... Our State Department is an immense institution. It sends around 350 million dollars a year [1951] and engages the services of thousands of employees in Washington and all over the world.
... The Department is divided into numerous bureaus. One of these is the Far Eastern Division. If one school of thought on Far Eastern relations can lodge its man at the head of that department the jobs well under way. Up to 1944, Joseph W. Ballantine was the head of it. In that department was a section concerned with China. John Carter Vincent was the head of that. There was another division concerned with political affairs. Alger Hiss was deputy director and later director of that.
Mr. Ballantine did not fall in with the peculiar ideas of the Achesons, the one-worlders and the pro-pinks. He was, therefore, removed to another post and John Carter Vincent put at the head of the whole Far Eastern Division in 1945. I need not say that Vincent fell in with Mr. Achesons' ideas and, in fact, went much beyond them. . . . (etc).
[. . .]
There was another division of first-rank importance—the Division of Political Affairs. Alger Hiss was at first deputy director and later director of this division. He was the closest man in the Department to Acheson, who leaned heavily on him. One must gasp as one beholds this seemingly mild, scholarly young man, who so boldly promoted at every turn the interests of his master, the Russian government. He drew up a plan for reorganizing the State Department. Another official of the Department drew up a protest against the plan in which he pointed out that it was cleverly designed to give Hiss and his group "astounding control of the Department." This was in 1946, and even that early it was suggested that the matter be brought to the attention of the FBI.
The Department had a coordinating Committee of which Dean Acheson was chairman. Hiss and John Carter Vincent were also members. Its powers were immense throughout the Department. As stated in the Congressional Directory, it had "responsibility for considering matters of policy or actions and
questions of inter-office relations referred to it by the Secretary. Under Secretary and Secretary's Staff Committee or initiated by the members" (of the coordinating Committee). It is not too much to say that at this point Acheson was the most powerful man in the Department in his impact on policy and that Hiss was the most powerful next to him. ( pages 32-34 )