environment. The sum total of all surroundings of a living organism, including natural forces and other living things, which provide conditions for development and growth as well as of danger and damage.
Under subpoena in 1948, he testified in what became Alger Hiss's perjury (espionage) trials (1949â1950) and he became an outspoken anti-communist (all described in his 1952 memoir Witness). Afterwards, he worked briefly as a senior editor at National Review (1957â1959). President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.
Correction Appended. Alger Hiss, the erudite diplomat and Harvard-trained government lawyer who was convicted of perjury in an espionage case that became one of the great riddles of the Cold War, died yesterday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He was 92 and lived in Manhattan.