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This post is *not* about whether Alger Hiss was guilty or innocent. I happen to believe that he was guilty for a number of reasons, one of which is that I find the identification of the famous Venona cable's "Ales" with Alger Hiss more convincing than the attempt of Kai Bird and Svetlana Chervonnaya to prove that Ales was really Wilder Foote. Those interested in the matter may compare http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-mystery-of-ales-2/ with http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page70.html
However, as I said, my question here is not whether Hiss was innocent or guilty. It is, What would have happened if he had been acquitted at his first trial? (After all, both innocent and guilty people can be acquitted.) In OTL the jury deadlocked 8-4 for conviction. Presumably a slightly different jury could have had a majority for acquittal, and it is not unknown in such situations for the majority to wear down the minority until it too agrees to acquit.
The most immediate possible effect I want to explore is this: What happens to Richard Nixon's political career? He will no doubt blame the acquittal on the alleged pro-Hiss bias of Judge Samuel Kaufman. (The judge in the second Hiss trial, Henry W. Goddard, was more lenient on evidentiary matters and allowed both the prosecutor and Hiss's attorney to elicit testimony that Kaufman had excluded.) But the fact remains that the case that brought Nixon fame had ended in failure--his side had lost, and there is no appealing an acquittal. Helen Gahagan Douglas will still be vulnerable in 1950 as being too far to the Left for California's mood that year--especially with the Korean War. But the Republicans may want to nominate someone other than Nixon to oppose her. (I assume that she still runs and that Sheridan Downey still retires.)