Bang that spoon, Jonah. We should never forget that one of the senior American diplomats at the Yalta conference was none other than Alger Hiss — who was, of course, not serving the United States but the Soviet Union, whose undercover agent he was. A cable from the U.S. Embassy in Washington to the Kremlin in March 1945 made clear just how crucial Hiss’s role was in the discussions that resulted in the 45 year subjugation of Central and Eastern Europe. (The cable uses Hiss’s code name, ALES.) “After the YALTA conference,” the document reads, “a Sovet personage iin a very responsible position (ALES gave to understand it was Comrade VYshINSKIJ) allegedly got in touch with ALES and at the behest of the military NEIGHNORS passed on to him their gratitude and so on.” The code word “neighbors” referred to Soviet military intelligence. Comrade Andrei Vyshinski was the deputy foreign minister of the Soviet Union (and had been the chief prosecutor at the Moscow show trials in the 1930s). Hiss’s presence at Yalta remains the most scandalous intelligence penetration in American history. It’s probably worth bringing up once a week just to stick it to the odious Eric Alterman, who said a few years ago that he remains “agnostic” about Hiss’s guilt.