moynihan
  | first = Daniel Patrick
  | author-link = Daniel Patrick Moynihan
  | title = Secrecy: The American Experience
  | publisher = Yale University Press
  | year = 1998
  | page = [https://archive.org/details/secrecyamericane00moyn/page/146 146]
  | isbn = 978-0-300-08079-7
  | url = https://archive.org/details/secrecyamericane00moyn/page/146
  }}</ref> In their numerous books, [[Harvey Klehr]], professor of political science at Emory University, and [[John Earl Haynes]], historian of twentieth-century politics at the Library of Congress, have mounted an energetic defense of Lamphere's conclusion that ALES indeed referred to Alger Hiss.<ref name = DSEA>{{Cite book
 |author1=Haynes, John Earl  |author2=Klehr, Harvey
 | year = 2000
 | title = Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
 | publisher = Yale University Press
 | pages = 170: pp. 36
 | isbn = 978-0-300-08462-7
}} For an assessment of Haynes and Klehr's perspective on the role of the American Communist Party in the 1930s, see [https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98oct/mccarthy.htm James T. Patterson, "The Enemy Within"], ''The Atlantic Monthly'' (October 1998).</ref> [[National Security Agency]] analysts have also gone on record asserting that ALES could only have been Alger Hiss.<ref>{{cite web
  | title = Secrets, Lies and Atomic Spies; Alger Hiss
  | publisher = Nova Online
  | year = 2002
  | url = https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_hiss.html
  }}</ref> The [https://web.archive.org/web/20160306185104/https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/venona/1945/30mar_kgb_interviews_gru_agent.pdf Venona transcript # 1822], sent March 30, 1945, from the Soviets' Washington station chief to Moscow,<ref name=Venona1822 /> appears to indicate that ALES attended the February 4–11, 1945, Yalta conference and then went to Moscow. Hiss did attend Yalta and then traveled to Moscow with Secretary of State Stettinius.<ref>{{cite web
 |last        = Linder
 |first       = Doug
 |title       = The Venona Files and the Alger Hiss Case
 |work        = Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials – 1949–50
 |year        = 2003
 |url         = http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissVenona.html
 |access-date  = September 13, 2006
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20060830194709/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html
 |archive-date = August 30, 2006
 |url-status     = dead
 |df          = mdy-all
}}</ref>

Some have questioned whether Venona #1822 constitutes definitive proof that ALES was Hiss. Hiss's lawyer, John Lowenthal argued:

* ALES was said to be the leader of a small group of espionage agents but, apart from using his wife as a typist and Chambers as courier, Hiss was alleged by the prosecution to have acted alone.<ref>{{cite web |author=default |url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html |title=Alger Hiss and the VENONA files |publisher=Law.umkc.edu |date=March 30, 1945 |access-date=February 15, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060619201454/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hissvenona.html |archive-date=June 19, 2006 |df=mdy-all}}</ref> The CIA concluded the "small group" comprised Alger, his wife Priscilla, and brother Donald.
* ALES was a GRU (military intelligence) agent who obtained military intelligence and only rarely provided State Department material. In contrast, during his trial, Hiss, an employee of the State Department, was accused of having obtained only non-military information, and the papers he was accused of having passed to the Soviets on a regular basis were non-military, State Department documents.
* Even had Hiss been a spy as alleged, after 1938 he would have been unlikely to have continued espionage activities as ALES did, since in 1938 Whittaker Chambers had broken with the Communist Party and gone into hiding, threatening to denounce his Communist Party colleagues unless they followed suit. Had Hiss been ALES, his cover would thus have been in extreme jeopardy, and it would have been too risky for any Soviet agency to continue using him.<ref name=Lowe>{{cite web
  | last = Lowenthal
  | first = David
  | title = Did Allen Weinstein Get the Alger Hiss Story Wrong?
  | publisher = History News Network
  |date=May 2005
  | url = http://hnn.us/articles/11579.html#_ednref13
  | access-date = September 13, 2006 }}</ref>
*Lowenthal suggests that ALES was not at the Yalta conference at all and that the cable instead was directed to Soviet deputy foreign minister [[Andrey Vyshinsky]].<ref>Also spelled "Vyshinskii," "Vishinsky" and "Vyshinski."</ref> According to Lowenthal, in paragraph six of Venona #1822, the GRU asks Vyshinsky to get in touch with ALES to convey thanks from the GRU for a job well done—which would have been unnecessary if ALES had actually gone to Moscow, because the GRU could have thanked him there in person.<ref name=VeHi />

