The Trials of Alger Hiss

Hiss was a Roosevelt aide who served on the US delegation at the Yalta Conference; he was charged with being a Communist in 1949 by Whittaker Chambers, a former spy and guilty homosexual who had found religion and become a senior editor of Time. Lowenthal's long, intricate study of the case, using archive footage and interviews with many of the principals, clarifies the national hysteria of the early Cold War years and the opportunism of prosecutor Richard Nixon. It rationally argues the case for a re-examination of Hiss' conviction, proving that film and investigative journalism were made for each other.