Alger Hiss

Why He Chose Treason

Christina Shelton

• Publisher: Threshold Editions
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781451655438
• eBook ISBN: 9781451655452
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In 1948, former U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy. Because the statute of limitations on espionage had run out, he was convicted only of perjury. Decades later—after the Hiss trial had been long forgotten by most—archival evidence surfaced confirming the accusations: a public servant with access to classified documents had indeed passed crucial information to the Soviets for more than a decade. Yet many on the American Left still consider Hiss an iconic figure—an innocent victim accused of unsubstantiated crimes. They prefer to focus on the collectivist ideals Hiss stood for, rather than confront the reality of a man who systematically and methodically betrayed his country. Former U.S. Intelligence analyst Christina Shelton employs an in-depth knowledge of Soviet intelligence affairs as well as recently released Hungarian and KGB archival material to shine a fresh light on one of the most famous espionage cases. The story is dramatic, but Shelton's analysis goes beyond sensationalism as she explores both the ideological motivation behind Hiss's behavior and the lasting influence it has had on U.S. foreign policy. Why exactly were the intellectual elite so deter-mined that Hiss was innocent? His accuser, Time magazine senior editor Whittaker Chambers—originally Hiss's Soviet handler—presented compelling written evidence. However, the intelligentsia were intent on supporting one of their own. They ignored the facts, a willful blindness that helped contribute to a polarization still in place in our country today. Thirty years of intelligence analysis gives Shelton the expertise to approach the story from many different angles, especially: • Her persuasive argument that Communism and Fascism are not polar opposites, as has so long been claimed, but highly similar ideologies. • How Hiss's central role at the Yalta Conference and the founding of the United Nations are examples of the significance of Soviet intelligence recruitment of high-level Americans who could influence U.S. foreign policy in their favor. • Why the silence surrounding the implications of Hiss's espionage continues—and why apologists fear that smearing his name would undercut New Deal policies and the United Nations. Shelton doesn't just detail the body of evidence pointing to Hiss's guilt; she suggests new layers of meaning in light of the current political landscape. Today, the importance of understanding Hiss's ideological commitment has never been more vital. His advocacy of collectivism and internationalism still resonate among the political elite, making this book an important and timely analysis of American thought at this critical juncture in our country's life.

PART ONE

The Early Years

I.

GROWING UP IN BALTIMORE

The Escape from Shabby Gentility

DURING THE HISS-CHAMBERS congressional hearings in 1948 and the two Hiss perjury trials (May 31, 1949–July 8, 1949, and November 17, 1949–January 21, 1950), Alger Hiss supporters consistently used certain adjectives to describe his “persona” in an attempt to prove his innocence through a character defense: this highly credentialed person, this handsome, well-connected, sophisticated patrician from a socially prestigious family who became a senior State Department official, could not possibly be a Communist spy; the liar certainly must be his accuser, Whittaker Chambers, the stumpy, fat, sloppy, poorly dressed, brooding ex-Commie with particularly bad teeth. Never mind that Chambers was an intellect of a higher order than Hiss, and a senior editor for Time magazine; the narrative in the press of the comparative physical and character descriptions of the two men continued for the duration of the trials, and for that matter, for decades more as well. One of the reasons for Hiss’s lifelong crusade to prove his innocence—in addition to his adherence to Leninist morality, serving the cause as a symbol of American injustice, and protecting the legacy of the New Deal, Yalta, and the UN—was his determination to preserve the “persona” he so assiduously had developed.

The journalist Murray Kempton once famously suggested that Alger Hiss was a product of “shabby gentility.”¹ That is not quite on the mark. The Hiss family may have come from gentility but it was certainly not shabby. Growing up, all five children had music and art lessons, as well as German language lessons for Alger. They attended private colleges or universities and vacationed on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. During college, the three boys spent summers in Europe. Not too shabby. Alger Hiss himself, in an obvious reference to Kempton’s description, portrayed the economic circumstances of his early years as “modest” but “not particularly shabby.”² While the Hisses did represent the gentility of an old Baltimore family, whose first ancestor arrived from Germany in the mid-eighteenth century, they were not blue-blooded, distinguished, or upper class, as even Kempton noted. Mrs. Hiss may have thought of the family as socially prominent, but a more accurate designation would have been “middle class.”