Eduard Mark of the Center for Air Force History hotly disputed this analysis.<ref>{{Cite journal
  | doi = 10.1080/02684520412331306920
  | last = Mark
  | first = Eduard
  | title = Who was 'Venona's' 'ALES'? cryptanalysis and the Hiss case
  | journal = Intelligence and National Security
  | volume = 18
  | issue = 3
  | pages = 45–72
  | date=September 2003
  | s2cid = 154152581
 }} A Cold War hardliner, Mark also maintained that Venona proved that Roosevelt's close adviser, Harry Hopkins, originator of The New Deal, was a Soviet agent. See also Mark's previous (1998) article in the same periodical: "Venona's Source 19 and the Trident Conference of May 1943: Diplomacy or Espionage?" ''Intelligence and National Security'': 13: 2 (April 1998): 1–31.</ref> In 2005, the NSA released the original Russian of the Venona texts. At a symposium held at the Center for Cryptologic History that year, intelligence historian John R. Schindler concluded that the Russian text of Venona #1822 made clear that ALES was indeed at Yalta: "the identification of ALES as Alger Hiss, made by the U.S. Government more than a half-century ago, seems exceptionally solid, based on the evidence now available; message 1822 is only one piece of that evidence, yet a compelling one."<ref>{{cite web
  | last = Schindler
  | first =John R.
  | title =Hiss in VENONA: The Continuing Controversy
  | work = Center for Cryptologic History Symposium
  | date =October 27, 2005
  | url =http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page61.html
  }}</ref>

Rebutting Lowenthal's other points, [[John Earl Haynes]] and Harvey Klehr argued that:
* None of the evidence presented at the Hiss trial precludes the possibility that Hiss could have been an espionage agent after 1938 or that he had only passed State Department documents after 1938.
* Chambers's charges were not seriously investigated until 1945 when Elizabeth Bentley defected, so the Soviets could in theory have considered it an acceptable risk for him to continue his espionage work even after Chambers's 1938 defection.
* Vyshinsky was not in the US between Yalta and the time of the Venona message, and the message is from the Washington KGB station reporting on a talk with ALES in the US, rendering Lowenthal's analysis impossible.<ref>{{Cite book 
 |author       = Haynes, John Earl
 |author2      = Klehr, Harvey
 |title        = ''In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage''
 |year         = 2003
 |pages        = [https://archive.org/details/indenial00john/page/158 158–163]
 |isbn         = 978-1-893554-72-6
 |publisher    = Encounter Books
 |author2-link = Harvey Klehr
 |author-link  = John Earl Haynes
 |url          = https://archive.org/details/indenial00john/page/158
}}</ref>

An earlier Venona document, #1579, had actually mentioned "HISS" by name. This partially decrypted cable consists of fragments of a 1943 message from the GRU chief in New York to headquarters in Moscow and reads: "from the State Department by name of HISS" (with "HISS" "spelled out in the Latin alphabet," according to a footnote by the cryptanalysts). "HISS" could refer either to Alger or Donald Hiss, both State Department officials at that time. Lowenthal argued that had Alger Hiss really been a spy, the GRU would not have mentioned his real name<ref name = VeHi /> in a coded transmission, since this was contrary to their usual practice.<ref name = DSEA />

