Primary Sources: The 1950s: Hiss, Alger

"Colour footage of Alger Hiss being interviewed intercut with older footage from the 1950s when he was accused of being a Communist spy. Algar Hiss denies being either a spy or a Communist."

"No criminal case had a more far-reaching effects on modern American politics than the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers spy case. The case catapulted an obscure California congressman named Richard Nixon to national fame, set the stage for Senator Joseph McCarthy's notorious Communist-hunting, and marked the beginning of a conservative intellectual and political movement that would one day put Ronald Reagan in the White House." UMKC SCHOOL OF LAW - Famous Trials website

Digitized papers from the The Weisberg Archive, Beneficial-Hodson Library, Hood College related to Alger Hiss.

"This study concerns the controversial case of Alger Hiss, who was suspected of spying for Soviet Military Intelligence. It does not concern his guilt or innocence but whether the U.S. Army Military Intelligence used an undercover spy-catcher to penetrate Hiss’s defense and to plant evidence forged to secure his perjury conviction. If so, Hiss’s conviction—which ushered in the McCarthy era and thrust Richard Nixon to national prominence—represents an alarming intrusion of our military into civil affairs."