So while Hiss was not a person born into the upper class, he always displayed great self-control and composure, typical characteristics of that class. By virtue of his intelligence and highly successful academic career at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School, as well as his distinctive charming manner, grace, good looks, and sophistication, he turned himself into an exemplar of the eastern upper-class liberal establishment. From the 1920s to 1940s, Hiss gave the impression of good breeding and wealth, when he really used his talents to successfully develop this “persona” while networking with prominent upper-class people he came in contact with during his years at Hopkins and Harvard Law, then his Supreme Court clerkship. Thus did he gain a foothold in their class. In short, he became “the fair-haired boy” of the elite establishment even though his origins did not put him in their class. Moreover, this was an upper-class establishment noted for loyalty among its members. Mrs. Hiss had urged her children to strive for professional and social prominence, and none succeeded more than Alger.

Alger Hiss was born in Baltimore on November 11, 1904, to Charles Alger Hiss (1864–1907) and Mary Lavinia Hughes Hiss (1867–1958). Charles was of German ancestry; his great-great-great-grandfather had changed his name from Hesse to Hiss. His middle name, “Alger,” was given for his grandfather’s old friend, Russell Alexander Alger, who became secretary of war under President McKinley.³ Charles, the last of six children, was educated in Baltimore public schools. After high school, he became a salesman for the Troxell Carriage and Harness Company. He then worked in a cotton textile mill and after that as a salesman and executive for a major Baltimore wholesale dry goods store, Daniel Miller and Company.⁴ Charles also was an officer of the Fifth Regiment in Baltimore’s National Guard unit. In 1888 he married Mary Hughes, known as “Minnie,” the daughter of a middle-class Baltimore family of English ancestry; according to her, she was directly descended from the Earl of Leicester. Minnie was educated at the Maryland State Teachers College.⁵

Minnie was by most accounts a devoted mother but she also maintained a busy schedule of club meetings. She was a member of many of Baltimore’s civic and women’s groups, serving as president of the Arundel Club and on the boards of the Women’s Civic League of Women Voters and District Federation of Women’s Clubs.⁶ Minnie pushed her children to succeed professionally, financially, and socially. According to Whittaker Chambers, Hiss did not speak much of his early years but Chambers’s impression was that “his relations with his mother were affectionate but not too happy. She was perhaps domineering.”⁷ William Marbury, one of Hiss’s closest friends, also considered Minnie domineering.⁸

Charles and Minnie had five children: Anna (1893–1972), Mary Ann (1895–1929), Bosley (1900–26), Alger (1904–96), and Donald (1906–89). In 1895, one of Charles’s older brothers, John, died at the age of thirty-three from a heart attack and left a widow and six children. According to one of Hiss’s biographers, John Chabot Smith, Charles became the “financial and emotional care taker of his brother’s family.”⁹ Thus Charles and Minnie’s five children grew up in a rather large extended family, with their six cousins who lived a few blocks away. The eleven children played together (board games, charades, spelling bee contests), had family meals together, and went to church and Sunday school at the neighborhood Episcopal church every Sunday. Religious training and Bible reading played a central role in the Hiss household. Minnie later transferred to the Presbyterian Church and after that to the Unitarian Church.¹⁰ Alger remained an Episcopalian but stopped going to church when he left home.¹¹

The Hiss family lived near Lanvale Street in Baltimore, a middle-class neighborhood, in a three-story, semidetached brick house. Charles prospered in his business and eventually became part owner of the Daniel Miller Company. He helped his wife’s brother, Albert Hughes, get a job at his company as treasurer. Unfortunately for Charles, Albert seemed to have become involved in some unsuccessful investments of company funds,¹² which Charles felt obliged to repay by selling his own company stock. In the process, Charles lost his job. He was forty-two years old, the mainstay of eleven children, in poor health, and he was unable to find another job. An older brother, George, offered to take him in as a partner to help run his successful cotton mill in North Carolina. Charles would have accepted, but Minnie refused to leave Baltimore; she valued her place in Baltimore’s “genteel” society as a respected woman who attended concerts and art galleries and belonged to the proper clubs.¹³ Charles’s depression grew deeper and on April 7, 1907, he committed suicide by slitting his throat with a razor blade.¹⁴ Alger was about two and a half years old.

