" .

             A Federal grand jury summoned both Chambers and Hiss in September 1948. Hiss sued Chambers for slander. In November, Chambers handed over 65 typed pages of State Department documents, four pages of word-for-word copies of its cables in Hiss' handwriting, plus two strips of developed and three cylinders of undeveloped microfilm. The HUAC then accused Hiss of perjury in denying that he had conveyed documents to Chambers. The statute of limitations had expired on charging Hiss of spying. .

             In the first trial, Hiss" lawyer got a hung jury by attacking Chambers personally and presenting his client as a symbol of the New Deal. In this trial, only Chambers and his wife testified against Hiss. In the second trial, Hiss' new lawyer based his strategy on unsupported claims that the documents had been stolen by Chambers or by Julian Wadleigh, another member of the Ware Group. However, Chambers's had another witness, Hede Massing, a former Soviet espionage controller. The judge at the earlier trial had barred her from testifying because she had no firsthand knowledge of the Hiss-Chambers connection. The second judge let her tell the court that in 1935 she and Hiss had argued over whether Noel Field, a spy at the State Department, would work for her spying organization or his. In addition, the typewriting of the documents would prove to be important to the case. The Hisses had owned a Woodstock, a brand of typewriter. In a comparison of copies of letters typed in the 1930s by the Hisses on their Woodstock, the Department of State indicated that the documents came from the same machine. Alger Hiss was convicted, serving 40 months of a five-year sentence.

             From archives in the Czech Republic, previously unavailable documents that further confirm that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent have been secured. These files concern Noel Field, a NKVD (later KGB) agent who served with Hiss at the State Department prior to World War II.