"Mary Martin" Note From Alger Hiss Trial Connected to The Rubens-Robinson Case

Alger Hiss during 1949 perjury trial 

By Svetlana Chervonnaya of Documentstalk.com

There has been a historical consensus that “the most damning” physical evidence against Alger Hiss was a tiny early 1938 note in Alger Hiss’s handwriting known as the “Mary Martin” note. Since Alger Hiss’s first perjury trial and in all subsequent accounts, this puzzling note was presented as evidence of Hiss’s betrayal of U.S. government secrets to the Soviet military intelligence.

In his summation for the jury in Hiss’s first perjury trial, on July 6, 1949,

A diplomatic confrontation in 1938

By Svetlana Chervonnaya

The name used in historical literature for a Soviet-American diplomatic confrontation that took place in early 1938, following the arrests in Moscow of a married couple who had entered the Soviet Union on American passports in the names of Mr. and Mrs. Donald Louis Robinson. An investigation launched by the U.S. Department of State revealed that the Robinson passports were fraudulent and that the couple possessed a second set of passports issued in the names of Adolph Arnold Rubens and Ruth Marie Rubens. The incident thus became known as the Rubens-Robinson case.

Following this investigation, the United States refused to recognize Mr. Rubens-Robinson as an American

From The Russian End

By Svetlana Chervonnaya
Soviet diplomatic files from 1938 provide a glimpse into the alleged Soviet “receiving end” of one of the key items of physical evidence in the Alger Hiss perjury trials – the “Mary Martin note” in Alger Hiss’s handwriting. By “receiving end” I mean foreign – in this case, Soviet – intelligence, to which the note was allegedly directed. Prosecution on U.S. espionage charges requires proving the existence of a “receiving end,” that is, proof that the information