Robert E. Stripling

Robert E. Stripling (circa 1910–1991) was a 20th-century civil servant, best known as chief investigator of the House Dies Committee and its successor the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), particularly for collaboration with junior congressman Richard Nixon and for testimony gleaned from witness Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, the latter of whose allegations led indirectly to indictment and conviction of State Department official Alger Hiss in January 1950.

[1][2] In 1932, before Stripling had finished college, U.S. Representative Martin Dies Jr., a Democrat from the Texas's 2nd congressional district, brought him to Washington, DC.

Stripling had received what he himself called a "patronage job" in the "folding room" of the Old House Office Building at $120 per month while he attended night school.

[1] The cover of the original print run of Stripling's memoir The Red Plot Against America cites his title as "Chief Investigator, House Un-American Activities Committee, 1938–1948.

"[4] HUAC investigations in which Stripling participated include: testimony of alleged Soviet spy Gerhart Eisler, the Hollywood Trials (which derived from Eisler through his brother Hanns Eisler, a Hollywood composer at the time, and their friend Bertolt Brecht[5]), testimony by writer Ring Lardner Jr.,[6] testimony by Elizabeth Bentley, and testimony by Whittaker Chambers and members of his Ware Group – Alger Hiss, Donald Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lee Pressman, John Abt, Nathan Witt, Charles Kramer, studio mogul Jack L. Warner, and others.