A Pumpkin Patch, A Typewriter, and Richard Nixon:

The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case

by

John W. Berresford

1. INTRODUCTION AND ALGER HISS

Thank you for choosing to read “A Pumpkin Patch, A Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The
Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case.” The Case has been a hobby of mine – some of my friends say an
unhealthy obsession – for many years. In these pages, I hope to give you some of the fascination
and thrills it has given me.

This is a story about two men. It is also about law, evidence, politics, trust, and public
opinion; and friendship, ideals, and country – loyalty to those things and the betrayal of them. All
these flow through the two men. One of them is a great patriot and the other is great liar, and the
question is which is which.

The two men are Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. Both agree that they knew each
other at the dawn of their professional lives, for a few years in the 1930s. Then they parted. A
decade later they were brought back together against both of their wills and were forced, amid
scandalous publicity, to re-live what they had done. What happened ruined both their lives,
launched the career of a future President, and opened a new era in our history, one in which fear of
homegrown Communist traitors was common. That fear, we now know, was justified.

Who were these two men? Both were born around 1900 into families that shared two traits.
The first is that families were what used to be called “shabby genteel”; they had seen better days.
Neither family had been higher than middle class, but they had been solid and respectable. But in
the generation of Hiss’s and Chambers’ parents, they had gone downhill.1 Hiss grew up in
Baltimore; Chambers on Long Island.

1
Henry Grunwald, ONE MAN’S AMERICA: A JOURNALIST’S SEARCH FOR THE HEART OF HIS
COUNTRY (Doubleday 1997) at 107; Murray Kempton, PART OF OUR TIME: SOME RUINS &
MONUMENTS OF THE THIRTIES (“Kempton I”) (Simon & Schuster 1955) at 17, 19, 26.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2449479

 Second, each family was what is now called dysfunctional – extremely so. Hiss and
Chambers each grew up in a milieu of an absent father – Hiss’s committed suicide when Hiss was
two years old,2 and Chambers’ dad was an active bisexual and alcoholic.3 Their siblings displayed
mental illness, alcoholism, death at an early age, and suicide. Chambers’ childhood home also
featured a crazy grandmother.4 I think both families were held together by “iron butterfly” mothers.

The great journalist Murray Kempton wrote a lot about this Case and I will quote or
paraphrase him often. He wrote that among the shabby genteel, the average runs alarmingly
towards strong widows with promising sons.5 Both Hiss and Chambers were promising, highly
intelligent boys with rare natural gifts. But each of them seems to have reacted differently to the
rigors of his childhood.

Hiss decided to follow the code of shabby gentility; to work hard, get ahead, and thus
restore the family’s good name. He attended Johns Hopkins University, where he was Phi Beta
Kappa, an editor of the college newspaper, President of the dramatic club, and President of the
Student Council – all of which he seemed to do without breaking a sweat.6 He went on to Harvard
Law School, where he was on the Law Review and was the favorite student of then-Professor Felix
Frankfurter (later a Supreme Court Justice). One of Hiss’s fellow students wrote that at that time
Alger had a physical distinction that had to be seen to be believed – if you saw him with the British
Ambassador, you would think Hiss was the Ambassador and the Ambassador was his butler. "He
gave you a sense of absolute command and absolute grace."7

Professor Frankfurter got Hiss is first job after law school, the job that third-year law
students just dreamed of. In 1929, Hiss was secretary (we would now say Law Clerk) to Supreme
Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., one of the greatest judges in our nation’s history.

The same year, Hiss married a divorced woman named Priscilla Hobson, who came from an
Illinois Quaker family that moved to Pennsylvania when she was four.8 She had been to Bryn
Mawr College9 on Philadelphia’s fashionable “Main Line” for her bachelor’s degree, took some
courses towards a masters at Yale, and got her masters at Columbia.10 She had had a previous
marriage, which produced a son named Timothy and ended in a Mexican divorce.11 Mrs. Hiss was

2
Allen Weinstein, PERJURY: THE HISS-CHAMBERS CASE (“Weinstein I”) (Hoover Inst. 2013) at 81;
Second Trial at 2491.
3
Weinstein I at 95.
4
Grunwald at 107.
5
Kempton I at 17.
6
Jonathan Aitken, NIXON: A LIFE (Regnery Publishing 1993) at 151; Weinstein I at 85.
7
Kempton I at 20.
8
First Trial at 2251.
9
First Trial at 2252.
10
First Trial at 2252, 2310; Second Trial at 3375.
11
Timothy Hobson was born 9/19/26. First Trial at 2252, 2309.

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2449479

highly intelligent but apparently was something of a scold, the kind of person who, if you said it
was a lovely day, might snap back “Well, it’s not a lovely day for the sharecroppers in
Oklahoma!”12 A lot of Alger’s friends did not like Mrs. Hiss.13 The night before Hiss married her,
his mother sent him a telegram: “Do not take this fatal step.”14

After the Holmes clerkship, Hiss worked briefly for two prestigious law firms, one in
Boston and one in New York.

And it was in New York, as Murray Kempton said, that Hiss first showed signs that there
was something more to him than the hyper-ambitious son of shabby gentility. In New York, his
wife Priscilla joined the Socialist Party; Hiss was affiliated with the International Juridical
Association, a group of labor lawyers with a radical leftist impulse; and, according to Murray
Kempton, both Alger and Priscilla attended lectures at the Socialist Party's night-time Rand School
near Union Square in lower Manhattan.15 As Kempton put it, they must have been such a strange
sight, the bright young man from the Wall Street law firm and his Bryn Mawr wife walking up the
stairs of the Rand School, rubbing shoulders with the Robespierres and Dantons of the garment
workers' unions. Kempton wrote: "To think of them there is to abandon any thought of these two
as typical of their time and their condition; the impulse which bought them to this foreign colony
almost cries out in its loneliness and isolation."16 Perhaps underneath the super-achiever there was
in Alger Hiss a "pilgrim soul of romance."17

One of his biographers wrote that as Hiss sat in a taxi on March 4, 1933, he heard President
Roosevelt’s first inaugural address on the radio and was transfixed.18 He received a telegram from
his old Professor Frankfurter, who summoned him to Washington to help save the country from the
Great Depression. Hiss quit his law firm and moved to Washington to join the New Deal19 in May
1933.20

Hiss was a New Deal ‘wonder boy’ – first, a lawyer for an alphabet soup agency called the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration;21 then, at the age of 29, the sole22 attorney for a Senate

12
Weinstein I at 121; Kempton I at 21.
13
G. Edward White, ALGER HISS’S LOOKING-GLASS WARS: THE COVERT LIFE OF A SOVIET SPY
(“White Book”) (Oxford Univ. Press 2004) at 26; Weinstein I at 107.
14
John Chabot Smith, ALGER HISS: THE TRUE STORY (“Smith”) (Holt Rinehart & Winston 1976) at
68; Weinstein I at 90.
15
Weinstein I at 83.
16
Kempton I at 24.
17
Kempton I at 26.
18
Smith at 2-4.
19
Alger Hiss, RECOLLECTIONS OF A LIFE (Seaver Books 1988) at 52-70; Weinstein I at 122, 143.
20
HUAC at 644; First Trial at 2254.
21
Graham White & John Maze, HENRY A. WALLACE: HIS SEARCH FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER
(University of North Carolina Press 1995) at 75, 80-81, 116. Hiss survived a “purge” of alleged

3
Committee, chaired by Senator Nye, that investigated the profits made by armaments companies in
World War I; and then in the prestigious Solicitor General’s Office, which argues the government’s
case before the Supreme Court.

Both Hiss and Chambers agree that, sometime around in mid- or late 1934, when Hiss was
working for the Nye Committee, the two men met.23 They came to know each other. The issue is
what they did together.

In September 1936, Alger Hiss joined the State Department24 and everyone said “Ah, home
at last. Alger was born to be in the State Department.” He entered as Personal Assistant to the
Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Francis B. Sayre (son-in-law of former President
Wilson). Sayre’s principal focus was commerce between the US and foreign countries25 – us
selling our stuff to foreign countries and them selling their stuff to us.

As time went by, something seemed to go out of Hiss. He was no longer the New Deal
wonder boy; he became merely proper. I've spoken with several people who knew Hiss in his State
Department years, and the words they use most often to describe him are stuffy and pompous –
“pompous in a State Department kind of way,” someone who knew him once wrote me.26 His own
son wrote that he was “a prig.”27

During World War II, Hiss became one of the State Department’s experts in planning
international organizations, especially the United Nations.28

Towards the end of the War, Hiss began to appear in the public eye, slightly. You have
probably seen photographs of the Yalta Conference in February 1945, where Roosevelt, Churchill
and Stalin sat around a big round table and drew the map of the post-War world. Sitting behind
FDR, passing him papers and whispering in his ear, is Alger Hiss.

There is much dispute about how important Hiss was at the Conference. He had all the

Communists in the AAA. Hope Hale Davis, GREAT DAY COMING (Steerforth Press 1994) at 77-78.
22
First Trial at 1846-47.
23
Second Trial at 114; HUAC at 1078.
24
Christina Shelton, ALGER HISS: WHY HE CHOSE TREASON (Threshold Editions 2012) at 61;
Second Trial at 36.
25
Second Trial at 1192-1192a.
26
See, e.g., Charles E. Bohlen, WITNESS TO HISTORY: 1929-1969 (Norton 1973) at 194; Thomas H.
Eliot, RECOLLECTIONS OF THE NEW DEAL: WHEN THE PEOPLE MATTERED (Northeastern Univ. Press
1992) at 17; Letter from Mrs. Thomas H. Eliot to John W. Berresford, March 13, 1993 (quoted
words).
27
Anthony Hiss, LAUGHING LAST: ALGER HISS BY TONY HISS (“Tony I”) (Houghton Mifflin 1977)
at 8.
28
Shelton at 114.

4
briefing papers that were handed to the President, so he knew a lot; he took lots of minutes at lots of
meetings and gave his opinions at some.29 It seems to me that he did more than just carry the
President’s briefcase, and he may have had minor input to some decisions, but he was not a major
decision-maker on the American side. I think it likely that everything that happened at Yalta would
have happened if Hiss had not been there.

But just having the President’s briefing papers is something, and having any policy role
probably lets you know what the top US negotiators consider important, what we’ll give up and
what we won’t. If you think that’s unimportant, let’s play poker for $1,000 a point; I get to see
your cards but you don’t get to see mine. At the end of the game, see if you still think that me
knowing your position is unimportant.

After Yalta, Hiss went almost immediately to San Francisco for the April conference that
founded the UN. He was Secretary General of that conference. You could say that Alger Hiss was
the first Secretary General of the UN. Hiss was universally praised for his poise and efficiency at
handling the thousands of details that had to be attended to during wartime for all the diplomats and
members of the press corps from all over the world. At the end of the conference, he had a brief
moment of public glory when he was photographed taking the UN Charter back from San Francisco
to Washington, where he presented it to President Truman. It was LIFE MAGAZINE’s “Picture of the
Week.”30

In December 1946, Hiss left the government. One reason was that a troubling number of
claims were being made that he was a Communist and, worse still, a secret agent for the Soviet
Union (or the USSR, the rump of which is today Russia). Who was making these claims? Around
1940, the French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier told our Ambassador in France that Alger Hiss
and his brother Donald were Soviet agents;31 in the fall of 1945, a defector from the Soviet
Embassy in Canada stated that an assistant to Secretary of State Stettinius – and Hiss was one – was
a Soviet spy.32 Also in fall 1945, an American defector from the Soviet underground in this
country, named Elizabeth Bentley, said that she had heard Hiss mentioned as a Soviet agent
(although she thought his first name was Eugene);33 and Hiss had been named as a secret

29
M. Stanton Evans & Herbert Romerstein, STALIN’S SECRET AGENTS: THE SUBVERSION OF
ROOSEVELT’S GOVERNMENT (Threshold Editions 2012) at 42-48, 198; Shelton at 131-41.
30
Picture of the Week, LIFE (July 16, 1945) at 23.
31
Weinstein I at 350, 370.
32
Amy Knight, HOW THE COLD WAR BEGAN: THE IGOR GOUZENKO AFFAIR & THE HUNT FOR
SOVIET SPIES (Carroll & Graff 2005) at 1-3, 61; Richard Rhodes, DARK SUN: THE MAKING OF THE
HYDROGEN BOMB (Simon & Schuster 1995) at 186; Weinstein I at 375-76; see also Chapman
Pincher, TOO SECRET TOO LONG (St. Martin’s Press 1984) at 623-24.
33
Curt Gentry: J. EDGAR HOOVER: THE MAN & HIS SECRETS (Penguin 1992) at 343-44; John Earl
Haynes & Harvey Klehr, EARLY COLD WAR SPIES: THE ESPIONAGE TRIALS THAT SHAPED
AMERICAN POLITICS (“Haynes & Klehr I”) (Cambridge Univ. Press 2006) at 106; Knight at 90-91;
Kathryn S. Olmstead, RED SPY QUEEN: A BIOGRAPHY OF ELIZABETH BENTLEY (University of North

5
Communist as early as 1939 by Whittaker Chambers. That’s four independent sources.

Hiss was also found to have accessed secret State Department documents that he was not
supposed to see.34 So, by 1946, the file on Hiss was getting uncomfortably thick. He was
marginalized Hiss within the State Department and denied access to some kinds of documents.35
The claims against him could not be proved, but Hiss could not disprove them – how do you prove
that you are not a Communist?36

The other reason that Hiss left State was that, luckily for him, he was offered, and accepted,
a new job: President of a think tank about foreign policy, the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace.37 He started there on February 1, 1947.38 The Carnegie Endowment was no
hotbed of Communism. The Chairman of the Endowment's Board was John Foster Dulles, who
later became Secretary of State under President Eisenhower, and the Board included such
Establishment luminaries as the ultraconservative Democrat John W. Davis, General Eisenhower,
David Rockefeller, and Thomas Watson, the man who made IBM a giant company.39

In 1948, Hiss was living in Greenwich Village with his wife and their seven-year old son
40
Tony. Mrs. Hiss’s son by her previous marriage, Timothy Hobson, was then 21.

Thus, Alger Hiss, still looking young at 44.

In the next Chapter, we meet Hiss’s short-term subtenant or best friend, and later his
nemesis. This man went by many names, the best known of which is Whittaker Chambers.

Carolina Press 2002) at 100-01; Mark Riebling, WEDGE: THE SECRET WAR BETWEEN THE FBI &
CIA (Knopf 1994) at 88; White Book at 49; see also Gary May, UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES: THE
TRIALS OF WILLIAM REMINGTON (Oxford Univ. Press 1994) at 83.
34
Ted Morgan, A COVERT LIFE: JAY LOVESTONE, COMMUNIST, ANTI-COMMUNIST, & SPYMASTER
(Random House 1999) (“Morgan I”) at 149.
35
Robert L. Beisner, DEAN ACHESON: A LIFE IN THE COLD WAR (Oxford Univ. Press 2006) at 285.
36
See James Chace, ACHESON: THE SECRETARY OF STATE WHO CREATED THE AMERICAN WORLD
(Simon & Schuster 1988) at 195-96.
37
First Trial at 1270-71.
38
Weinstein I at 391.
39
Weinstein I at 176.
40
First Trial at 2253 (Anthony Hiss was born 8/5/41).

6
 2. WHITTAKER CHAMBERS, PART I

If Hiss’s life seemed a stately progress towards perfection, Chambers’ was a painful,
zigzagging mess, but always in search of high truth. It’s going to take longer than Hiss’s to tell
because it was much more complicated (and interesting).

I have already described his sick, sad family. Chambers escaped from it by immersing
himself in 19th Century romantic novels, especially Dostoyevsky41 and Victor Hugo’s Les
Miserables.42 His hygiene was so poor that his schoolmates called him ‘Chamber Pot’ and
‘Stinky.’43 He was so physically clumsy that he couldn't even play marbles;44 his mother joked that
he couldn’t pound a nail in the wall.45 But by the end of high school, in 1919, his intellectual
brilliance won him the position of class valedictorian. His speech a graduation was unforgettable
because in it he predicted that one of his girl classmates would become a prostitute.46 Even as a
boy, Chambers did not follow the rules. Later that year he ran away from home for several months
and lived in New Orleans’ French Quarter. He dwelt in a rooming house where his next-door
neighbor was a prostitute called One-Eyed Annie.47

Chambers returned north and entered Williams College in 1920. He skipped a gathering of
the freshman class; instead, he stayed in his room and read the Bible.48 He left Williams after a few
days. Chambers’ roommate there said that Chambers later sent him several strange letters, although
their contents were never disclosed.49

Chambers enrolled in Columbia University in New York City and quickly developed a
reputation there as a great writer. Among the people he met there, many of whom became long
time friends, were Meyer Schapiro, later a Columbia Professor and, in some opinions, the greatest
art historian of the 20th Century; two future famous poets, Louis Zukovsky and Langston Hughes;

41
Ralph de Toledano & Victor Lasky, SEEDS OF TREASON: THE TRUE STORY OF THE HISS-
CHAMBERS TRAGEDY (Funk & Wagnalls 1950) at 4.
42
Weinstein I at 82, 96.
43
Karen Alonso, THE ALGER HISS COMMUNIST SPY TRIAL: A HEADLINE COURT CASE (Enslow
Publishers 2001) at 12; Sam Tanenhaus, WHITTAKER CHAMBERS: A BIOGRAPHY (Random House
1997) at 11.
44
Leslie Fiedler, AN END TO INNOCENCE: ESSAYS ON CULTURE & POLITICS (Beacon Press 1952) at
14.
45
Sam Tanenhaus, Sifting Through the Evidence, in Patrick A. Swan (Ed.), ALGER HISS,
WHITTAKER CAMBERS, & THE SCHISM IN THE AMERICAN SOUL (ISI Books 2003) at 287.
46
Weinstein I at 97.
47
Francis X. Busch, GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? at 226 (Bobbs-Merrill 1952); Chambers I at 150;
Weinstein I at 98.
48
Second Trial at 3228-33.
49
Weinstein I at 657 (note 35); Second Trial at 331-32, 3231-32.

7
the great liberal thinker and later Columbia Professor Lionel Trilling and his wife, Diana, one of
this country’s great Ladies of Letters; the middlebrow cultural maven Clifton Fadiman; and the
philosopher Mortimer Adler.50 Quite a collection of college chums.

Somewhere along the line, Chambers became fluent in French and German, and gained
some ease with as many as nine other languages, including Chinese and Russian51 – most of them
self-taught. His faculty advisor at Columbia, the great liberal arts Professor Mark van Doren,
thought highly of Chambers’ poetry and prose and said that Chambers was the best of all the
undergraduates he knew in the 1920s52 – and I’m sure there was a lot of competition for that title.
Van Doren and others said later that the great tragedy of Chambers’ life was that he left literature
for politics and that, had he stayed in literature, he could have become one of the significant poets
of his generation.53

You may recall that people said of Alger Hiss that he was so effortlessly graceful that you
might think he was the British Ambassador. Lionel Trilling recalled Chambers’ physical
appearance in the early 1920s:

"The moral force that Chambers asserted began with his physical appearance. This
seemed calculated to negate youth and all its graces, to deny that they could be of
any worth in our world of pain and injustice. He was short of stature and very broad,
with heavy arms and massive thighs; his sport was wrestling. . . . His eyes were
narrow and they preferred to consult the floor rather than an interlocutor’s face. . . .
When the mouth opened, it never failed to shock by reason of the dental ruin it
disclosed, a devastation of empty sockets and blackened stumps. . . . [T]hat
desolated mouth was the perfect insigne of Chambers’ moral authority. It
annihilated the hygienic American present – only a serf could have such a mouth, or
some student in a visored cap who sat in his Moscow garret and thought of nothing
save the moment when he would toss the fatal canister into the barouche of the
Grand Duke.”54

Chambers became Editor in Chief of the student literary publication,55 The Morningside,

50
Weinstein I at 98.
51
Tanenhaus at 181; Weinstein I at 96, 100, 127, 660 (note 12); but see Depositions in Hiss v.
Chambers (“Depo”) at 163 (“I cannot read Russian.”); Henry Julian Wadleigh, My Double Life in
the State Dept., WASH. POST (July 31, 1949) at B-6 (Chambers ordering a meal in a restaurant from
a Chinese menu); but see Second Trial at 1634 (Wadleigh did not hear Chambers speak Chinese).
52
Tanenhaus at 24 (footnote).
53
Bennett Cerf, AT RANDOM: THE REMINISCENCES OF BENNETT CERF (Random House 1977) at
242; Sidney Hook, OUT OF STEP: AN UNQUIET LIFE IN THE 20TH CENTURY (Harper & Row 1987) at
296; Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers, Man of Letters, in Swan at 265.
54
Lionel Trilling, THE MIDDLE OF THE JOURNEY (Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich1975) at xiv.
55
Second Trial at 93.

8
and it published a play he wrote about Jesus Christ. It’s called “Play for Puppets” and it depicts
Jesus in his tomb moments before the resurrection. He portrays Jesus as a long-haired redhead
dressed in a gray kimono, world-weary, wanting to stay dead and coming back to life reluctantly.56
A newspaper labeled the play ‘blasphemous’ and there was a public scandal. (In those days, you
could get kicked out of Columbia for blaspheming Jesus!) Chambers withdrew from the University
in November 1922.57

In 1923, he and Meyer Schapiro traveled to western Europe58 and saw the continent still
recovering from its suicide attempt in World War I. Chambers slowly became convinced that
‘society as we know it’ was in its last gasps, would die a violent death, and would be succeeded
(after great bloodshed) by a new Socialist or Communist paradise.59

He got back into Columbia in 1924 by lying to the Dean, saying that he wanted to teach
history. He dropped out without completing one semester.60

Chambers and his alcoholic younger brother began frequenting working class bars on Long
Island. He sang the Communist anthem, The Internationale, there with others, in English and
French. Chambers was swept away61 and joined the Communist Party. He began regular
attendance at meetings in 1924 and received his membership card in 1925.62 As an amateur
psychologist, it seems to me that Chambers had found a new family and a cause. The Party was a
place of commitment and action more attractive than college, which he no longer wanted, and his
chaotic, horrible family life – his Grandmother was becoming violently psychotic, swinging a knife
in the air to fight off demons, and his younger brother was tending towards suicide, which he finally
achieved in 1926.63

Chambers joined the Party long before it became chic for a few Hollywood types and
intellectuals. It was an explicitly revolutionary organization in the 1920s, and made no attempt to
be seen as a “normal” American political party. It was also overwhelmingly working class and
foreign-born in those days.64 Chambers, an intellectual who had been to college and liked books,

56
Second Trial, Gov’t. Ex. 13.
57
Second Trial at 95, 333.
58
Second Trial at 95.
59
Tanenhaus at 43-45; Whittaker Chambers, WITNESS (“Chambers I”) (Regnery Gateway 1952) at
176-97 passim.
60
Weinstein I at 104.
61
Chambers I at 176-77.
62
Second Trial at 343. He received his Party card in early 1925. Tanenhaus at 45; see also
Weinstein I at 82, 106, 441; First Trial at 105 (Chambers says he joined the Party in 1924).
63
Tanenhaus at 51-55; Weinstein I at 82.
64
Lauren Kessler, CLEVER GIRL: ELIZABETH BENTLEY, THE SPY WHO USHERED IN THE MCCARTHY
ERA (Harper Collins 2003) at 43; Weinstein I at 110.

9
was an outsider there.65

It is an understatement to say that Chambers “joined” the Communist Party. After his
brother’s suicide, he made the Communist Party his life.66 Professor Trilling wrote that "Chambers
was the first person I ever knew whose commitment to radical politics was meant to be definitive of
his whole moral being, the controlling element of his existence."67 He eventually became a top
editor of the Party newspaper, THE DAILY WORKER.

In 1929, there was a factional fight within the Communist party. The faction that Chambers
belonged to lost, and he dropped out of the Party for about two years.68 But he remained a
Communist and wrote short stories that were published in Communist journals the world over.69
The muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote to Chambers that “Whenever I hear people
talking about 'proletarian art and literature,' I'm going to ask them to shut their minds and look at
you.”70

Chambers also established himself as a translator of German literature into English.

In 1931, Chambers married a woman whose maiden name was Esther Shemitz71 – marriages
between Christians and Jews were very rare in those days.

Also in 1931, Chambers was asked and agreed to return to the Party and become an editor of
THE NEW MASSES, the Communist Party’s literary magazine.72 It may seem humorous today that
boring Communists had a literary magazine, but in the Depression years it was ‘radical chic’ and
published some of the country’s best writers.73

Chambers’ time at THE NEW MASSES was very short, only a few months.74 In late spring

65
See Chambers I at 201-08.
66
Depos at 49, 58; Second Trial at 401.
67
Lionel Trilling at xiii.
68
Morgan I at 139.
69
Chambers I at 261-63; Hook at 277; Depos at 107-12; First Trial at 141. Some can be found in
Terry Teachout (Ed.), GHOSTS ON THE ROOF: SELECTED ESSAYS (Transaction 1989) at 3-46.
70
Weinstein I at 127.
71
Weinstein I at 120.
72
Davis at 91 (“meant to attract liberals”); Thomas Griffith, HARRY & TEDDY: THE TURBULENT
FRIENDSHIP OF PRESS LORD HENRY R. LUCE & HIS FAVORITE REPORTER, THEODORE H. WHITE
(Random House 1995) at 134; see also Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes & Kyrill M. Anderson,
THE SOVIET WORLD OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM (Yale Univ. Press 1998) at xxviii (“strongly
aligned”); Judy Kutulas, THE LONG WAR: THE INTELLECTUAL PEOPLE’S FRONT & ANTI-STALINISM,
1930-40 (Duke Univ. Press 1995) at 56.
73
Tanenhaus at 75.
74
Depos at 130.

10
1932 he was tapped on the shoulder, as it were, and was told that the Party had a new job for him.
He was being shifted into the underground, into secret work for the Soviet Union.75 He went to
work for the Fourth Branch of the GRU, Главное  разведывательное  управление, the Soviet
Army’s military intelligence agency.76 There are lots of Soviet spy and secret police groups and for
the sake of simplicity, I will use the single and better-known term KGB to refer to all of them –
otherwise you’ll be dizzy from all the acronyms.

For his first two years in the KGB, Chambers was a courier, carrying envelopes around New
York City77 and getting documents photographed78– a real self-denial for a man who had been a
literary editor and was so smart. That’s dedication! More important, he helped organize secret
Soviet front organizations and spy cells in foreign cities.79

Chambers and his wife had their first child in 1933, a daughter.80

Early in the spring of 1934,81 the underground tapped Chambers on the shoulder again re-
assigned him to work in Washington. He commuted between there and New York City and finally
moved to Baltimore in August.

President Roosevelt’s New Deal was hiring bright young men from Harvard and other top
universities and putting them in its new regulatory agencies. A few of them were Communists in
sentiment; some had even joined the Party, secretly. The attraction of Communism to these people,
I think, was that, when the rebellion against the ruling class was won and the dictatorship of the
workers and peasants was being established, there would be lots of plans – Five-Year Plans, Farm
Plans, Urban Plans, always more plans. These highly educated guys were going to be the expert
central planners in Washington who would write the plans. They would run the lives of the smelly
peasants out in the hinterlands – all for the peasants’ good, of course.

The Party had organized these young recruits into several groups (or “cells”). They were
told to keep their heads down, avoid any outward sign that there was anything remotely leftist about
themselves,82 to rise through the ranks – trying to get out of the regulatory agencies and into the
Cabinet Departments – and to await instructions, perhaps years hence, to tilt US government policy

75
Hook at 172; Weinstein I at 122-23.
76
Weinstein I at 137-38.
77
See Weinstein I at 131-37.
78
William F. Buckley, Jr., ON THE FIRING LINE: THE PUBLIC LIFE OF OUR PUBLIC FIGURES
(“Buckley Firing”) (Random House 1989) at 403 (statement of Nadya Ulanovskaya).
79
http://www.c-span.org/video/?318550-2%2Fcold-war-era-spies (presentation by David
Chambers, Whittaker Chambers’ grandson, at 4:55 through 20:09).
80
Weinstein I at 128; Depos at 494 (Ellen was born 10/17/33).
81
Depos at 186, 188; Second Trial at 114.
82
Selma R. Williams, RED-LISTED: HAUNTED BY THE WASHINGTON WITCH HUNT (Addison-
Wesley 1993) at 134-35.

