Reuben, William A.

Investigative reporter, writer.

Investigative reporter and author who wrote, most notably, about the Rosenberg espionage case and the Alger Hiss-Whitaker Chambers libel and perjury trials.

William A. Reuben (1916-2004) was born in Cleveland, Ohio and educated at the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University (Graduate Faculty of English). Reuben served as a lieutenant with the 45th Infantry Division in World War II and received three Purple Hearts.After the war Reuben began his career as an investigative journalist and later served as national publicity director for the American Civil Liberties Union. He wrote numerous articles for Scribner's, Vogue, the National Guardian, the Nation and Rights, the journal of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Foundation and published a number of books and pamphlets, including, "To Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case" (1951); The Atom Spy Hoax (New York: Action Books, 1955); The Honorable Mr. Nixon and the Alger Hiss Case (New York: Action Books, 1956); The Mark Fein Case (New York: Dial Press, 1967); and "Footnote on an Historic Case: In Re Alger Hiss, No. 78 Civ. 3433" (New York: The Nation Institute, 1983).

As a founder and Provisional Chairman of the Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, Reuben was active in the endeavor to bring national attention to the cases of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell. Shortly after publication of The Honorable Mr. Nixon, Reuben began his reexamination of the Hiss case evidence, a task that would occupy him for the rest of his life. In 1974, as part of this work, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request for FBI documents related to the case. In the lawsuit growing out of this request, filed by the New York City firm of Rabinowitz, Boudin and Standard, and sponsored by the National Emergency Civil Liberties Foundation, the plaintiffs obtained more than 300,000 pages of copies of documents from the files of the FBI and other agencies. The release of these documents, and the information they provided, enabled Alger Hiss to prepare a lawsuit aimed at overturning his conviction, based on an alleged pattern of misconduct by the Bureau and the prosecutor, Thomas F. Murphy. Although Hiss's petition did not prevail, the thousands of documents released by the government offered an invaluable look at the politics and tactics of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI in the 1940s and 1950s.

William Reuben died of natural causes on Monday, May 31, 2004, in New York City, at the age of 88.