The suicide of Alger’s father was kept a close family secret. The Hiss children were so protected from it that the tragedy was treated as a nonevent in their family. Alger revealed in his memoir that he and his brother Donald did not learn of it until they were about ten and eight, respectively, when they overheard neighbors refer to them as “the children of the suicide.”¹⁵ Alger related this comment to his older brother, Bosley, who apparently also had been unaware of the family tragedy. Bosley confirmed the suicide from an obituary in the Baltimore Sun. This is how the three sons learned of their father’s death about eight years earlier. Alger revealed that hearing the comment by the neighbors was one of the most painful episodes in his early years. Yet he claimed he did not feel resentment at not being told, and that when he did learn of the secret, he “joined in the family policy of silence.”¹⁶

Charles left Minnie with their five children to raise, and his deceased brother John’s widow and six children to care for as well. Minnie did receive a $100,000 insurance policy, in addition to having the family home, and each of her five children inherited a $10,000 trust (equivalent today to about $200,000).¹⁷ Given their financial position, it is curious that during Alger’s early life he always indicated that he lacked money. He said, “As our family financial resources were moderate, I applied for and received scholarships each year at Hopkins and Harvard.”¹⁸ He also claimed, according to one of his biographers, Meyer Zeligs, that “for financial reasons” he needed to go to college in Baltimore in order to live at home.¹⁹ At the end of his sophomore year at Hopkins, Hiss was able to afford a trip to Europe only because of the newly innovated Student Third Class, which made European travel affordable for “students of modest means like myself,” Hiss said. Traveling in Europe, he was on a budget of four dollars a day and he lamented that he could afford only an “occasional bottle of decent wine.”²⁰ Not exactly the profile of a patrician.

Given the rather substantial trust he inherited, it is unclear why Alger did feel so strapped for money during these years and thought it necessary to depend on school loans and family money. Perhaps, in relative terms, he felt poor because he had surrounded himself with so many people of wealth and privilege. When he was at Johns Hopkins, he recalled that he was moved by the book What Price Glory, which, according to John Chabot Smith, “confirmed his antiwar views and his distrust for militarism.” Yet he was in ROTC, which he said provided him with a modest stipend and a uniform to wear once a week, which saved him money on his other clothes! So he stayed in ROTC for the monetary benefits.²¹ Even later in life, when he was earning a good salary at a prestigious law firm at the beginning of the Depression, his letters to his wife, Priscilla, reflected this same preoccupation with insufficient money. For example, in one letter Hiss enumerated the Christmas gifts he bought for his family in Baltimore; one was for an aunt—a pair of skating socks for eighty-five cents—and he was going to split the cost with his brother Donald and give it to her as a joint gift. In fact, he wrote that he bought eight Christmas gifts and Donald’s share for them was $4.60.²² As an attorney for a prestigious law firm in Boston, Hiss wrote in a letter to his wife in March 1932 that “I found a restaurant that has a great lunch for fifteen cents.”²³ Years later, in 1947, after he moved to New York as president of the Carnegie Endowment, with a sizable salary, Alger rented a small third-floor walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village. Chambers observed that Hiss did not seem to be interested in “things”—his home furnishings, cars, and taste in food were all rather simple. Nonetheless, there was always enough money ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Author Bio
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Foreword
• Prologue
• Part One: The Early Years
• Part Two: A Committed Communist
• Part Three: Accused and Convicted
• Part Four: The Evidence
• Epilogue
• Photographs
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index