Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was a U.S. State Department official who was accused of membership in a communist espionage ring.
Synopsis
Alger Hiss was born on November 11, 1904 in Baltimore, Maryland. He worked in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1948, Whitaker Chambers accused Hiss of having been a member of an underground communist organization. Hiss denied this but was found guilty of two counts of perjury in 1950 (the statute of limitations on a treason charge had run out) and served more than three years of a five-year prison sentence. He released in 1954, still asserting his innocence until his death in 1996.
