HISS'S LATEST APPEAL DENIED BY FEDERAL JUDGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302660006-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: July 18, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302660006-0
ARTICLE AF?EAnEp
ON PAGE "?-3
THE NE'.. YORK TIMES
18 JULY 1982
Hiss's Latest Appeal Denied by Federal Judge
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Alger Hiss's long_legal fight to over
turn his conviction. on lion
related perjury es ered_
ant "setback with a rejectionjz3La
Federal ji dg"e i a.. an, of Mr.
Hiss ~Tteyv trial:.
In an 82-page decision handed down
Thursday, Judge Richard Owen of Fed-
eral District court ruled that Mr. Hiss
had not been denied a fair trial, as Mr.
Hiss had contended. Mr. Hiss had filed
an appeal in 1978 with what he called
new information from 150 Government
documents obtained under the Freedom
of Information Act.
"The trial was a fair one by any
standard, and I am presented with noth-
ing requiring a hearing on any issue,"
Judge Owen declared. "The jury ver-
dict rendered in 1950 was amply sup-
ported by the evidence - the most dam-
aging aspects of which were admitted
by Hiss - and nothing presented in
these papers, extensive though they
are, places the verdict under any
cloud."
An Appeal Is Planned
Mr. Hiss, who is 77 years old and a
resident of Manhattan, was not avail-
able for comment on the decision yes-
terdav. but his son Anthony replied "of
course" when asked if his father in-
tended to appeal the ruling.
- In one of the most controversial and
publicized trials of an era of anti-Com-
munist fervor in the United States, Mr.
Hiss was convicted of lying to a grand
jury in denying that he had given classi.
fied documents to a former Communist
Party member, Whittaker Chambers,
to be passed on to the Soviet Union in
1937 and 1938.
In 1948 hearings before the House Un-
American Activities Committee, Mr.
Chambers, an-editor of Time magazine
who had become disillusioned and quit
the Communist party, named Mr. Hiss
as a Communist, a charge Mr. ? Hiss
denied. The case helped pCongressman, Richard )7721=1
political prominence and election as
Vice President in 1952.
Sentenced to five years in prison, Mr.
Hiss served 44 months. The conviction
destroyed what had been a brilliant ca-
reer for the former State Department
official, who had been an adviser to
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and,
Secretary General of the San Francisco
United Nations Conference.
Continued Controversy
In the years since, the case has gives
rise to numerous books, articlbs and
continued controversy, and Mr. Hiss
has made numerous unsuccessful ap-
peals in an attempt to clear his name.
In the latest appeal, be used docu-
ments obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act to assert various
-claims of prosecutorial misconduct
that, he contended, had denied him a
fair trial. Among the claims were the
following:
cThat be had been denied effective
counsel because of improper contacts
between the prosecution and a defense
investigator.
cThat three statements by Mr.
Chambers had been suppressed by the
prosecution.
cThat the prosecution had sup-
pressed inforr?aation about a typewriter
that had,been used to type the stolen
documents.
cThat the prosecution had knowingly
'used perjured testimony by two wit-
nesses.
QThat the prosecutor had used an im-
proper argument in his summation.
Judge Owen dismissed all the conten-
tions. He noted that the contacts be-
tween the prosecution and -the investi.
gator "could not have had the slightest
impact on the outcome" of the trial. The
statements by Mr. Chambers, he said,
were insignificant, irrelevant or not
suppressed.
'Pursllng? Aspects
The judge noted that Mr. Hiss's con.
tentions about the typewriter had to do
with its ongr He acknowledged there
were "puali g" aspects about this, but
-said Mr. Hiss had conceded that the
stolen documents were typed on it and
that "consequently, any evidence as to
its origins was irrelevant."
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000302660006-0