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Abe Fortas Under Secretary of the Interior, Abe Fortas, had its last dinner meeting attended by over 75 Southerners in the Capital." The “Southern Patriot" was cited as an "organ" of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare by the House Committee on Un-American Activities which cited the Southern Conference for Human Welfare as a communist front organization. Association with Alger Hiss be b7C During the course of an investigation conducted in 1949 ere interviewed at[ —__ BID Vermont. They advised _t at anons the friends of Alger an Priscilla Hiss were Abe ortas. During the course of that investigation Mr. Fortas was interviewed and advised he first became acquainted with Alger Hiss in 1933 when they both worked in the Department of Agriculture. He said they were employed in different areas but that they were in contact with each other considerably. He described Alger Hiss as one of the “finest, most decent persons" he had ever known. He said he was “unutterably shocked when he first heard the allegations" made against Alger Hiss by Whittaker Chambers. He said that aithough he, Mr. Fortas, may have been "politically unsophisticated” at that time in that communism was "merely a word" to him, he never had any reason to question the "loyalty, decency and character" of Alger Hiss. Mr. Fortas said that subsequent to their employment with the Department of Agriculture he had seen Mr. Hiss on two occasions; once at the San Francisco, California, Conference of the United Nations and later, at the First General Assembly of the United Nations at London, England. The records of the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, disclosed that Alger Hiss was convicted on two counts of perjury on January 20, 1950, resulting from his testimony before a grand jury wherein he (1) denied furnishing ~ 10 -