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Article: Hiss Case
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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HISS CASE
HISS CASE.
The Hiss case, which spanned the years from 1948 through 1950, helped pave the way for McCarthyism and, in particular, the Cold War search for communists thought to have infiltrated the State Department during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. The principals included Alger Hiss, a former State Department official; Whittaker Chambers, a self-confessed former Soviet agent; and Richard Nixon, a freshman congressman and member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).
The Hiss case broke during the HUAC hearings in the summer of 1948 when Chambers accused Hiss of membership, some ten years earlier, in a communist cell with ...