“I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss.” So ended the trial. There could be no ending to the story, yet; it was, as Chambers had said, part of the “tragedy of history” and of the ...

Alger Hiss, a former US State Department official, was exposed as a Soviet spy by Whittaker Chambers, a self-confessed former communist. Hiss was convicted and imprisoned in 1950. Ethel and Julius ...