At an April 2007 symposium, authors Kai Bird and [[Svetlana Chervonnaya (political historian)|Svetlana Chervonnaya]] postulated that, based on the movements of officials present at Yalta, Wilder Foote, a US diplomat, not Hiss, was the best match for ALES.<ref>{{cite journal
  |author1=Bird, Kai  |author2=Chervonnaya, Svetlana
  | title =The Mystery of Ales
  | journal =American Scholar
  | date =Summer 2007
  | url = http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-mystery-of-ales/
  | access-date = September 12, 2009 }}</ref> They note Foote was in Mexico City when a Soviet cable placed ALES there, whereas Hiss had left several days earlier for Washington (see above). In response, Haynes and Klehr point out that Foote doesn't fit other aspects of the description of ALES (Foote was publishing newspapers in Vermont at the time when ALES was said to have been working for Soviet military intelligence) and suggest that the cable came from someone who managed [[KGB]] assets (rather than [[Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye|GRU]] assets like ALES) and may have been mistaken when he stated that ALES was still in Mexico City.<ref>{{cite web
  | author = Haynes, John Earl |author2=Klehr, Harvey
  | title =Hiss Was Guilty
  | date = April 16, 2007
  | publisher = History News Network
  | url =http://hnn.us/articles/37456.html
  |author2-link=Harvey Klehr
 |author-link=John Earl Haynes
 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web
  | last = Haynes
  | first =John Earl
  | title =Ales: Hiss, Foote, Stettinius?
  | date =April 14, 2007
  | url =http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page63.html
  }}</ref> Mark also disputes that Foote was ALES, arguing that Foote was never shown to be associated with the communists or any foreign intelligence services; Hiss was the "one possible candidate" who could have been ALES, Mark contends.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Mark|first1=Eduard|title=In Re Alger Hiss: A Final Verdict from the Archives of the KGB|journal=Journal of Cold War Studies|date=Summer 2009|volume=11|issue=3|page=50|doi=10.1162/jcws.2009.11.3.26|s2cid=57560522}}</ref>

===Oleg Gordievsky===

In 1985, a high-ranking KGB agent, [[Oleg Gordievsky]] (b. 1938), who was recruited in 1974 as a British double agent, defected and wrote a series of memoirs, in one of which, ''The KGB'' (1990), he recalled attending a lecture given before a KGB audience by [[Iskhak Akhmerov|Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov]], who identified Hiss as a World War II Soviet agent.<ref>
{{Cite book
  | author1 = Andrew, Christopher
  | author2 = Gordievsky, Oleg
  | title = KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev
  | publisher = Harpercollins
  | year = 1990
  | page = [https://archive.org/details/kgbinsidestoryof00chri/page/287 287]
  | isbn = 978-0-06-016605-2
  | url = https://archive.org/details/kgbinsidestoryof00chri/page/287
  }}</ref>
Gordievsky went further and claimed that Hiss had the codename identity of "ALES." Appearing before the Venona cables were made public, this at first appeared to be independent corroboration of the codename, but it was later revealed that Gordievsky's source for the ALES identity was an article by journalist Thomas Powell, who had seen National Security Agency documents on Venona years before their release.<ref>{{Cite journal|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/983|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040324005455/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/983|url-status=dead|archive-date=2004-03-24|title=The New York Review of Books: NOT A RECRUITER|journal=The New York Review of Books|date=2004-03-24|access-date=2018-09-12}}</ref> Gordievsky's status as a reliable source was challenged in sections of the British media.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-article--michael-foots-tainted-accuser-1573992.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120123054651/http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-article--michael-foots-tainted-accuser-1573992.html |archive-date=2012-01-23 |url-access=limited |url-status=live|title=LEADING ARTICLE : Michael Foot's tainted accuser|work=The Independent|date=1995-02-20}}</ref>

===Soviet archives===

After the [[dissolution of the Soviet Union]] in 1991, Alger Hiss petitioned General [[Dmitri Volkogonov|Dmitry Antonovich Volkogonov]], who had become Russian president [[Boris Yeltsin]]'s military advisor and the overseer of all the Soviet intelligence archives, to request the release of any Soviet files relevant to his case. Both former President Nixon and the director of his presidential library, [[John H. Taylor (pastor)|John H. Taylor]], wrote similar letters, though their full contents are not yet publicly available.

