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Wednesday, Dec. 16, 1998

Groups seek release of Hiss records

Grand jury indictment in perjury case sought

By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press

   NEW YORK -- A half century after Alger Hiss faced perjury charges in one of the seminal spy cases of the Cold War, historians and lawyers asked a federal judge to unseal documents relating to his grand jury indictment.
   The lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks transcripts of still-secret testimony that led to Hiss's conviction on two counts of lying under oath to the grand jury about his purported ties to Soviet espionage.
   Hiss went to prison for nearly three years in a case that helped define the era of McCarthyism and vaulted Richard Nixon to national prominence.
   Hiss died in 1996 at age 92, still insisting that he had been falsely accused of spying for Moscow.
   The legal arm of Ralph Nader's organization asked U.S. District Judge Peter K. Leisure to open the files in the interest of justice and historical inquiry.
   While some testimony from two grand juries was offered during Hiss' two perjury trials, most of the principals are dead, many questions about "changed testimony, alleged judicial improprieties and political interference" -- including the roles of Nixon, the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee -- remain unanswered.
   "Fifty years of secrecy is long enough. It's time to lift the shroud of secrecy and let the American people judge whether justice was served by the indictment and conviction of Hiss," said David Vladeck, director of the Washington-based Public Citizen Litigation Group.
   Federal grand jury testimony is routinely sealed and rarely made public -- "the one great treasure trove of information that even centuries after the events involved remain off-limits to historians and researchers," said Hiss' writer son, Tony. "So this action becomes a test case that we hope will open many other doors and windows to truth."
   The post-World War II scandal that transformed Hiss from Ivy League-establishment diplomat and presidential adviser to suspected traitor was a spy-novel epic involving stolen government documents and clandestine liaisons with purported Soviet agents.
   His main accuser, Time magazine editor and self-avowed ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers, led investigators to a Maryland farm where they found microfilm, allegedly received from Hiss, in a hollowed-out pumpkin.
   

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