In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Alger Hiss appealed to the post-Communist Russian government to search their records for any evidence that could throw light on his case (Volkogonov on the Hiss Case). In the mid-1990s, the partial release of Cold War files in both Russia and the U.S. sparked heatedly renewed debate among historians and journalists both about Hiss himself and about the extent to which Soviet intelligence had penetrated American government during the early years of the Cold War. (Venona and the Russian Files). In a landmark 1999 ruling, a federal judge ordered the release of thousands of pages of grand jury testimony from the Hiss case. Judge Peter K. Leisure agreed with the contention put forward by historians and archivists, who had petitioned for the release of the documents that some federal cases are of such overriding historical importance that they need to be made public, despite the continuing presumption that in most cases secrecy protects the public's rights (The Grand Jury Minutes). | 