Russian archivists responded by reviewing their files, and in late 1992 reported back that they had found no evidence Hiss ever engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union nor that he was a member of the Communist Party. Volkogonov subsequently stated he spent only two days on the search and had mainly relied on the word of [[KGB]] archivists. "What I saw gave me no basis to claim a full clarification," he said. Referring to Hiss's lawyer, he added, "John Lowenthal pushed me to say things of which I was not fully convinced."<ref name = SamT>
{{Cite news
  | last = Tanenhaus
  | first = Sam
  | title = Hiss: guilty as charged
  | work = Commentary
  | volume = V. 95
  |date=April 1993}}</ref> General-Lieutenant Vitaly Pavlov, who ran Soviet intelligence work in North America in the late 1930s and early 1940s for the NKVD said that Hiss never worked for the USSR as one of his agents.<ref name= Kobyakov>{{cite journal
  | last = Kobyakov
  | first = Julius N.
  | title = Lowenthal and Alger Hiss
  | journal = H-Diplo
  | publisher = Humanities and Social Services Net
  | date = October 10, 2003
  | url = http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=b&msg=xPNOEFLppoOgkkWbtl1dQw&user=&pw=
  | access-date = October 25, 2007
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130709080910/http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=b&msg=xPNOEFLppoOgkkWbtl1dQw&user=&pw=
  | archive-date = July 9, 2013
  | url-status = dead
  }}; and:<br>
{{cite journal
  | last = Kobyakov
  | first = Julius N.
  | title = Alger Hiss
  | journal = H-Diplo
  | publisher = Humanities and Social Services Net
  | date = October 16, 2003
  | url = http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=c&msg=/%2bj6%2bNHkqbEMRV0ioyVHUQ&user=&pw=
  | access-date = October 25, 2007
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130709083601/http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-diplo&month=0310&week=c&msg=%2F%2Bj6%2BNHkqbEMRV0ioyVHUQ&user=&pw=
  | archive-date = July 9, 2013
  | url-status = dead
  }}</ref>

In 2003, retired Russian intelligence official General Julius Kobyakov disclosed that it was he who had actually searched the files for Volkogonov. Kobyakov stated that Hiss did not have a relationship with SVR predecessor organizations,<ref name= Kobyakov/> although Hiss was accused of being with the [[GRU (Soviet Union)|GRU]], a military intelligence organization separate from SVR predecessors. In 2007, [[Svetlana Chervonnaya (political historian)|Svetlana Chervonnaya]], a Russian researcher who had been studying Soviet archives since the early 1990s, argued that based on documents she reviewed, Hiss was not implicated in spying.<ref>
{{Cite news
| last = Pyle
| first = Richard
| title = Researcher adds to Alger Hiss debate
| agency = Associated Press
| url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040402644.html
| date = April 5, 2007
| newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref> In May 2009, at a conference hosted by the [[Wilson Center]], Mark Kramer, director of [[Cold War Studies at Harvard University]] at the [[John F. Kennedy School of Government]], stated that he did not "trust a word [Kobyakov] says,"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20110713155035/http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ondemand/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.play&mediaid=1CF9FE54-ABA6-DE06-59C4D3B1753CDA24 The Vassiliev Notebooks and Soviet Intelligence Operations in the U.S] video transcript of day 1, at 2:24:42 ''Wilson Center On Demand'' May 20, 2009</ref> At the same conference, historian [[Ronald Radosh]] reported that while researching the papers of [[Kliment Voroshilov|Marshal Voroshilov]] in Moscow, he and [[Mary R. Habeck|Mary Habeck]] had encountered two [[Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye|GRU]] (Soviet military intelligence) files referring to Alger Hiss as "our agent."<ref>[http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ondemand/index.cfm?fuseaction=Media.play&mediaid=1CFF2944-B310-AC18-3101C1CCB31D8A1F The Vassiliev Notebooks and Soviet Intelligence Operations in the U.S] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606034635/http://www.wilsoncenter.org/ondemand/index.cfm?fuseaction=Media.play&mediaid=1CFF2944-B310-AC18-3101C1CCB31D8A1F |date=June 6, 2011 }} video transcript of day 2, Part I at 1:43:10 ''[[Wilson Center]] On Demand'' May 21, 2009</ref>

In 2009, Haynes, Klehr, and [[Alexander Vassiliev]] published ''Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America'', based on KGB documents reportedly hand-copied by Vassiliev, a former KGB agent, during the 1990s. The authors attempted to show definitively that Alger Hiss had indeed been a Soviet spy and argue that KGB documents prove not only that Hiss was the elusive ALES, but that he also went by the codenames "Jurist" and "Leonard" while working for the GRU. Some documentation brought back by Vassiliev also refers to Hiss by his actual name, leaving no room, in the authors' opinion, for doubt about his guilt. Calling this the "massive weight of accumulated evidence," Haynes and Klehr conclude, "to serious students of history continued claims for Hiss's innocence are akin to a terminal case of ideological blindness."<ref name = HaynesKlehr>{{Cite book
| publisher = Yale University Press
| isbn = 978-0-300-16438-1
| last = Haynes
| first = John Earl
| author2 = Harvey Klehr
| author3 = Alexander Vassiliev
| title = Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America
| year = 2010
| url-access = registration
| url = https://archive.org/details/spiesrisefallofk00john
}}</ref> In a review published in the ''[[Journal of Cold War Studies]]'', military historian Eduard Mark heartily concurred, stating that the documents "conclusively show that Hiss was, as Whittaker Chambers charged more than six decades ago, an agent of Soviet military intelligence (GRU) in the 1930s."<ref>"In Re Alger Hiss: A Final Verdict from the Archives of the KGB," in ''[[Journal of Cold War Studies]]'' (Summer 2009): 11:No. 3: 26–67.</ref> ''[[Newsweek]]'' magazine reported that [[Civil Rights Movement]] historian [[David Garrow]] also concluded that, in his opinion, ''Spies'' "provides irrefutable confirmation of [Hiss's] guilt."<ref>David J. Garrow [http://www.newsweek.com/2009/05/15/from-russia-with-love.html "From Russia, With Love"] ''[[Newsweek]]'' May 16, 2009</ref>

