Summary:
The indictment of Alger Hiss on perjury charges 50 years ago represents a defining moment in the Cold War era and cleared the way for the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s. Americans were stunned at the notion that a high-ranking government official may have been a spy. The former top State Department official was accused of being a Soviet spy in the 1930s by confessed Communist and former Time magazine editor Whittaker Chambers.
It was Chambers who brought investigators to his Maryland farm and showed them a hollowed-out pumpkin in which canisters of microfilm containing State Department documents were placed. Chambers said the so-called "Pumpkin Papers" were provided by Hiss for Soviet agents.
Richard Nixon, then a junior California congressman and member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was thrust into the national spotlight during the grand jury hearings as he lobbied forcefully for Hiss' indictment.
Hiss' first trial ended in a hung jury, but he was later convicted and sentenced to 44 months in federal prison. But questions remained about Hiss' guilt and possibilities of grand jury improprieties.
A group of scholars, represented by the Public Citizen Litigation Group, petitioned the federal court in Manhattan to release grand jury testimony from the Hiss hearings last year. In May, a judge ordered the release of 4,200 pages of grand jury testimony, representing interviews with 80 witnesses, marking the first time grand jury records have been released to the public on the basis of their historical importance.
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