On August 3 , 1948 , Whittaker Chambers , a former Communist Party member , appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities ( HUAC ) to denounce Alger Hiss . A senior editor at '' Time '' magazine , Chambers had written a scathingly satirical editorial critical of the Yalta agreements . Chambers asserted that he had known Hiss as a member of " an underground organization of the United States Communist Party " in the 1930s . The group , which Chambers called the " Ware Group , " had been organized by agriculturalist Harold Ware , an American communist intent on organizing black and white tenant farmers in the American South against exploitation and debt peonage by the cotton industry ( Ware had died in 1935 ) . According to Chambers , " the purpose of this group at that time was not primarily espionage . Its original purpose was the Communist infiltration of the American government . But espionage was certainly one of its eventual objectives . " As historian Tim Weiner points out , " This was a crucial point . Infiltration and invisible political influence were immoral , but arguably not illegal . Espionage was treason , traditionally punishable by death . The distinction was not lost on the cleverest member of HUAC , Congressman Richard Nixon ... . He had been studying the FBI 's files for five months , courtesy of J. Edgar Hoover . Nixon launched his political career in hot pursuit of Hiss and the alleged secret Communists of the New Deal . " Rumors had circulated about Hiss since 1939 , when Chambers , at the urging of anti-Stalinist Isaac Don Levine , had gone to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle , Jr. and accused Hiss of having belonged to an underground communist cell at the Department of Agriculture . In 1942 , Chambers repeated this allegation to the FBI . In 1945 two other sources appeared to implicate Hiss . In September 1945 , Igor Gouzenko , a 26-year-old Ukrainian whose three-year tour as a cipher clerk stationed at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa was coming to an end , defected from the Soviet Union and remained in Canada . In exchange for asylum , Gouzenko offered to Canadian authorities evidence about a Soviet espionage network actively working to acquire information about nuclear weapons , along with information that an unnamed assistant ( or more precisely an " assistant to an assistant " ) to U.S. Secretary of State Stettinius was a Soviet agent . When informed of this , Hoover assumed Gouzenko was referring to Alger Hiss . Three months later ( in December 1945 ) , Elizabeth Bentley , an American spy for the Soviet Union , who served also as a courier between Communist groups , told the FBI , as documented in the FBI Silvermaster File that " At this time Kramer told me that the person who had originally taken Glasser away from Perlo 's group was named Hiss and that he was in the U.S. State Department . " Bentley also said that the man in question , whom she called " Eugene Hiss " worked in the State Department and was an adviser to Dean Acheson . In both cases ( Gouzenko and Bentley ) , the FBI decided that Alger Hiss was the likely match . Hoover put a wiretap on Hiss 's home phone and had him and his wife investigated and tailed for the next two years
Yalta
Yalta Conference
Alger Hiss