11
to benefit the Soviet Union.

The leaders of each of these cells and one or two others met about once a week in one of
their apartments, in kind of a chat group. They mostly discussed matters of public policy from the
Party’s point of view, perhaps like a college seminar or a left wing book club. They also handed
over their Party dues.83 Chambers job was to tend to this group of cell leaders; he once described
himself as the group’s “morale officer.”84 This chat group came to be called The Ware Group because
its guiding spirit was an open Party member, Harold Ware. Ware had spent some of the 1920s
working in the Soviet Union on the collectivization of agriculture85 – a process in which the Soviet
government starved to death or violently killed millions of its own citizens.86 A great training
experience. Ware hung around a New Deal “alphabet soup” agency called the Triple A, the
Agricultural Adjustment Administration, which is where Alger Hiss worked in 1933 and 1934.87

There is no doubt that The Ware Group existed and met from time to time at one member's
home in a back street called St. Matthew's Court,88 I think behind Washington’s Roman Catholic
Cathedral From its looks, it was as close as Washington got to Greenwich Village in New York. The
Ware Group’s members also did some document stealing from the government and passing on to the
Soviet Union – though I don’t understand what information the AAA, for example, would have that
the Soviet Union would want. Maybe it was just to get the Group members into the habit of passing
paper to the Soviet Union, or maybe The Ware Group wanted the Soviets to critique their work – are
we being Communist enough in setting fringe benefits for peach-pickers?89

One member of The Ware Group, Nathaniel Weyl, testified that Hiss was a member of it in the
first half of 1934.90 Chambers said many times that when he began work in Washington in mid-1934,

83
M. Stanton Evans, BLACKLISTED BY HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY OF SENATOR JOE MCCARTHY
& HIS FIGHT AGAINST AMERICA’S ENEMIES (Crown Forum 2007) at 52 (footnote)(heads of cells).
84
Depos at 349.
85
Davis at 101; Elinor Langer, JOSEPHINE HERBST (Northeastern Univ. Press 1984) at 148; Morgan
I at 34.
86
Holdomor, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor.
87
Stephen Koch, DOUBLE LIVES: SPIES & WRITERS IN THE SOVIET WAR OF IDEAS AGAINST THE
WEST (Free Press 1994) at 233; Earl Latham, THE COMMUNIST CONTROVERSY IN WASHINGTON:
FROM THE NEW DEAL TO MCCARTHY (Athaneum 1966) at 101-23; Weinstein I at 143-46; White
Book at 30.
88
HUAC at 568.
89
John J. Abt & Michael Myerson, ADVOCATE & ACTIVIST: MEMOIRS OF AN AMERICAN
COMMUNIST LAWYER (University of Illinois Press 1993) at 41-42, 150; Davis at 82; Ted Morgan,
REDS: MCCARTHYISM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA (“Morgan II”) (Random House 2003) at
152-55; Thomas Sakmyster, RED CONSPIRATOR: J. PETERS & THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST
UNDERGROUND (University of Illinois Press 2011) at 74-88; Weinstein I at 145-52.
90
Herbert L. Packer, EX-COMMUNIST WITNESSES: FOUR STUDIES IN FACT FINDING (Stanford Univ.
Press 1962) at 44.

12
Hiss was already a member of The Ware Group.91 At about the same time, Hiss left the Triple A and
became counsel for the Nye Senate Committee.92

Chambers and his wife had their second child in 1936, a son.93

Then, in 1937, Chambers moved into much darker activities. Again loyally following
orders, he left The Ware Group and became head of a spy ring in Washington.94 The spokes of the
ring were several men in the State and Treasury Departments and one each at the Army Proving
Ground at Aberdeen, Maryland, and the National Bureau of Standards.95 Each of these men gave
him documents about once every ten days or two weeks, knowing that their ultimate destination
was Moscow. Usually, Chambers would have the documents photographed, would pass the films
up the chain to Moscow, and would return the original documents to the government men a few
hours later or the next morning.96

It seems that just about when Chambers began this spying, in early 1937, be began to get
disillusioned with Communism and the life he was leading. I think there were several reasons.
First, Chambers became genuinely disillusioned with Communism in action, with what it was
producing – endless backstabbing in the American Communist Party, a complete lack of popular
success, and a poverty-stricken dictatorship back in the homeland.97

Second, in the mid-1930s he had a spiritual awakening, triggered by his marveling at the
delicacy and intricacy of his baby daughter’s ears – “’those ears were not created by any chance
coming together of atoms in nature (the Communist view). . . . They could have been created only
by immense design.’ . . . . Design presupposes God.”98 To Chambers, belief in God necessarily
excluded Communism.

Third – and this is simply speculation, although I think it compellingly sensible – Chambers
may have felt that the quality of his daily life was hopelessly unsatisfactory in the GRU. He was a
skilled writer, linguist, and editor; yet he was virtually a messenger boy. Chambers was living in
near poverty, in a dingy apartment in a poor neighborhood in Baltimore. It is one thing to accept
that kind of sacrifice when you are twenty-five and single, but another to stick with it when you are
approaching forty with a wife and two children to support. Chambers may simply have wanted the

91
See, e.g., HUAC at 565; Depos at 207; Chambers I at 340-47.
92
Shelton at 61.
93
Weinstein I at 128; Depos at 588 (date of birth 8/18/36); see also Depos at 428.
94
First Trial at 187 (February 1937).
95
Chambers I at 419-32; Chambers testimonies at Grand Jury (“GJ”) at 3577–8 (Ward Pigman,
Alger Hiss, Julian Wadleigh, Harry Dexter White), 3583-85 (Renos).
96
First Trial at 187-92, 349; Second Trial at 153.
97
See, e.g., Gary Kern, A DEATH IN WASHINGTON: WALTER G. KRIVITSKY & THE STALIN TERROR
(Enigma Books 2003) at 191.
98
Chambers I at 16.

13
comforts of middle class life for himself and his loved ones, which he could easily get given his
talents. He would never have them as long as he remained a Communist worker.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, by the late 1930s Cambers feared for his life.99 The
Stalin Purges had reached the Communist parties in countries other than the Soviet Union.
Chambers had not been a faithful Stalinist in the American Communist Party's internal squabbles,
and "deviationists" like him were starting to be murdered or to disappear (in this country), and to be
summoned to Moscow for "consultations" from which they never returned. Chambers himself was
called to Moscow in July 1937100 and used various excuses to remain in the U.S. It says something
true and awful about Communism and the Soviet Union that Chambers feared death at the hands
not of the government that he had betrayed, but at the hands of the movement to which he had given
all his heart and energies for 12 years.

Chambers planned his exit with care. He was wise to do so – if the Russians found out that
he was leaving or found him afterwards, they would kill him if they could. He got a job under his
own name – at a government office called the National Research Project.101 He lined up some
translating work with the Oxford University Press102 and got a car (more on that later).103 All this
took several months during which he continued to seem a loyal underground functionary.

Then, on April 15, 1938, Chambers got in the new car with his family and drove away.
They lived for a while in Daytona Beach, Florida.104 Staying at a motel there, he slept by day and
translated by night with a gun next to him as his wife slept nearby with a hatchet under her pillow.

Murray Kempton thought that the great attraction of Communism, and its greatest evil, is
that it takes away the sense of personal sin. You can see millions killed and lose no sleep because
they are priests, or farmers who will not join the collective. Their deaths are necessary deaths. You
don’t even regret the killing. Kempton wrote that a man who thinks that the night manager of a
Florida motel in 1938 is a KGB agent and assassin is fleeing not an enemy of flesh and blood. He
is fleeing the re-appearance in his life of a sense of personal sin, “from which the world was not
wide enough to offer him shelter.”105

Shortly after Chambers’ disappearance, the KGB realized he’d stopped ‘showing up for
work’ and sent an open member of the Communist Party, one Grace Hutchins, to see Mrs.

99
Weinstein at 326-29; see also David J. Dallin, SOVIET ESPIONAGE (Yale Univ. Press 1955) at
417-18.
100
Weinstein I at 328.
101
Weinstein I at 288, 331; Second Trial at 155 et seq.
102
Weinstein I at 332.
103
Weinstein I at 331.
104
First Trial at 195; Tanenhaus at 136
105
Kempton I at 33-34.

14
Chambers’ brother, a Manhattan lawyer named Reuben Shemitz.106 Ms. Hutchins left him with a
phone number, which he called. A female voice on the other end told him that Chambers returning
to the Communist movement was a “matter of life or death” and that if Shemitz would tell the Party
where Chambers was, no harm would come to Chambers’ wife and children.107 Ms. Hutchins, by
the way, had been one of the two witnesses to the marriage of Chambers and his wife Esther.108
Such good people, those Communists. They witness your marriage and, six years later, they set up
a death threat.

Let us leave Whittaker Chambers there for a moment, at the (so far) low point in his life.
His thrills and spills were far from over, and will resume in the next Chapter.

3. WHITTAKER CHAMBERS, PART II

Chambers hid out in Florida for a few months. Then he realized that being out of sight
might actually be hazardous to his health. He could be killed and no one would know. His wife
could go to the police, but she could not prove that Whittaker Chambers ever existed – he’d been
living in the shadows and under false names for years. Strange to say, the safest course for him was
to re-emerge as Whittaker Chambers with loads of friends who knew him by his real name and all
the other traces of normal life – his name on the door and in the phone book, etc. Chambers
returned to the northeast, established himself openly, and began circulating again with his old
acquaintances, including Lionel Trilling and Meyer Schapiro.109

In late 1938 or early 1939, Chambers did another odd thing. He gave his wife’s nephew, a
Brooklyn lawyer named Nathan Levine, a large brown110 manila envelope, filled with stuff.
Chambers told Levine to put it in a safe place and make its contents public if he, Chambers, was
ever killed. Most lawyers would have put it in the firm safe or a safe deposit box in a bank. But
Mr. Levine – perhaps as given to melodrama as Chambers – put it instead in the Brooklyn
apartment he lived in with his mother, in a linen closet that had been a dumbwaiter shaft in a
bathroom.111

In those days, TIME MAGAZINE was the pre-eminent weekly news magazine in the United
States, much more important than it is now. Chambers had the great luck to be hired by TIME as

106
Weinstein I at 67.
107
Weinstein I at 334.
108
Weinstein I at 334; Depos at 116; First Trial at 143.
109
See Hook at 281-87 (Chambers trying to re-surface and crashing a party); Diana Trilling, THE
BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY: THE MARRIAGE OF DIANA & LIONEL TRILLING (Harcourt Brace 1993)
at 219-20; Lionel Trilling at xvii-xviii (same); Depos at 780.
110
GJ at 3457.
111
See Weinstein I at 204 (3rd footnote), 337-38; First Trial at 194; Second Trial at 856.

15
book reviewer in April 1939.112

The head of the TIME-LIFE-FORTUNE- SPORTS ILLUSTRATED publishing empire, Henry Luce,
soon recognized (as had the Communists a decade earlier) that he had on his hands a journalist of
enormous talents.113 Soon Chambers was editing all book reviews and, by summer 1942, all the
“back of the book’ sections except “Business.”114 By the time he left TIME, he was earning almost
$200,000 in 2014 dollars.

In 1940, Chambers became an Episcopalian; a year later, he shifted to being a Quaker.115 In

his Quaker Meeting, he said he “found the experience that I have been seeking all my life.”116

At TIME MAGAZINE, Chambers was quite a character. Usually during each week he would
work non-stop for 48 hours once;117 he often worked 36 hours non-stop.118 Then, in late 1942 and
early 1943, he had a complete physical breakdown, went home, and lay in bed, not even shaving
himself, for seven months.119 In the summer of 1944, Chambers attained his crowning glory,
becoming editor of all foreign news.

Chambers’ politics were by then very anti-Soviet and there was a revolt among the
correspondents in the field who objected to him editing their dispatches beyond recognition. In late
1945 and early 1946, Chambers was eased out of the top foreign news job and became one of
several Senior Editors. In that job, Chambers wrote articles about the history of the West for LIFE
MAGAZINE and cover stories for TIME – and this was back when many millions read TIME cover
stories. His cover stories included ones about the black singer Marian Anderson, Albert Einstein,
James Joyce, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and the historian Arnold Toynbee.120

Once in the early1940s, he wanted to get rid of a typewriter that had some bad memories for
him, so he left it on a streetcar or subway in New York City.121 He carried a pistol122 – not a

112
Second Trial at 168-69; Weinstein I at 288 (footnote), 347.
113
Griffith at 134.
114
Weinstein I at 354.
115
Second Trial at 170-71.
116
Weinstein I at 355.
117
Tanenhaus at 194; Weinstein I at 28 (“often working through the night”); First Trial at 552.
118
Weinstein I at 690-91 (note 5)
119
Chambers I at 496; Second Trial at 615; Tanenhaus at 174-75.
120
Griffith at 148, 166; Tanenhaus at 155; Weinstein I at 368; Irving Younger, THE IRVING
YOUNGER COLLECTION: WISDOM & WIT FROM THE MASTER OF TRIAL ADVOCACY (“Younger
Book”) (American Bar Ass’n, Section of Litigation 2010) at 517; see also Grunwald at 84, 104-06;
Robert E. Herzstein, HENRY R. LUCE: A POLITICAL PORTRAIT OF THE MAN WHO CREATED THE
AMERICAN CENTURY (Scribners 1994) at 347-49, 354-55, 383.
121
First Trial at 370; Depos at 1027.
122
Griffith at 137; Tanenhaus at 156.

16
common male fashion accessory at TIME. If you wanted to have lunch with him, he would take you
on a succession of subway and walks all over midtown Manhattan, end up at a restaurant not far
from the office, look around, and say 'I think it’s all right now.'123 Then he would sit with his back
to a wall or in a corner.124 When he was in Manhattan, he moved to a different cheap hotel every
night.125 The general impression of Chambers in those years seems to have been that he was a
brilliant editor, awesomely well read, perfectly suited to work on a newsmagazine, distressingly
monomaniacal in his politics, and on maters of his personal safety simply psychotic – but only on
his personal safety, not psychotic in a way that meant he couldn't hold down a very demanding job
and have a family.126

Chambers’ refuge was a 300-acre127 farm he owned in Westminster, Maryland (northwest of

Baltimore). It was worked mainly by his wife and one farm hand. They had 18 cows, 40 or 50
head of dairy cattle, six beef cattle, and chickens.128 Chambers spent the weekends there and often
worked there after he began writing “big pieces” for TIME and LIFE. Sometimes, in the Manhattan
offices of TIME, according to Chambers’ biographer, “a faint odor of farm manure . . . waft[ed]
from his shoes.129

In New York City, Hiss at the Carnegie Endowment had an office a few blocks from
Chambers’.130 One wonders if they ever passed on the street or sat in the same restaurant or bus.

Let’s take a breath for a minute and ask – based on what I have told you so far, if these two
men disagreed about whether something had happened or not, which of them would you naturally
believe?

Hiss, obviously.

Or, is there something a bit too perfect, too good to be true about Hiss? And, of Chambers,
might you say that although obviously moderation is not his strong suit, he is an honest man,
painfully honest? If he comes to believe in Communism, by God, he joins the Party, makes it his
life, and becomes the Managing Editor of the Daily Worker!

You’ll have to see which man is trustworthy. The ‘long arm of fate’ is about to reach out

123
Weinstein I at 358.
124
Grunwald at 108.
125
Griffith at 137-38.
126
See, e.g., John K. Galbraith, ANNALS OF AN ABIDING LIBERAL (Meridian 1979) at 305; Griffith at
82-83, 122, 135-36.
127
Griffith at 137; First Trial at 1037.
128
First Trial at 844; Second Trial at 1202.
129
Tanenhaus at 173.
130
Chambers’ office was in the Time-Life Building around 49th Street & 5th Avenue. Hiss’s was at
552 5th Avenue, near 44th Street. GJ at 2652; First Trial at 2192; Second Trial at 2626.

17
and bring them back together, with terrible results for them and their families.

In late August 1939, Chambers was stunned, along with the rest of the world, to learn that
the Soviet Union, which had been screaming criticism of the Nazis for years, had signed a pact with
Nazi Germany. This was especially disillusioning for American Communists because the Soviet
Union had always claimed to be something new in the history of man, not just another nation but
the living embodiment of a movement for all toiling men and women everywhere that just
happened to have occurred first in the Soviet Union. This pact showed that the Soviet Union was
just another nation state that had to look out for itself – Stalin was frightened of the German armed
forces and wanted a year or two of peace before they went to war. So, the great enemy of Hitler
hopped into bed with him.

To Chambers, Nazi-Soviet Pact meant more – that all the papers he had given the Russians
might now fall into the hands of Hitler. Oh, my God, what have I done??

Chambers, of course, demanded to see President Roosevelt. Through a journalist friend, he

got in to see an Assistant Secretary of State, Adolph Berle, on the evening of September 2, 1939.
The result was a several hours-long conversation131 under an elm tree on Berle’s estate in Rock
Creek Park in Washington, 132 lasting past midnight.133 Chambers revealed to Berle the existence
of The Ware Group and more. Berle wrote down pages of notes.134 One bit of his notes states,
towards the bottom of one page:

Alger Hiss
Ass’t to Sayre – CP – until 1937
Member of the Underground Com.—Active - ?!
Baltimore boys—
Wife – Priscilla Hiss – Socialist
Early days of New Deal135

In his presentation to Berle, Chambers did not single out Alger Hiss; he mentioned Alger’s
brother Donald and more than a dozen other people in the several pages taken up by Berle’s
notes.136

Berle’s notes also mention “Aerial bomb sight Detectors” and “Plans for two Super-

131
John T. Donovan, CRUSADER IN THE COLD WAR: A BIOGRAPHY OF FR. JOHN F. CRONIN, S.S.
(1908-1994) (Peter Lang 2005) at 59.
132
Kern at 229.
133
Kern at 230.
134
HUAC at 1007; Second Trial at 386.
135
Weinstein I at 76; Lewis Hartshorn, ALGER HISS, WHITTAKER CHAMBERS & THE CASE THAT
IGNITED MCCARTHYISM (McFarland 2013) at 200.
136
Second Trial, Gov’t Exh. 18.

18
battleships—secured in 1937 – who gave . . .” These obviously allege espionage,137 although not
specifically by Alger Hiss.

Berle took Chambers’ allegations seriously: he had dealt with the Communist Party and
disliked it strongly. He and others tried to interest President Roosevelt in Chambers’ allegations.
According to all accounts, the President brushed them off. Communist agents in the State
Department? They’re all Harvard boys? Stuff and nonsense!138 The others, incidentally, who tried
to interest the President included the famous columnist and broadcaster Walter Winchell139 and the
labor leader David Dubinsky.140 According to one account, Berle stopped raising the matter with
Roosevelt only when the President told Berle to “go fuck yourself.”141

Chambers’ interview with Berle, by the way, was the only time that Chambers ever came
forward to accuse Hiss. And it was a time that made perfect sense for him to do so. All other
contacts between Chambers and the government in which he named Hiss began by the government
coming to Chambers.

In 1940, the FBI was tipped off that Chambers had been in the Communist underground,
and on the evening of May 13, 1942, two FBI agents visited him in his office at TIME. He told them
about The Ware Group only, that in the mid-1930s he was the chief morale officer for a glorified
chat room of entry-level bureaucrats, parlor pinks in the New Deal alphabet soup agencies. He
described it as part of the American Communist Party, not the Soviet Union or the KGB. He
mentioned Hiss by name, but did not at all single him out. Chambers mentioned espionage
activities by the Soviet Union, but did not mention either himself or Hiss participating in them.142
His discussion of espionage was professorial, “I know this and that, the Party’s goals and methods

137
Second Trial, Gov’t Exh. 18 at 2-3; Weinstein I at 349; Beatrice Bishop Berle &Travis Beal
Jacobs (Eds.), NAVIGATING THE RAPIDS 1918-71: FROM THE PAPERS OF ADOLF A. BERLE (Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich 1973) at 249-50; Isaac Don Levine, EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY: MEMOIRS &
REFLECTIONS OF A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT FOR HALF A CENTURY (Hawthorn Books 1973) at
194-95 .
138
Christopher Andrew & Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: THE INSIDE STORY OF ITS FOREIGN OPERATIONS
FROM LENIN TO GORBACHEV (Harper Collins 1991) at 280; Berle at 598; Donovan at 60; Thomas
Fleming, THE NEW DEALERS’ WAR: F.D.R & THE WAR WITHIN WORLD WAR II (Basic Books 2001)
at 320.
139
Neal Gabler, WINCHELL: GOSSIP, POWER & THE CULTURE OF CELEBRITY (Knopf 1994) at 382.
140
Levine at 198.
141
Arthur Herman, JOSEPH MCCARTHY: REEXAMINING THE LIFE & LEGACY OF AMERICA’S MOST
HATED SENATOR (Free Press 2000) at 344 (note 1); Richard Gid Powers, NOT WITHOUT HONOR:
THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ANTICOMMUNISM (Free Press 1995) at 171; William A. Rusher,
SPECIAL COUNSEL: AN INSIDE REPORT ON THE SENATE INVESTIGATIONS INTO COMMUNISM
(Arlington House 1968) at 258; see also Kern at 230; Joseph E. Persico, ROOSEVELT’S SECRET
WAR: FDR & WORLD WAR II ESPIONAGE (Random House 2001) at 259-61.
142
Weinstein I at 360-61; see also First Trial at 1054-55.

19
were such and such” not “I did this and that.”

The FBI agents wrote up a report of their interview with Chambers for J. Edgar Hoover,
concluding that "most of his information is either history, hypothesis or deduction." There is a left-
handed check mark in the margin next to this conclusion, and J. Edgar Hoover was left-handed.143
And that seems to have set the FBI's attitude towards Chambers for several years, that he was a
second-drawer witness, of little worth. His story was not hot stuff at all and it was past its
expiration date.

As the file on Hiss got thicker in 1945 and 1946, however, government investigators came
back to Chambers several times. As in 1942, he talked more about the people he knew, including
Hiss, influencing policy than about passing any paper to the Soviet Union.144

Before we go farther with these men and their lives, I want to dip into political philosophy for a
moment. What was Communism, and what made a few Americans become Communists? That’s the
subject of the next Chapter, Number 4. If you’re not interested in the philosophy and want to keep on
with the action, go to Chapter 5.

4. COMMUNISM IN THE 1930s

You have gathered by now that this story concerns belief in, and disillusionment with,
Communism. Communism was a philosophy of life that came out of nowhere in the 1800s, became
the way of life for much of the human race by 1950, and then suddenly vanished in the 1980s (except
for a few holdouts like Cuba and North Korea). Rarely has a philosophy spread so far so fast, been
such a big deal, and then, poof, vanished. What was it?

There is an elaborate philosophical basis for Communism, as there is for Nazism and almost
every other –ism. What interests me is what Communism means in the real world, what happens
where it becomes the governing program of a country. Communism is about the abolition of private
property and individual rights and the creation of a new kind of society in which, we are promised,
everything will be shared by everyone in common. The government will control everything, managing
and planning all life so that everyone has enough and no one has too much.

The idea of everyone sharing everything is an ancient one – you can find it in Plato and
Aristophanes. But the industrial revolution of the 1800s gave that idea new power in some minds.

143
Memo of P.E Foxworth, Assistant Director, FBI, to Director, FBI, “RE: WHITTAKER
CHAMBERS, with aliases/Espionage - R” (May 14, 1942); Weinstein I at 361 (erroneously
attributing the quoted words to J. Edgar Hoover).
144
Chambers I at 510; Morgan I at 148-49; Weinstein I at 366, 389; First Trial at 1050-59; Second
Trial at 604-06, Gov’t Exh. 17.

20
Pessimists like Karl Marx saw modern factories and Capitalism creating vast new wealth but
distributing it unfairly. They also disliked the way that change disrupted the old, stable relations that
people had in medieval, rural society. They predicted that, under Capitalism, the rich would get richer
and the poor would get poorer, forever – there wouldn’t be a rising tide that would lift all boats. At
some point, the workers and peasants would rise up violently against the ruling class of a few rich
people and overthrow them.

The workers and peasants, led by the Communist Party, would establish a dictatorship of their
own; wise plans would stabilize industry and make a fair distribution of goods to everyone; individual
human beings, freed from the Rat Race, would stop being selfish and ambitious. They would almost
stop being individuals. Eventually no government would be needed at all because everyone would
naturally harmonize. The state would wither away and everything would just automatically run
smoothly.

In the beginning, however, when the people’s dictatorship was being established, there would
be a lot of killing.145 The killed people would be mostly property owners, religious people, farmers
who wouldn’t join the collective, and others who wouldn’t follow orders. And until the new harmony
began occurring naturally, there would be lots of expert bureaucrats in the capital city planning the
transition to the new harmonious society.146 This is where Communism appeals to people like Hiss –
they get to be the expert planners running the lives of the smelly peasants who didn’t go to Harvard.
Communism and Socialism, in actual practice, are not about Power to the People. They’re about
Power to the Planners, the PhDs, the Professors – in their dreams, at least. Communism, in actual
practice, becomes Power to the Thugs. The thugs (Stalin, Mao and Castro, for example) get what little
wealth is created. The planners get a little power and a sense of self-satisfaction. A self-perpetuating,
poverty-stricken dictatorship results.

But very few people saw this coming that in the 1930s. Capitalism and individualism had
always seemed cruel and spiritually empty to some persons, and in the Great Depression they seemed
failures by any standard. It is almost impossible for anyone who didn't live through he Great
Depression to understand how completely it destroyed most people's confidence in 'things as they are.'
From the stock market crash in October 1929, everything got worse steadily for four years. By 1933,
many totally sensible people thought that the nation's entire economic and social structure was about to
dissolve.147

When President Roosevelt took office in early 1933, no one knew that the New Deal was going
to work and that the system, after a few modifications, would right itself. Many radical left wing
people, in fact, thought that Roosevelt was Capitalism’s last gasp. I recall reading that some radical

145
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes & Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, THE SECRET WORLD OF
AMERICAN COMMUNISM (Yale Univ. Press 1995) at 5; see also Latham at 22 (& footnote 10), 39.
146
See Benn Steil, THE BATTLE OF BRETTON WOODS: JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, HARRY DEXTER
WHITE, & THE MAKING OF A NEW WORLD ORDER (Princeton Univ. Press 2013) at 36.
147
Alistair Cooke, A GENERATION ON TRIAL: U.S.A. V. ALGER HISS (Knopf 1952) at 12.

21
leftists thought it especially fitting that he was “crippled” – what a perfect symbol of capitalism in
1933. Not even on its last legs, but in a wheelchair! The only doctrines that seemed to be advancing in
the 1930s were Soviet Communism and Nazi Fascism. Between the two, Communism seemed more
rational, optimistic, humane, universal, and welcoming. It was hard to know what was really going on
in the Soviet Union – and some of the most horrible things hadn't happened.

In the early 1930s, the Communist Party in the United States was explicitly revolutionary,
following Marx’s teachings.148 But in 1935, it got frightened by the rise of Hitler and the Fascists in
Japan and the Party changed its tune. Following (as it always did) orders from Moscow, the Party
began a new campaign called “The Popular Front.” The Party minimized all differences between itself
and others to the left of center. The Party presented itself as just “Liberals in a Hurry” or “The Shock
Troops of the New Deal.”149 This “Charm Offensive” led some non-Communists to become what
were called “Fellow Travelers,” a term used to describe a non-Communist who works and cooperates
with Communists.150

While many people accepted this new, cute and cuddly appearance of the Party, the Party was
always dominated by the Soviet Union and was subordinate to the goals of Soviet foreign policy.151
And by the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union wanted to infiltrate the US government for several purposes.
First was to promote official government policies in the United States that were close to those of the
Soviet government's in the Soviet Union. Perhaps this is what the paper-passing in the AAA was all
about.

