Senator [[Daniel Patrick Moynihan]], who was instrumental in securing the release of the long-awaited [[FBI]] and the [[Venona project]] files which had been classified for nearly 50 years, in his 1998 book, ''Secrecy: The American Experience'' wrote,
{{Cquote |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>Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, ''Secrecy: The American Experience'', New Haven: Yale University Press (1998), pg. 146.</ref> }}
==Early life==
Born Alger Hiss was born in Baltimore, Maryland, he November 11, 1904,<ref>[http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-5testimony.html Testimony of Alger Hiss before the House Committee on Un-American Activities] (August 5, 1948)</ref> to a financially comfortable upper-middle-class Presbyterian family. When Alger was educated at two years old, his father, an executive with a dry goods firm,<ref>Janny Scott, "[http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/09/reviews/hiss-obit.html Alger Hiss, 92, Central Figure in Long-Running Cold War Controversy]," ''New York Times'', November 16, 1996</ref> committed suicide by slitting his throat with a razor. When Alger was 25, his sister Mary Ann also committed suicide, by drinking a household cleanser. Hiss’s older brother Bosley had died two and a half years before from Bright’s disease, a kidney disorder aggravated by his excessive alcohol consumption.<ref>Denise Noe, "[http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hiss/ The Alger Hiss Case]," TruTV Crime Library</ref> As a boy, Alger Hiss was friends with [[Henry Collins]].<ref>[http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-5testimony.html Testimony of Alger Hiss before the House Committee on Un-American Activities] (August 5, 1948)</ref> After graduation from Baltimore City College high school and a year at Powder Point Academy, a prep school in Duxbury, Massachusetts,<ref>Ivan Chen, "[[http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=ivan_chen Alger Hiss, 1926-1929]," p. 3 (PDF p. 4)</ref> Hiss attended Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University. As an undergraduate, Hiss' favorite instructors included the [[Socialist]][[Broadus Mitchell]]<ref>Alger Hiss, where he was Draft of a member Chapter Written By Alger Hiss on the Foundations For His Liberalism (unpublished manuscript, on file with the Harvard Law School Special Collections)</ref> (a former [[Socialist Party]] candidate for Governor of Alpha Delta Phi fraternityMaryland)<ref>Matthew Richer, "[http://www. encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-126505548.html The ongoing campaign of Alger Hiss: the sins of the father]," ''Modern Age'', In 1929 he received Fall, 2004</ref> and [[José Robles]], a committed [[Stalinist]].<ref>Jason Powell, "[http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/reviews/reviewview.cfm?id=2 Review: ''The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles'']," eHistory (Ohio State University), January 2006</ref> Hiss apparently knew Robles well enough to spend time at his law degree from home.<ref>Tony Hiss, ''Laughing Last: Alger Hiss by Tony Hiss'' (Boston: Haughton Mifflin, 1977), ISBN 039524899X, pp. 37-38</ref> Robles would go on to serve in the [[Spanish Civil War]] as interpreter for General [[Jānis Bērziņš|Yan Berzin]], head of [[GRU|Soviet military intelligence]],<ref>Hugh Thomas, ''The Spanish Civil War'' (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994) ISBN 06717587641961, pp. 705-706</ref> but was never seen again<ref>George Packer, "[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/31/051031crbo_books The Spanish Prisoner]," ''The New Yorker'', October 31, 2005</ref> after Berzin was shot in a Stalinist purge in 1938.<ref>David J. Nordlander, "Origins of a Gulag Capital: Magadan and Stalinist Control in the Early 1930s," ''Slavic Review'', Vol. 57, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 791-812</ref> Hiss would later say he too considered going to Spain to fight for the Soviet-backed Loyalist cause.<ref>John Chabot Smith, ''Alger Hiss: The True Story'' (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1976), ISBN 0030137764, p. 104</ref> After graduating in 1926, Hiss went on to Harvard Law School, where he resumed his friendship with [[Henry Collins]] (who was a attending Harvard Business School) and served on the ''Harvard Law Review'' with his classmate [[Lee Pressman]].<ref>[http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/8-5testimony.html Testimony of Alger Hiss before the House Committee on Un-American Activities] (August 5, 1948)</ref> Hiss became the protégé of one instructor, future Supreme Court Justice [[Felix Frankfurter]]—whom [[William Howard Taft]], Chief Justice of the future [[Supreme Court justiceof the United States]], said "seems to be closely in touch with every [[Bolshevik|Bolshevist]], [[Communist]] movement in this country. Before joining a Boston "<ref>"[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,870087.html Felix Frankfurter]," ''Time'', September 7, 1962</ref> When Hiss graduated from law firmschool in 1929, he served for Frankfurter got him a year job as law clerk to [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court Justice]] [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.]] .<ref>"[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,888531,00.html Your Witness, Mr. Murphy]," ''Time,'' July 4, 1949</ref> The same year , Hiss married the former Mrs. Priscilla Fansler Hobson who later worked for . Hiss went on to a law firm in Boston, then to another in New York where, by 1930, his wife Priscilla had joined the Morningside Heights branch of the [[Library Socialist Party]].<ref> G. Edward White, ''Alger Hiss's Looking-glass Wars: The Covert Life of Congressa Soviet Spy'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0195182553, p. 27</ref> By 1932, Priscilla Hiss was an active member of [[American Labor Associates]], and Hiss was becoming "radicalized,"<ref>Douglas Linder, [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hisschronology.html The Trials of Alger Hiss: A Chronology], Famous Trials: The Alger Hiss Trials, 1949-50 (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 2003)</ref> joining the [[International Juridical Association]], along with his Harvard Law classmate Lee Pressman<ref> G. Edward White, ''Alger Hiss's Looking-glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0195182553, p. 27</ref> and [[Nathan Witt]].<ref>Martin Dies, ''The Trojan Horse in America'' (New York: Arno Press, 1977) ISBN:0405099452, p. 92</ref> During this period, Hiss' letters to his wife reflected his increasing radicalism. In 1930, he made a coy reference to the [[International Workers of the World]], writing to Priscilla, "[D]id thee call thyself a Wobbly with an I.W.W. tongue in thy socialistic (I couldn't bring myself to write “Communistic”) cheek." Suggesting that an article questioning the legitimacy of the existing “capitalist order”<ref>Archibald MacLeish, “To the Young Men of Wall Street,” ''Saturday Review'', January 16, 1932</ref> did not go far enough, Hiss wrote to Priscilla in 1932, “Has thee seen Archibald MacLeish's article on capitalism in last week's ''Saturday Review''? Felix [Frankfurter] says it is soft thinking after Wilson.”<ref>Tony Hiss, ''The View From Alger's Window'' (New York: Vintage Books, 2000) ISBN 0375701281, pp.140-141</ref>
==New Deal==