Decades later, the name Alger Hiss remains one of the most controversial in the history of American espionage. Stettinius, in January 1945, when Roosevelt was assembling a small team from the State Department to travel to Yalta. It was this expertise that endeared him to the new Secretary of State, Edward R. By late 1944, Hiss had been named executive secretary of the Dumbarton Oaks conference and was responsible for laying the groundwork for Roosevelt’s brand new peace organization of United Nations. Amidst the daily chaos of World War II and doubt surrounding Chambers’ credibility as a former Communist, this message never made its way up the ladder, and Hiss continued to rise. One evening, Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle received a visitor, a former Communist-turned-journalist named Whittaker Chambers, who warned that Alger Hiss was not the golden boy the State Department thought he was. Those at the State Department were not the only people to take notice of this young man in a hurry. After graduating from Harvard Law School and clerking for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Hiss quickly rose through the ranks at the State Department, impressing his superiors, including President Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law. Alger Hiss, a handsome young man with a sterling résumé, was not all he seemed. On this day in 1950, after a trial that had garnered national attention, a federal jury found Alger Hiss, a former top-level State Department official, guilty on two. Alger Hiss (1904-1996) Alger Hiss was a State Department official, who in 1948 was accused of transmitting government secrets to the Soviet Union.
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