Other historians, such as [[D. D. Guttenplan]], Jeff Kisseloff, and [[Amy Knight]], assert that ''Spies''{{'}} conclusions were not borne out by the evidence and accused its authors of engaging in "shoddy" research.<ref>Guttenplan, D. D., ''Red Harvest: The KGB in America'', ''The Nation'', May 25, 2009. [http://www.thenation.com/article/red-harvest-kgb-america?page=full]</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Kisseloff |first=Jeff |url=http://algerhiss.com/media/books/reviews/jeff-kisseloff-2009-ii/ |title=Kisseloff, Jeff, "'Spies': Fact or Fiction?," ''The Alger Hiss Story'' (2009) |publisher=Homepages.nyu.edu |access-date=February 9, 2013}}</ref><ref>[http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/Subscriber_Archive/History_Archive/article6770809.ece Amy Knight, "Leonard?," ''Times Literary Supplement'' (June 26, 2009).]{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} Haynes responded to Knight on his [http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page73.html website].</ref> Guttenplan stresses that Haynes and Klehr never saw and cannot even prove the existence of the documents that supposedly convict Hiss and others of espionage, but rather relied exclusively on handwritten notebooks authored by Vassiliev during the time he was given access to the Soviet archives in the 1990s while he collaborated with Weinstein. According to Guttenplan, Vassiliev could never explain how he managed, despite being required to leave his files and notebooks in a safe at the KGB press office at the end of each day, to smuggle out the notebooks with his extensive transcriptions of documents.<ref name="Guttenplan, Red Harvest.">Guttenplan, ''Red Harvest''.</ref> Haynes and Klehr respond that the material was examined by historians, archivists, and intelligence professionals who unanimously agreed that the material was genuine.<ref name="johnearlhaynes.org">[http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page73.html Comment on Amy Knight's review of Spies in the Times Literary Supplement ] by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr</ref>

Guttenplan also suggested, moreover, that Vassiliev might have omitted relevant facts and selectively replaced cover names with his own notion of the real names of various persons.<ref name="Guttenplan, Red Harvest."/> According to Guttenplan, Boris Labusov, a press officer of the SVR, the successor to the KGB, has stated that Vassiliev could not in the course of his research have possibly "met the name of Alger Hiss in the context of some cooperation with some special services of the Soviet Union."<ref name="Guttenplan, Red Harvest."/> Guttenplan also points out that Vasiliev admitted under oath in 2003 that he'd never seen a single document linking Hiss with the cover name "Ales."<ref name="Guttenplan, Red Harvest."/> Haynes and Klehr also cite a 1950 memo indicating that a GRU agent, described as a senior State Department official, had recently been convicted in an American court. "The only senior American diplomat convicted of an espionage-related crime in 1950 was Alger Hiss."<ref name="johnearlhaynes.org"/>