But more important was espionage. The US had an isolationist foreign policy and very few
military secrets in those days. We barely had a military. But the United States had something the
Soviet Union wanted very, very much, and that was lots of knowledge of what was going on in
Germany and Japan.152

By this time, Fascists had come to power in both those countries, which were on either side of
the Soviet Union and sworn to its destruction. But how could the Soviet Union find out what exactly
what the Germans and Japanese were planning – precisely when and how they were going to attack?
Only one, or both of them? The Soviet Union had few people in either country and not many
commercial relations. Both Japanese and German governments controlled their news media, too, so
that was no source of useful information.

148
Klehr, Haynes & Firsov at 8; see also Depos at 96-98.
149
Thomas W. Devine, HENRY WALLACE’S 1948 PROGRESSIVE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN & THE
FUTURE OF POSTWAR LIBERALISM (University of North Carolina Press 2013) at 3; Klehr, Haynes &
Firsov at 9.
150
See Devine at 143.
151
See, e.g., Klehr, Haynes & Firsov at 10; Latham at 52, 153; T.H. Watkins, THE HUNGRY YEARS:
A NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN AMERICA (Henry Holt 1999) at 317-18 n.46.
152
Weinstein I at 248-49; First Trial at 185.

22
 But the United States knew a lot. We had extensive business dealings with both Germany and
Japan, lots of tourism with Germany, and a large diplomatic presence in both countries. KGB
recruiters in this country went to sympathetic persons in the US government. They didn’t say “Hi, I
want you to commit treason” or anything as crude as that. They flattered, smiled, and said "Look, you
and I are Progressive Americans, trying to fight Fascism and build a better world for the ordinary
worker and farmer. If you ever find out anything about what's happening in Germany and Japan, let us
know or slip us a copy if you can." More than a few government employees fell for that line.

The issue is whether Alger Hiss was one of these people.

OK, enough philosophy. In the next Chapter, we get back to the action.

5. THE FIRST HUAC HEARINGS

There used to be something called the House Un-American Activities Committee, or

“HUAC.” A committee of the lower house of Congress, it is one in the long history of
Congressional committees that exist mainly not to pass laws, but to conduct factual investigations.
The investigations are often theatrical – maybe you remember the Ollie North Iran-Contra hearings
or the Sam Ervin hearings into the skullduggery of the Nixon Re-Election campaign. HUAC
became famous for going after leftists and searching for “a red under every bed,” as the saying
used to go. Those of you who are true civil libertarians will not be surprised to learn that one of its
founders in the 1930s was a Jewish liberal Democrat from New York City named Sam Dickstein,
who used it to find out information about Nazi activities in the US.153 Incidentally, he sold that
information to the Soviet Union – yes, one of the founders of HUAC was a Jewish liberal Democrat
from New York City and Soviet spy.

Nazis were in short supply by the late 1940s, and like all government bureaucracies, HUAC
wanted to perpetuate itself, so the Committee concentrated mere than ever on Communists. By the
end of World War II, polite society considered HUAC a fever swamp of southern Democrats who
equated civil rights with Communism and Republicans who wanted to find that “red under every
bed.” Many establishment Republicans considered it to be a bunch of drunken used car salesman
threatening to break into the country club and smash the china. Paranoid lefties considered it the
thin end of the wedge of domestic Fascism.154

In 1947, the Republicans took over Congress and, for the first time, wanted to use HUAC to
establish that the New Deal had been shot through with Soviet agents – not just believers in
Communism, but U.S. citizens who, while employees of the U.S. government, were actually

153
John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, & Alexander Vassiliev, SPIES: THE RISE & FALL OF THE KGB
IN AMERICA (Yale Univ. Press 2009) at 285-87.
154
Herbert S. Parmet, RICHARD NIXON & HIS AMERICA (Little Brown 1990) at 142.

23
working of the Soviet Union. (The Democrats, when they ran HUAC, had usually preferred to stay
away from Communists in government, because government was them; they like to investigate
Communists in labor unions, youth groups, and so on.) But to the Republicans of HUAC, the
government itself was fair game and a hunt was long overdue.

Someone gave HUAC Chambers’ name. In March 1948, HUAC investigators visited
Chambers on his farm in Westminster, Maryland, told him that HUAC was going to hold hearings
that summer into Communist infiltration of the government, and asked him if he'd like to be the star
witness.155

We don’t know exactly what Chambers said, but his gist was 'No. You are asking me to go
back over a part of my life that is over and done with. It's a part of my life about which I feel deep
shame. It's also a part of my life that I concealed from TIME MAGAZINE when I got my job there –
everyone knows that I was in the open Party, but no one knows that I was in the underground. It’s
sort of like I lied on my resume. If my underground activities came out, it could end my career and
all the nice life I've got for myself and been able to give my family in the last ten years. Also, I’m
using my perch here at TIME to fight the good fight against Communism. Please leave me alone.’

The HUAC staffers left him alone. Incidentally, one of them might have exchanged a
surprised glance with Chambers when they met. He was Ben Mandel. 24 years earlier in New
York City, Mandel had handed Chambers his Communist Party membership card.156

HUAC settled instead on a star witness named Elizabeth Bentley. She had been in the
Soviet underground since 1935 and had been the courier for a Soviet spy ring in Washington in the
1940s. She testified to HUAC on July 31, 1948. Some of the names she named were people whom
Chambers had named to Berle and the FBI – there was a slight overlap in their names, although she
did not name Hiss in her HUAC testimony that day. I believe that her testimony was the first time
that an American citizen had testified in public and under oath ‘there were U.S. citizens whom I
saw with my own eyes spying for the Soviet Union.’157

Ms. Bentley wasn’t a totally convincing witness, however, and HUAC felt that it had to get
someone to corroborate her testimony.158 So, on Monday, August 2, a process server walked into
Chambers’ office at TIME a subpoena ordering him to appear in Washington the next day sand
testify to HUAC.

One can only imagine Chamber's' feelings at the prospect of his whole dark past being
spread before his employer, the world, and the former comrades he might have to name. The ‘long

155
Weinstein I at 14-15, 368-69; but see First Trial at 322 (Chambers vaguely recalls it was June).
156
Tanenhaus at 45, 532 n.49; Weinstein I at 15 & footnote; Depos at 58.
157
HUAC at 503-62.
158
Walter Goodman, THE COMMITTEE: THE EXTRAORDINARY CAREER OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE
ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1968) at 247.

24
arm of fate’ is starting to reach out and drag these guys back together.

Here, we begin the formal historical record in The Hiss-Chambers Case. There will less
narrative from me from now on, and a lot of quotations from testimony. I am going to quote from the
testimony because in many cases the precise words that people used (and did not use) are extremely
important. Also, I like the HUAC hearings because, by the time of the trials, all the principals had told
their stories many times before and were well practiced, if not rehearsed. The HUAC hearings,
however, for all their imperfections, just came on so suddenly, and were such a roller coaster, that no
one could prepare for what happened next. The factual testimony was relatively spontaneous and I
think that counts for a lot. There was a lot of lying, but also a lot of spontaneous truth-telling.

On August 3, 1948, at 11:00 AM, Chambers opened by reading a statement to HUAC. Years
before, he said, he had reported what he knew of Communist activity to the government – this was
back in 1939 when he talked for hours with Berle under the elm tree – and, as far as he knew, the
government had done nothing about it. What he reported, he said, was The Ware Group, a secret,
underground "apparatus" of young, entry-level bureaucrats in the New Deal years. Its purpose in those
years, he said, was the infiltration of the government by secret Communists, not espionage. A long-
term goal was espionage, but the Group functioned day to day like a left wing study group – you might
think you had walked into a college course in applied Marxist thought. All its members were secret
members of the Communist Party, however, dedicated to the someday violent overthrow of the US
Constitution.159

Chambers named seven names; the fourth name he named to the Committee and the world was
Alger Hiss.160 Chambers did not single Hiss out for special mention, did not hint at any personal
friendship, and did not allege any spying involving Hiss or anyone else. Indeed, he spoke entirely in
terms of the American Communist Party, hardly mentioning the Soviet Union and not mentioning the
KGB.

Chambers’ words had flair:

"Disloyalty is a matter of principle with every member of the Communist Party.

The Communist Party exists for the specific purpose of overthrowing the Government,
at the opportune time, by any and all means; and each of its members, by the fact that
he is a member, is dedicated to this purpose.

"It is 10 years since I broke away from the Communist Party. During that
decade, I have sought to live an industrious and God-fearing life. At the same time I
have fought communism constantly by act and written word. I am proud to appear
before this committee. The publicity inseparable from such testimony has darkened,
and will no doubt continue to darken, my effort to integrate myself in the community of

159
HUAC to 564-65, 581 (nothing being done).
160
HUAC at 565-66.

25
 free men. But that is a small price to pay if my testimony helps to make Americans
recognize at last that they are at grips with a secret, sinister, and enormously powerful
force whose tireless purpose is their enslavement.

"At the same time, I should like, thus publicly, to call upon all ex-Communists
who have not yet declared themselves, and all men within the Communist Party whose
better instincts have not yet been corrupted and crushed by it, to aid in this struggle
while there is still time to do so."161

This is the first long quotation I’ve given you from Chambers. Do you think that he loves
melodrama? Do you get the feeling that, after a few sentences of facts that are credible, he suddenly is
overcome by a need to bring in the trombones and kettle drums?

Chambers was questioned principally by the Committee's Chief Investigator, Robert Stripling.
He was a Texas Democrat, a protégé of the previous Democrat Chairman of HUAC, Martin Dies.
Stripling was sick and tired of Washington and had handed in his resignation, to take effect at the
end of the year.162 In my opinion, he was the unsung hero of the early stages of this Case.

Under Stripling’s questioning, Chambers first began talking about Hiss especially. This, in
response to Stripling’s questioning, not volunteered by Chambers, is where the toothpaste starts to
come out of the tube.

Stripling: “When you left the Communist Party in 1937 did you approach any
of these seven to break with you?"

Chambers: ". . . The only one of those people whom I approached was Alger
Hiss. I went to the Hiss home one evening at what I considered considerable risk to
myself and found Mrs. Hiss at home. Mrs. Hiss is also a member of the Communist
Party. . . . . Mr. Hiss came in shortly afterward, and we talked and I tried to break him
away from the party.

"As a matter of fact, he cried when we separated; when I left him, but he
absolutely refused to break. "

Congressman McDowell (a Pennsylvania Republican): "He cried?"

Chambers: "Yes, he did. I was very fond of Mr. Hiss."

161
HUAC at 565-66.
162
Statement of Robert E. Stripling, Midland, Texas, prepared for Dr. Allen Weinstein, presumably
in or before 1978 (“Stripling Statement”) at 25; Interview of Robert E. Stripling by John Gizzi of
HUMAN EVENTS, transcribed by John W. Berresford (Jan. 31, 1994) (“Stripling Interview”) at 9.

26
 Congressman Mundt (a South Dakota Republican): "He must have given you
some reason why he did not want to sever the relationship."

Chambers: "His reasons were simply the party line."163

Chambers named as another member of The Ware Group Donald Hiss, Alger's younger brother
and a friend of the prominent diplomat and Washington lawyer Dean Acheson. They were partners in
the law firm that is now called Covington & Burling.164

Chambers testified that, when he was at The Ware Group’s meetings, someone else had
collected the Party dues and he was given them.165

The more promising members of the Group, he said, were not wanted as sources of information
– to steal government documents, for example, for transmission to the Kremlin. Instead, they were to
rise to positions of power and, there, tilt policy to favor the Soviet Union.166

Chambers’ appearance lasted a little more than an hour. It was vindication beyond HUAC's
wildest dreams. Recently, the Committee had made its share of questionable accusations and had
given platforms to accusers whose testimonies seemed weak. But here was an eloquent witness
making very specific factual allegations. And the witness was not some nobody looking for a book
contract and fifteen minutes of fame. He was Senior Editor of the nation's pre-eminent weekly news
magazine.

And, making for all the drama, one of the secret scuzzballs he named, Alger Hiss, was the
personification of the governing class of the past 16 years, “The Best and the Brightest,” and the last
person you’d expect to be a secret revolutionary. Washington’s tabloid newspaper, THE DAILY NEWS,
made Chambers’ testimony the front page headline of the day:

UN ORGANIZER HERE
A RED, PROBE TOLD

HUAC's joy was short-lived. Twenty-four hours after Chambers left the stand, the
Committee received a telegram from Hiss:

"My attention has been called by . . . the press to statements made about me before
your committee . . . by one Whittaker Chambers. I do not know Mr. Chambers and,
so far as I am aware have never laid eyes on him. There is no basis for the
statements made about me to your committee. . . . I would . . . appreciate the

163
HUAC at 572.
164
HUAC at 566.
165
HUAC at 569, 571.
166
HUAC at 576-78.

27
 opportunity to appear before your committee to make these statements formally and
under oath. . . . "167

As one student of this Case, Professor Irving Younger of Cornell Law School said, one
imagines beads of cold sweat breaking out on the collective brow of HUAC.168

6. HISS’S DENIAL

And the next day, August 5, there was Hiss, all dignity and moderation, with every hair in
place. His opening statement seemed direct and unequivocal.

"I am here at my own request to deny unqualifiedly various statements about

me which were made before this committee by one Whittaker Chambers the day
before yesterday. . . . I welcome the opportunity to answer to the best of my ability
any inquiries the members of this committee may wish to ask me.

"I am not and never have been a member of the Communist Party. I do not
and never have adhered to the tenets of the Communist Party. I am not and have
never been a member of any Communist-front organization. I have never followed
the Communist Party line, directly or indirectly. To the best of my knowledge, none
of my friends is a Communist.”

All his contacts with Communists from other countries were with diplomats, they were part
of my job at the State Department, Hiss said, and they were strictly official.

Having cleared up his politics, Hiss moved on to the friendship that Chambers had alleged.
"So far as I know, I have never laid eyes on [Whittaker Chambers], and I should like the
opportunity to do so. . . . . [T]he statements made about me by Mr. Chambers are complete
fabrications.”169

HUAC was stunned. Usually, people named before HUAC either did nothing (who cares
what HUAC thinks?), took the Fifth Amendment, or got into shouting matches with the Committee
(like the Hollywood Communists). Hiss did not do any of those. Nor did he say “Yes, I was a silly
Fellow Traveler” 15 years ago, like lots of idealistic youngsters in the Depression. HUAC had
never heard a denial so simple, and Hiss’s very calmness added credibility to it.

Congressman Mundt, the Acting Chairman of the Committee, fumbled forward.

167
HUAC at 585-86; see also Weinstein I at 18.
168
Younger Book at 521.
169
HUAC at 642-43.

28
 "I want to say . . . that it is extremely puzzling that a man who is a senior
editor of TIME MAGAZINE, by the name of Whittaker Chambers, whom I had never
seen until a day or two ago, and whom you say you have never seen— "

Hiss: "As far as I know, I have never seen him."

Mundt: "—should come before this committee and discuss the Communist
apparatus working in Washington, which he says is transmitting secrets to the
Russian Government . . . "170

At that point, Stripling enters the questioning.

Stripling: "You say you have never seen Mr. Chambers?"

Hiss: "The name means absolutely nothing to me, Mr. Stripling."

The Committee thought it might be a case of mistaken identity, and that maybe Chambers
had confused Alger Hiss with Donald Hiss, whom Chambers had also mentioned. They found a
photograph of Chambers. Stripling walked over to Hiss and handed it to him and asked "I show
you this picture, Mr. Hiss, and ask you if you have ever known an individual who resembles this
picture."

Hiss answered "I would much rather see the individual. I have looked at all the pictures I
was able to get hold of in, I think it was, yesterday’s paper which had the pictures. If this is a
picture of Mr. Chambers, he is not particularly unusual looking. He looks like a lot of people. I
might even mistake him for the chairman of this committee."

There was general laughter, which Stripling took to be at his expense. Acting Chairman
Mundt said "I hope you are wrong in that."

Hiss: "I didn’t mean to be facetious, but very seriously. I would not want to take oath that I
have never seen that man. I would like to see him and then I think I would better be able to tell
whether I had ever seen him."171

Stripling, feeling humiliated by Hiss, gave up for the moment.

Mundt: "You realize that this man whose picture you have just looked at,
under sworn testimony before this committee, where all the laws of perjury apply,
testified that he called at your home, conferred at great length, . . . plead with you to

170
HUAC at 646.
171
HUAC at 647.

29
 divert yourself from Communist activities, and left you with tears in your eyes
saying, ‘I simply can’t make the sacrifice.’”

Hiss: "I do know that he said that. I also know that I am testifying under
those same laws to the direct contrary."172

The Committee then asked Hiss if he knew the other people named by Chambers, most of
whom were well known by 1948 as Communist Party members or very far leftists. Hiss answered
generally that he had known this one in Harvard, that one in the Triple A, that sort of thing. Then
the Committee decided to wind the whole embarrassing thing up.

McDowell: "Mr. Hiss, do you feel you have had a free and fair and proper
hearing this morning?"

Hiss: "Mr. McDowell, I think I have been treated with great consideration
by this committee."173

Mundt: "The Chair wishes to express the appreciation of the committee for
your very cooperative attitude, for your forthright statements, and for the fact that
you were first among those whose names were mentioned by various witnesses to
communicate with us asking for an opportunity to deny the charges."

And Congressman “Lightnin’ John” Rankin, an outspoken, bigoted Democrat of

Mississippi, stepped down and shook Hiss’s hand,174 saying "And another thing. I want to
congratulate the witness that he didn’t refuse to answer the questions on the ground that it might
incriminate him, and he didn’t bring a lawyer here to tell him what to say."175

Hiss left the Committee room and, as he walked around the Capitol Building, people
applauded.176 The Committee adjourned and stumbled off to lunch.

There had been one little exchange that was pregnant. It came in a question asked of Hiss
by HUAC's youngest and least senior member, an unknown Republican from California then
finishing out his first term, Richard Nixon.

Nixon had asked Hiss for the names of the Government officials who requested him to come
to Washington and work for the AAA.

172
HUAC at 647.
173
HUAC at 657.
174
Goodman at 255.
175
HUAC at 659.
176
Robert E. Stripling & Bob Considine, THE RED PLOT AGAINST AMERICA (Bell 1949) at 116.

30
 Hiss replied, with unfortunate haughtiness, that he preferred to not answer because, you
know, people whose names get mentioned before HUAC get into the headlines and people think
they are Communists even if they are not. Nixon insisted that Hiss answer. Hiss answered that it
was Felix Frankfurter, who had also gotten him his first government job as secretary on the U.S.
Supreme Court to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.177

What I am about to say is not in the HUAC transcripts, but several sources say that what
Nixon said next – and what he later had cut out of the transcript – was something like ‘That was
before Frankfurter was on the Supreme Court, when he was a Professor of yours, right?’ and that
Hiss’s answer was ‘Yes, Mr. Nixon. I went to Harvard . . . and your school, I believe, was
Whittier.’178

Those of us who remember Nixon, especially his social awkwardness and his sense of NOT
being one of The Beautiful People,179 will not be surprised to learn that according to Stripling, the
hair on the back of Nixon's neck stood out straight when Hiss said that.180 It is impossible to
imagine a more offensive thing to say to Richard Nixon.

But as I said, the Committee stumbled off to lunch. Journalists came up to them and said, in
effect, 'You guys at HUAC have finally blown it, and you have no one to blame but yourselves.181
You gave this guy Chambers a platform without checking into his story, and now he's obviously a
liar, or a nut case, or he's got Hiss mixed up with someone else, or something. But whatever, you
have completely destroyed whatever reputation HUAC ever had.' They also learned that that
morning, President Truman, in a press conference, had denounced the HUAC hearings as a "red
herring" – a choice of adjective he might have later regretted – and a distraction from his programs
to fight rising prices.182

Let me ask a question. You're HUAC. What do you do?

Give up, apologize to Hiss? But then you’re finished, ruined.

177
HUAC at 644.
178
Susan Jacoby, ALGER HISS & THE BATTLE FOR HISTORY (Yale Univ. Press 2009) at 96; Kenneth
F. Kurz, NIXON’S ENEMIES (Lowell House 1998) at 70; Christopher Matthews, KENNEDY & NIXON:
THE RIVALRY THAT SHAPED POSTWAR AMERICA (Simon & Schuster 1996) at 61; Stripling
Statement at 6.
179
Bruce Mazlish, IN SEARCH OF NIXON: A PSYCHOHISTORICAL INQUIRY (Penguin Books 1973) at
41-42.
180
Stripling Statement at 6.
181
Richard M. Nixon, SIX CRISES (“Nixon I”) (Doubleday 1962) at 9.
182
Christopher Andrew, FOR THE PRESIDENT’S EYES ONLY: SECRET INTELLIGENCE & THE
AMERICAN PRESIDENCY FROM WASHINGTON TO BUSH (Harper Collins 1995) at 175; Barton J.
Bernstein & Allen J. Matusow (Eds.), THE TRUMAN ADMINISTRATION: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY
(Harper & Row 1966) at 385; Weinstein I at 25.

31
 Fight on, look deeper? But how?

After lunch, HUAC met secretly, in a state of shock. One member said 'We’re ruined.
We've been had!' They were about to agree to do some dodge, like sending both men’s testimonies
to the Justice Department and ask them to figure out who was lying,183 when up spoke
Congressman Nixon. He was also supported by Stripling, who in fact claims at least equal credit
for the following insights.184

What Nixon (and Stripling) said was basically as follows. Nixon said to the other members
of HUAC, I want to go ahead with this. If you don’t, I do. I'll take this case off your hands. Make
it mine, name a subcommittee to look into who’s telling the truth and I’ll do all the work on it. Let
me run with this case, and whatever comes out, blame or glory, will be all mine.

HUAC did as he wished instantly. They created a subcommittee chaired by Nixon. The
other two members were the Republican McDowell and the Democrat Felix Edward Hébert of
Louisiana.

HUAC’s members asked Nixon why he was doing this, wondering why he was taking such
a reckless step.

There is something here worth pursuing, Nixon and Stripling said – it’s too soon to give up.
First, said Stripling and Nixon, there was a fine thread of equivocation running through Hiss’s
testimony – perhaps Nixon’s training as a lawyer made him alone notice it. Under oath, Hiss never
denied knowing Chambers unequivocally. He said "As far as I know, I have never seen him.” And
when Stripling asked him "You say you have never seen Mr. Chambers?" Hiss answered "The
name means absolutely nothing to me" – not an answer to the question. And we all know that
people in the Communist underground use false names. Hiss left open the possibility that he had
known Whittaker Chambers under a name other than Whittaker Chambers. There was something
sneaky about every seemingly absolute denial that Hiss gave.

Second, they said, another reason not to write off Chambers was that he had given them a
way to prove he was lying, if in fact he was lying. Not about the Communist activity, Nixon said.
Whether Hiss was a secret Communist 10-15 years ago will always remain one man's word against
the other's. When you join the Communist underground, you don't call a press conference and tell
all your friends.

But there was another disagreement between the two men. Chambers had also hinted that

183
Goodman at 255.
184
Goodman at 255; Nixon I at 10-11; Richard M. Nixon, RN: THE MEMOIRS OF RICHARD NIXON
(“Nixon II”) (Simon & Schuster 1990) at 54-55; Stripling Statement at 7-8.

32
he and Hiss were friends – they had him over to their house for dinner and talked and Hiss cried.185
Hiss denied that absolutely. If Chambers is the one telling the truth about that, said Nixon or
Stripling, then Chambers must know a lot about the Hiss family’s life those long years ago. Little
things – think of all the things you know about your best friend that only a friend would know. So
my idea, Nixon and/or Stripling went on, is to get Chambers under oath, in secret, as soon as
possible – if it has to be Saturday morning, then we’ll do it Saturday morning – and bombard him
with questions about the Hiss family’s daily life in the 1930s. If Chambers knows nothing, then
we're screwed, but we’re already screwed anyway. But if Chambers gives us plausible answers,
then we get Hiss under oath as quickly as possible and ask him the same questions. And if Hiss’s
answers match Chambers’, then we know that Chambers is the one telling the truth about the
friendship. And you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that whoever is telling the truth
about the friendship is probably also the one telling the truth about the Communist activity. That
can save the Committee.

Despite Nixon and Stripling's smart analysis and simple plan, I think that everyone else in
the room thought that they were nuts and that Nixon was ending a career that had looked like it
might have some promise.

7. CHAMBERS’ SECRET TESTIMONY

And about 30 hours later, at 10;30 on Saturday morning on August 7, 1948, in a small room
in the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan, the HUAC Subcommittee got Chambers under oath
for a secret hearing.

And for two and a half hours, Chambers poured forth details about the Hiss family’s daily
life 10-15 years before. Here are some of the things he said, or facts he alleged.

Hiss knew Chambers not as Whittaker Chambers, but as "Carl.”186

In the early 30s, Hiss had no children of his own, but his wife, Priscilla Hiss, had a son by
her previous marriage. Her first husband was Thayer Hobson, who works for the publishing house
of William Morrow in New York. Her maiden name was Fansler and she hated her ex-husband.187
The son’s name was Timothy and he was "a puny little boy, also rather nervous," "a slightly
effeminate child. I think there was some worry about him."188

Thayer Hobson paid for the boy’s private education at an expensive school, but they put

185
GJ at 4163.
186
HUAC at 662.
187
HUAC at 664, 669-70.
188
HUAC at 668.

33
Timmy in a cheaper school and gave the difference to the Communist Party.189

Chambers was asked about family nicknames. Priscilla called Alger “Hilly” and he called
her “Dilly” and sometimes “Pross.” They were commonly referred to as “Hilly” and “Dilly” by
other members of The Ware Group.190

Chambers stayed overnight in the Hiss homes for a number of days from time to time, for
free. The Hisses had various cooks and maids over the years.191

The Hisses had a cocker spaniel that they used board in a kennel “out Wisconsin Avenue”
when they took vacation trips to the Eastern Shore of Maryland.192

Chambers described several details of the insides and outsides of several houses the Hisses
had lived in during the years he said they were friends and secret Communists. The Hisses did not
have twin beds.193

When Nixon asked him "Was there any special dish they served?" Chambers began to open
up.

"No. I think you get here into something else. Hiss is a man of great
simplicity and a great gentleness and sweetness of character, and they lived with
extreme simplicity. I had the impression that the furniture in that house was kind of
pulled together from here or there, maybe got it from their mother or something like
that, nothing lavish about it, quite simple.

“Their food was in the same pattern and they cared nothing about food. It
was not a primary interest in their lives."194

Staffer Ben Mandel asked Chambers "Did Mr. Hiss have any hobbies?" and Chambers
answered:

"Yes; he did. They both had the same hobby – amateur ornithologists, bird
observers. They used to get up early in the morning and go to Glen Echo, out the
canal, to observe birds.

“I recall once they saw, to their great excitement, a prothonotary warbler. . . .

189
HUAC at 668.
190
HUAC at 664.
191
HUAC at 665.
192
HUAC at 665.
193
HUAC at 671-72.
194
HUAC at 666.

34
 “I never saw one. I am also fond of birds."195

Nixon: "Did they have a car?"

Chambers: "Yes; they did. When I first knew them they had a car. Again I
am reasonably sure – I am almost certain – it was a Ford and that it was a roadster.
It was black and it was very dilapidated. There is no question about that.

“I remember very clearly that it had hand windshield wipers. I remember

that because I drove it one rainy day and had to work those windshield wipers by
hand."196

The car, Chambers said, brought up something else.

"The Communist Party had in Washington a service station – that is, the man
in charge or the owner of this station was a Communist – or it may have been a car
lot. . . .

