Russian Backs Off Claim Hiss Didn’t Spy
The Russian general who in October said Alger Hiss never spied for the Soviet Union backed off from his statement, saying in a published report that he “was not properly understood.”
Gen. Dmitry A. Volkogonov, a Russian military historian, said he only knew that there was no evidence in KGB files he searched that Hiss was a spy, the New York Times reports in today’s editions.
“The Ministry of Defense also has an intelligence service, which is totally different, and many documents have been destroyed,” Volkogonov said. “I only looked through what the KGB had. All I said was that I saw no evidence . . . .”
In a 1948 congressional committee hearing that riveted the country, former Communist Whittaker Chambers charged that Hiss had spied for the Soviet Union while he worked for the State Department in the 1930s. Hiss, who was convicted of perjury in 1950, has insisted he never was a Soviet spy.
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