We can start with the spoiler. At the end of his newly released and massive revised edition of Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, Allen Weinstein makes the following observation: "As for the conspiracy theories themselves, we may expect that newer and perhaps more ingenious defenses of [Alger] Hiss may emerge, if only because none of the theories raised during the past six decades has proved persuasive. There has yet to appear, however, from any source, a coherent body of evidence that seriously undermines the credibility of the evidence against Alger Hiss."
There will never be produced such a body of evidence, because Alger Hiss was guilty. The relevant questions today are what his guilt means. On that score, conservatives as well as liberals may have something to learn.
The story is famous and well known to some, but increasingly forgotten by too many Americans. On August 3, 1948, a Time magazine editor and former communist spy named Whittaker Chambers came to Washington, D.C. On that day Chambers testified that Alger Hiss, a former high ranking State Department official and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was a Communist and Soviet agent who had passed secrets to Moscow.
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