Whittaker Chambers's Accusation Against Alger Hiss

Whittaker Chambers's Accusation Against Alger Hiss began with testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee on August 4, 1948, and quickly unsettled official Washington. Chambers, an editor at Time, named Alger Hiss—a prominent former New Deal official who had served in the United States Department of State for fourteen years—as his accomplice in a Communist network. The accusation became a political crisis as well as a charge against an individual: the next day, Harry S. Truman attacked the hearings as a diversion that was slandering people who did not deserve it.

The accusation

Chambers told the committee that he had served in an underground organization in Washington. He said, “For a number of years, I, myself, served in the underground in Washington, D.C.,” and claimed, “I knew it at its top level…. A member of this group…was Alger Hiss.” The allegation linked a figure associated with the New Deal to a covert Communist network, but Chambers's testimony presented an accusation, not an established finding.

Hiss's public standing sharpened the impact of the charge. He was president of the Carnegie Foundation and had been counted among the New Deal’s “bright young men”; he had also served in both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Chambers’s claim therefore reached beyond a private dispute, raising the prospect that an alleged Communist network had touched the federal government.

Washington reacts

The news rocked the capital. Official Washington was described as stunned with anger and disbelief, while Samuel Rayburn warned a reporter that the investigation carried political consequences: “There is political dynamite in this Communist investigation. Don’t doubt that.” The testimony had made the committee’s inquiry a national political issue, before its claims had been resolved.

The timing added to the dispute. The testimony came on August 4, during the closing days of a special congressional session that Harry S. Truman had expected to accomplish little. He had already framed the Republican Congress as an obstacle to social progress. Against that backdrop, the charge could be read not only as a grave allegation about government security but also as part of the partisan contest over what Congress was doing and why.

Truman challenges the hearings

At a press conference the day after Chambers testified, Harry S. Truman was asked whether the “spy scare” on Capitol Hill was a “red herring” intended to divert attention from inflation. He agreed, describing the hearings as “a ‘red herring’ to keep from doing what they ought to do…. They are slandering a lot of people that don’t deserve it.” The response shifted attention from Chambers’s claims to Truman’s judgment of the investigation and its political purpose.

Reporters asked whether they could quote him. Truman said they could, making the criticism public and adding to the political stakes. His answer did not settle the accusation against Hiss; it established a sharp contrast between Chambers’s claim of a Communist network and Truman’s contention that the hearings were being used to distract and malign. The episode thus brought the charges, the committee’s role, and the administration’s response into the same public confrontation.