“The owner was a communist. I never knew who this was or where it was.
It was against all the rules of the underground organization for Hiss to do anything
with his old car but trade it in, . . . but Hiss insisted that he wanted that car turned
over to the open party so it could be of use to some poor organizer in the West or
somewhere.

"Much against my better judgment . . . , he finally got us to permit him to do

this thing. Peters [Chambers’ boss in the underground, and a major figure in Soviet
espionage worldwide] knew where this lot was and he either took Hiss there, or he
gave Hiss the address and Hiss went there, and to the best of my recollection of his
description of that happening, he left the car there and simply went away and the
man in charge of the station took care of the rest of it for him. I should think the
records of that transfer would be traceable."197

Chambers talked on and on. The Hisses never drank cocktails in his presence. He didn’t
remember anything about their china, silver, or stemware.198 He gave physical descriptions of the
Hisses, including the interesting details about Alger Hiss that “He had rather long delicate

195
HUAC at 666.
196
HUAC at 666; see also GJ at 4117 et seq. According to Professor White, Chambers originally
misremembered the transaction as occurring in 1936. White Book at 60.
197
HUAC at 666-67.
198
HUAC at 667.

35
fingers”199 and that "In his walk, if you watch him from behind, there is a slight mince
sometime."200

When Hiss was "a small boy he used to take a little wagon – he was a Baltimore boy – and
walk up to Druid Hill Park, which was up that time way beyond the civilized center of the city, and
fill up bottles with spring water and bring them back and sell it."201

"My impression was his relations with his mother were affectionate but not too happy. She
was, perhaps, domineering."202

Hiss had a brother, Donald, who was also in the underground Communist Ware Group.
"Donald Hiss was married, I think, to a daughter of Mr. Cotton, who is in the State Department.
She was not a Communist and everybody was worried about her."203 Donald Hiss "was much less
intelligent than Alger. Much less sensitive than his brother. I had the impression he was interested
in the social climb and the Communist Party was interested in having him climb. At one point, I
believe he was fairly friendly with James Roosevelt," the President’s son.204

Nixon: "Have you seen Hiss since 1938?

Chambers: "No; since the time I went to his house and tried to break him away, I
never seen him since."

Nixon: "Would you be willing to submit to a lie detector test on this testimony?"

Chambers: "Yes; if necessary."

Nixon: "You have that much confidence?"

Chambers: "I am telling the truth."205

They stopped asking him questions after two hours because they had simply run out of
questions. They were very impressed by all the details Chambers recalled. But equally or more,
they were impressed by the tone of Chambers. He was not reciting facts about a man whose life he
had studied. He was talking about someone he had known, and known very well.206

199
HUAC at 669.
200
HUAC at 667.
201
HUAC at 668.
202
HUAC at 669.
203
HUAC at 670.
204
HUAC at 670.
205
HUAC at 671.
206
Nixon I at 16-17; Stripling & Considine at 117; PBS Video, The American Experience, Nixon, at

36
 So, the needle of credibility moves back towards Chambers.

Stripling, too, was impressed by Chambers’ tone, but in a different way. Testimony to
HUAC, he said, tended to have an antiseptic quality, but Chambers was spilling his guts out – most
unusual. Stripling also later claimed from the start to suspect not only that Hiss was lying a blue
streak, but also that Chambers himself was holding something back, too.207 Stripling thought that if
they were such good friends for so long, Chambers ought to have something of Hiss’s and ought to
have volunteered it by now – a book signed by Hiss, a picture of the two of them together, a
handwritten note. But Chambers said nothing of the kind. Maybe, Stripling began thinking,
Chambers does have something from Hiss. Chambers has set a trap for him, and Hiss has walked
right into it. At some point, Chambers is going to pull whatever he has out of his back pocket and
prove Hiss is lying.

But, whatever the future, after this secret session, the few people who knew about it thought
that Nixon's gamble might pay off, rescue HUAC, and give the young Congressman a career after
all.

8. NIXON TAKES THE PLUNGE

You might think that HUAC would waste no time in getting Hiss under oath and asking him
the same questions they’d asked Chambers. But nine days passed before HUAC questioned Hiss.

One reason is that Nixon wanted time. I imagine that he saw himself at a huge ‘fork in the
road’ in his young career. Here he was, a first term Congressman, very smart, very ambitious. His
plumb Committee assignment was Education and Labor, and he was planning on proceeding up the
political ladder there slowly, voting the Party line and maybe being a Subcommittee Chairman in
ten years. Doing it ‘The Company Way,’ as most Congressmen did in those days. But here he was,
on HUAC, presented with a magnificent opportunity to become famous in his first term, a ‘one-way
ticket out of weenie town’ – if, that is, Chambers is the one telling the truth. And only if Chambers
is perceived as truthful, and only if he can withstand the slings and arrows that Hiss and his
powerful friends will be pouring down on him. For Nixon to bet his career on Chambers would be
risky. Hiss had powerful friends, from the White House, to the legal establishment, to the press,
conceivably even on the Committee. What if Chambers turned out to be lying, or if he was telling
the truth but wasn’t believed, or if he cracked under the strain, or if there was something fishy in his
background? Then, in six months Nixon would be back in Whittier doing personal injury cases for
the rest of his life.

23:20.
207
GJ at 3767.

37
 Also, I grant Nixon the gift of sincerity here – he really cared about anti-Communism and
didn't want to fire a shot that would backfire or miss the target. How to be sure about this strange,
melodramatic man Chambers?

Over the next nine days, Nixon paid three or four visits to Chambers at Chambers’ farm in
Westminster. Nixon, who was a Quaker, also got his Mother and Brother Ed to visit the
Chamberses and “talk Quaker” with them, get to know them.208

As the two men walked around Chambers’ farm, they must have been an odd couple: the
melodramatic, melancholy intellectual Chambers going on and on about the dark night of the soul
under Communism and the calculating young Congressman in his polished shoes and buttoned-up
suit following him through the dirt and trying to keep from stepping in the sheep dip. But at the
end, Nixon had confidence in Chambers and decided to stake everything on him.

Perhaps bolstering his confidence was what else was going on at HUAC. Lots of the other
people whom Chambers and Bentley had named had come to testify. Most of them "took the Fifth"
– refused to answer any meaningful questions on the ground that to do so might tend to incriminate
them. For example, one guy whom Chambers had named as a member of The Ware Group denied
he had ever known "a man by the name of Whittaker Chambers,” but took the Fifth when asked if
he had ever known someone named Carl in 1935.209

Then came Nixon’s first emergency. On August 9 or 10, Nixon heard a rumor that the
Carnegie Endowment Board, that bastion of the bi-partisan Eastern Establishment, was going to
issue a statement expressing confidence in Hiss’s truthfulness and loyalty. Nixon felt that if this
happened, the entire Establishment would move behind Hiss solidly and the HUAC investigation
would be made almost impossible.

He rushed up to New York City, and met at Dewey for President headquarters with John
Foster Dulles, who was Chairman of the Carnegie Board and the chief foreign policy advisor to the
Republican Presidential campaign of Thomas E. Dewey. (The 1948 election campaign was getting
underway.)

This must have been heady stuff for the first-term Congressman, incidentally – two years
ago I was doing slip-and-fall cases in Whittier and now I’m meeting with the mighty John Foster
Dulles of Sullivan & Cromwell, the next Secretary of State. Nixon sat Dulles down and said
‘Before you let the Carnegie Board endorse Hiss, read this.’ And Nixon handed Dulles the
transcript of Chambers’ secret testimony.

208
Ed Nixon & Karen Olson, THE NIXONS: A FAMILY PORTRAIT (Book Publishers Network 2009)
at 137-38.
209
HUAC at 803-05; see also HUAC at 808-09, 820-21, 823. Later, one even took the Fifth when
asked if he had ever shared an office with Hiss at the AAA! HUAC at 1030-31.

38
 Dulles read Chambers’ testimony and said “It’s almost impossible to believe, but Chambers
knows Hiss.” And: "Go ahead. There's no question that Hiss apparently in this case has lied to the
Committee, and you've got to press it [the investigation]."210 This shows how smart Nixon had
been to get Chambers’ detailed testimony down on paper quickly.

Dulles had nothing to gain from Chambers or HUAC. Hiss was kind of his protégé – they
had worked closely for years and Dulles had recommended Hiss to the Carnegie Endowment's
Board as its next President.211 Newspapermen were already questioning Dulles, the chief foreign
policy advisor to the next President, and a Republican no less, about why he hired a Communist!212

Chambers’ appearances before HUAC were certainly also embarrassing to President

Truman and, I think it is likely, to J. Edgar Hoover over at the FBI. We know from FBI files that
during the HUAC hearings Hoover maintained a watch over what HUAC was doing. But there is
no evidence that he and HUAC were cooperating.

Indeed, I imagine a conversation between Truman and Hoover at this time, in which Hoover
says to the President roughly the following: "Mr. President, this HUAC mess doesn't make either
of us look good. You and your predecessor, the sainted Franklin Roosevelt, had a Communist
agent high in the State Department. And I was warned about him in 1942 and missed it completely.
I can see the conservatives saying 'Hey, J. Edgar, you had the big fish in your hands and you threw
it back. Fine Commie-hunter you are.'

“Mr. President, neither of us wants this thing to go forward. Hiss could demand a complete
investigation and ask for all our information on him to be released, and what have we got – a bunch
of hearsay from foreigners – we can't get the former French Prime Minister to testify and reveal his
sources – the uncorroborated words of this rather weird man Chambers, and hearsay from Bentley.
Hiss could be vindicated and wind up as Secretary of State someday! But we shouldn’t feel too
bad, Mr. President. As far as we know, Hiss didn’t do any damage to the national security. Hiss is
out of the government, not in a position to harm the national security anymore. So, Mr. President,
let's both keep our powder dry and hope this all just goes away. Though you can never be sure of
anything with HUAC. They're totally beyond our control."213

210
Stephen E. Ambrose, NIXON: THE EDUCATION OF A POLITICIAN 1913-1962 (Simon & Schuster
1987) at 178; William H. Harbaugh, LAWYER’S LAWYER: THE LIFE OF JOHN W. DAVIS (Oxford
Univ. Pres 1973) at 447; James Srodes, ALLEN DULLES: MASTER OF SPIES (Regnery 1999) at 410-
11; Weinstein I at 37 (quoted words).
211
Harbaugh at 445, 453; Leonard Mosley, DULLES: A BIOGRAPHY OF ELEANOR, ALLEN, & JOHN
FOSTER DULLES & THEIR FAMILY NETWORK (Dell 1978) at 340 (footnote); Srodes at 409; John
Kenneth White, SEEING RED: HOW THE COLD WAR SHAPES THE NEW AMERICAN POLITICS
(Westview 1998) at 59.
212
Harbaugh at 448 (footnote).
213
See Ovid Demaris, J. EDGAR HOOVER AS THEY KNEW HIM (Carroll & Graff 1975) at 119
(counterintelligence expert dismissing the Hiss-Chambers Case as “an old tired-out ass-end-of-

39
 I also imagine, at this point, both Hiss and Chambers sitting in their offices in Manhattan214
and each praying ‘Dear God, make this whole scandal blow over so I can just go back to my nice
upper middle class life.’

Each of them is in a situation that maybe we can sympathize with. You're in your forties,
you have a family, you have stability in life, you have a great job where you're making lots of
money that makes it possible to have a nice life and provide well for your family. You have a solid
position in society. To the extent you're thinking about the future, you're looking forward to
twenty-five years or so more of the same.

But there's ‘something in your past.’ Something you did years ago, when you were
footloose and maybe the world looked very different to you. Something that could be made to look
foolish if it came out. Maybe nothing illegal, but something that you wouldn't like to see in the
newspapers or investigated by a hostile committee of Congress. And there’s something else you
did, too, that was illegal, really awful and could ruin your life if it came out.

Someone from your past shows up who knows both the foolish thing and the awful thing,
and he tells about the foolish thing.

What do you do? Do you admit to the foolish thing? But then you run the risk that the
awful thing will come out, too, and you'll be ruined, or that the guy who knows everything will
blackmail you.

Do you admit to everything, jeopardizing everything you've got in the last ten or twenty
years and probably ruining the rest of your life? If any one else was involved in it with you, you
may have to name names and ruin other people's lives.

Maybe you tell yourself: The guy who’s accusing me doesn't have any proof. It's just an
accusation, his word against mine. Perhaps I can get away with denying everything.

What would you do? This, I think, was the position that both Hiss and Chambers found
themselves in. And this, ironically, is very much where Nixon found himself in after the Watergate
Break-In in 1972.215

Well, let’s get back to the action, what the two men really did.

history picture”).
214
Irwin F. Gellman, THE CONTENDER: RICHARD NIXON: THE CONGRESS YEARS: 1946-1952 (Free
Press 1999) at 198 (Chambers’ office at 9 Rockefeller Plaza); see also May 1942 FBI Report at 1.
215
Fawn M. Brodie, RICHARD NIXON: THE SHAPING OF HIS CHARACTER (Norton 1981) at 200.

40
 9. HISS’S SECOND TESTIMONY

On Monday, August 16, the HUAC Subcommittee met at 2 pm, again in secret, in
Washington, to hear from Hiss a second time.

Hiss came in with none of the calm, goodwill and charm of his first testimony. (The
Representatives’ earlier goodwill towards him, too, was clearly gone.) He was full of outrage that
he would be summoned back, that the Committee did not accept his word against Chambers.

He did "not recall anyone by the name of Carl that could remotely be connected with the
kind of testimony Mr. Chambers has given."216

He still didn't recognize Chambers, definitely, as anyone he'd known by the name of Carl or
any other name.217

Stripling let out that Chambers had “sat there and testified for hours" and "just rattled off
details like that" about Hiss’s household.” “He has either made a study of your life in great detail or
he knows you . . . or he is incorrect."218

Hiss complained that he had read in the newspapers that Nixon had spent a weekend at the
Chambers farm. Nixon assured Hiss that “I have never spent the night with Mr. Chambers.”219 (If
you want to catch a liar, get a good liar to help you!)

Hiss hemmed and hawed some more about photographs he was shown of Chambers. Then,
suddenly, Hiss made a surprise announcement. He was changing his story.220 The story he told
starting then is the story he stuck with through his dying day. What he said to HUAC was rather
sketchy and he got much more detailed in his later testimonies. To spare repetition, I’ll give the
detailed version up front.221

‘Sometime in 1933 or ’34 or ‘35, Hiss said, he was counsel to a Senate Committee that was
investigating the profits made by munitions manufacturers in World War I. Part of his job was to
deal with the press. One day there shambled into his office a man who called himself George
Crosley. He claimed to be a freelance journalist, writing a series of articles on the Committee's
work, which he hoped to sell to a large magazine. Part of my job, Hiss said, was to deal with such

216
HUAC at 938.
217
HUAC at 940.
218
HUAC at 946.
219
HUAC at 945.
220
HUAC at 948.
221
HUAC at 948-49, 955-69, 979-84, 1078, 1082 et seq.; Hiss II at 207-08; see also descriptions of
both Hisses’ testimonies below.

41
people, and I spoke with him. He was "pretty obviously not successful in financial terms, but as far
as I know, wasn’t actually hard up."222 After a few months' acquaintance on this basis, in the spring
of 1935, I took him to lunch one day near the Senate Office Building and we got to talking about
other things. This man Crosley said he was living in New York with his wife and baby daughter
and wanted to move to Washington for the summer so he could devote full time to writing his
articles.

‘Well, said Hiss, this is your lucky day, because my wife and I have just moved into a
house, 2905 P Street, but we still have a few months to go on the lease of an apartment we rented, at
2831 28th Street. We’re on the hook for a few months more of rent. We'll sublease the apartment to
you at cost – the same rent we're paying. This would be for four months in the summer – June,
July, August, and September, maybe October, 1935. There's still some furniture in it that you can
use.

‘Then Crosley said that he was also looking for a car to get around Washington, and I said
“This is really your lucky day, because I and my wife have just bought a new car, a respectable
middle class Plymouth. We still have an old Ford. It is so old it has almost no resale value, and it
has a sentimental value to us so we don't want to sell it, but it's just sitting out on the street
collecting parking tickets, so I'll throw it in with the sublease at no extra cost.”’

Hiss’s exact words were: "I sold him an automobile. I had an old Ford that I threw in with
the apartment and had been trying to trade it in and get rid of it."223 "I threw it in."224 "I think I just
turned it over."225 It was an early Model A Ford, “a slightly collegiate model” with “a sassy little
trunk on the back.”226

And, said Hiss, Crosley accepted the deal – the sublease and the free car. Then, Hiss
continued, a few nights before he was to move in – my wife and I were in our new house – Crosley
got in touch with us in great agitation and said that the plans he'd made to move his furniture down
from New York had fallen through, what am I going to do, and so on. And I said to him, why don't
you and your wife and the baby daughter move into our house with us for a few nights until you can
make other arrangements to move your stuff down to Washington and into the apartment we’re
subleasing you. And that's what happened. The Crosley family moved in with us and lived under
the same roof with us for a few nights. I don't remember exactly how many it was – probably more
than two and less than five.

‘During those days and nights, we talked about the kinds of things you talk about with
houseguests under that sort of forced friendship situation. You develop a kind of pseudo-

222
HUAC at 956.
223
HUAC at 957.
224
HUAC at 957.
225
HUAC at 959; see also id. at 958.
226
HUAC at 957.

42
friendliness over a transaction of this kind. This man Crosley, by the way, was quite a character.
He was something out of a Jack London novel. He had been everywhere and done everything. Any
story you could tell he's top with one of his own.227

‘Eventually his stuff arrived at the 28th Street apartment and Mr. Crosley left us and moved
in there. Well, to make a long story short, this guy Crosley turned out to be a deadbeat. He paid me
only a pittance of the rent he owed. He even got me to make him a few small loans, maybe $40 in
all, and never paid back any of them. He was always just about to sell his articles, but he never did.
And at the end of the subtenancy, he moved out of our 28th Street apartment – I didn’t see this
happen, I just assume it did – and that was it. Except that from time to time he'd show up at my
office to do more research and, since it was my job, I helped him out.

‘And then there was one more time. The last time I saw Crosley in the flesh was a very
strange encounter. Sometime in 1935 – Hiss later changed this to 1936228 – one night my wife and I
were at home and suddenly there was a knock at the door and there was Crosley, turning up like a
bad penny and bearing in his arms a Persian rug. It was about six foot by ten foot. He said it was a
gift from a wealthy patron, handed it to me, and walked off into the night. I guess he intended it as
a substitute rent payment or something.’ “I have still got the damned thing.”229

‘Then one day, probably in the summer of 1936, he called me at the Senate Committee and
asked me for another loan and I told him that he was obviously sponging off me – by now, if he
hadn’t been from the very beginning. I told Crosley I didn't want to have anything more to do with
him and would he please leave me alone from now on except for matters involving my job at the
Committee.’

And that, Hiss told the HUAC Subcommittee and later one grand jury and two trial juries
and everyone else for the rest of his life, is the whole George Crosley story. Maybe this man who
briefly infested my life long ago under the name George Crosley is now going around under the
name Whittaker Chambers, has become the Senior Editor of TIME MAGAZINE and, for some reasons
only a psychiatrist could fathom, has decided to reappear in my life ten years later and make all
these false and fantastic allegations against me. Hiss said that no “normal man” would hold a
grudge such as Chambers/Crosley must be holding.230

Hiss gave a detailed physical description of Crosley and his wife, leaving no doubt he was
talking about the Chamberses. Perhaps most important, Hiss said that Crosley had "[v]ery bad
teeth. That is one of the things I particularly want to see Chambers about. This man had very bad
teeth, did not take care of his teeth."231

227
HUAC at 958.
228
HUAC at 964, 1170-71; see also Second Trial at 2821.
229
HUAC at 964.
230
HUAC at 970; Weinstein I at 44.
231
HUAC at 956.

43
 Does Hiss’s story sound plausible to you?

10. HUAC REACTS

HUAC's reaction to this story was curious for more, but skeptical. Congressman Hébert led
the charge. This is a very significant exchange, because I suspect that Hébert, a Democrat (Hiss’s
party) and from New Orleans (a tolerant place by the standards of the south in those days) could
have been Hiss’s friend on the Committee. But Hébert was unimpressed and Hiss proceeded to
antagonize him.

Hébert: “I will tell you exactly what I told Mr. Chambers so that will be a
matter of record, too: Either you or Mr. Chambers is lying.”

Hiss: “That is certainly true.”

Hébert: “And which ever one of you is lying is the greatest actor that
America has ever produced. Now, I have not come to the conclusion yet which one
of you is lying and I am trying to find the facts. Up to a few moments ago you have
been very open, very cooperative. Now, you have hedged. You may be standing on
what you consider your right and I am not objecting to that.”232

“Now, if we can get the help from you and, as I say, if I were in your
position, I certainly would give all the help I could, because it is the most fantastic
story of unfounded – what motive would Chambers have or what motive – one of
you has to have a motive. You say you are in a bad position, but don’t you think that
Chambers himself destroys himself if proven a liar? What motive would he have to
pitch a $25,000 position as the respected senior editor of Time Magazine out the
window?”

Hiss: “Apparently for Chambers to be a confessed former Communist and

traitor to his country did not seem to him to be a blot on his record.”233

Please note that Hiss is pre-channeling Senator McCarthy – you can’t believe anything
Chambers says because he was once a Communist, and all Communists are traitors!

Hiss continued: “I am sorry, but I cannot feel to such an extent that it is

difficult for me to control myself that you can sit there, Mr. Hébert, and say to me

232
HUAC at 951.
233
HUAC at 952.

44
 casually that you have heard that man and you have heard me, and you just have no
basis for judging which one is telling the truth. I don’t think a judge determines the
credibility of witnesses on that basis.”

Hébert: “I am trying to tell you that I absolutely have an open mind and am
trying to give you as fair a hearing as I could possibly give Mr. Chambers or
yourself. The fact that Mr. Chambers is a self-confessed traitor – and I admit he is –
the fact that he is a self-confessed former member of the Communist Party – which I
admit he is – has no bearing at all on whether the facts that he told – or, rather, the
alleged facts that he told –“

Hiss: “Has no bearing on his credibility?”

Hébert: “No; because, Mr. Hiss, I recognize the fact that maybe my
background is a little different from yours, but I do know police methods and I know
crime a great deal, and you show me a good police force and I will show you the
stool pigeon who turned them in. Show me a police force with a poor record, and I
will show you a police force without a stool pigeon. We have to have people like
Chambers or Miss Bentley to come in and tell us. I am not giving Mr. Chambers
any great credit for his previous life. I am trying to find out if he has reformed.
Some of the greatest saints in history were pretty bad before they were saints. Are
you going to take away their sainthood because of their previous lives? Are you not
going to believe them after they have reformed?”

“I don’t care who gives the facts to me, whether a confessed liar, thief, or
murderer, if it is facts. That is all I am interested in.”234

Then Stripling and Nixon had just a few more questions. Hiss was "willing to answer any
question you ask."235

Hiss gave the names of, and details about, many of the servants they had had during the
years in question.

Stripling asked Hiss about the Ford car he'd given to Crosley.

Stripling: “Do those model Fords have windshield wipers?”

Hiss: “You had to work them yourself.”

Stripling: “Hand operated?”

234
HUAC at 952.
235
HUAC at 959.

45
 Hiss: “I think that is the best I can recall.”236

Nixon: “What were the nicknames you and your wife had?”

Hiss: “My wife, I have always called her ‘Prossy.’”

Nixon: “What does she call you?”

Hiss: “Well, at one time she called me quite frequently ‘Hill,’ H-i-l-l.”

Nixon: “What other name?”

Hiss: “’Hilly,’ with a y.”

Nixon: “What other name did you call her?” . . .

Hiss: “She called me ‘Hill’ or ‘Hilly.’ I called her ‘Pros’ or ‘Prossy’ almost
exclusively. I don’t think any other nickname.”

Nixon: “Did you ever call her ‘Dilly’?”

Hiss: “No; never.”237

Nixon: “Where did you spend your vacations during that period?”

Hiss: “. . . My son went to a camp over on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I

am partly an Eastern Shore man myself. Part of my family came from there. When
he was at camp, I think we spent two summers, I think, during this period in
Chestertown, Md.”

Nixon: “On the Eastern Shore?”

Hiss: “On the Eastern Shore of Maryland. . . .”

Nixon: “Did you have pets?”

Hiss: “We had a brown cocker spaniel we had before we came to

Washington, was with us all during that period, . . .”

236
HUAC at 959.
237
HUAC at 960.

46
 Nixon: “What hobby, if any, do you have, Mr. Hiss?”

Hiss: “Tennis and amateur ornithology.”

McDowell: “Did you ever see a prothonotary warbler?”

Hiss: “I have, right here on the Potomac. . . . They come back and nest in
those swamps. Beautiful yellow head, a gorgeous bird.”238

Nixon quickly asked another question to cover what would otherwise have been a deafening
silence. Hiss said that his stepson's "educational expenses were paid by his own father as part of
the arrangement."239

Nixon: “As a boy, Mr. Hiss, did you have any particular business that you
engaged in?”

Hiss: “Yes. . . . One of which I was most proud was the delivery of spring
water in Baltimore. Baltimore people didn't think they had very good municipal
water.”240

Stripling: “Did you ever go riding with Crosley in this [Ford] automobile? .
. .”

Hiss: “I think I once drove him to New York City when I was going to make
a trip to New York City anyway.”241

This hearing wound towards its conclusion with Stripling expressing a skepticism that by
now pervaded the whole Committee:

"I am trying to determine why a man would come in before a committee of Congress
under the penalties of perjury and just out of the blue make up a story and then have
that story check in almost every minute detail, . . . and then have people come in
who we know are Communists and then ask do they know you and they refuse to
answer. From your testimony and your appearance I would certainly be given the
impression that you were as far removed from communism and knew no one who
could even be suspected of being a Communist, just absolutely – just never heard of
the word."242

238
HUAC at 962.
239
HUAC at 962.
240
HUAC at 963.
241
HUAC at 963-64.
242
HUAC at 970.

47
 Nixon stated that HUAC would hold another hearing in 9 days, at which Hiss and Chambers
would be brought together face to face for the first time. Hiss said “I will be very glad of the
chance to confront Mr. Chambers.” Nixon offered Hiss a secret hearing or a public one and Hiss,
after hemming and hawing, said that he preferred a public one.243 Hiss said “Thank you very much
for your courtesies” and the hearing ended.244

So, nothing was going to happen for more than a week right? But Nixon really had another
strategy. At 2 a.m. the next morning, August 17, Nixon called Stripling and told him: 'To hell with
this nine days business. Hiss’s Crosley story is a pack of lies. He’s realized that Chambers had
begun to spill out details of the Hiss family's domestic routine, and that he has confirmed them.
Hiss realizes he can't get away with a complete denial any more, and he's constructing this Crosley
story out of thin air – explaining how Chambers knows all about Hiss’s domestic details, but Hiss
wasn’t a Communist, and dropping hints that Chambers is crazy. Those Harvard Law Review
wheels in Hiss’s head are turning at the speed of light, and I don't want to give him nine more days
to make his cover story fix the facts. Stripling, I want you to get me Hiss and Chambers face to
face, without any forewarning to either of them . . . today. Do it.'245

If you were Stripling, after making a pot of coffee, what would you do?

11. FACE TO FACE!

Stripling did as he was told. He arranged for the Subcommittee to travel north to New York
City, where both Hiss and Chambers worked. I imagine that another reason that the face-to-face
was held in New York City was that this was August in Washington and air-conditioning was still
rare. Any excuse to get out of town and go north for a day!

Nixon's Subcommittee and a few HUAC staffers went up to New York City and checked
into Suite 1400 of the Commodore Hotel, at the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. (It’s
now a Hyatt Hotel.) In a stroke of luck, they had found Chambers in Washington, had taken him
along with them; they put him in the suite's bedroom. The others went into the suite's sitting room.
Chambers, in the bedroom, has no idea what is about to happen. The last thing he knows happened
was that he spilled out all the details of the Hiss family's daily life to the Subcommittee. He does
not know that they have begun to believe him, that they’ve heard Hiss again, or that Hiss has begun
to tell the George Crosley story.

