Who were they? Why was Alger Hiss convicted as a perjurer?

In this episode of America’s Untold Stories, we delve into the intriguing story of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss and uncover the fascinating connection between these two individuals. Whittaker Chambers, a former Soviet spy turned anti-communist, and Alger Hiss, a prominent American government official, became entangled in a web of espionage and scandal that would leave a lasting impact on American history.

Whittaker Chambers: The Truth Became Too Preposterous.

“In accusing (Alger) Hiss of Communism, I had attacked an architect of the U.N., and the partisans of peace(3) fell upon me like combat troops. I had attacked an intellectual and a “liberal.” A whole generation felt itself to be on trial—with pretty good reason, too, for its fears probably did not far outrun its guilt. From their roosts in the great cities, and certain collegiate eyries, the left-wing intellectuals of almost every feather (and that was most of the vocal intellectuals in the country) swooped and hovered in flocks like fluttered sea fowl—puffins, skimmers, skuas and boobies—and gave vent to hoarse cries and defilements. I had also accused a “certified gentleman,”4 and the “conspiracy of the gentlemen” closed its retaliatory ranks against me.

Hence that musk of snobbism that lay rank and discrepant over the pro-Hiss faction. Hence that morganatic bond between the forces of the left and the forces of the right (a director of a big steel company, the co-owner of a great department store, a figure high in the Republican organization, come quickly to mind) which made confusing common cause in exculpating Hiss by defaming Chambers.

There was another, less tangible bond between those circles which, together, accounted for a large part of the articulate American middle class. Both groups lived fairly constantly in the psychoanalyst’s permanent shadow, and few articles of furniture were less dispensable to them than a couch. And they shared a common necessity.

Since my charge against Alger Hiss was that he had been a Communist and a Soviet agent, and there was, besides the Grand Jury’s perjury indictment, a good deal of clear and simple evidence that he had been, something, anything at all must be believed rather than the common-sense conclusion. The old masters—Freud and the author of the Psychopathia Sexualis—were conned again. No depravity was too bizarre to “explain” Chambers’ motives for calling Hiss a Communist. No hypothesis was too preposterous, no speculation too fantastic, to “explain” how all those State Department documents came to be copied on Hiss’s Woodstock typewriter. Only the truth became too preposterous to entertain.” — From Chambers’ masterpiece, “Witness”. Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury.