Alger Hiss was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a US State Department official and as a UN official. In later life, he worked as a lecturer and author.
Whittaker Chambers was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from the Soviet underground (1938), worked for Time magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware Group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century, all described in his 1952 memoir Witness. Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at National Review (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.
Judith Coplon Socolov was a spy for the Soviet Union whose trials, convictions, and successful constitutional appeals had a profound influence on espionage prosecutions during the Cold War.
Laurence Duggan, also known as Larry Duggan, was a 20th-century American economist who headed the South American desk at the United States Department of State during World War II, best known for falling to his death from the window of his office in New York, ten days after questioning by the FBI about whether he had had contacts with Soviet intelligence.
Charles Kramer, originally Charles Krevisky was a 20th-Century American economist who worked for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his brain trust. Among other contributions, he wrote the original idea for the Point Four Program. He also worked for several congressional committees and hired Lyndon B. Johnson for his first Federal job. Kramer was alleged a Soviet spy as member of the Ware Group, but no charges were brought against him.
Donald Hiss, also known as "Donie" and "Donnie", was the younger brother of Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss's name was mentioned during the 1948 hearings wherein his more famous and older brother, Alger, was accused of spying for the Soviet Union, and two years later convicted of perjury before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
J. Peters was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was a journalist, political activist, and accused Soviet spy who was a leading figure of the Hungarian language section of the Communist Party USA in the 1920s and 1930s. From the early 1930s, Peters was actively involved in the espionage activities of the Soviet Union in the United States, fabricating passports, recruiting agents, and accumulating and passing along confidential and secret information.
Julian Wadleigh (1904–1994) was an American economist and a Department of State official in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a key witness in the Alger Hiss trials.
Franklin Vincent Reno was a mathematician and civilian employee at the United States Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in the 1930s. Reno was a member of the "Karl group" of Soviet spies which was being handled by Whittaker Chambers until 1938. Reno confessed in late 1948 to his espionage activities on behalf of the GRU. He is listed as number "118th" in the Gorsky Memo. Reno was sentenced to three years in prison.
Boris Yakovlevich Bukov, also Boris Bykov ("Sasha") Regiment Commissar was a member of the Communist Party since 1919. Bykov was head of the underground apparatus with which Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss were connected.
Alexander Ulanovsky (1891–1970) was the chief illegal "rezident" for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU), who was rezident in the United States 1931–1932 with his wife and was imprisoned in the 1950s with his family in the Soviet gulag.
John Nevin Sayre was an American Episcopal priest, peace activist, and author. He was an active member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and helped found the Episcopal Pacifist Fellowship. The US State Department official Francis Bowes Sayre Sr. was his brother.
The Pumpkin Papers are a set of typewritten and handwritten documents, stolen from the US federal government by members of the Ware Group and other Soviet spy networks in Washington, DC, during 1937-1938, withheld by courier Whittaker Chambers from delivery to the Soviets as protection when he defected. The Pumpkin Papers featured frequently in criminal proceedings against Alger Hiss during the period of Hiss Case. The term "Pumpkin Papers" quickly became shorthand for the complete set of handwritten, typewritten, and camera film documents in newspapers. Along with names like Richard Nixon, Alger Hiss, and Whittaker Chambers, the Pumpkin Papers is a name closely associated with the Hiss Case.
William Ward Pigman was a chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at New York Medical College, and a suspected Soviet Union spy as part of the "Karl group" for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).
Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case is a 1978 book by Allen Weinstein on the Alger Hiss perjury case. The book, in which Weinstein argues that Alger Hiss was guilty, has been cited by many historians as the "most important" and the "most thorough and convincing" book on the Hiss–Chambers case. Weinstein drew upon 30,000 pages of FBI documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, the files of the Hiss defense attorneys, over 80 interviews with involved parties and six interviews with Hiss himself. In 1997, Weinstein published an updated and revised edition of Perjury, which incorporated recent evidence from Venona project decrypted cables, released documents from Soviet intelligence archives and information from former Soviet intelligence operatives.
Henry Hill Collins Jr. (1905–1961), also known as Henry H. Collins, Jr., and Henry Collins, was an American citizen employed in the New Deal National Recovery Administration in the 1930s and later the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. He was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Washington D.C. based Ware group, along with Alger Hiss, Lee Pressman, Harry Dexter White and others. He was also a "pioneer in the compiling of ornithological field guides."
Calvin Fixx, born Calvin Henry Fix, was an American journalist and editor, lifelong friend of Robert Cantwell and friend of Whittaker Chambers, both fellow editors at Time magazine. All three were either Marxist or communist during the 1920s and 1930s and then became anti-communists by 1939.
Esther Shemitz, also known as "Esther Chambers" and "Mrs. Whittaker Chambers," was an American painter and illustrator who, as wife of ex-Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers, provided testimony that "helped substantiate" her husband's allegations during the Hiss Case.
Nathan Levine was an American labor lawyer and real estate attorney in Brooklyn, New York, who, as attorney for his uncle, Whittaker Chambers, testified regarding his uncle's "life preserver." This packet included papers handwritten by Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, as well as typewritten by the Hiss Family's Woodstock typewriter. It also included microfilm, paraded to the public by U.S. Representative Richard M. Nixon and HUAC investigator Robert E. Stripling, dubbed the "Pumpkin Papers" by the press, which helped lead to the U.S. Department of Justice to indict Hiss for perjury.
Witness, first published in May 1952, is a best-selling book of memoirs by American writer Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961), which recounts his life as a dedicated Marxist-communist ideologist in the 1920s, his work in the Soviet underground during the 1930s, and his 1948 testimony before the US Congress, which led to a criminal indictment against Alger Hiss and two trials in 1949.
