Whittaker Chambers achieved public renown as the principal informant in what became the greatest espionage trial of the Cold War. In August 1948 Chambers informed the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) that he had been a courier for a Soviet spy apparatus during the 1930s. Accused by Chambers as being part of that apparatus was Alger Hiss, president of the prestigious Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, and at the time of the alleged espionage a high official in the U.S. State Department. Hiss repudiated the charge before HCUA, a denial that led to his indictment for lying to Congress. Hiss's trial, at which Chambers was the chief witness for the prosecution, grabbed national headlines not only because of the inherent drama of the proceedings, but because implicated with Hiss stood the liberal political establishment that had dominated American politics since the early 1930s and with...