Term
|
Definition
| Former U.S. State Department official accused of being a Soviet Spy in1948. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Editor of Time Magazine, chief witness against Alger Hiss. Identified Hiss as "Ales". |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Freshman Congressman who served on the HUAC, who forced the Alger Hiss case to trial. |
|
|
Term
| The Baltimore Papers / Pumpkin Files |
|
Definition
| The Pumpkin Papers would be called the "Dumbwaiter Papers." The sixty-five typed pages and four handwritten pages all came from an envelope removed from a dumbwaiter shaft in the Baltimore home of Whittaker Chambers's nephew's mother, where they apparently had been kept for ten years. (The typed papers and notes are sometimes called "the Baltimore papers.") The name "Pumpkin Papers" comes from the fact that the rolls of 35 mm film were found wrapped in waxed paper inside a hollowed-out pumpkin on Whittaker Chambers's Maryland farm. In response to a HUAC subpoena, Chambers on the evening of December 2, 1948 dramatically led two HUAC investigators to the patch, where the film had been placed by Chambers only the previous day. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| The VENONA files are decoded cables sent from Soviet agents in the United States to Moscow. Transcripts of the intercepted cables were released by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency in 1995 and 1996. The VENONA transcript with the most relevance to the Hiss case is #1822, sent March 30, 1945 from the Soviet's Washington station chief to Moscow. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| House Un-American Activities Committee |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Director of the FBI that lobbied heavily for Hiss' conviction. |
|
|
Term
|
Definition
| Crime for which Alger Hiss is tried and convicted. |
|
|