Alger Hiss has been Indicted For Perjury

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26957, 17 December 1948, Page 5

Alger Hiss has been Indicted For Perjury

NZPA— Copyright

Rec. 9 p.m. NEW YORK, Dec. 15. The Federal Grand Jury to-day indicted a former State Department official. Alger Hiss, on two counts ol perjury. The Grand Jury, which has been investigating espionage in the Government, said it found untrue a denial by Hiss that he gave secret State Department papers to Whittaker Chambers, one of the central figures in the investigations by both the Grand Jury and the House Un-American Activities Committee. . ■ Chambers has accused Hiss and otner former Government employees of serving the Communist underground and furnishing important documents for delivery to Russian agents. The Grand Jury could not indict Hiss for espionage because of three-year Statute limitations. .. The Grand Jury, after issuing the indictments, was discharged because its 18 months’ term had expired A new grand jury, which will be convened immediately, will complete the espionage investigations. Hiss, if convicted will be liable to a fine of 5000 dollars and two years’ imprisonment on each perjury count. . _ , In Washington, an investigator _ for the House Un-American Activities Committee told the press to-day that information on the secret United States Norden bomb sight was given to a Communist agent before the war. The Norden bomb sight was one of America's closely-guarded pre-war secrets. Bombadiers during the early part of the war had instructions to destroy it in the case of planes shot down in enemy territory. 1 The investigator added that a Government worker was responsible for giving the Communist agent the bomb sight information and that he was still employed at the army’s proving ground. The acting chairman of the committee, Representative Karl Mundt, said the worker was a civilian who holds a top-ranking position at the Proving grounds. All information in the case had been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Chambers testified last summer that for several years before he broke from the party in 1938 he was a courier for the Communist underground. Chambers, a senior editor of Time magazine, has* accused Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, of membership in a pre-war Red network that sought to place Communists in key Government jobs. Hiss has filed libel suits against Chambers for 75,000

dollars damages Hiss, who is now president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was once a high official in the State Department on a policy-making level. He' was secretary-general of the conference which founded the United Nations.

Both men havojsince tendered their resignations.