What happened next is surreal, but I assure you it all happened. One scholar says that it

243
HUAC at 972.
244
HUAC at 974.
245
Nixon I at 30-31; Nixon II at 61; Weinstein I at 44.

48
seems “a bit like a Henry James story, . . . full of subtleties and ambiguities.”246 Both Hiss247 and
Stripling248 said it was like something out of a dream.

It was a formal hearing of Nixon’s Subcommittee, so there is a verbatim transcript. All

dialogue is verbatim from the transcript – was actually said in this secret hearing. All movements
and tones of voice are taken from accounts given by those who were in the room.

Nixon is sitting and Stripling is standing next to him. Both are facing the door to the suite
and with their backs to the window. On the walls are Audubon prints of birds. There is a sofa to
one side.

The Committee had just called Hiss on the phone and 'asked' him to come to Suite 1400 of
the Commodore to meet with them and "one other."249

Hiss walks in, angry, and then sits in a chair facing Nixon, Stripling, and the window behind
their backs. Hiss is about eight feet away from them.

Many HUAC hearings meandered from subject to subject. The sole purpose of the hearing
was to bring Hiss and Chambers together, with minimum warning to them, and to have Hiss
identify (or not identify) Chambers as the man he claimed to have known twelve years earlier as
"George Crosley."

When I talked about this Case at The Smithsonian, I and some friends acted out the
following scene. It was great fun for all of us. In the interests of simplicity, I combined all the
Subcommittee members into "Nixon" and all the Committee staffers into "Stripling." The
following has been edited in the interest of brevity and minor punctuation has been changed.

Nixon (speaking to Hiss): “It is quite apparent at this state in the testimony .
. . that the case is dependent on the question of identity. [S]o consequently we have
asked Mr. Chambers to be in New York at the same time so that you can have the
opportunity to see him and make up your own mind on that point.”250

Hiss (irritable, pettish, edgy and belligerent throughout this scene): "May I
interrupt at this point, because I take it this will take more than 10 or 15 minutes.
Would it be possible for one of the members of the committee to call the Harvard
Club and leave word that I won't be there for a 6 o'clock appointment?”

246
Robert K. Carr, THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES 1945-50 (Cornell Univ.
Press 1952) at 109.
247
Alger Hiss, IN THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION (“Hiss I”) (Knopf 1957) at 90.
248
Stripling & Considine at 129.
249
Hiss I at 81.
250
This hearing is at HUAC at 975-1001.

49
 Nixon: “There is a telephone, I believe, in the room here. Anytime you want
to call, you may. Mr. Stripling, will you bring Mr. Chambers in?”

Stripling leaves the room and returns through the front door of the suite
(behind Hiss), accompanied by Chambers.

Nixon: “Sit over here, Mr. Chambers.”

Chambers sits on a sofa, to Hiss’s right but within the edge of his range of
vision. Hiss purposely stares straight ahead at the Committee, not looking at
Chambers. The two men are four or five feet apart.

Nixon: “Mr. Chambers, will you please stand? And will you please stand,
Mr. Hiss?”

The two stand and look at each other.

Nixon: “Mr. Hiss, the man standing here is Mr. Whittaker Chambers. I ask
you now if you have ever known that man before."

Hiss (uncertain and confused): "May I ask him to speak? Will you ask him
to say something?"

Nixon: "Mr. Chambers, will you tell us your name and your business?"

Chambers (in a low voice, looking straight ahead, not at Hiss): "My name is
Whittaker Chambers."

Hiss cocks his head inquisitively, walks over to Chambers until he is not
more than a foot away from him and looks at his mouth.

Hiss: "Would you mind opening your mouth wider?"

Chambers (winces with surprise, then speaks). "My name is Whittaker

Chambers."

Hiss (moves his right hand six inches from Chambers’ mouth and moves his
thumb and index finger in a scissors-like motion, indicating to Chambers to open
wider. He speaks loudly): "I said, would you open your mouth? You know what I
am referring to, Mr. Nixon. [To Chambers:] Will you go on talking?"

Chambers: "I am senior editor of Time Magazine."

50
 Hiss (seeming puzzled for a moment, then turning to Nixon): "May I ask
whether his voice, when he testified before, was comparable to this?"

Nixon (slightly sarcastic): "I would say it is about the same now as we have
heard."

Hiss: "Would you ask him to talk a little more?"

Nixon: "Read something, Mr. Chambers. I will let you read from –" (He
hands Chambers a nearby copy of NEWSWEEK.)

Hiss: "I think he is George Crosley, but I would like to hear him talk a little
longer. Are you George Crosley?"

Chambers (smiling quizzically): "Not to my knowledge. You are Alger

Hiss, I believe."

Hiss (straightens up and speaks vehemently): "I certainly am."

Chambers looks at Hiss for a time, then smiles and says quietly: "That was
my recollection. [Chambers takes a magazine and reads from it.] 'Since June —'"

Nixon: "Just one moment. Since some repartee goes on between these two
people, I think Mr. Chambers should be sworn."

Hiss: "That is a good idea."

Nixon: “You do solemnly swear, sir, that the testimony you shall give to this
committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you
God?”

Chambers: “I do.”

Nixon: "Mr. Hiss, I suggested that he be sworn, and when I say something
like that I want no interruptions from you."

Hiss stares back at Nixon coldly, then says: "Mr. Nixon, I think there is no
occasion for you to use that tone of voice in speaking to me, and I hope the record
will show what I have just said."

Nixon: "The record shows everything that is being said here today."

51
 Chambers [reading from the magazine]: "'Tobin for Labor. Since June,
Harry S. Truman had been peddling the labor secretaryship left vacant by Lewis B.
Schwellenbach's death in hope of gaining the maximum political advantage from the
appointment.'"

Hiss: "The voice sounds a little less resonant than the voice that I recall of
the man I knew as George Crosley. The teeth look to me as though either they have
been improved upon or that there has been considerable dental work done since I
knew George Crosley, which was some years ago. [Hiss pauses for a moment.] I
believe I am not prepared without further checking to take an absolute oath that he
must be George Crosley." (This surprises the others, because shortly before Hiss
had said "I think he is George Crosley.")

Nixon (to Chambers): "Have you had any dental work since 1934 of a
substantial nature?

Chambers (looking at Hiss). "Yes; I have."

Hiss: "Could you ask him the name of the dentist that performed these
things?"

Chambers: "Dr. Hitchcock. Westminster, MD."

Hiss: "That testimony of Mr. Chambers, if it can be believed, would tend to

substantiate my feeling that he represented himself to me in 1934 to 1935 or
thereabout as George Crosley, a free lance writer of articles for magazines. I would
like to find out from Dr. Hitchcock if what he has just said is true, because I am
relying partly, one of my main recollections of Crosley was the poor condition of his
teeth."

Nixon: "Can you describe the condition of your teeth in 1934?"

Chambers: "Yes. They were in bad shape."

Nixon: "Before we leave the teeth, Mr. Hiss, do you feel that you would
have to have the dentist tell you just what he did to the teeth before you could tell
anything about this man?"

Stripling: "I certainly gathered the impression when Mr. Chambers walked
in this room and you walked over and examined him and asked him to open his
mouth, that you were basing your identification purely on what his upper teeth might
have looked like. Now, here is a person that you knew for several months at least.
You knew him so well that he was a guest in your home, that you gave him an old

52
 Ford automobile, and permitted him to use, or you leased him your apartment and in
this, a very important confrontation, the only thing that you have to check on is this
denture; is that correct? There is nothing else about this man's features which you
could definitely say, 'This is the man I knew as George Crosley,' that you have to
rely entirely on this denture; is that your position?"

Hiss (after a long silence): "My answer to the question you have asked is
this: From the time on Wednesday, August 4, 1948, when I was able to get hold of
newspapers containing photographs of one Whittaker Chambers, I was struck by a
certain familiarity in features. When I testified on August 5 and was shown a
photograph by you, Mr. Stripling, there was again some familiarity [in] features. I
am not given on important occasions to snap judgments or simple, easy statements. I
am confident that George Crosley had notably bad teeth. [Turning to Chambers.]
Did you ever go under the name of George Crosley?"

Chambers: "Not to my knowledge."

Hiss: "Did you ever sublet an apartment on Twenty-ninth Street from

me?"[251]

Chambers: "No; I did not."

Hiss: "You did not?"

Chambers: "No."

Hiss: "Did you ever spend any time with your wife and child in an apartment
on Twenty-ninth Street in Washington when I was not there because I and my family
were living on P Street?"

Chambers: "I most certainly did."

Hiss: "You did or did not?"

Chambers: "I did."

Hiss: "Would you tell me how you reconcile your negative answers with this
affirmative answer?"

Chambers (looking at Hiss steadily, speaking quietly): "Very easily Alger. I

was a Communist and you were a Communist."

251
I think he means 28th Street.

53
 Hiss: "Would you be responsive and continue with your answer?"

Chambers (turning to Nixon). "I do not think it is needed. [Chambers sits

down.] As I have testified before, I came to Washington as a Communist
functionary, a functionary of the [turning to Hiss] American Communist Party. I
was connected with the American underground group of which Mr. Hiss was a
member. [Hiss sits down.] Mr. Hiss and I became friends. To the best of my
knowledge, Mr. Hiss himself suggested that I go there, and I accepted gratefully. I
brought no furniture, I might add."

Hiss (shakes with a spasm of anger, then speaks). "Mr. Chairman, I don't
need to ask Whittaker Chambers any more questions. I am now perfectly prepared
to identify this man as George Crosley."

Stripling: "You will identify him positively now?"

Hiss: "I will on the basis of what he has just said positively identify him
without further questioning as George Crosley."

Stripling: "Will you produce for the committee three people who will testify
that they knew him as George Crosley?"

Hiss (gags for a moment): "I will if it is possible. Why is that a question to
ask me? I will see what is possible."

Nixon: "Will you tell the committee whether or not during this period of
time that you knew him, which included periods of 3 nights or 2 or 3 nights, in
which he stayed overnight and one trip to New York, from any conversation you
ever had any idea that he might be a communist?"

Hiss: "I certainly didn't."

Nixon: "You never discussed politics?"

Hiss: "Oh, as far as I recall his conversations – and I may be confusing them
with a lot of other conversations that went on in 1934 and 1935 – politics were
discussed quite frequently. May I just state for the record that it was not the habit in
Washington in those days, when particularly if a member of the press called on you,
to ask him before you had further conversation whether or not he was Communist. It
was a quite different atmosphere in Washington then than today. I had no reason to
suspect George Crosley of being a Communist. It never occurred that he might be or
whether that was of any significance to me if he was. He was a press representative

54
and it was my duty to give him information, as I did any other member of the press.
I would like to say that to come here and discover that the ass under the lion's skin is
Crosley, I don't know why your committee didn't pursue this careful method of
interrogation at an earlier date before all the publicity."

Nixon: "Well, now, Mr. Hiss, you positively identify –"

Hiss: "Positively on the basis of his own statement that he was in my

apartment at the time when I say he was there. I have no further questions at all. If
he had lost both eyes and taken his nose off I would be sure.

Hiss, shaking a fist, starts walking in the direction of Chambers. Chambers

sits passively on the couch, believing that Hiss is play-acting and will not strike him.
Hiss’s voice quavers with anger.

Hiss: “May I say for the record at this point, that I would like to invite Mr.
Whittaker Chambers to make those same statements out of the presence of this
committee without their being privileged for suit of libel. I challenge you to do it,
and I hope you will do it damned quickly. [Stripling moves over to Hiss and lays a
restraining hand on him.] I am not going to touch him. [addressing Stripling:] You
are touching me."

Stripling: "Please sit down, Mr. Hiss."

Hiss: "I will sit down when the chairman asks me. Mr. Stripling, when the
Chairman asks me to sit down –"

Stripling: "I want no disturbance."

Hiss: "I don't –"

Nixon: "Sit down, please."

Hiss: "You know who started this."

Stripling: "I am concerned with the statement you made before the
subcommittee of Congress in the presence of quite a few hundred people that you
didn't even know this person. You led the public and press to believe you didn't
know such a person."

Hiss: "I did not say that I have never seen this man. I said, so far as I know I
have never seen Whittaker Chambers."

55
 Stripling: "Never laid eyes on him."

Hiss: "I wouldn't have been able to identify him today for certain without his
own assistance."

Stripling (sarcastically): "You are willing to waive the dentures?"

Hiss: "I am, on the basis of his own testimony. That is good enough for
me."

Stripling: "You are fully aware that the public was led to believe that you
had never seen, heard, or laid eyes upon an individual who is this individual, and
now you do know him."

Hiss: "Mr. Stripling, you are stating your impression of public impression."

Nixon: "You never knew this man under the name of Carl?"

Hiss: "I did not."

Nixon: "You never paid this man any money for Communist Party dues?"

Hiss (with some heat). "I certainly did not."

Nixon: "Did you ever discuss your hobby, ornithology with this man?"

Hiss: "I may very likely have. My house has pictures very similar to that
[indicating the pictures on the wall]. This is an appropriate hearing room. Anyone
who had ever been in my house would remark that I had a interest in birds."

Nixon: "It would appear to me, Mr. Hiss, of all the newspaper men you were
in contact in your highly important jobs with the Nye committee that you must have
formed some sort of affection for this man to go through all of the things that you
did to try to occupy your home, take over your lease, and give him an automobile."

Hiss: "May I ask how much longer you think this is now going on, because I
have another appointment?"

Nixon: "The committee will rise and you gentlemen make yourselves
comfortable. As a result of the testimony the committee has decided to bring about a
meeting of the full committee in public session Wednesday, August 25, at which
time both Mr. Hiss and Mr. Chambers, whom Mr. Hiss identified as the person
whom he knew as Mr. Crosley, will appear as witnesses."

56
 Hiss: "Thank you. Am I dismissed? Is the proceeding over?"

Nixon: "That is all. Thank you very much."

Hiss: "I don't reciprocate."

Nixon: "Italicize that in the record."

Hiss: "I wish you would." [Hiss walks out. After a few seconds of silence,]

Stripling (turns to Chambers and drawls): "Ha-ya, Mistah Crawz-li?''252

Let me note a few things about this scene that just ended. I have never testified before a
Committee of Congress but, if I ever do, the first words out of my mouth will not be “Do you think
one of you Congressmen could call The Harvard Club to tell them I’ll be late.” It’s hard to believe
that Hiss was a tone-deaf as he was.

Second, imagine the feelings of the two men. Hiss being summoned, he knew in his bones,
to meet Chambers/Crosley. And Hiss had just learned that another man named as a Communist
before HUAC, Harry Dexter White, an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and another Harvard
man, had died of a heart attack.253 (Harry Dexter White was indeed a Soviet spy, by the way.) And
Chambers, in the bedroom, not knowing that the Committee had swung over to him, not knowing
what was going to happen next, and suddenly hearing from the next room Hiss’s voice for the first
time in ten years.

Third, Chambers wrote in his memoirs that when he said to the Subcommittee, looking at
Hiss, that “I came to Washington as a Communist functionary, a functionary of the American
Communist Party,” I was trying to signal Alger that I had not talked about the spy ring.254

Fourth, no one was ever able to find anyone other than Hiss who said that someone was
hanging around the Capitol in the mid-1930s claiming to be a freelance journalist and calling
himself George Crosley.255

Fifth, Chambers said that when, at the end, Stripling turned to him and said “Hiya, Mr.
Crosley,” that was his first signal that the Subcommittee had taken his side. (Whew!)

Finally, this scene was devastating to Hiss. A liberal historian, in a history of HUAC,

252
Chambers I at 615.
253
Hiss I at 80-81; HUAC at 976.
254
Chambers I at 611.
255
Weinstein I at 47, 163.

57
agreed with Cambers that “It is difficult to read the transcript of this encounter and not conclude . . .
that ‘Alger Hiss was acting from start to finish.’”256 Prosecutor Murphy said that when he was
reading the file on the case for the first time, it was when he read this transcript that he first
believed that Hiss was lying.257 The Court of Appeals, in its decision upholding Hiss’s conviction
several years later, reprinted pages of this transcript and stated: “The jury might well have believed
that the appellant [Hiss] had been less than frank in his belated recognition of Mr. Chambers . . .”258

Staging this scene was a brilliant tactical move by Nixon.

12. SETTING UP THE PUBLIC CONFRONTATION

Well, by the day of the public confrontation on August 25, the nation's interest was intense.
Everyone had an opinion about the Case, and many opinions were fierce. And your view of the
Case told a lot about your views on other matters. I want to digress a few minutes on this, because
the Hiss-Chambers Case had by now become a major political litmus test in this country. I’m going
to do a bit of background-setting and philosophizing in this Chapter, to explain why – other than the
human drama – people cared so much about this. If that bores or you can’t wait to see what
happened when Hiss and Chambers confronted each other in public, go on to the next Chapter,
number 13.

You may have the impression that the Cold War began the day World War II ended, but this
is not so. As late as this Case public opinion in America was largely fluid. There were many views
about what America's role should be in the post-War world, and indeed about the nature of the post-
War world itself, about the nature of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union.

One view, a Traditional Conservative one held especially by Republicans from the center of
this country, held that we were right back where we had always been – a self-sufficient nation with
big oceans to our east and west (and this was before long range aircraft, much less intercontinental
missiles), non-threatening neighbors to our north and south. And now we had the only atom bomb.
Let's return to our pre-War isolationism. Who cares if Europe goes Communist, who cares if China
goes Communist, who cares about the Soviet Union, who needs the UN, the Marshall Plan, the
International Monetary Fund? The American Communist Party is just a tiny bunch of sickos, no
more of a threat to the nation than The Flat Earth Party. Who cares about them?

A second view reached the same result – no hostility to Communist countries and no worry
about the domestic Party – but by a totally different path. I call it The Century of the Common
Man, or One World, View. It held that the whole world was on the verge of a new age of reason,

256
Goodman at 257.
257
Chambers I at 615.
258
United States v. Hiss, 185 F.2d 822, 830 (2d Cir. 1950).

58
virtue, and justice. The Great Depression had completely discredited Capitalism, private property,
making money, and self-seeking. The two World Wars had completely discredited the nation state
and traditional religion (which had tolerated the mass slaughter and the Holocaust). All these
institutions were discredited. To take their place would arise The Common Man. Indeed, The
Century of The Common Man was dawning all over the world, in which ordinary people
everywhere would ignore their artificial differences of birth and race and nationality and would
form a common bond, help each other, and share and share alike just like at the UN.

Many who held this view believed that there was one place in the world where this bright
future was dawning, and that was the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. It was the error and, in my
opinion, the shame of these people that they held this view most strongly during the very years that
the Soviet people were suffering the worst tortures of Stalin’s Communist rule and he was killing
them off by the millions.259

The people who held to this view were a good many on the left, some of the educated
progressive upper middle class (perhaps desirous of secure jobs as central planners), and many
practicing Christians. These people took umbrage at any statement that was critical of
Communism, and any policy of opposition to the Soviet Union. Needless to say, this side rallied to
the defense of Alger Hiss, seeing in him – themselves, the model civil servant, the enlightened
liberal statesman and cool man of reason being assaulted by the savage mob of HUAC, especially
Richard Nixon in his off-the-rack suits and five o’clock shadow.260

This side’s mindset, incidentally, is represented well by a man you may never have heard of,
but his quotes are too good to pass up. He was Harold J. Laski, a lecturer at Harvard and Yale, a
writer for The New Republic magazine, Chairman of Britain’s Labor Party, half the author of a
famous correspondence with Mr. Justice Holmes, and, for 25 years, a Professor at the London
School of Economics.261 Laski put his views in a book he wrote towards the end of World War II
called FAITH, REASON AND CIVILIZATION. Laski saw the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as the
model for the future of the world, even as an exemplar of Christian values. Laski writes: "It is . . .
difficult to see upon what basis the civilized tradition can be rebuilt save that upon that upon which
the idea of the Russian Revolution is founded";262 the Russian Revolution "insisted upon [the]

259
See, e.g., Wikipedia, Mass Killings Under Communist Regimes, States Where Mass Killings
Have Occurred, Soviet Union, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist
_regimes (“Robert Conquest, in the latest revision (2007) of his book The Great Terror, estimates
that while exact numbers will never be certain, the communist leaders of the USSR were
responsible for no fewer than 15 million deaths.”).
260
See, e.g., Max Frankel, THE TIMES OF MY LIFE & MY LIFE WITH THE TIMES (Random House
1999) at 90; E. Howard Hunt & Greg Aunapu, AMERICAN SPY: MY SECRET HISTORY IN THE CIA,
WATERGATE, & BEYOND (Wiley 2007) at 35; Steven R. Weisman, DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN: A
PORTRAIT IN LETTERS OF AN AMERICAN VISIONARY (Perseus Books 2010) at 618-19.
261
Wikipedia, Harold Laski, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Laski (visited Aug. 5, 2013).
262
Harold J. Laski, FAITH, REASON, & CIVILIZATION: AN ESSAY IN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS (Viking

59
inherent dignity [of the common man] as a person";263 "When the last word has been said against
Russian bureaucracy, against the hindrances to the political self-expression we know in Britain and
the United States, against the scale upon which the terror has been conducted, against the ugly
Byzantinism of its party infallibility, the solemn truth remains that in the Soviet Union, since the
October Revolution, more men and women have had more opportunity for self-fulfillment than
anywhere else in the world";264 from the Russian Revolution, "the principles that seem to emerge
are the same as those which underlie the dream of the early Christians";265 "No one is now entitled
to doubt that there is developing in the Soviet Union those qualities of mind and heart which gave
to the Greek city-state at its best its capacity to raise the moral stature of its citizens";266 "No one
who examines with any care the experience of the Russian experiment will be entitled to say again
that the masses of a community do not contain an immense and perpetual reservoir of talent which
the acquisitive society is unable either to discover and to utilize";267 "And it is a fact beyond dispute
that the economic system of the Soviet Union has given to the ordinary worker a right to say in the
conditions under which he labors.”268 At the risk of beating a dead horse, I will add one more
comment, by the American politician Henry Wallace, who was Vice President in Roosevelt’s third
term: “I would say that the Communists are the closest things to the early Christian martyrs we
have today.”269

These statements were written, not by known nut cases, but by (let us charitably assume)
highly intelligent and humane men who wanted peace and abundance for all. Laski was a leading
western intellectual, greatly admired by educated liberals. He and Henry Wallace had attained
positions of great respect and power. About Communism they were idiots. Please note several
factors about their mindset: first, the assumption that Capitalism and individualism are over;
second, the hopelessly rosy view of the Soviet Union under Stalin; third, the great optimism about
the future of the world after the War; and, fourth, the terrible failure to see that their hope and
sentiment made them so blind to the facts that they embraced what was, in fact, the greatest enemy
of all the humane values they held. That was the worldview of a lot of leftist intellectuals as late as
1948. To them, the American Communist Party was, at worst, like your vulgar country cousins;
they don’t have our manners, but at the end of the day they’re still family.

The third view that was abroad in the land at the time of the Case was what I will call the
Triumphant American Liberal Capitalist view. About the only thing it had in common with the
Common Man view was that it was optimistic. It held that Europe had committed suicide in two

1944) at 51.
263
Laski at 52.
264
Laski at 57.
265
Laski at 84.
266
Laski at 142.
267
Laski at 144.
268
Laski at 145. See also Carol Brightman, WRITING DANGEROUSLY: MARY MCCARTHY & HER
WORLD (Clarkson Potter 1992) at 118-21 re communism’s appeal to self-styled intellectuals.
269
Devine at 45.

60
World Wars, Russia was locked in poverty because of the War and Communism, China was in
good hands (Chaing Kai Shek’s in charge and he’s one of us), and the rest of the world was a
colony. We, on the other hand, had emerged from the War undamaged, out of the Depression, with
full employment and the only bomb. The next century would belong to America – the American
Century, as Chambers’ boss Henry Luce called it in a famous essay in LIFE MAGAZINE in February
1941.270 Liberal Capitalism with a safety net and lots of personal freedom is the way to go – we’ve
got it figured out. America had to be involved in the rest of the world – it was our turn to run the
world, in fact – in an optimistic, triumphal, expansionist way. No powerful enemies anywhere.
Nothin’ but good times ahead for the liberal Capitalist USA.

Finally, there was a small group of mostly middle class people, generally suspicious of the
rest of the world, who were unwilling to return to isolationism and who were very leery of the new
world was being born. They saw Communism on the march even here in the U.S., under our beds,
and hiding in the woodwork. A non-trivial number of these people were racist, anti-Semitic, anti-
city, anti-foreign, anti-Big Money, anti-Eastern Establishment, anti- just about everything new and
different.

This last group found its footing in The Hiss Case – the Communists were not only on the
march in Eastern Europe (thanks to Yalta, where Hiss was whispering sweet nothings into the ear of
the dying FDR), the UN (“the house that Hiss built”) and in China, but in our own government, in
the Roosevelt-Truman administration in particular. They hated Hiss as the arch-representative of
Eastern money and good breeding (forgetting for the moment Hiss’s shabby genteel origins), post-
graduate education and cultural sophistication, big government and multi-national organizations,
the whole lot of them. (These people didn't necessarily like Chambers, by the way, because he had
been a Commie, in his own way he was even more cosmopolitan than Hiss, and his wife’s maiden
name was Esther Shemitz.)

In The Hiss Case, the fourth group found its nightmare becoming reality and said to the
traditional isolationists and the triumphant Capitalists "No, the world is not as simple as you think.
There are enemies who seek our destruction just as much as the Nazis, and some of them are among
us in powerful places. We all must act to root them out, or there will be no future for normalcy, no
triumph for liberal Capitalism."

Aside from the ideological divisions I've just mentioned, The Hiss Case caused some
fascinating and subtle social divisions in our country, too. One was based on class and style. If you
had been born on the right side of the tracks and gone to Harvard, and if you shopped at Brooks
Brothers and read THE NEW YORKER, you tended to side with Hiss even if you were conservative.
He represented, as Alistair Cooke wrote, the good “breeding, the graceful probity, the plain living
and high thinking of [the] . . . New England tradition” of service to the nation.271 But if you had

270
Information Clearing House, News You Won’t Find on CNN, The American Century, Henry R.
Luce, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6139.htm.
271
Cooke at 11.

61
had a hard life, had gone to a college that was not in the top ten, had had to work hard for
everything you had, if you didn't look too good in your suits, and if you thought of yourself in life
as being on the outside looking in – then you tended to side with Chambers, again regardless of
your politics. Perhaps the best example of this group is Richard Nixon.

There was also another group that tended to lean towards Chambers that you might not
expect. These were the few intellectuals who were liberals or leftists, even intellectual Marxists, in
1948 but who had been in the Communist Party, or very close to it, in earlier decades and had left
it. The very liberal editor of the NEW YORK POST, James Wechsler, wrote that people who had just
been liberals all their lives "seemed moved compulsively to declare that Hiss could not conceivably
be guilty . . . ; while those [of us liberals] who had been communists at least tended to reserve
judgment, and saw no inherent implausibility in Chambers’ story."272 They knew that there had
been a darker side to the Communist Party, and in their time in or near the Party they had seen
people who were just as well put together as Alger Hiss. Their own infatuations with the Party had
mostly been brief, and indeed many of them had emerged still leftists, even still Marxists, but
implacable enemies of the Party and the Soviet Union as corrupters of the high ideas of Marx.

