Russian Says Alger Hiss Was Not Soviet Spy

Alger Hiss is frail now, at age 87, and his eyesight is failing. But in a quivering voice he expressed “extreme elation and delight” Thursday after a top Russian general said that Hiss never spied for the Soviet Union.

The report, which once again raises one of the most bitter controversies of the Cold War, came from Gen. Dmitri A. Volkogonov, chairman of the Russian government’s military intelligence archives. Volkogonov said he has concluded that espionage charges against Hiss, a former State Department lawyer, were “completely groundless.” And, he declared: “You can tell Alger Hiss that the heavy weight should be lifted from his heart.”

After Volkogonov’s videotaped statement was played at a New York news conference Thursday, Hiss said that after more than four decades his resolve to clear his name remains strong.

“For 44 years, I have been trying to set the record straight about the false charges against me,” he said in an interview.

The Hiss case, which helped propel an obscure California congressman named Richard M. Nixon into national prominence, remains an echo across the chasm of the Cold War. Hiss was charged with being a spy by Whittaker Chambers, an editor at Time magazine who in the 1930s was a member of the Communist Party. Chambers died in 1961, but was honored with the Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Despite the Russian general’s statement, the controversy may not be over. Some Soviet scholars say Volkogonov may not have seen all the relevant documents, that labyrinthine archives within archives may exist.

The archives, scattered around Moscow and the former Soviet Union, contain immense amounts of papers--one building alone contains 30 million documents. Much of this material has yet to be examined.

Chambers said Hiss had passed classified information to him to be sent to the Soviet Union. He produced microfilmed documents from a hollowed out pumpkin on his Maryland farm that he said connected Hiss with Communist activities.

Hiss was not charged with espionage but in 1950 was convicted of lying to the House Un-American Activities Committee when he denied he gave the “pumpkin papers” to Chambers in 1938. He served four years in prison on the perjury conviction. Since his release on Nov. 27, 1954, he has been fighting to clear his name.

Last August, Hiss wrote to Volkogonov and other top Russian officials requesting his records. Their answer was all he had hoped for--that he had never served as a Soviet agent.

“This is a delight. I won’t say I had given up hope, but this comes at a nice time,” said Hiss, who was a leading figure in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State Department. “I have a feeling of great annoyance and disappointment that so much of my time and energy was devoted to settling this. I have a feeling of real anger for (former FBI Director) J. Edgar Hoover who I think was responsible for a miscarriage of justice.”

Nixon backed Chambers in the case and his political career took off.

“I think Nixon was misled by Chambers,” Hiss said. “He fooled a lot of people and I think he fooled Nixon, too, but Nixon wanted to be fooled. He didn’t try very hard to find out the true facts.”

Nixon was not immediately available for comment.

Said Volkogonov: “I have prepared an opinion on the basis of a careful study of the documents, archive materials, in the light of which I can make a firm conclusion that Alger Hiss was not ever or anywhere recruited as an agent of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union. This conclusion is confirmed by documents and the opinion of the head of foreign intelligence services of Russia.”

Interviewed by phone at his home in New York City, Hiss charged that he always thought Chambers was “not of sound mind.”

“It is hard to have bitterness at somebody who is now dead and was not responsible for what he did,” Hiss said.

” . . . Those charges were made at the beginning of the Cold War, and they ushered in McCarthyism. There was never a chance to have them considered without the tensions and the political rigidities of the Cold War,” Hiss added.

Volkogonov, a member of the Russian Legislature and a confidant of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, said that he gave orders to Yevgeny M. Primakov, director of the foreign intelligence service, to provide him with documents that could shed light on the Hiss case.

He said he asked Primakov to instruct his staff to determine whether Hiss was an agent of the intelligence services of the Soviet Union. Volkogonov said he personally visited the foreign intelligence service archive and talked with the staff. Records showed that Hiss in his official State Department capacity in the 1940s did have official diplomatic contacts with Soviet representatives. But the general stressed these were normal working relations in his professional capacity.

Volkogonov said that he had concluded Hiss was never a Soviet agent and his case was a result of the Cold War. The records showed that Chambers was a member of the American Communist Party.

Volkogonov was interviewed on videotape by John Lowenthal, a historian and film maker who has been a student of the Hiss controversy.

These days, Hiss lives quietly in Manhattan. “I am practicing law. I have friends who come in and read to me,” he said. “My eyesight is no good. I listen to a good deal of music.”

Times staff writer Stephanie Simon in Moscow also contributed to this story.

Alger Hiss Chronicle

Here is some background on the Hiss case: * The case--Alger Hiss was one of the first targets of the anti-Communist hysteria of the Cold War. In 1948, in a sensational drama that spotlighted a young congressman by the name of Richard M. Nixon, Hiss was accused of being a Red spy by an admitted former Communist, Whittaker Chambers. He was convicted of perjury in the case in 1950--it was too late for an espionage prosecution--and served four years. The case turned on bizarre revelations, the most famous of which had Chambers opening a pumpkin in which he had hidden microfilm of what he said Hiss had given him. The material was known ever after as the “pumpkin papers.”

* Major dates in the case:

1936--Joins State Department.

1945--Is part of U.S. delegation at the Big 3 Yalta Conference. Is secretary-general at San Francisco Conference that drew up U.N. Charter.

1946--Leaves government to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Aug. 2, 1948--Whittaker Chambers, a Time magazine editor, tells House Un-American Activities Committee that 10 years earlier Hiss was a fellow Communist who gave him State Department secrets to pass to the Soviet Union.

Aug. 4--Hiss denies allegations under oath.

July 8, 1949--First trial ends in hung jury.

Jan. 21, 1950--Convicted of perjury.

March 22, 1951--Begins prison term.

Nov. 27, 1954--Released from prison.

Oct. 15, 1992--Gen. Dmitri A. Volkogonov, chairman of Russia’s intelligence archives, says records show Hiss was not a spy.

Source: Times wire services; “A Generation on Trial: U.S.A. vs. Alger Hiss”