![]() ![]() An iconic event of the McCarthy era, the case of Alger Hiss fascinates political intellectuals not only because of its historical significance but because of its timeless relevance to equally fierce debates today about the difficult balance between national security and respect for civil liberties. Alger Hiss, seated, tells the House Un-American Activities Committee that he is unable to identify Whittaker Chambers in a photograph, on Aug. With a brisk, engaging style, Jacoby positions the case in the politics of the post-World War II era and then explores the ways in which generations of liberals and conservatives have put Chambers and Hiss to their own ideological uses. Unfettered by political ax-grinding, the author examines conflicting responses, from scholars and the media on both the Left and the Right, and the ways in which they have changed from 1948 to our present post-Cold War era. In 1944, he was appointed as Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs in the United States State Department. In this highly original work, Susan Jacoby turns her attention to the Hiss case, including his trial and imprisonment for perjury, as a mirror of shifting American political views and passions. Alger Hiss (United States of America, 1904 1996) entered government service in 1933, serving in the Departments of Agriculture, Justice and State. Books on Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss abound, as countless scholars have labored to uncover the facts behind Chambers's shocking accusation before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the summer of 1948-that Alger Hiss, a former rising star in the State Department, had been a Communist and engaged in espionage. ![]()
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