Felix Frankfurter

Alger Hiss's mentor at Harvard Law School, Frankfurter would go on to be an honored member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Upon Hiss's graduation from Harvard, Frankfurter selected him to become secretary to Oliver Wendell Holmes. In 1933, he encouraged Hiss to join the New Deal.

Frankfurter would appear as a character witness for Hiss, but when the guilty verdict was appealed to the Supreme Court, Frankfurter and Justice Stanley Reed (who also testified for Hiss) had to disqualify themselves. As a result, Hiss's appeal was turned down (it came up two votes shy). Justice William O. Douglas later wrote, that if the case had been reviewed, "...in my view no Court at any time could possibly have sustained the conviction."