Alger Hiss

Born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1904, his father committed suicide when he was three years old.

Attended the prestigious Johns Hopkins University from which he graduated in 1926. Moved on to Harvard University Law School and after graduation in 1929 served as a law clerk for the esteemed United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and then practiced law in New York and Massachusetts. In 1929 married Priscilla Fansler Hobson. Moved to Washington, D.C. in 1933 where he worked for the Roosevelt administration in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration until 1935. Next moved to the Department of Justice until 1936 and then to the State Department in 1936. Served as Secretary to the Nye Commission on Munitions as well as Assistant General Counsel to the Solicitor General of the United States.

At the State Department, was a very important figure, traveling with President Franklin Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference where Roosevelt met to discuss allied strategies for World War II. Served as a top aide to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius.

Served as the Secretary General for the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in which the United Nations was established. In 1946 was named President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served in that capacity until 1948.

In 1948, Whitaker Chambers, the Senior Editor for Time Magazine and a former member of the Communist Party went before the House Un-American Activities Committee and testified that Hiss was a Communist and had passed classified State Department documents to Soviet agents.