Baltimore Documents

The name given to the documents produced by Whittaker Chambers, which became physical evidence in the Alger Hiss perjury trials. After Chambers charged Hiss with belonging to the Communist Party in the 1930s, Hiss sued Chambers for libel. On November 17, 1948, in the course of pre-trial depositions in Baltimore, MD, Chambers produced a collection of typed copies – or in some cases summaries – of U.S government documents, which he claimed he had stashed away as a “life preserver” from January to mid-April 1938, while planning his defection from the Communist cause. Most of the Baltimore Documents, as they are commonly known, were typed copies of State Department documents, which Chambers claimed he had received from Alger Hiss for transmission to the Soviet Union. Chambers also produced four short summaries of State Department cables, or fragments thereof, in Alger Hiss’s handwriting.  Click here for more.