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Alger Hiss: The Carnegie Endowman's Trial

1525 Words7 Pages

Alger Hiss is not a very well known figure by today’s standards; however, espionage and perjury accusations against him became both infamous and controversial in his era. In the 40s and 50s, the height of Communist Hysteria, Alger Hiss would be accused to have been a spy or agent for the Soviet Union. Unlike similar trials involving accusations of treason and espionage, Hiss’s trial would become controversial as he continuously pleaded his innocence and only received a punishment for perjury. While he did deny the allegations, Hiss was definitely a treasonous spy for Soviet intelligence and deserved a much heavier sentence for all his crimes. Before being accused of treason and espionage, Alger Hiss was born in Baltimore in 1904, and lived there for a majority of his young life, and later becoming a lawyer. He began working in the federal government in 1933 under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration in the Agricultural Adjustment Agencies (AAA) in the Department of Justice and State (Shaffer). He was in the Roosevelt administration and was helped Roosevelt during the Yalta Conference (Everett 1) Hiss continued to work as a politician as well as a representative for organizations such as the Carnegie …show more content…

This breach of trust should also have been into account. Since he was a rather powerful figure, a heavier conviction would have set an important precedent that espionage is a dangerous offense in any occasion. Similar cases involving espionage, especially the Rosenbergs, ended with even greater sentences. The Rosenbergs got the death penalty for espionage, proving that espionage truly is a big issue and crime. If very similar cases could receive sentences such heavy sentences as life in prison or the death penalty, Hiss definitely got a light sentence and deserved harsher consequences for leaking sensitive material to Soviet

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