But from their own times in the Party they had seen people like Hiss and could imagine the
rationalizations that could have led Hiss to do what Chambers alleged. For these people, Wechsler
wrote, the whole Hiss-Chambers thing was a reminder of our rumbustious youth that we’d just as
soon have been spared. They were genuinely puzzled by Hiss’s total denial – why doesn't he just
admit he was in this silly chat group and get it over with? Chambers isn’t accusing Hiss of
espionage or anything really serious. All Hiss has to do to make this thing go away is admit, well,
like admitting today that you smoked pot in the 1960s.273

The eyes of all these groups were on the Congressional hearing room on August 25. It was
one of the first Congressional hearings that was broadcast on television.274 And this is where we go
next.

13. THE PUBLIC CONFRONTATION

The public confrontation of Hiss and Chambers began at 10:30 in the morning on
Wednesday, August 25, 1948, in the Caucus Room in the Old House Office Building in
Washington. Several hours of it were broadcast on local television – I think it was the first House
hearing in Washington that was televised. The Committee’s Chairman, J. Parnell Thomas of New
Jersey presided, but Nixon asked most of the questions.

272
James A. Wechsler, THE AGE OF SUSPICION at 233-34 (Random House 1953); see also Michael
Straight, AFTER LONG SILENCE (Norton 1983) at 231.
273
Wechsler at 233-36.
274
Thomas Doherty, COLD WAR, COOL MEDIUM: TELEVISION, MCCARTHYISM, & AMERICAN
CULTURE (Columbia Univ. Press 2003) at 106.

62
 It began with Stripling staging a face-to-face confrontation of the two men. Each was sworn
to tell the truth, and was told to stand up – and they were about 10 feet from each other.275 Each
identified the other, and stated when he had last seen the other and under what name.276 This was
intended to outline for the huge public audience what the two men agreed on and what they
disagreed on.

Hiss was questioned and testified first. He was on the spot for about six hours.277 The focus
of the questions was whether Hiss and Chambers had known each other for a long time as friends,
from 1934 to early 1938, as Chambers claimed, or for a short time as tenant and deadbeat subtenant,
mainly in 1934 and 1935, as Hiss claimed.

Throughout his testimony, Hiss was suspiciously, achingly careful in his wording – by one
count, about 200 times he began an answer with the words "to the best of my recollection."278
While Hiss was talking, Chambers sometimes stared at the ceiling.279

Hiss made no attempt to hide his disdain for HUAC.280 And as each part of his George
Crosley story was weakened by evidence, Hiss retreated or hedged so that by the end of his
testimony he was swearing to almost nothing – he seemed to be saying that sometime in the mid-
30s he had known this man with bad teeth.

Hiss could not explain his Hamlet-like hesitation in recognizing Chambers – a man who left
a vivid impression on people who met him even for only a few minutes in the 1930s.281 When he
was shown three pictures of Chambers, Hiss not only refused to say that they were clearly pictures
of Chambers/Crosley, he refused to say that the three pictures were of the same man!282

Hiss was asked about all the people he had known and worked with in the AAA who were
known by 1948 to be Communists or Communist Party members or who, when asked if they were
or ever had been Party members, had taken the Fifth. How could Hiss have known all these people
and say, as he said in his first testimony to HUAC, that he had never known a Communist? That's
not precisely what I testified, Hiss answered – I merely said that "to the best of my knowledge, none

275
United Press, Hiss & Accuser Stick to Stories, WASH. DAILY NEWS (Aug. 25, 1948) at 3 col. 2.
276
HUAC at 1076-79.
277
Edward F. Ryan, Chambers Confronted by Hiss; Each Charges Other is Liar, WASHINGTON
POST (Aug. 26, 1948) at 1, col. 8.
278
Goodman at 258; William A. Reuben, THE HONORABLE MR. NIXON (Action Books 1958) at 57.
279
Ryan at 1, col. 8.
280
See, e.g., HUAC at 1084 (Hiss speaking of HUAC’s “presumed search for the truth”).
281
Tanenhaus at 263; Weinstein I at 50, 150, 465, 502, 652 (note 59); see also HUAC at 1140, GJ
at 4081 (Wadleigh); First Trial at 1641 (Mrs. Catlett).
282
HUAC at 1143-45.

63
of my friends is a communist."283 His earlier testimony seemed hypertechnical, a statement that,
even if technically true, created a false impression.

HUAC's staff had looked through what are called the regularly kept records of disinterested
third parties. Such records are likely to be reliable because they were kept routinely by businesses
and governments that had no reason to favor one side or the other in a dispute – especially in a
dispute that hadn’t broken out when the records were created.

All this evidence tended to disprove Hiss’s George Crosley story. For example, the records
of various real estate companies and public utilities showed that Hiss’s 28th Street apartment was
vacant for only two months, May and June of 1935, not three or four as he had said.284 This was
also sooner than Hiss implied; he had said it had been during the summer of 1935.

There was no written lease between Hiss and Chambers285 – perhaps hard to believe for a
careful lawyer like Hiss. No one had come forward who had known Chambers (or anyone else) by
the name George Crosley in the 28th Street apartment building or on Capitol Hill in 1935.286 You
would think that if Chambers had been posing to Hiss as George Crosley, he would have made the
same pose to other people, too. Nor had anyone named George Crosley published any articles in
Washington in those years.287

But the most damaging evidence to Hiss was about the cars and was in the form of the
regularly kept records of a car dealership and of the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles. Hiss said
he had two cars at the same time: a new middle class Plymouth, and the old Ford with hand-
operated windshield wipers and the sassy little trunk, which he gave Crosley in connection with the
sublease.288 But Motor Vehicle records showed that Hiss didn't buy the Plymouth until September
1935,289 months after the May-June sublease (if there was one) came to and end. So if Hiss’s story
that he gave Crosley a car as part of the sublease were true, then Hiss was saying that he gave
Crosley his only car. If this were true, it seemed to support Chambers’ story that Hiss was a
fanatical secret Communist – why else would he give Chambers his only car?

Hiss said OK, maybe I got the two transactions – the sublease and the car – wrong by
combining them in my mind, so what? It was so long ago. Maybe I actually gave Crosley the car a
few months later than I recalled, after the sublease.

283
HUAC at 1147.
284
HUAC at 1085-90; but see First Trial at 857, 860 (Mrs. Chambers says April and part of May, 6
or 7 weeks).
285
HUAC at 1084.
286
HUAC at 1090-92.
287
HUAC 1092-93.
288
HUAC at 1093-94.
289
HUAC at 1095.

64
 The problem with this was that now Hiss is saying that ‘first I figured out the this guy
Crosley was a deadbeat, and then I gave him a car.' That made even less sense!290

Hiss also said that he may have remembered the Crosley subtenancy wrong, that perhaps
Crosley and his family had lived in Hiss’s house not before the subtenancy, but after it. HUAC
said, OK, now you're asking us to believe that after you figured out he was a deadbeat, you not only
gave him a car but you invited him into your house, too?291 Come on!

More fundamentally, the car story seemed incredible, even if you accepted Hiss’s sequence
of events. It seemed highly implausible that Hiss, a man with no family money, with three mouths
to feed on the salary of a junior government lawyer, and during the Great Depression, would give
away a car to anyone.

Hiss said 'well, maybe I didn't give him the car, I may have just given him the use of the
car.'

Nixon: ". . . did you give Crosley a car?"

Hiss: "I gave Crosley, according to my best recollection --"

Nixon: "Well. Now, just a moment on that point. I do not want to interrupt
you . . . , but you certainly can testify, 'Yes' or 'No' as to whether you gave Crosley a
car. How many cars have you given away in your life, Mr. Hiss?"292

At this, the audience laughed at Hiss, the first of several times they would do that.293

Hiss said that the car had had great sentimental value to him and his wife, that he recalled
nothing about the formal transfer of the car's ownership to Crosley, that he gave it to Crosley
because it was so old and dilapidated as to be worthless, and that his memory was understandably
vague because it had all happened years ago.

But this was hard to believe, even self-contradictory. If the car had great sentimental value,
would he give it away to someone he didn’t like? Wouldn't he want it disposed of carefully, or
wouldn't he at least remember about its disposition?294 Cars were not worthless – in the mid-1930s,
1929 Fords had a resale value of about $60,295 more than a month’s wages at the minimum wage in

290
HUAC at 1105.
291
HUAC at 1151.
292
HUAC at 1097.
293
HUAC at 1115-16, 1122.
294
HUAC at 1099, 1106-07.
295
HUAC at 1099.

65
those years.296 And assuming that you merely loaned it to Crosley, would you let someone who
you knew was irresponsible drive your car around town and maybe get into an accident for which
you might be held legally liable. Surely Hiss, a careful lawyer, would have thought of that.297

Most damaging to Hiss were records showing what had actually happened to the old Ford.
You recall that Hiss said he had given the car to Crosley as part of the sublease; Chambers said that
Hiss had given the car to the Communist movement.

The records showed that what had happened to that car was very strange. On July 23, 1936,
Hiss gave the car to a car dealership, the Cherner Motor Company. Hiss received no money.298
Have you ever heard of someone giving a car to a car dealership?

Second, the records of the Cherner Company showed that, on the same day, that car was
sold to a Mr. William Rosen.299 Mr. Rosen, when called before HUAC, refused to say whether or
not he was or had been a member of the Communist Party and he refused to say anything about the
Ford.300 The address of Mr. Rosen stated on the car documents was a false one.301

Both Hiss’s gift and the later transfer to Rosen were made by the people of and through the
facilities of the Cherner Motor Company, but without creating the normal records on the Company's
books that the Company owned the car. In other words, this was an “off the books” transaction, not
the normal above-board practice of Cherner Motors.302 The papers transferring the car from Hiss to
Cherner bore Hiss’s signature, notarized by a Notary Public at Hiss’s place of work, the Department
of Justice.303

This evidence was consistent with Chambers’ story that somehow, unknown to him, the car
had been given to the Communist movement. And that Chambers knew what had happened to the
car was consistent with Chambers’ story that he was still conversant with Hiss in July 1936, long
after Hiss said he had gotten rid of Crosley – and with Chambers’ story of a long, friendly personal
relationship rather than the short, unpleasant business relationship that Hiss averred.

When confronted with this evidence, Hiss simply professed ignorance of what had happened

296
United States Department of Labor, Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938: Maximum Struggle for a
Minimum Wage, http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/flsa1938.htm (visited Aug. 25, 2013)
(federal minimum wage first set, in 1938, at 25 cents per hour).
297
HUAC at 1123.
298
HUAC at 1110-11; Second Trial, Gov’t Exh. 49.
299
HUAC at 1112; Second Trial at 928.
300
HUAC at 1209-13. Rosen testified the following day, August 26, 1948.
301
HUAC at 1125.
302
HUAC at 1113-14, 1224-29; Second Trial at 933-34.
303
HUAC at 1067-74, 1111-1126 passim; Second Trial, Gov’t Exh. 49 (Notary signature).

66
to his car.304 How did I no longer know this guy in 1935 but I signed his car over in 1936? Maybe,
he said, a year after he gave the car to Crosley, I was having a busy day at Justice working on a
brief for the Supreme Court. Someone ducked into my office and said "There’s a man in the hall,
says his name is Crosley and you gave him a car a while ago, and there's still some paperwork, so
please sign here.” And I signed. It could have all been over in 30 seconds and I completely forgot
about it. Hiss said that he had no recollection of that actually happening, but it could have
happened that way.305 Hiss got so vague that the audience laughed at him repeatedly and even his
own supporters in the audience shook their heads.306

When Hiss said he had no way of knowing that Crosley was a Communist, he was hoist on
his own petard. He had already begun what was called "the defense by reputation," that 'Look at all
the powerful people in government who have trusted me over the years. How could they have
failed to notice if I were a Communist?’ Congressman Hébert asked, if you couldn't tell whether
Crosley was a Communist, how could all the people you worked with in government know whether
you were one?307

Congressman Hébert later wrote that Hiss was “harder to pin down than a greased pig at a
country fair.”308 At the hearing, he could only snarl "You are a remarkable and agile young man,
Mr. Hiss."309 Congressman Mundt said that his wife had told him that he had earlier been taken in
by Mr. Hiss’s "suavity."310

HUAC did not hide its disbelief in Hiss, and Hiss reciprocated. When they got back to the
teeth, Nixon expressed puzzlement at Hiss’s emphasis on Chambers’ teeth and asked "Didn't you
ever see Mr. Crosley with his mouth closed?"

Hiss answered: "The striking thing in my recollection about Crosley was not when he had
his mouth shut, but when he had his mouth open."

When the Chairman chided the audience for laughing, Hiss snapped "I understood the
laughter to be at the question, not at the answer, Mr. Chairman. Maybe you or Mr. Nixon would
like to withdraw and tell your jokes."311

304
HUAC at 1117, 1122.
305
HUAC at 1118-19, 1122; see also First Trial at 2071-72.
306
Nixon II at 64; see also HUAC at 1140 (audience applause at HUAC member statement hostile
to Hiss).
307
HUAC at 1169.
308
F. Edward Hébert & John McMillan, LAST OF THE TITANS: THE LIFE & TIMES OF CONGRESSMAN
F. EDWARD HÉBERT OF LOUISIANA (University of Southwestern Louisiana 1976) at 305.
309
HUAC at 1117; see also id. at 1139.
310
HUAC at 1175.
311
HUAC at 1129.

67
 Hiss always had a plausible explanation for every point where he was tripped up. Who can
remember exactly what happened thirteen years ago, and caution (“to the best of my recollection”)
is understandable when you are under oath before hostile finder of fact that has a perjury indictment
hanging over your head if you misremember a date or detail. But Hiss was tripped up on every
detail, and had to come up with an explanation for everything. Hiss’s original story made little
sense and every established fact required Hiss to revise his story and make it more like the one
Chambers had been telling from the start.

By the end of his questioning, Hiss was willing to commit to almost nothing. When Nixon
asked him "[H]ow many times in the last 15 years have you borrowed a car from a friend for the
summer?" Hiss answered "I would want to search my recollection and the recollection of
friends."312

Congressman Mundt summed it up as follows: even by your own account, Mr. Hiss,

"You knew this man; you knew him very well. You knew him so well that
you even trusted him with your apartment; you let him use your furniture; you let
him use or you gave him your automobile. You think that you probably took him to
New York. You bought him lunches in the Senate Restaurant. You had him staying
in your home when it was inconvenient for him to stay in the apartment and made
him a series of small loans. There seems no question about that."313

"[O]n every point on which we have been able to verify, on which we have had
verifiable evidence before us, the testimony of Mr. Chambers has stood up. . . .
[Y]our testimony is clouded by a strangely deficient memory."314

Hiss was allowed to make a closing statement. He said that Chambers is a "self-confessed
liar, spy, and traitor”315 – again, Hiss equating Communism with treason. He "has . . . been
peddling to various government agencies for 10 years or so stories about me."316 Lots of
information about my private life is a matter of public record – my bird-watching hobby is in
WHO'S WHO. Chambers could have been studying my life for ten years and building a storehouse
of facts with which to fabricate a friendship 10 or 15 years ago.317

My record, on the other hand, Hiss said, is an open book. I have worked with Judges,
Ambassadors, cabinet members, and Presidents. "It is inconceivable that there could have been on
my part, during 15 years or more of public office, . . . any departure from the highest rectitude

312
HUAC at 1156.
313
HUAC at 1158-59.
314
HUAC at 1160.
315
HUAC at 1162.
316
HUAC at 1160.
317
HUAC at 1160.

68
without its being known."318

This hearing is not really about me, Hiss went on. It's about the New Deal and the
Roosevelt-Truman foreign policy. I’m the immediate target, but what’s really going on here is an
attempt "to discredit recent great achievements of this country in which I was privileged to
contribute,"319 "the finest and deepest American traditions. . . . I, too, have had a not insignificant
role in [the] magnificent achievements of our Nation in recent times."320

And, Hiss asked, who is this man who now calls himself Chambers?

"Is he a man of consistent reliability, truthfulness and honor? . . . Indeed, is

he a man of sanity?"321 "[H]is career is not, like those of normal men, an open
book."322

"My action in being kind to Crosley years ago was one of humaneness, with
results which surely some members of the committee have experienced. You do a
favor for a man, he comes for another, he gets a third favor from you. When you
finally realize he is an inveterate repeater, you get rid of him. If your loss is only a
loss of time and money, you are lucky. You may find yourself calumniated in a
degree depending on whether the man is unbalanced or worse."323

You should ask Mr. Chambers for "a complete bibliography of all his writings . . . under any
and every name he has used. . . . I would like him to be asked if he has ever been treated for a
mental illness."324

When Nixon asked Hiss if he had any reason to believe that Chambers had been treated for
mental illness, Hiss said only that he had heard rumors to that effect.325

Do you find Hiss credible? Sympathetic?

Then it was Chambers’ turn; he testified and was questioned for about one and three
quarters hours.326 Hiss took notes when Chambers was talking.327

318
HUAC at 1162.
319
HUAC at 1162.
320
HUAC at 1164.
321
HUAC at 1164.
322
HUAC at 1165. Re other uses of the word “normal” by Hiss, see Weinstein I at 61.
323
HUAC at 1165.
324
HUAC at 1166; see also 1174 re mental illness.
325
HUAC at 1167.
326
Ryan at 1, col. 8.
327
Ryan at 1, col. 8.

69
 Chambers said he had never been treated for mental illness, period.328 His testimony was
strikingly simple and forthright compared to Hiss’s – no "to the best of my recollections." He said
that he had known Hiss through 1938,329 had stayed at numerous Hiss houses numerous times –
“Mr. Hiss considered it a privilege to have a superior in the Communist organization at his
home"330 – and had collected Communist Party dues from him.331

Hébert asked him "Now, Mr. Chambers, you heard Mr. Hiss on the stand today, all day
long. What is your reaction to his denials?”

Chambers answered "Mr. Hiss is lying. . . . I would say that [his story] is 80 percent at
least fabrication."332

Chambers said "I was very fond of Mr. Hiss. . . . perhaps my closest friend."333

Towards the end of his examination, HUAC's Chairman, J. Parnell Thomas, asked
Chambers, in effect, 'we're used to seeing Communists here who are poor, or black, or Jewish, or
immigrants – people who have had a hard time in this country and whom you can imagine wanting
to burn everything down and start something totally new. But in these hearings we've seen people
like you and Mr. Hiss – native born, white, Christian Americans from good families, people who
can command good salaries in our economy – how do people like you become Communists?'

Chambers answered:

"The making of a good living does not necessarily b[l]ind a man to a critical
period in which he is passing through. Such people, in fact, may feel a special
insecurity and anxiety. They seek a moral solution in a world of moral confusion.

"Marxism, Leninism offers an oversimplified explanation of the causes and a

program for action. The very vigor of the project particularly appeals to the more or
less sheltered middle-class intellectuals, who feel that there the whole context of
their lives has kept them away from the world of reality.

"I do not know whether I make this very clear, but I am trying to get at it.
They feel a very natural concern, one might almost say a Christian concern, for
underprivileged people. They feel a great intellectual concern, at least, for recurring

328
HUAC at 1188.
329
HUAC at 1178.
330
HUAC at 1185.
331
HUAC at 1181.
332
HUAC at 1199.
333
HUAC at 1190.

70
 economic crises, the problem of war, which in our lifetime has assumed an atrocious
proportion, and which always weigh[s] on them. What shall I do? At that
crossroads the evil thing, communism, lies in waiting for a simple answer."334

Nixon asked Chambers "Do you – is there any grudge that you have against Mr. Hiss over
anything that he has done to you?"

Chambers gave an answer that still gives some people goose bumps. One newspaper wrote
that his voice “slowed close to choking”335 and another had his eyes brimming with tears.336

"The story has spread that in testifying against Mr. Hiss I am working out
some old grudge, or motives of revenge or hatred. I do not hate Mr. Hiss. We were
close friends, but we are caught in a tragedy of history. Mr. Hiss represents the
concealed enemy against which we are all fighting, and I am fighting.

“I have testified against him with remorse and pity, but in a moment of
history in which this Nation now stands, so help me God, I could not do
otherwise."337

As Chambers said these words, Hiss “looked up, shaking his head as if in amazement.”338 Into the
hands of what kind of psychopath have I fallen? Why me, Lord, why me?

And that's how the hearings ended, at 8 in the evening.339 Hiss’s credibility had been badly
damaged, but mostly about his friendship with Chambers. Chambers had come across as weird, but
supported by all the circumstantial evidence from dependable sources. But on the crucial question
– whether Hiss had been a secret Communist in the underground when he worked for the
government – that was still one man’s word against the other’s.

And that's where the whole scandal might have died – Hiss and Chambers might have
returned to their well paying jobs in New York City and life would have gone on – but for a few
other events.

First, a few days after the marathon HUAC hearing, one more bit of light was shed on the
Hiss-Chambers relationship in the 1930s by a newspaper, THE BALTIMORE NEWS-POST. The
newspaper revealed that in April 1936, Hiss had signed a contract to buy a farm in Westminster,

334
HUAC at 1203-04.
335
Ryan at 3, col. 1.
336
Spy Probers to Quiz ‘Red Underground Chief’ Next, WASH. DAILY NEWS (Aug. 26, 1948) at 5,
col. 1.
337
HUAC at 1191.
338
Ryan at 3, col. 1.
339
Chambers I at 695; HUAC at 1206.

71
Maryland, and had paid a security deposit on it. The deal fell through in late May, however, and
Hiss never bought the farm. In early 1937, Mrs. Chambers bought the same farm – not the farm
they lived on in 1948, which they bought later.

When this was all told to Chambers, he said 'Now I remember, . . .' He said that he hand
Hiss had talked about wanting a place in the country, and that he and the Hisses had visited the farm
(in the Model A Ford) in 1936. Mrs. Hiss didn't like the place, saying it was in "a nasty, narrow
valley."340 Later, Mrs. Chambers bought the place. Chambers’ recollection was supported by many
letters and notes in the files of the realtor for the farm’s owner.341

How did Chambers come to see and buy the same that Hiss had almost bought a year earlier
– an obscure parcel miles away from where either of them lived? Either there was a coincidence so
great as to be incredible, or Chambers was the one telling the truth – that he and Hiss were on
cordial terms in mid-1936, a year after Hiss had testified their relationship had all but dissolved.

Second, Alger Hiss got in one more statement of his case. He sent HUAC a long letter with
a recitation of famous names – Innocence by Association, Nixon called it. Hiss’s letter also struck
less subtly at a theme he had hinted at before – that there was something funny about Chambers.
Four times in his 14-page letter, Hiss used the term "somewhat queer" to refer to Chambers’ story,
saying things like 'I find Mr. Chambers’ accusations to be somewhat queer.'342

So, you're Hiss and Chambers. What do you do now? Go back to work at your great upper
middle class job and hope everyone goes on to something else? Alger Hiss did not.

14. HISS MAKES THE MISTAKE OF OSCAR WILDE

Statements made to HUAC and other Congressional Committees are immune – “privileged”
– from suit for defamation. If, when I’m testifying to Congress, I call you a child molester (and
that’s not true), you may not sue me for defamation. Recall that in the Commodore Hotel
confrontation, Hiss had challenged Chambers to repeat his accusations in a forum where Hiss could
sue him. Well, Meet the Press, which was a Sunday night radio show in 1948, asked Chambers to
appear on it.

What could Chambers do? Decline, and appear to lack confidence in his testimony? He
accepted, and there he was, on nationwide radio on the night of August 27. The first question,
asked by Ed Folliard of the WASHINGTON POST, was "Are you willing to say now that Alger Hiss is
or ever was a Communist?"

340
HUAC at 1257.
341
Weinstein I at 64-68; see generally Second Trial at 162 et seq.
342
Weinstein I at 79, 177-78.

72
 Chambers answered "Alger Hiss was a Communist and may be one now" and later added
that "I do not think Mr. Hiss will sue me for slander or libel."

When Chambers was asked whether Hiss, in addition to being a Communist, had ever
committed overtly treasonous acts, Chambers answered ominously "I am only prepared at this time
to say he was a Communist."343

Chambers thus threw the gauntlet down at Hiss’s feet.

What was Hiss then to do?

A month went by during which Hiss made no public response. By the end of that, even
liberals were saying that Hiss “should put up or shut up.”344

Hiss’s delay was caused in part by having a hard time choosing who would be his lawyer in
his suit against Chambers. There were so many superlative volunteers. Unlike many defendants in
Cold War security cases, Hiss had an embarrassment of riches when it came to lawyers. Among the
attorneys who had given Hiss advice by this time were:

- his patron at the Carnegie Endowment, John Foster Dulles of Sullivan & Cromwell (later
Secretary of State under President Eisenhower);
- another future Secretary of State, Dean Acheson of the firm that is now Covington &
Burling; he had gone to summer camp with Hiss when they were both children345 and was
close to Alger’s brother Donald;346
- another Carnegie trustee, John W. Davis of Davis Polk & Wardwell, former Solicitor
General of the United States, US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Democratic candidate
for President in 1924, and the man who argued more cases before the Supreme Court than
any lawyer except Daniel Webster;
- William Marbury, founder of the largest law firm in Baltimore (Piper & Marbury), a
childhood friend of Hiss, occasional diplomat for the Truman Administration and an
Overseer of Harvard; and
- Edward McLean of Debevoise, Plimpton & McLean, a fellow alumnus of Hiss from
Harvard Law School,347 one of the leaders of the New York corporate trial bar and later a

343
Weinstein I at 69; Whittaker Chambers Meets the Press, American Mercury (Feb. 1949) at 153-
60; http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1949feb-00153?View=PDF&apages=0027; see generally
Rick Ball & NBC News, MEET THE PRESS: 50 YEARS OF HISTORY IN THE MAKING (McGraw Hill
1998) at 14-15.
344
Goodman at 259.
345
Kempton I at 17.
346
Chace at 196.
347
Weinstein I at 174.

73
 federal judge in New York City.

This was indeed a Dream Team.

Hiss eventually chose Baltimore and Mr. Marbury, and sued Chambers for defamation in
federal court in Baltimore on September 27.348 The plan was that Marbury would be lead counsel
and do the standing up in court in Baltimore, and McLean would do a most of the back office
preparation in New York.

Chambers was represented by the distinguished Baltimore law firm of Semmes, Bowen &
Semmes, and his lead counsel on the case was Richard Cleveland, son of the former President
Grover Cleveland.349 An excellent junior on Chambers’ team was William D. Macmillan. Also,
TIME MAGAZINE felt that it had so much on the line that it retained counsel, the famous New York
law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Chambers responded to Hiss’s suit with characteristic rhetoric: "I welcome Mr. Hiss’s
daring suit. I do not minimize the audacity or the ferocity of the forces which work through him.
But I do not believe that Mr. Hiss or anybody else can use the means of justice to defeat the ends of
justice."350

So, Hiss’s lawsuit kept the scandal going. A final event that kept the scandal from dying –
indeed, it caused it to explode beyond all expectation – was the election of 1948, in November. The
Hiss Case did not figure much in the Presidential campaign. The Republican candidate, Thomas E.
Dewey, stayed away from the Communist issue in general351 – he had tried it in his 1944 campaign
against President Roosevelt and it hadn’t worked.352 And in 1948, Dewey’s chief foreign policy
adviser was John Foster Dulles, Hiss’s patron at the Carnegie Endowment. This fact, by the way,
makes it very unlikely that slamming Hiss was a big Republican plot in 1948 – Hiss was too close
to John Foster Dulles, the next Republican Secretary of State.

President Truman had mentioned Hiss and Chambers briefly in his campaign, in which he

348
Weinstein I at 173 (slander); William Marbury, The Hiss-Chambers Libel Suit, 41 MD. L. REV.
75 (1981) (libel).
349
Weinstein I at 181.
350
Weinstein I at 173.
351
Stanley I. Kutler, ABUSE OF POWER: THE NEW NIXON TAPES (Free Press 1997) at 138; James G.
Hershberg, JAMES B. CONANT: HARVARD TO HIROSHIMA & THE MAKING OF THE NUCLEAR AGE
(Knopf 1993) at 426.
352
Thomas Fleming at 458-59; James T. Patterson, GRAND EXPECTATIONS: THE OXFORD HISTORY
OF THE UNITED STATES, 1945-74 (Oxford Univ. Press 1996) at 182; Richard Norton Smith, THOMAS
E. DEWEY & HIS TIMES (Simon & Schuster 1982) at 433-34. Some Republicans other than the
Presidential candidate did want ‘the Communist issue’ to figure in the campaign, however. See,
e.g., Kessler at 172.

