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The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the rise in the early 1990s of non-Communist governments in Russia and Eastern Europe has held out the bright promise that, as the Cold War fades into memory, countries on both sides of the old Iron Curtain might begin to open their Cold War-era files. Release of long-secret information, many have hoped, could illuminate or resolve still- controversial issues, such as the Hiss case.

Unfortunately, more than a decade later, at the dawn of the 21st Century, that promise remains, for the most part, only a promise: Full archival openness - both in Russia and the U.S. - continues to be a goal rather than a reality. Some information has been declassified, leading to a rush of recent books, some scholarly, some popular and dramatic, about Cold War disputes. Many government archives, however, after offering only glimpses into their contents, have again been re-sealed.

Some scholars have already concluded that it may take another generation or more before historians have anything close to free access to the full range of Soviet, American, and other Cold War files. The situation is unlikely to improve without sustained public pressure in both the U.S. and Europe. (Click here for information about how you can help move this process forward.)

What is the present state of Cold War scholarship? How much has been learned, and how much remains murky? In particular, what, if anything, has been discovered about Alger Hiss or Whittaker Chambers or the Hiss case? In the early 1990s, Alger Hiss, who in the 1970s had with partial success sued the U.S. government under the Freedom of Information Act for access to FBI and State Department files about his case, himself pressed the post-Communist Russian authorities to release any information they might have that would shed light on his situation.

Frustratingly, in both Russia and the U.S. only small amounts of previously unknown information that may relate to Alger Hiss - some of it tantalizing or ambiguous - have at this point been made public. Several senior Russian officials or former officials have, for instance, prepared statements or issued written comments. The U.S. National Security Agency has released two World War II-era cables that it thinks may refer to Alger Hiss. The few scraps of newly available information continue to be hotly debated. According to Hiss detractors, the case against Hiss has been considerably tightened; they suggest that it can now be shown that Hiss continued spying for the Russians throughout World War II, years after Whittaker Chambers had turned against the Communist Party. For others, there are now new reasons for believing in Alger Hiss's innocence. The search for the truth continues.

Interpreting the Venona Documents and Information From the Russian Files.

• At the height of the Cold War, the National Security Agency decoded Soviet intelligence messages transmitted by telegraphic cable to and from Moscow during World War II. Those who for years have supported Whittaker Chambers' charges think that one of the recently-released Venona cables proves Hiss was indeed a Soviet spy code-named "ALES." Hiss Case student, filmmaker, and former law professor John Lowenthal examines this charge in light of what else is known about the Hiss case. Click here to read Lowenthal's article, which appeared in Intelligence and National Security, a British scholarly quarterly.
  
  
• Some Venona analysts say the Venona transcripts indicate that Alger Hiss as "Ales" received a commendation for his espionage from the Soviet Union while visiting Moscow during the Yalta conference. After examining Hiss's schedule during the conference, historian Bruce Craig writes that the charges against Hiss are unfounded.
  
  
• Victor Navasky offers a critical analysis of both the Venona releases and alleged Noel Field statements about Alger Hiss. Click here to read Navasky's article from The Nation.
  
  
• Miriam and Walter Schneir explain the history behind the Venona files. Click here for their account.

In 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the possibility that the new, post-Communist Russian regime might open up some of the Soviet intelligence files, former President Richard M. Nixon and the director of his presidential library, John H. Taylor, both wrote to the Russian historian General Dimitry Antonovich Volkogonov, who had become President Yeltsin's military advisor and the overseer of all the Soviet intelligence archives, to request the release of any Soviet files on the Hiss case. Nixon's and Taylor's letters to Volkogonov have not been made available to researchers.

In 1992, Alger Hiss made a similar request to Volkogonov, and also sent identical letters to several other Russian officials. In response to Hiss¹s request, Russian archivists and researchers reviewed their files, and in the fall of 1992 reported back - by letter, fax, or orally - that they had found no evidence that Alger Hiss had ever been a member of the Communist Party USA; and, similarly, that they had found no evidence that he had ever been an agent for the KGB, for the GRU (Soviet military intelligence), or for any other intelligence agency of the Soviet Union.

Such letters and reports came from:

• the Archive of the Government of the Russian Federation (Roskomarchiv);
• the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (successor agency to the KGB);
• the Russian Ministry of Security;
• the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs;
• the Russian Center for the for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Modern History (which houses former Central Party and Comintern archives);
• the Russian Ministry of Defense and Soviet Army Archives (successor agency to the GRU).

To read General Volkogonov's October 14, 1992 written report about Alger Hiss, click here.

To read a previously unpublished interview with Volkogonov about Hiss, conducted in Washington, D.C. by John Lowenthal on November 11, 1992, after the written report had been issued click here.

Several high-ranking KGB veterans, including General Oleg Kalugin, a former chief of the foreign intelligence department, have also stated that Alger Hiss was not a Soviet spy. The published memoirs, excerpted here, of General-Lieutenant Vitaly Pavlov, who oversaw Soviet intelligence work in North America in the late 1930s and early 1940s, include comments about both Hiss and Harry Hopkins, one of President Roosevelt's principal advisors.

The State of Cold War Scholarship

• To see the Venona document that refers to "ALES," click here. 
  
  
• To see the Venona document that refers to a State Department official "by the name of Hiss," click here.
  
  
• To see a 1950 FBI report about Venona that may have been the origin of the FBI's tentative identification of Alger Hiss as "ALES," click here.
  
  
• Was the FBI convinced that Alger Hiss was "ALES"? To see a 1953 FBI investigative report indicating that the Bureau was still searching for evidence, click here. (This document was released to Alger Hiss in the 1970s but did not make sense to researchers until after the public release of the Venona papers.)

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