Salant on Neutralizing "Ales" Without Compromising Venona: What Really Happened to Alger Hiss

Stephen Walter Salant, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has published Neutralizing 'Ales' Without Compromising Venona: What Really Happened to Alger Hiss. Here is the abstract.

In the celebrated Alger Hiss case, the defendant was convicted on the basis of typed spy documents traced to his typewriter. Although Hiss always maintained he had been the victim of forgery by typewriter, judges were unpersuaded, saying "there is not a trace of any evidence that Chambers [his accuser] had the mechanical skill, tools, equipment or material for such a difficult task [as forgery by typewriter]." Moreover, "If Chambers had constructed a duplicate machine how would he have known where to plant it so that it would be found by Hiss?" These are reasonable questions and I answer each of them. What the judges, jurors, and Hiss himself did not know was that Army Military Intelligence (1) had become proficient during the War at forging documents to protect agents behind enemy lines, (2) had concluded (rightly or wrongly) from Venona decryptions of Soviet messages which could not be disclosed that Hiss was stealing military information for Soviet Military Intelligence and (3) had inserted into Hiss's legal team as its Chief Investigator an undercover Army spy-catcher (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/hiss/essay.html), as Special Agents of the Counter Intelligence Corps referred to themselves. The spy-catcher confided in the FBI that he was actually working for Military Intelligence. Hiss’s legal team assigned the investigator/spy-catcher to find the Hiss family machine, hoping to prove Hiss innocent. The spy-catcher secretly removed the rusty family machine in December. A few months later a fabricated one which had been used to type bogus spy documents was deposited in its place.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Berresford on A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon

John W. Berresford has published A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case. Here is the abstract.

This is a history of one of the most famous trials in American history. It was also a political circus and a personal tragedy for the litigants. The article takes the reader through Congressional hearings in 1948, a libel suit, grand jury proceedings, two criminal jury trials, and appeals that ended only in the 1980s. In the end, it was proved that a drearily correct diplomat named Alger Hiss had been spying for the Soviet Union for years and that warnings about his and similar crimes had been ignored for too long. Hiss's chief accuser, Whittaker Chambers, was a strange and fascinating genius who originally was believed only by a freshman Representative named Richard Nixon. The personalities, public punches and counter punches, litigation strategies, evidence, legal rulings, and courtroom advocacy of both sides are examined in detail. Also described are what did not come out in the trials and the political impact of all this, as well as elite and public opinion about who was telling the truth.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Link to the author's website and podcast available here.