However, her most important duty was that of an agent recruiter, a work she carried out with great skill. She used appeals to ideology, especially to the strong anti-Nazi sentiments of New Deal liberals who dominated the Washington scene of the Roosevelt administration in the early 1930s. Laurence Duggan was among her recruits. In 1935, Massing, at a Communist Party USA cell meeting in a private home, argued with Alger Hiss over whether Noel Field, a State Department spy, should work with her group or with the GRU. Massing testified to that episode at Alger Hiss' second trial in November 1949. Noel Field always denied this, but it seems clear that he changed his testimony more than once, depending on time and circumstance (e.g., Hiss Case vs. Czechoslovak show trial venues vs. prison).