The Meaning of the Enduring Controversy Over Alger Hiss

By David Oshinsky

Alger Hiss, a convicted traitor to many Americans, a political victim to others, died last month at the age of 92, protesting his innocence to the end.

Almost 50 years ago, in the midst of President Harry S. Truman's dramatic re-election campaign, a magazine editor named Whittaker Chambers accused Hiss, then head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of funneling State Department secrets to the Soviet Union. Their confrontation dominated the headlines of the late 1940s