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By Dan Cryer

June 1, 1999 | Was Alger Hiss a dedicated public servant or a spy, a victim of Cold War hysteria or a secret communist? For half a century the question has roiled public debate, shaped discourse about honor and justice, split liberals into warring camps and rallied conservatives around the faith of anticommunism.

Hiss was the embodiment of New Deal liberalism. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he had clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court's venerable Oliver Wendell Holmes and had given up a promising career in New York to join Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. He rose high in the State Department and served as secretary-general of the founding conference of the United Nations. By 1948, when he was accused of spying for the Soviets, he was president of a prominent philanthropic foundation, the Carnegie Endowment.

His accuser, Whittaker Chambers, presented a far cloudier image. An admitted ex-communist, the Time magazine writer packed a pistol at the office, harbored a secret homosexual past and muttered about the decline of Western civilization. Nevertheless, in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where Richard Nixon was an ambitious young unknown, Chambers laid Hiss low. Hiss fought back, accusing Chambers of slander. But following a first trial that ended in a hung jury, Hiss was convicted of perjuring himself about his involvement in espionage.

From March 1951 to November 1954, Hiss was confined in the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pa. After his release, his reputation in tatters, he found work as a salesman for a Manhattan printing firm. Though he always insisted on his innocence, he remained remarkably free of bitterness. He died in 1996 at the age of 92.

Click here for books by Tony Hiss at BARNES & NOBLE

Tony Hiss, 57, a former staff writer at the New Yorker, recalls the once-a-month treks to Lewisburg that he and his mother, Priscilla, made to visit the famous father he barely knew. His new memoir, "The View From Alger's Window" (Knopf), is a devoted son's attempt to portray a man whose impeccable character made treason inconceivable. But the book is coming out at a time when scholarly opinion about Alger Hiss is increasingly hostile. Newly opened files from Soviet, U.S. and Hungarian sources have provided evidence that, some historians say, links him to Soviet espionage. And despite the lack of any smoking gun, this is also the conclusion of a trio of recent books: "Whittaker Chambers," a 1997 biography by Sam Tanenhaus; the just-published "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America" by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr; and "Perjury: the Hiss-Chambers Case" by Allen Weinstein, first published in 1978 and again two years ago in an edition that incorporates newly available archival material.

The contrary stance in "The View From Alger's Window" is based largely on a cache of 2,500 letters, including 445 Alger Hiss wrote during his imprisonment. They show a man who reads the New Yorker and the Bible, sings in the prison choir, delights in classical music and teaches a small-time mobster to read. Out his window, his eyes feast on sunsets and stars. To his wife, he vows to make use of imprisonment as "a large opportunity for learning and growing." To his son, he writes touching letters designed to impart lessons in coping and growing up. Buddha, Shakespeare and FDR show up in these letters, but there is not a word about Marx or communism.

My interview with Tony Hiss took place at the Greenwich Village apartment where he spent much of his early life. He lives there now with his wife, the young-adult novelist Lois Metzger, and their 7-year-old son, Jacob. Hiss pointed with pride to a handsome 18th century mirror that Justice Holmes willed to Alger Hiss. For the Hiss family, the mirror isn't merely an antique -- it's an emblem of loyalty to American tradition.

Next page | Why are authorities convinced of Hiss' guilt?