Historian Jeff Kisseloff questions Haynes and Klehr's conclusion that Vassiliev's notes support Hede Massing's story about talking to Hiss at a party in 1935 about recruiting their mutual friend and host Noel Field into the communist underground. According to Kisseloff, "all that the files Vassiliev saw really indicate is that she was telling yet another version of her story in the 1930s. Haynes and Klehr never consider that, as an agent in Washington, DC, who was having little success in the tasks assigned to her, she may have felt pressure back then to make up a few triumphs to reassure her superiors."<ref>Kisseloff, "Spies: Fact or Fiction" (2009).</ref> Kisseloff also disputes Haynes and Klehr's linking of Hiss with former Treasury Department official [[Harold Glasser]], who they allege was a Soviet agent.<ref>According to Kisseloff, "In the handwritten Glasser autobiography [copied by Vassiliev] ... that Haynes and Klehr refer to in "Spies," Glasser says, as they report, that he met with a 'Karl' [Chambers] on a regular basis through 1939.... But on December 31, 1948, Chambers told the FBI that he and Glasser had only met 'on two or three occasions'. Chambers also told the Bureau that 'Glasser had not been part of his apparatus and he had no knowledge of his underground activities.' (Chambers's comments didn't help Elizabeth Bentley's credibility either, as the FBI report noted the discrepancy between his comments and what Bentley had told them: that Glasser had been stolen from the Perlo group by Alger Hiss.)" See Kisseloff (2009.)</ref> Finally, Kisseloff states that some of the evidence compiled by Haynes and Klehr actually tends to exonerate rather than convict Hiss. For example, their book cites a KGB report from 1938 in which Iskhak Akhmerov, New York station chief, writes, "I don't know for sure who Hiss is connected with."<ref>"Kisseloff (2009).</ref> Haynes and Klehr also claim that Hiss was the agent who used the cover name "Doctor." According to some Soviet sources, "Doctor" was a middle-aged Bessarabian Jew who was educated in Vienna.<ref>Kisseloff (2009).</ref>

Other historians {{failed verification|date=August 2013}} felt that Haynes and Klehr's information was suspect because their publisher, [[Crown Publishing Group|Crown]] (a division of [[Random House]]), obtained temporary and limited access to KGB files through a payment of money (amount unspecified) to a pension fund for retired KGB agents, of whom Vassiliev was one, as was KGB archivist Volkogonov.<ref>"Just a year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the intelligence services responded to an offer from Crown Publishers, which offered a substantial payment to a pension fund for its retired officers in return for cooperation on a series of books on Soviet intelligence. As part of the agreement the SVR gave Alexander Vassiliev permission to examine archival records for a book project that teamed a Russian (Vassiliev) and an American (Allen Weinstein) for a book on Soviet espionage in the 1930s and 40s," Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev (2009), p. xxii.</ref> Other historians had not been permitted to verify Vassiliev's data. In 2002, Vassiliev sued John Lowenthal for libel in a British court of law for publishing a journal article questioning his conclusions. Vassiliev lost the case before a jury and was further reprimanded by ''[[The Times]]'' for trying to exert a "chilling effect" on scholarship by resorting to the law courts.<ref>Judge Eady also issued a [http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthalruling.html separate opinion] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101126003201/http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/lowenthalruling.html |date=November 26, 2010 }} in which he stated that the book by Haynes, et al., by asserting that the Hiss case was definitively "settled," had in effect "thrown down a gauntlet" to any would-be defender of Hiss; and that family, friends, or any other defender of Hiss should not be penalized for "picking up that gauntlet."</ref> Vassiliev has since also unsuccessfully sued [[Amazon (company)|Amazon]] for publishing a customer review critical of his work.<ref>Charles Arthur, "Former KGB Agent Sues Amazon Over Book Review" [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/former-kgb-agent-sues-amazon-over-book-review-537930.html ''The Independent'', UK (May 3, 2003)]{{dead link|date=August 2021|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}.</ref>

In 1978, Victor Navasky interviewed six people Weinstein had quoted in his book ''Perjury'', who all claimed to have been misquoted by Weinstein.<ref>[http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/5062.html Jon Wiener, "Allen Weinstein: A Historian With a History," ''Los Angeles Times''], May 2, 2004, reprinted in the HNN.</ref> One, Sam Krieger, won a cash payment from Weinstein, who issued an apology and promised to correct future editions of his book and to release his interview transcripts, which he subsequently failed to do.<ref>See [https://books.google.com/books?id=8uACAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA61 "Costly Error for Hiss Historian: Weinstein Pays for Mistake," ''New York Magazine'' (May 21, 1979), 61]. For more on Weinstein, see also Jon Wiener, "Alger Hiss, the Archives, and Allen Weinstein," pp. 31–57, Chapter Two, in ''Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower'' (New York: New Press, 2004, {{ISBN|978-1565848849}} (Paperback 2007).</ref>