The decades-long effort to convince the House of Representatives to release its historic HUAC files finally paid off in 2001. Historians interested in HUAC's investigation of Alger Hiss and other Cold War matters can now examine hitherto secret executive session testimony and investigative files.

The newly available material on Hiss is especially compelling. There is important testimony by key figures in the case, including Whittaker Chambers, Isaac Don Levine and Hede Massing, among others. HUAC's investigative files on such controversial topics as the Woodstock typewriter and the Ford car are also valuable for piecing together information about what the government already knew about these matters when Hiss went to trial.

In coming months, The Alger Hiss Story Web site will be posting as much of this new evidence as possible, along with commentary pointing to the places where the released information adds a new dimension to what has previously been known about the people and evidence in the Hiss case. The Web site remains committed to disseminating primary material that brings us closer to the full truth in this watershed case of the Cold War era. (The released HUAC files may be viewed and copied by researchers at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., but the Archives does not plan to post them on the Internet.)

	Click here for the first detailed look at the Hiss-related material in HUAC files, by Bruce R. Craig, Ph. D., a historian who, as Director of the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, was part of a coalition of scholars who in 2001 requested the House of Representatives to release all of HUAC's long-withheld information.

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