74
lambasted the Republican Congress. He had said something like 'These Republicans in Congress, if
you are a Communist traitor they make you an Editor at TIME MAGAZINE, and if you're a
distinguished diplomat, they say you're a Communist traitor."353 And, more generally, Truman
wanted to abolish HUAC.354

When the people voted, in the greatest political upset in American history, against all the
predictions of the experts, Harry Truman was re-elected. Not only was HUAC's sworn abolisher
returned to the White House, which meant that the Justice Department and the FBI would remain in
Democratic – that is to say, pro-Hiss – hands. But also, the Democrats gained almost 80 seats in the
House, regaining control, which meant that Democrats would control HUAC. HUAC would go
back to finding Communists outside of government, like in Hollywood and labor unions.

In particular, the Republican delegation on HUAC was almost destroyed. The Republican
Chairman, J. Parnell Thomas, was shortly to go to jail for payroll padding. The ranking
Republican, Carl Mundt, was one of the few Republican success stories, but he was elevated to the
Senate. Congressmen Vail of Colorado and McDowell of Pennsylvania were defeated for re-
election. When all was said and done, only one Republican member of HUAC would be returning,
and that was Richard Nixon. That’s more bad news for Chambers – the levers of the Justice system
and HUAC in Democratic hands and all his allies but one gone. Nixon seemed the only “Friend in
High Places” he had left.355 And the minority party in the lower house is not a very high place.

Back to Hiss’s libel suit against Chambers. In preparation for the trial of his libel suit,
Hiss’s lawyers decided to do something called ‘taking Chambers’ deposition.’ A deposition is a
pre-trial interview that one side has with a witness for the other side, usually held in a lawyer's
office. The witness is questioned, usually by the other side's attorney, and gives answers under
oath. Its purpose is to find out exactly what the witness is going to say and this prevent surprises at
trial.

Hiss’s lawyer William Marbury began "deposing" Chambers on November 4. Chambers’

lawyers were present, but Hiss was not. Chambers volunteered a great deal of damaging
information about himself, so much of it that by the end of the first day he had just reached the
point where he had moved to Washington in 1934.356 On November 4, 1948, at the end of the first
day of Chambers’ deposition, Marbury, sounding rather routine, demanded that Chambers “produce
. . . any correspondence, either typewritten or in handwriting . . . from any member of the Hiss
family . . . which he has received at any time . . . any papers signed by Mr. Hiss which may be in
his [Chambers’] possession.”357

353
See Chambers I at 707; see also Griffith at 171.
354
Morgan II at 322; Weinstein I at 14.
355
Ralph de Toledano (Ed.), NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND: THE WHITTAKER CHAMBERS-
RALPH DE TOLEDANO LETTERS: 1949-60 (Regnery 1997) at 101.
356
Weinstein I at 182.
357
Weinstein I at 182; Depos at 208.

75
 On the morning of Sunday November 14, Chambers sent a telegram to his wife’s nephew,
the lawyer Nathan Levine (remember him from Chapter #3?), saying “ARRIVING AROUND
ONE. PLEASE HAVE MY THINGS READY. WHIT”358 and got on a train to New York. When
Chambers reached Brooklyn that afternoon, the two of them went to Levine’s mother’s house. Ten
years before, Chambers had given Levine a filled manila envelope and Levine had hidden it in his
mother’s apartment (where he also lived then), in a bathroom, in a linen closet that had been a
dumbwaiter shaft. That Sunday afternoon in 1948, Levine removed the envelope and the muck that
had accumulated on it over ten years.

Chambers took the envelope into the kitchen as Levine cleaned up the dust in the
bathroom.359 When Chambers saw the contents of the envelope, he exclaimed something like
“Holy Cow!”360

On November 16, Mrs. Chambers began being deposed – after waking up at 5:30 in the
morning to milk the cows.361 Her depo continued the morning of the 17th. Marbury asked her
some questions harshly. This was back when women were ‘The Fair Sex” and you were supposed
to be polite to them, but Marbury did not conceal her disdain for her.362 She had painful memories
of fear and extreme poverty at the time of Chambers’ break with Communism. They had so little
money they had pawned most of their possessions and they couldn’t afford gas for the car, so Mrs.
Chambers had to give up her job. Recalling all this, Mrs. Chambers broke down and cried for
several minutes.363

After lunch, Chambers’ deposition resumed and he began by saying that he wished to make
statement. In particular, he said, he had been asked by Mr. Marbury if he had anything on paper
that he had ever received from the Hiss family. Chambers said that he now wished to answer that
question.

Professor Younger speculates that when Chambers said this, Mr. Marbury's heart stopped,
but I’m sure he didn't show it.364

One can only imagine Marbury’s feelings when, next, Chambers produced a filthy brown
manila envelope and pulled from it a bunch of papers.

Chambers stated:

358
Weinstein I at 184.
359
First Trial at 375 et seq., 808 et seq.; Second Trial at 856-57.
360
HUAC testimony of Nathan Levine, quoted in Carr at 119 n.84.
361
Depos at 527-28.
362
Depos at 546-47.
363
Depos at 698-700.
364
Younger Book at 537.

76
 "I have certain papers in Mr. Hiss’ handwriting and certain other papers.

“I was particularly anxious, for reasons of friendship, and because Mr. Hiss
is one of the most brilliant young men in the country, not to do injury more than
necessary to Mr. Hiss.

"Therefore, I have carefully avoided testifying to certain activities of Mr.

Hiss at any place or time heretofore.

"I found when I looked . . . certain documents which I had forgotten I had put
by. . . . The documents . . . reveal a kind of activity . . . which is somewhat different
from anything I have testified about before. . . . [My decision to produce them here
today] is merely the last act of the turmoil that has been going on for a decade, . . .365

"I have been very careful to make a distinction in testifying as to Mr. Hiss’
activities with the Communist Party, but in the year 1937 a new development took
place in the Washington apparatus . . . .

“Sometime in 1937 [my boss in the underground, a man with the cover
name] J. Peters introduced me to a Russian, [whom] I subsequently learned was one
Colonel Bykov. . . . I arranged a meeting between Alger Hiss and Colonel Bykov.
For that purpose, Mr. Hiss came to New York, where I met him. . . . [Colonel
Bykov] raised the question of procuring documents from the State Department, and
Mr. Hiss agreed.

“Following that meeting Alger Hiss began a fairly consistent flow of such
material as we have before us here. The method was for him to bring home
documents in his brief case, which Mrs. Hiss usually typed. [I]t became a function
for her and helped to solve the problem of Mrs. Hiss’ longing for . . . Communist
activity. Nevertheless, there occasionally came to Mr. Hiss’ knowledge, certain
things, or he saw certain papers which he was not able to bring out of the
Department for one reason or another . . . [and] notations, in his handwriting are
notes of such documents, such information, which he made and brought out in that
form."366

The papers were four small notes in Alger Hiss’s handwriting, on State Department
notepaper, and 65 pages of typewritten documents that were evidently re-typed copies or summaries
of State Department papers, mostly sent from foreign places to Washington. They were dated

365
Depos at 717-19.
366
Depos at 739-42; Second Trial circa 153, 207.

77
roughly January through March of 1938.367

As a lawyer who has taken depositions, I feel great sympathy for Mr. Marbury at this
moment. Through no fault of his own, he had conducted what must be the most cataclysmic
deposition in history. (Although, of course, it was totally sensible for him to hear this in his office
for the first time and not in front of the jury; that why we have depositions.) For years I wondered
what was going through the poor man’s mind at that moment. Then, through one of his old
partners, I found a memoir he left of his role in the Case. He says that he immediately recognized
Alger's handwriting – they had been friends since childhood. And he immediately realized – this
lawsuit is over.368 Marbury later said that if it had been known that Chambers had those papers, no
lawyer in the United States would have advised Hiss to sue Chambers.369

Mr. Marbury was smart enough to realize that the documents meant, in addition to his
lawsuit being over, and Hiss was in more trouble than ever. This was no longer a case about
whether Alger Hiss, entry level bureaucrat, had been a parlor pink, engaged in “a rather silly and
extreme form of fellow-traveling,” during the mid-30s.370 This was now about whether an aide to
two Presidents and friend of Supreme Court Justices and cabinet members, had been a spy for
Communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union, America’s greatest enemy. And the Senior Editor of
the nation’s pre-eminent weekly news magazine has just confessed to being a Soviet spy! We’re
talking espionage, treason, high crimes against the state. As important and controversial as the
Case had been up to now, it had just become ten times more so.

Marbury called up Hiss and later gave him the bad news face-to-face.371 Marbury
recommended, and Hiss agreed, that the documents be turned over to the Justice Department.372
The next day, Marbury informed the Justice Department's Criminal Division, and its lawyers and
Hiss’s and Chambers’ all met with the judge who was supervising the case in Baltimore. The
Justice Department requested a two week freeze on all activity in the suit and asked for what is
called a "gag order," which prevents anyone from saying anything about what has happened. This
was needed, Justice said, to give it time to conduct a full investigation. It will take us two weeks,
and then, or sooner, we will get back to you. Everybody agreed to the stay and the gag order.373

Chambers and his attorneys expected to get a call from the FBI the next day and he’d start
telling them all about how the spy ring worked. But they waited, and waited, and waited. Twelve

367
For earlier intimations by Chambers that he had seen government documents or received
government information from Hiss, see Depos at 299-300, 307, 312-15, 317.
368
Marbury at 94.
369
Weinstein I at 187.
370
Rebecca West, Book Review of Alistair Cooke’s A GENERATION ON TRIAL (“West Book
Review”), UNIV. CHICAGO L. REV. 662, 669 (1950).
371
Second Trial at 2999, 3497.
372
Weinstein I at 190.
373
Second Trial at 3501-02.

78
days later they had heard nothing at all; silence from the Justice Department. Chambers began to
suspect a Democratic Party cover-up, that Hiss would get off scott free, and maybe even he
Chambers would be indicted for perjury. According to one count, Chambers had denied under oath
sixteen times that he or Hiss had been involved in espionage or that Hiss had ever given him
anything. Chambers began to consider what options remained to him.

If you were Chambers, what would you do? The tide seems to have turned against you.
How would you shake things up?

15. CUE THE MARX BROTHERS!

December 1 and 2 were the most dramatic, action-packed days in the history of this Case.
Some events are worthy of The Marx Brothers or The Three Stooges.

Several people have given accounts – some of them, several accounts – of what happened
during these 4 hours. They all disagree about many details of exactly what happened exactly when,
but they agree on the general narrative. They are Chambers, Nixon, Stripling, and a Pulitzer Prize
winning journalist named Bert Andrews.374 Andrews had covered the hearings for THE NEW YORK
HERALD TRIBUNE, then the leading liberal Republican paper. He had written articles that were
critical of HUAC and won him a Pulitzer Prize.375 But he had come to believe that Chambers was
telling the truth. Well, here is what happened.

The morning of December 1 began with Robert Stripling sitting at his desk in HUAC’s
offices. He was preparing to leave the government at the end of the month and go back to Texas
and make some real money in the oil business. Stripling was reading the WASHINGTON POST, in
particular the column called The Federal Diary. It normally features gossip that only people in
Washington would be interested in, like who has the inside track to be the next Ambassador to
Peru. There was a single paragraph entry in the column that said: "The Hiss-Chambers fight is
slated to make the news again shortly. . . . Some very startling information on who's a liar is
reported to have been uncovered" in the Hiss-Chambers lawsuit.376

Stripling went “Wow!”

Then, entering Stripling’s office from stage right is a young lawyer for TIME's outside

374
Bert & Peter Andrews, A TRAGEDY OF HISTORY: A JOURNALIST’S CONFIDENTIAL ROLE IN THE
HISS-CHAMBERS CASE (Luce 1962) at 174-80; Chambers I at 751-76; Nixon I at 46-56; Nixon II at
67-69; Stripling & Considine at 138-50; Stripling Statement passim; Stripling Interview passim;
Weinstein I at 198-207, 289-93; GJ at 3769 et seq. (Stripling), 3835 et seq. (Chambers).
375
Weinstein I at 13.
376
Weinstein I at 198; Jerry Kluttz, The Federal Diary, WASHINGTON POST (Dec. 1, 1948) at B-1.

79
counsel, Nicholas Vazzana. He was in Stripling's office to conduct some research. At one point,
apropos of nothing, Vazzana said to Stripling "If I were Alger Hiss, I would . . ." and he made a
cutting motion across his throat.377

Stripling asked him what he meant, and Vazzana repeated his words, "If I were Alger Hiss, I
would" and again made as if to slit his throat.

Stripling puts two and two together and says to himself ‘Chambers has produced proof
against Hiss in the Baltimore defamation suit. Wow!!’

Then Stripling read another Washington newspaper, the tabloid DAILY NEWS, and saw a
United Press story claiming that the Justice Department was going to take no action in the Hiss-
Chambers controversy.378

Stripling put all this together and concluded that (a) Chambers did, after all, have proof
against Hiss; (b) he had produced it in the libel lawsuit; and (c) the Democrats were covering it up.
Stripling had his “Holy cow!” moment.379

Stripling dragged Vazzana, I imagine by his necktie, to the office of one member of HUAC
who was still in Washington, Richard Nixon.

A word about Nixon's frame of mind at this time. He had been re-elected smashingly, but
seems to have gone into one of his periodic bad moods. The Republicans had lost Congress, the
promised destroyer of HUAC was back in the White House and, Nixon felt that he had failed in the
Hiss hearings. His grab for the brass ring had not quite succeeded and the nation was laughing at
him. To lift him out of his funk, he and Pat had booked passage on a Caribbean cruise, to start the
next evening from New York. Picture it – Dick and Pat on The Love Boat.380

Stripling bursts into Nixon's office with Vazzana in tow and says “Boss, good news!”
Vazzana repeats his throat-slitting performance. Stripling said words to the effect of "Don't you
see, Congressman, what this means? It’s good news! Chambers has the goods on Hiss, we can
blow away any cover-up, make you a national hero, and save HUAC. We haven't got a moment to
lose."

Question: You're Nixon - what do you do?

Do you say “Yippee! Vindication of Chambers, and of my judgment, and proof of treason
by Democrats!” You would not be Richard Nixon.

377
Weinstein at 199; Stripling Statement at 10 (I think has this occurring on November 30).
378
WASHINGTON DAILY NEWS (Dec. 1, 1948) at 10.
379
Weinstein I at 198-99.
380
Younger Book at 539.

80
 He asked Vazzana to be more specific. Vazzana said he couldn't, there was a gag order.
Nixon exploded. ‘I don't think Chambers has anything, I don't think anything has happened. And,
if Chambers has produced something, that means Chambers lied to me. We asked him time and
again if he had anything from the Hisses and, under oath, he swore he didn't. If he now says he has
something, that means he committed perjury again and again – what a wonderful star witness! You
say it’s good news. Do you have any bad news?

‘And it also means that that son of a bitch Chambers held out on me. I stuck my neck out, I
went out to his smelly farm and stepped in his sheep dip and we looked deep into each other's eyes
and had all these heart-to-hearts, and I trusted him. I risk my career for this guy and become a
national laughing stock, and this is what I get. The guy was lying to me, holding out on me, the
whole time. He had the goods on Hiss all along and could have helped me, but no-o-o-o-o-o . . . .’

Vazzana appears to have left – he’s one of the few actors in this Case who never wrote
anything – and Stripling tried to calm Nixon down. The two went out to lunch, during which
Stripling said that Nixon cussed him out in language he had never heard before or since – and
Stripling came from Midland, Texas. It was so bad I didn't touch my food, Stripling said.

But he prevailed on Nixon to drive out into Maryland to see Chambers. They brought along
Bert Andrews, the HERALD TRIBUNE journalist, and a stenographer named Rose Purdy (another
cameo role-player who has not left any memoir). Late that afternoon they burst into Chambers’
house. In the living room, there was a stuffed raven on the wall and a German Bible open on a
table. They all asked Chambers something to the effect of “What the hell is going on?!!”
Chambers looked out the window and made a typically portentous utterance like "I was afraid
something like this would happen." They asked him again: ‘OK, you’ve had your moment of Zen.
What the hell is going on?!!”

Chambers replied that he couldn't tell them, because there was a gag order.

Then Stripling or Nixon – again, both claim to have done the quick thinking – asked him
what I call The Sixty-Four Dollar Question: Do you mean to say that if you had produced proof
against Hiss, you could not tell us about it? (Wink.)

Chambers, perhaps with a wink, said yes.

Then Stripling or Nixon asked Chambers The Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Question:
Assuming that you did produce something (wink) and it is covered by a gag order, do you have
anything else, something more that is not covered by the gag order and that therefore you may tell
us about and can give us?

Chambers said yes, and it will be an even bigger bombshell . . . than the first bombshell that

81
I can't tell you whether or not it exists.381

Then, or in some versions hours later, Nixon and Stripling discussed how to get whatever it
was and to keep it out of the Justice Department's reach. They concluded that, under our
Constitution’s Separation of Powers Doctrine, if what Chambers had came into the official
possession of HUAC, which was part of the House of Representatives, the legislative branch of
government, it would be beyond the reach of the Justice Department, which was part of the
executive branch of government, or the courts, which are the judicial branch of government. This
meant they needed to give Chambers an official Congressional Subpoena Duces Tecum before he
gave them whatever he had. That meant a trip back to Washington to get a subpoena and find
someone in the House with the authority to sign it.382

Chambers said he was going to be in Washington the following morning. He would go

about his business during the day, and that afternoon he would come by HUAC. By then you will
have figured out this subpoena business. You can give me the subpoena, and then I can drive some
HUAC people out to my farm and give him what I have . . . in response to the subpoena.

They agreed to do that, and Nixon, Stripling, Bert Andrews and Rose Purdy prepared to
leave. On the way out, Chambers apparently tugged at Stripling’s sleeve and asked him if he had “a
good photographic expert.” Stripling said, “I have one on my staff.”383

According to Stripling, on the way back Nixon still snarled that he didn't think Chambers
had anything, he and Pat hadn't had a vacation in three years, he'd already postponed it too many
times, he was sick of Washington, sick of HUAC, sick of you (Stripling), and so on. He was going
on The Love Boat come hell or high water.

Historians have had fun with Nixon's decision to go on The Love Boat with Pat anyway.
Some have trusted Nixon and though he that he simply didn't want to disappoint Pat again. That’s
certainly plausible. Some have attributed it to Nixon's desire to stage a dramatic return from a
vacation. Others give it a more Machiavellian twist – that if Chambers really had a bombshell
Nixon could stage a dramatic return and if Chambers had nothing Nixon would be far from 'the
scene of the accident' and wouldn't look any more foolish than he already felt.

For whatever reason, the next morning, December 2, as planned, Nixon left for New York to
go on The Love Boat with Pat. At about the same time, Chambers was up in Westminster and had
one foot out the door, when he realized that he and his wife would be off the property all day. Hiss
investigators had already been visiting his neighbors, trying to find out dirt about Chambers.
Chambers thought that Hiss’s minions could come in here and ransack the house and find my
bombshell, and it will disappear forever. I've got to hide it. Where?

381
Nixon II at 67; Weinstein I at 201.
382
Weinstein I at 201-02.
383
Stripling Statement at 13.

82
 Behind the farmhouse, there was a strawberry patch had been invaded by a vine of
pumpkins. So Chambers went out back, picked a little green pumpkin, cut it from the vine, took it
in the farmhouse, hollowed it out like we all do before Halloween, put his bombshell in it, and
replaced the little green pumpkin in the backyard so that it rested inconspicuously among the others.
And he left for Washington.384

Chambers picked up his subpoena at HUAC about 2 pm and was back there a few hours
385
later. Stripling, who had spent all the previous night setting up a Hasty Pudding operation to
develop and enlarge films, was exhausted, so two HUAC investigators, Donald Appell and William
Wheeler, got in a car and followed Chambers north to Westminster. They arrived at his farmhouse
around 10:45 pm.386 The temperature was in the mid-30s; it was pitch dark.387

Chambers told the HUAC men to leave their car lights on and disappeared into the darkness
behind his farmhouse. He re-appeared, having been unable to find what he was looking for. Then
they went into the farmhouse. Chambers searched unsuccessfully for a flashlight that worked –
some things don’t change. Then he turned on an outside light that illuminated the back of the
house. Chambers led the HUAC guys to the back of the house and to the pumpkin vines. At some
point during what happened next, one of the HUAC men looked at the other and said “What is this,
Dick Tracy?”388

Chambers began kicking or picking up the pumpkins. Finally, he picked one up, took off its
top, and extended it to HUAC staffer Wheeler, saying "Here is what you’re looking for, here is
what you want."389

Wheeler reached in and pulled out – perhaps we should take a break now. No?

Wheeler pulled from out the pumpkin five rolls of camera film. Everyone calls it microfilm,
but it was just ordinary, store-bought camera film.390 There were two short rolls of developed film,
with little postage-stamp sized images on them. They were rolled together, with wax paper and a
rubber band around them to keep off the pumpkin goo.391 And the pumpkin also contained three
little metal canisters, which is what camera film used to come in. You took the canisters to the drug
or camera store and they developed it for you. Each canister contained a roll of film. On two of the
canisters Chambers had pulled from the pumpkin, the top was screwed on and secured with black

384
Chambers I at 751-53; First Trial at 694 (green); Second Trial at 757-58, 833 et seq.
385
GJ at 3466; see generally Second Trial at 205 et seq.
386
GJ at 3470.
387
GJ at 3538.
388
See, e.g., Stripling at 146.
389
Chambers I at 754; GJ at 3471, 3539; Second Trial at 206.
390
First Trial at 608.
391
GJ at 3472; Second Trial at 829, 835.

83
tape. The third was dented at the top and had no tape around it.

The pumpkin was returned to the ground. There was, at some point, additional chatting with
Chambers saying that the third, dented, canister might have had some light that got into it, and he
said that all the film in the canisters had had pictures taken on them ten years before, but the film
had never been developed. I don’t know if you can get a picture off film ten years old, he said.
This is now your problem, not mine.392 Have a nice trip back to Washington.

These five rolls of film became known as the Pumpkin Papers, a phrase that became a slang
way for decades to describe secret and explosive documents.

The HUAC men said their leave ten minutes after they arrived393 and began the long drive
back to Washington. The next morning, at HUAC’s offices, they gave the films to Stripling and he
started his people working on the films. He had obtained the use of a developing lab in The
Veterans Administration.394 A friend, a government employee, who was a camera bug and had a
lab at home did the enlarging and printing of the images.

The film in the canister with the dented top and no tape had indeed been struck by light and
no pictures could be developed from it. From the two other films in canisters, which had to be
developed ten years after the pictures were taken, only blurred images could be developed.395 But
the two rolls of developed films, when the images on them were enlarged, showed fifty-eight pages
of State Department documents dating from January 9-13, 1938.396 One of them was marked
"Strictly Confidential for the Secretary.”397 Now Stripling and the HUAC staffers had their “Holy
cow!” moment.

Nixon was on The Love Boat with Pat, having dinner at The Captain’s Table, when he
received a telegram from Stripling:

"Second bombshell obtained by subpoena. Case clinched. Information amazing.

Heat is on from press and other places. Immediate action appears necessary. Can
you possibly get back?"398

Nixon showed it to Pat and she exclaimed “Here we go again!”399

392
GJ at 3471-72, 3539-40, 3544.
393
GJ at 3476.
394
Second Trial at 836.
395
GJ at 3481-82, 4160.
396
Some documents attached to these are dated in 1937. See, e.g., Second Trial, Gov’t Baltimore
Exhs. 50, 53.
397
See Second Trial, Gov’t Baltimore Exh. 55, Frame53; GJ at 3780-82.
398
Nixon I at 48; Weinstein at 206.
399
Nixon I at 48.

84
 A later telegram from the journalist Bert Andrews said:

"Documents incredibly hot. . . . Link to Hiss seems certain. . . My liberal friends

don't love me no more. . . . Nor you. . . . But facts are facts and these facts are
dynamite. . . . Love to Pat. . . . Vacation-Wrecker Andrews."400

Nixon contacted the Defense Department and demanded an immediate escort back to the
mainland. There are various accounts of exactly how this was accomplished. According to one by
Professor Younger, the Department sent a destroyer to pick him up and it drew up alongside The
Love Boat. A sort of canvas sling, called a Breech’s Buoy, which is a large sack with holes cut for
the legs, was strung with rope between the two ships and Nixon climbed into it and was pulled from
The Love Boat to the destroyer. Professor Younger used to say 'You know, people on cruise ships
have cameras, and somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, in a family's photo album there is a
photograph of the blue sky, the beautiful Caribbean, The Love Boat, the destroyer -- and halfway in
between them, with his ass in a canvas sling, is Richard Nixon, giving his stiff V sign with both
hands raised stiffly above his head. I want to see it before I die!’401

I have never seen such a picture.

Nixon returned to Washington in a series of boats and planes, his every stop attended by
more of the brouhaha of which the news media is capable. When a reporter mentioned the
“Pumpkin Papers,” Nixon asked “What is this, a joke?” When what Chambers did was explained to
him, he wondered “if we really might have a crazy man on our hands.”402

When Nixon reached Washington, he called what would undoubtedly be the most
spectacular press conference ever held by a freshman Representative, vindication beyond his
wildest dreams. A few minutes before it, Nixon went through something that may have made him
wonder whether going into public life is really worth the effort.

Stripling was outside Nixon's office, talking with the 300403 newsreel men and other
journalists who were setting up their cameras to record Nixon's words. One f them casually asked
Stripling if he had checked the serial numbers on Chambers’ filmstrips. Stripling asked why, and
the newsman said that every roll of camera film had a serial number on it, that there was a man in
Washington named Mr. Lewis, who worked for Kodak was sort of their liaison with the law
enforcement community. Mr. Lewis had a book and, if you told him the serial number on your

400
Nixon I at 48-49.
401
Younger Book at 540-41.
402
Roger Morris, RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON: THE RISE OF AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN (Henry Holt
1990) at 472.
403
Gellman at 232.

85
film, he would look in his book and tell you what year the film was made in. This would be a way
to double-check the accuracy of any story you'd been told about when pictures on the firm were
taken. Like, if Chambers’ documents were dated 1938, you'd expect Mr. Lewis to tell you the film
was made in 1937 and maybe 1938.

Stripling thought it was worth doing and he walked into Nixon's office, where I imagine
Nixon standing in front of a mirror, straightening his tie and checking every hair in preparation for
his encounter with greatness. Stripling called Mr. Lewis and gave him the serial numbers off the
films.

Mr. Lewis checked his book and blandly informed Stripling that the film were manufactured
in 1945404 – which meant, of course, that they couldn't have been in existence in 1938 and could not
have taken pictures of State Department documents in that year. The films were phonies, palmed
off by Chambers. Stripling said “Are you sure?” and Mr. Lewis said something like “Of course, it’s
in the Book. The Book is never wrong.”

Stripling then informed Nixon of this fact and, according to which account you read, Nixon
either exploded or imploded. He moaned and howled that he was ruined, Hiss was telling the truth,
I knew there was something crazy about Chambers, this is all your fault, Stripling, you got me into
this, if I go down in flames I’m taking you with me and that lying, smelly son-of-a-bitch Chambers
– all the sort of things you'd probably expect to hear from a bad boss in the same situation.

Stripling said, calm down Congressman. This can’t be right. Everything else Chambers has
told us has checked out. And some of those documents are marked confidential, and everyone
knows that confidential documents are burned 24 hours after they come to the State Department. A
confidential document from 1938 wouldn’t have been in existence in 1945 to be photographed.
There’s got to be a sensible explanation for this and we’ll find it if we just stay calm.

