Editing Alger Hiss (section)

===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>