Cold War Political History, Richard Nixon Letter Linking His Carnegie Endowment Appearance to Alger Hiss, 1991

Richard Nixon

Manuscript & Autographs

Nixon, Richard M. typed letter signed, 1991, is a post-presidential document connecting Nixon’s public intellectual life after the White House to the Alger Hiss case, the Cold War controversy that helped establish his national political identity. Written to Honorable William Hyland, the letter shows Nixon still using private correspondence to frame institutional memory, political reputation, and anti-Communist history decades after his congressional investigation of Hiss. The material documents post-presidential political communication through personal letterhead and private commentary, revealing how Nixon continued to interpret Cold War controversies for trusted associates and providing primary-source evidence for the study of American anti-Communism, political reputation, and the long public afterlife of the Hiss case.

Nixon, Richard M. Typed letter signed to Honorable William Hyland. New Jersey: personal letterhead, April 12, 1991. One page. Quarto. The letter concerns an off-the-record Carnegie Endowment forum in Washington, with Nixon sending Hyland a list of attendees and joking about entering “the lion’s den.” Nixon writes, “I guess they thought that by having me they would balance the fact that Alger Hiss was once their President!,” a pointed reference to Hiss’s former leadership of the Carnegie Endowment and to Nixon’s own role in pressing the congressional investigation that led to Hiss’s perjury conviction. The letter is signed “Sincerely,” and preserves Nixon’s characteristic mixture of political irony, institutional grievance, and historical self-positioning.

The timing gives the letter particular interpretive value: in 1991 Nixon was active as an elder statesman on foreign policy, while the Cold War world that had shaped his early career was rapidly ending. His reference to Hiss ties a contemporary Washington policy forum to the anti-Communist investigations of the late 1940s and to the contested public memories of Nixon, Hiss, and loyalty politics after Watergate. Blue marker “File” notation at upper right; otherwise clean and well preserved, near fine. A sharply worded Nixon letter explicitly naming Alger Hiss and linking a late-career public appearance to one of the formative conflicts of twentieth-century American political history.

Item #13079

Price: $470.00