Abraham Feller
Abraham Feller
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Abraham Feller

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Abraham Feller

Abraham Howard Feller (1904 – November 13, 1952) was the chief legal counsel under Trygve Lie of the United Nations and a friend of Alger Hiss who committed suicide during investigations into communist subversion at the UN by the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS).

Feller was born in 1904 in New York City. He graduated from Columbia University in 1925, Phi Beta Kappa. At Columbia, he was classmates with future Federal Reserve chairman Arthur F. Burns and critic Lionel Trilling. In 1928, he graduated from Harvard Law School (a year ahead of Alger Hiss and Lee Pressman–and, like them, an editor of the Harvard Law Review).

In 1932 to 1933, Feller taught at Harvard Law School.

In the 1930s New Deal and the 1940s, Feller had served the federal government in Washington, DC. He was a member of Franklin Roosevelt's "Brain Trust."

In the fall of 1938, Feller was an American Labor Party candidate in New York City, as was Bella Dodd (and John F. O'Donnell for the Socialist Party of America).

In 1946, Feller joined the United Nations during its formation in London as legal counsel and policy adviser. He contributed to the drafting of the UN charter, as did Charles Easton Rothwell. At the time, he was working closely with Hiss.

The June 7, 1950, Congressional Record states:

In addition to the three Assistant Secretaries-General, Lie appointed pro-Soviet Abraham Feller as General Counsel and Director of the Legal Department of the United Nations Secretariat. Feller's Russian sympathies are well known to his associates. He has been a member of the Committee of International Law of the Nation[al] Lawyers Guild, which was repudiated as Communist-controlled by such liberal attorneys as Frank P. Walsh, Morris Ernst, Ferdinand Pecora, and Robert Jackson. Feller was also a member of the Washington Committee for Democratic Action, which defended civil-service employees charged with subversive activities and was itself cited as subversive by Attorney General Francis Biddle.

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