biography
pronunciation:
[aljer]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1904–96)
|
| biography:
| Lawyer and government official, born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. A lawyer who had clerked with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, he went to work for President Roosevelt's New Deal, eventually joining the State Department. He rose rapidly in the State Department (1936–45), going with President Roosevelt to Yalta. He was President of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace (1945–9) when Whittaker Chambers accused him of having been a spy for the Russians. Convicted of perjury in 1950, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, and after his release (1954) he continued writing and lecturing in his own defence. In 1992 a Russian with access to Soviet files announced that Hiss had never been a Soviet agent, but this did not put a complete end to the controversy that had surrounded him since 1948. |
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