Spy scandal dramatised

Press, 22 June 1985, Page 17

Spy scandal dramatised

The famous Whittaker Chambers - Alger Hiss spy scandal, which set the stage for Senator Joseph McCathy’s “reign of terror” in the United States in the early fifties, has been dramatised for television. The four-part mini-series, “Concealed Enemies,” begins on One at 8.30 p.m. tomorrow. It focuses on the three complex protagonists: Whit-

taker Chambers, the exCommunist and a senior editor of “Time” magazine, who was the accuser; Alger Hiss, the scholar and longtime Government servant, who was the accused; and rising to fame on the backs of both was Richard Milhouse Nixon, an ambitious young congressman from California. A member of the controversial, but powerful, House Committee on Un-American

Activities, Nixon staked his career on the conviction that Alger Hiss had been a spy for the Soviet Union during the years leading up to World War 11. Portraying Richard Nixon is Peter Riegert, the actor who played the American oii executive sent on business to Scotland in the film “Local Hero." Edward Herrmann appears as Hiss and John Harkins is Chambers.