I imagine Stripling saying all this to Nixon as he’s trying to pry Nixon’s hands from around
his neck. Stripling had the bright idea to call Chambers. Nixon got on the phone and asked him
what he would say if Kodak said that the films were made in 1945. Chambers paused and said
something like "God must be against me."

Nixon asked him – one imagines with barely contained fury – to repeat himself. Chambers
said again “God must be against me."

Nixon replied, probably with a few four letter words, that Chambers would be testifying
before HUAC that evening and he'd need a better answer than that by then.405

404
Nixon I at 54; Weinstein I at 290. But to Grand Jury, Nixon said that Lewis said 1947, GJ at
4164-66, and Stripling & Considine at 149 says 1946.
405
Nixon I at 55.

86
 Nixon hung up and said words to the effect of ‘Well, I've got to go out there and tell the
press it's all a mistake, that Hiss wasn’t what we thought he was, that Chambers deceived us. It will
be the biggest crow-eating performance in the history of Capitol Hill, but I've got to go through
with it.’

Nixon may have been contemplating the rest of his life doing fender benders in Whittier, but
the phone rang again. Stripling picked it up. It was Mr. Lewis from Kodak, who said he had made
"a little mistake." It turns out – who knew? – we used the same serial numbers were used in 1945
and . . . in 1938.

Stripling said “Thank you very much,” put down the phone, and, depending on what version
of this scene you read, Stripling and Nixon spent the next minute letting out yells of joy or waltzing
each other around the room or just breathing deeply.406

Just before they walked out to the press conference, Nixon said "Poor Chambers. Nobody
ever believes him at first."407

Back to Nixon and Stripling just after Mr. Lewis of Kodak has corrected his “little mistake.”
I don’t know about you, but if I had just been through what they had with the serial numbers, I
would need to lie down for a while. But moments later Nixon and Stripling were talking for the
news reels and for history.

Nixon had saved his career, saved HUAC, saved Chambers from possible ruin, and had put
Alger Hiss in big big trouble. And Robert Stripling had ended his government service with a bang.

But what did they forget to do? Call Chambers and tell him everything was OK! Someone
called Chambers hours later and told him everything was OK. But Chambers was so exhausted
emotionally by the whole scandal that . . . Well, what do you suppose he did?

Chambers tried to commit suicide. He bought a large can of cyanide at a seed store, went to
bedroom in his Mother’s house, opened the can, putting his head next to it with a towel over both
the can and his head so he would inhale the fumes. But he woke up the next morning, vomiting but
alive.

These dramatic scenes conclude the Washington and Congressional phases of The Hiss-
Chambers Case. The action now moves to New York City and to the courts. No more Marx
Brothers and Three Stooges. It’s time for Perry Mason – and some of the trial lawyers you’re about
to meet are as good as Perry Mason.

406
Nixon I at 55; Weinstein I at 291.
407
Weinstein I at 291.

87
 16. THE GRAND JURY

We have things called Grand Juries in this country. Grand juries are supposed to make sure
that prosecutors can’t put someone through the agony of a big-league criminal trial just because
they want to, for personal or political or corrupt motives. The prosecutors have to convince a
Grand Jury that the person to be indicted is likely guilty.

Grand juries operate in secret. They consist of about 20 people chosen from the community.
Government lawyers present to the Grand Jury evidence and testimony about possible crimes. A
Grand Jury may, by majority vote, indict someone for a serious federal crime – forcing that person
to go through a trial by a so-called small or ‘petit’ jury of 12 people. You cannot be tried for a
serious federal crime in the United States unless a Grand Jury indicts you.

People are usually surprised that Hiss was charged with perjury rather than espionage or
treason. Charges for the latter were, I think, off the table for both Hiss and Chambers. To convict
for treason, you need two witnesses to the same overt act of treason,408 and Chambers was the only
witness to Hiss’s alleged acts of treason, and vice versa. As for espionage, the last espionage that
Chambers could testify to was in early 1938. In that year, the statute of limitations for espionage in
peacetime (and we were at peace in 1938) was 3 years. The statute ran out in 1941 and no
prosecution of either man for espionage was possible in 1948.409

But one or both of them could be questioned by a Grand Jury and, if it thought he was lying,
could be indicted for committing perjury (a fancy word for lying) to them. This, incidentally, has
always offended some Hiss fans as an end-run around the statute of limitations for espionage, but
there it is. And you are not supposed to commit perjury before a Grand Jury – it’s fair to make that
a crime.

The Grand Jury involved in the Hiss-Chambers Case was not created just to get Alger Hiss.
Far from it. There was a Grand Jury in New York City that had been sitting off and on for 18
months hearing testimony about secret Soviet activity in the United States.410 It had heard an earful
about Soviet espionage, both in business and in government, and about all sorts of other shady or
illegal Soviet activity in this country. Unless the Grand Jury thought that most everyone who had
testified to it for a year and a half were coordinated psychopaths, the Grand Jury would take
seriously the possibility that Chambers was telling the truth.

Both men had testified to the Grand Jury before Chambers dropped his bombshells. Hiss
had testified to it in March 1948, before the HUAC hearings.411 He denied any Communist

408
U.S. Constitution, Article 3, section 3.
409
G. Edward White, Alger Hiss’s Campaign for Vindication, 83 B.U.L. REV. 1, 7 n.29 (2003)
(“White Article”).
410
Evans & Romerstein at 235.
411
GJ at 2652.

88
sentiments or activity, any friendships with people he knew to be Communists, and any
acquaintance with Chambers.412 Chambers had testified to the Grand Jury in October, after the
HUAC hearings and after Hiss sued him, but before he produced his bombshell documents.
Chambers had described The Ware Group and sworn that no espionage had occurred.413

One problem was that were are now in early December, and the Grand Jury would cease to
exist at the end of December 15. If this Grand Jury was going to indict anybody, it would have to
hear and analyze a lot of testimony very quickly.

Chambers and Hiss and a lot of other people began walking up the steps of the federal
courthouse in lower Manhattan, past a media frenzy, and appearing before that Grand Jury almost
daily. As I said, Chambers had testified to the Grand Jury in October and denied under oath that
any espionage had occurred. When he appeared before them again, on December 9,414 they let him
have it. By “they” I mean not only the government prosecutors, but sometimes also individual
members of the Grand Jury. (This was not a passive grand jury, by the way, not putty in the
prosecutors’ hands.)

‘In October, Mr. Chambers, you were in this room and you denied under oath that there was
any spying. Now, you swear to us under oath that there was spying. Why should we not indict you
for perjury? Why did you lie to us? Why should we believe you now? Mr. Chambers, you’ve got
some explaining to do.’

Chambers answered that he had wanted not to testify to HUAC; they had subpoenaed him.
He decided to expose that there had been secret Communist activity in the government, but he
didn’t want to ruin anyone’s life. So, he did not want to accuse anyone of any crime. (Belonging to
the Communist Party and discussing politics with other Party members – The Ware Group – is not a
crime.)

To do more harm than was necessary, he told the Grand Jury, would be “the ultimate
perfidy. . . . If the result is technically perjury, I can only say that my mind is at peace.”415 But
when Hiss sued me, then I realized that Hiss and the Communist movement were out to destroy my
life. I had to tell the whole story.416

"I think there are . . . two kinds of men, one of whom believes that God is a god of justice,
and the other believes that God is a god of mercy. I am so constituted that I will always range
myself on the side of mercy.”417 After raking Chambers over the coals, the Grand Jury bought his

412
GJ at 2654-69.
413
GJ at 3844-45; Weinstein I at 189; First Trial at 462-70.
414
GJ at 3825-73.
415
GJ at 3845.
416
See also Weinstein I at 188-89.
417
GJ at 3829.

89
explanation.

The Grand Jury subpoenaed Congressman Nixon, who appeared with the Pumpkin Papers in
his hands but would not turn them over to the Grand Jury or the Justice Department. He reminded
the enraged Justice officials that Chambers had produced the films in response to a subpoena from
the House of Representatives. That’s a separate branch of government from Justice; you have no
subpoena authority over the House, Nixon said. He told the Grand Jury, very politely, that they
could see the films and examine them, but the films would remain in his hands.

The Grand Jury formally ordered him to hand over the films. He politely declined, risking a
contempt citation from a federal judge down the hall and even prison: “regardless of a ruling of the
court, I will not part with the films. If the films go into evidence, I go with them. . . . [I]f it is the
desire of the court to take the films from me, if necessary by force, it will have to be done in that
way.”418

Ultimately, it seems a compromise was agreed to.419 But before that, Justice threatened
Nixon with jail and there was a lot of shouting and yelling beyond earshot of the Grand Jury.420 I
imagine Nixon saying to Justice and the FBI: you want to arrest a sitting Representative for
upholding the Constitutional prerogatives of the legislative branch of government? When is your
next oversight hearing before the House? And read the Constitution – who writes your budget? As
for me, bring on the paddy wagon and, as you lead me away in handcuffs, I’ll be yelling at the top
of my lungs that you Democrats are throwing me in prison for trying to expose a spy ring that all
the geniuses at Justice and the FBI totally missed for ten years. You’re trying to cover up treason!
You want that? Go ahead, make my day.’

There also testified before the Grand Jury an FBI expert on typed documents, a man named
Raymond Feehan. Feehan testified that he had examined the 65 pages of typed documents
produced by Chambers and certain other documents that Hiss and the FBI had found and that were
definitely typed on the typewriter that the Hisses had owned and kept at home in the late 1930s –
which I will call The Hiss Home Typewriter. Feehan gave his expert opinion that the two sets of
documents were typed on the same typewriter. Because the latter documents were concededly
typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter, the documents Chambers produced must have been typed on
The Hiss Home Typewriter.

This, in my opinion, was absolutely crucial to any indictment of Hiss. You might not want
to hang a man based solely on the testimony of Whittaker Chambers, but Feehan gave expert,
scientific corroboration for Chambers’ testimony.421

418
GJ at 4209-10.
419
GJ at 4420-21; Andrews at 199; Tanenhaus at 322.
420
Nixon I at 56-60.
421
GJ at 4243-52.

90
 The Grand Jury called in Hiss and now it was he who had some explaining to do. The
prosecutors asked him: if you got this guy Chambers/Crosley out of your life in 1935, how does he
have 65 pages of documents typed on your home typewriter in 1938? And, if you weren’t a spy,
how do 65 pages of documents, obviously prepared for spying, get typed on your home typewriter?

Hiss offered the first of three explanations that he offered over the years. He said that
Chambers was “not a man of sound mind”; that Chambers had somehow gained access to The Hiss
Home Typewriter in 1938 and, using documents that he got from his real spies in the State
Department, typed the 65 documents himself on The Hiss Home Typewriter, acting for vengeful
motives that only a psychiatrist could fathom.422 Chambers must have snuck into his Hiss’s house
without being noticed, often and long enough to type up sixty-five pages, and then exited as silently
as he had come. Or, Chambers broke into the house, stole the Hiss’s typewriter, did his typing at
his leisure somewhere else, and then re-entered the Hiss home and put the typewriter back, which
no one had noticed missing.423

To one Grand Juror’s exclamation that this was a fantastic story, Hiss replied simply and
powerfully that “Mr. Chambers is a fantastic personality.”424 He told the Grand Jurors that
“ordinary legally logical methods are not adequate to explain this case or Mr. Chambers . . . [and]
his strange, troubled personality.”425 He offered the Grand Jury the testimony of a psychiatrist.
The government lawyer cut him off with a simple question – can the psychiatrist explain how 65
pages of spy documents came to be typed on your home typewriter, Mr. Hiss? Hiss said no. The
Grand Jury had no interest in the psychiatrist. ‘Nice try, Alger. We’re keeping our eye on the
ball.’426

A minute later, a government attorney asked Hiss “At any time, did you, or Mrs. Hiss in
your presence, turn any documents of the State Department or of any other Government
organization, or copies of any documents of the State Department or any other Government
organization, over to Whittaker Chambers?” Hiss answered “Never,” adding with lawyerly
precision the exception of the certificate of title to the old Ford that Hiss said he gave Chambers.427
Hiss repeated the same denial the following day.428

That same following day, December 15, the last of the Grand Jury’s life, Hiss was asked
“Can you say definitely that you did not see [Chambers] after January 1, 1937?” and he answered
“Yes, I think I can definitely say that,” excepting recent events starting with the scene in the

422
GJ at 4400.
423
GJ at 4401-05.
424
GJ at 4405.
425
GJ at 4422.
426
GJ at 4423-24.
427
GJ at 4426; First Trial at 72-73.
428
GJ at 4490.

91
Commodore Hotel.429

Hiss repeated his theory that Chambers was a mentally ill master burglar and typist.430
According to one account – and this is not in the official transcript – Hiss said “Until the day I die, I
shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got into my house to use my typewriter” and at least one
member of the Grand Jury laughed.431

The government attorneys finally tossed Hiss a few life preservers. Were there “some
personal happenings that may be in your family” or “any relationship between you and Mr.
Chambers” that would cause Chambers to want to frame you? Hiss said “None whatsoever.”432

“Q. You would not be the first man in the history of this world who might have testified
falsely to shield his wife. . . .

“A. . . . I am not, and Mrs. Hiss needs no shielding in this matter.”433

In the last hours of its life, the Grand Jury voted to indict Alger Hiss for two counts of
perjury, his two alleged perjuries being his statements quoted above: denying passing government
documents to Chambers and denying seeing Chambers after January 1, 1937. The government later
fleshed out these two counts a bit by alleging that the turning over of documents occurred in
February and March 1938, that Chambers was not authorized to receive the documents Hiss turned
over to him, and that the documents were secret, confidential, and restricted.

Chambers was not indicted; neither was Mrs. Hiss.

The following day Hiss was brought into court and the indictment was read to him. He
pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ to both counts. For the first time in the scandal, Hiss looked “solemn, anxious
and unhappy” in the words of one journalist.434 He was no longer in control and, for the first time,
he knew it.

Before we get to the trials, one final note about the disaster enveloping the lives of Hiss,
Chambers, and their families.

During the Grand Jury proceedings, Hiss separated from the Carnegie Endowment.435 Parts

429
GJ at 4489-90; First Trial at 79.
430
GJ at 4490-91.
431
Weinstein I at 318.
432
GJ at 4491.
433
GJ at 4432: see also id. at 4401 (“I’m not trying to protect Mrs. Hiss. She needs no
protection.”).
434
Weinstein I at 319.
435
Weinstein I at 295.

92
of the Establishment had begun to cut him loose.

Chambers, after his document production became public, resigned from TIME MAGAZINE.
He said: “When Time hired me in 1939, its editors knew that I was an ex-Communist; they did not
know that espionage was involved. . . . Now . . . I have been called upon to expose the darkest and
most dangerous side of Communism – espionage. . . . I cannot share this indispensible ordeal with
anyone.”436 TIME stated: “Against the admitted disservice to his country of a decade ago must be
set the service we are convinced he is trying to perform for his country now.”437

People at TIME had laughed at Chambers’ eccentricities in the office – his carrying a pistol,
moving to a different hotel every night. They now understood that, at least for a time, his fears
about his personal safety were based in fact – when you run a Soviet spy ring and then defect, you
fear for your life. Now that his whole story had come out, Chambers’ ex-colleagues looked back on
him more sympathetically.438

Next time, we talk trial strategy for each side. If you can’t wait for the trial to begin, go on
to Chapter 18 or 19.

17. YOU BE THE LAWYER:

TRIAL STRATEGY: HOW STRONG IS YOUR CASE?

Let’s talk trial strategy.

Here are the charges against Alger Hiss: that he lied to the Grand Jury when he swore that:

1) he never turned over to Whittaker Chambers, without authorization, confidential

State Department documents or copies of such documents; and

2) he did not see Chambers after January 1, 1937.

To simplify a bit, the charges are that he lied when he denied passing confidential government
documents to Chambers in 1937 and 1938.

Let’s start with The Prosecution. It must prove – and this is a criminal trial, so it must prove
beyond a reasonable doubt – that Alger Hiss passed confidential documents from the US
government to Chambers without authorization in 1937 and 1938. Under what is known as “The
Perjury Rule” in federal courts, the testimony of just one witness (Chambers, obviously) is not

436
Griffith at 175.
437
Griffith at 175.
438
Griffith at 148, 176-77.

93
enough. You need the testimony of two witnesses or one witness plus independent corroboration.

Well, you have Chambers and the documents. If they are believed, and if the documents are
considered to be independent of Chambers, then you have one witness plus corroboration. Maybe
more independent corroboration can be Hiss’s admission that the 4 handwritten documents are in
his handwriting and that the typewritten documents were typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter – if
he admits that.

What else might be corroboration of Hiss’s lies (if they are lies)? Maybe all of his whoppers
about his relationship with Chambers, which can only be explained by his desire to conceal his
document-passing. These are his incredible hesitation in recognizing Chambers, and all the stuff
about the alleged sublease of the 28th Street apartment and the alleged gift of the old Ford with the
sassy little trunk – and, as we shall see, other incidents that occurred between the two men and that
appear inconsistent with Hiss’s story of a short, unpleasant business relationship with “George
Crosley” that ended in 1935. If Hiss is lying about those aspects of his dealings with Chambers,
would that corroborate Hiss lying about passing Chambers the State Department documents? True,
Hiss lying about the Ford doesn’t show directly that he spied, but why would he lie about the Ford
except to cover up the spying?

And maybe Mrs. Chambers can remember Hiss and Chambers being together – them seeing
each other – after January 1, 1937. She could be your second witness on Count 2.

So, the elements of a Prosecution victory are there – if the jury believes Chambers and his
wife.

The Prosecution has weaknesses, too. Chambers has many unattractive characteristics.
These are his plain old strangeness, his many denials under oath that there had been any spying, and
his love of melodrama. How do you tamp down suspicions that Chambers, even if he’s not making
it all up or he’s not crazy, is given to exaggeration? Maybe he can’t resist brightening the pastel
shades into primary colors, so that you just cannot trust him completely?

I think another challenge for The Prosecution is to overcome the natural revulsion against
Chambers as a former Communist, a traitor, and perhaps worse, a turncoat and a stool pigeon
ratting out the man who had been his best friend. To do this, maybe you could say what
Congressman Hébert said at HUAC, that “I don’t care who gives the facts to me, whether a
confessed liar, thief, or murderer, if it is facts.”439 There is also Congressman Hébert’s reminder
that some of our greatest saints were pretty bad sinners before they became saints. I’m not
nominating Chambers for sainthood, I say he’s telling the truth. And who is the bigger rat, the
traitor who has confessed and reformed or the traitor who has not?

An alleged weakness in The Prosecution’s case, and Professor Younger thought this was a

439
HUAC at 952.

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major one,440 is how to explain that Chambers, until he produced the documents at the deposition,
said that he left Communism in 1937. But, according to Younger, suddenly at the deposition in
Baltimore, Chambers produces all the documents dated 1938 and – hey, presto – the date of his
break with Communism is suddenly 1938. Does this make you suspect that, maybe Hiss was in
The Ware Group as Chambers initially claimed, but he was not a spy. Chambers made up the spy
story to defeat Hiss’s libel suit, using documents he got from other people in the State Department
in 1938 How to explain Chambers’ change from saying the last year he was a Commie was 1937 to
1938?

Chambers can try to explain that in a variety of ways. My saying early on that my
Communist life and relationship with Hiss ended in 1937 was part of my shielding Mr. Hiss. This
was another hint to Hiss that I had only told about The Ware Group and I had not mentioned the
spying.

Or, and this answer was favored by Murray Kempton, it is ridiculous to try to put a single
date, or maybe even a single year, on as slow and subjective a process as disillusionment with an
ideology; it’s like asking for the date you fell out of love or the moment you decided you hated your
job, or the moment you changed religious faiths or your politics. There may be a “last straw”
moment, but it’s usually proceeded by a long, slow disenchantment.441

It’s unfortunately true that, on this matter, Professor Younger is simply wrong. It is not true
that Chambers said he quit the underground in 1937 until he produced the documents, after which
he said 1938. As early as his August 25 testimony to HUAC, months before he produced the
documents, Chambers had moved his break to “early 1938.”442 Also, if you read very carefully
what Chambers says, much of the time, from the very start – and as far as I know I’m the first
person to notice this – what Chambers said happened in 1937 was that he lost faith in Marxism, he
decided to break with the underground, and what happened in 1938 was the he actually made his
break with the underground.443 Those two statements are completely consistent, like saying that
you decided that you didn’t like your job in 1937 but you didn’t hand in your resignation and quit
until 1938 (when you’d lined up a new job).

440
Irving Younger, Was Alger Hiss Guilty?, COMMENTARY (Aug. 1975) (“Younger Article”) at 34;
Younger Book at 563-64.
441
Murray Kempton, REBELLIONS, PERVERSITIES, & MAIN EVENTS (“Kempton II”) (Random House
1994) at 102.
442
HUAC at 1079 (last saw Hiss “about 1938”), 1176 (was a CP member “until about 1937 or
1938, early ‘38”).
443
HUAC at 564-65 (mentions both years), 573 (he ceased to be a communist because of his
convictions in 1937), 662 (knew Hiss until 1937), 1079 (last saw Hiss about 1938), 1176 (“I was a
member of the Communist Party from 1924 until about 1937 or 1938, early ‘38”), 1178 (“I broke
with the Communist Party in early 1938”), 1184 (saw Hiss through 1937, until he broke with the
party), 1190 (last saw Hiss at end of 1938), 1285 (“In 1937, when I had definitely decided to break
with the Communist Party”), 1289 (saw Hiss cordially into 1937 or the beginning of 1938).

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 Chambers, at the trials, gave a simpler explanation for any change in testimonies from 1937
to 1938. He simply said he was mistaken at first, that his memory had failed him. I forgot, it’s that
simple.444 And hope the jury believes you.

So, we can sum up The Prosecution’s strategy at the first trial as emphasizing:

- Chambers as a Prodigal Son, a reformed sinner; he did some really bad things, but in the end
he did the right thing

o who is worse, the sinner who has reformed and tried to atone for his sins, or the
dishonest Goody Two Shoes, the sinner who’s still sinning and denying that he ever
sinned?

- all the corroborating evidence:

o the documents – typed and handwritten, and the photographed Pumpkin Papers

 perhaps Hiss’s admission that they are in his handwriting or typed on The
Hiss Home Typewriter

o all the evidence about the Ford with the sassy little trunk and other regularly kept
business and government records showing a close relationship between the Hisses
and the Chamberses lasting into 1937

 Hiss is obviously lying about this, too, and he can only be lying about these
things to facilitate his lying about the spying

- never stop asking the Defense to explain how documents that were obviously intended for
espionage got typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter.

How about the Defense strategy? What are your strong points and weak ones?

The first lawyer who really sank his teeth into defending Alger Hiss, William
Marbury, said that he faced the lawyer’s bête noir – how do you prove that something did not
happen? (Prove to me that you did not rob a bank ten years ago – can you account for your
whereabouts every hour of every day that year with film and eyewitnesses? Of course not.)

First, you may want to rely on Hiss’s reputation. Build it up with his resume and, you
hope, lots of distinguished persons who will be “character witnesses” – who will testify that
they knew Hiss and also knew lots of people who knew Hiss and that, among them, he had an

444
First Trial at 340-44; Second Trial at 493.

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excellent reputation for honesty, loyalty, and integrity. Such a man is unlikely to be a spy or
to commit perjury.

Second, you must destroy Chambers. Bring out every bad deed he ever committed.
He’s a rat, a back-stabber, a man who ruined the life of his best friend by making public all
the little details of the friend’s family life. Paint him as a fanatical anti-Communist, just as
he used to be a fanatical Communist, a traitor, and a spy. If you can, prove that he is
mentally ill. Or, if not that bad, at least he’s so given to adding details here and there to a
story that his testimony cannot prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Are you going to
destroy a man with Alger Hiss’s background based on the word of Whittaker Chambers, with
his background?

Among the relatively minor points to add to The Hiss Defense is that if Hiss is guilty,
he has acted from the start in a way that is insane – coming before HUAC and the Grand
Jury, suing Chambers, telling his lawyers to turn the typed and handwritten documents over
to the Justice Department, always seeking a greater investigation of the truth.

The Hiss Defense also decided, apparently, that only fine upstanding citizens, Men
and Women of Distinction, would testify as witnesses for their side. The Defense was
approached from time to time by pornographers and other denizens of the lower orders of
society who offered up dirt on Chambers. But The Hiss Defense did not call them as
witnesses. Only ‘Top Drawer’ ladies and gentlemen will be called into court by Alger Hiss.
This will draw all the more the distinction between the proper, good, admirable Alger Hiss
and the solvency low life weirdo Chambers.

A final precept followed by The Hiss Defense was, consistent with what Hiss told
HUAC, to express nothing but hatred and contempt for Communism and Communists. That
Communism is protected free speech, that maybe I had a “Parlor Pink” phase when I was
younger and went a little overboard (lots of people do something foolish in their 20s) – no
hint of such an excuse would ever come from The Hiss Defense. Alger Hiss is, and always
had been, a 1000% patriotic American, a boring middle-of-the-road Democrat, and all the
Commies and Commie-symps are testifying for The Prosecution. If you read Hiss at HUAC
and his lawyers at the trials, he is pre-channeling Joe McCarthy.

But there are problems with this defense. Having an excellent reputation is not
inconsistent with spying or with betraying your country. We can all name a few people who,
out of idealism, have broken the Law of Man in order to serve what they thought was a
Higher Law or a Greater Good. Think of the Founding Fathers of this country, all of whom
were traitors to the United Kingdom. Think of Dr. King in Birmingham jail. He broke the
law.

As to Chambers’ unattractive aspects, the Grand Jury saw all of them – in fact, he lied
to them under oath and they heard him vaporize about Gods of Justice and Gods of Mercy –

97
and they believed him.

The Defense, of course, need not put on any evidence at all. Hiss is innocent until
proven guilty and The Prosecution has the burden of proof. But, if you want to advance your
own explanation of the facts, Hiss has to explain a lot of things that are difficult to explain.
First is Hiss’s admitted relationship with Chambers (including renting him an apartment at
cost and giving him a car). Isn’t Alger Hiss the kind of person who only associates with The
Top People, whose friends are all Dean Acheson and Felix Frankfurter, Justice Holmes and
Franklin and Eleanor?445 Everything you know about Hiss leads you to believe that if he saw
filthy, smelly, semi-toothless Chambers coming, he would cross the street to avoid him. Hiss
has no history of befriending down-at-the-heels freelance journalists, renting them
apartments at cost and giving them cars. What could possibly attract him to Chambers? Is
there any explanation for the acquaintance that Hiss admits to other than a shared belief in
Communism?

The hardest things the Defense has to explain is Chambers’ possession of documents,
obviously prepared for spying, that came from Hiss – the four handwritten notes and all the
documents on the films that crossed Hiss’s desk and bear his initials. And, worst of all, the
typed documents if they are proven to have been typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter. The
‘Chambers came down the chimney and typed them up himself’ story didn’t work before the
Grand Jury.

Concerning the four handwritten notes and the documents on the films, The Hiss
Defense decided to tell the jury that someone other than Hiss gave them to Chambers.
Chambers said he had another spy in the State Department, and it must have been him – “Mr.
X” – who came into Hiss’s office when he wasn’t there and filched the little notes from his
scrap basket.446 Or maybe Chambers himself snuck in to State and did the filching – the State
Department in the late 1930s, however incredible it may seem today, had no security. They
used to leave the doors open at night so that people could come in and go to the bathroom on
the way home.

The fact that the State Department leaked like a sieve, however, hurts Hiss’s defense,
too. A few of Chambers’ documents from the State Department did not pass through Hiss’s
office in the normal course of business, and Hiss would like to be able to say that that means
he cannot have given those documents – or any other documents in the same batch with them
– to Chambers. But if the State Department was really an ‘open door’ kind of place,447 Hiss
could have easily obtained such documents by walking into other people’s offices when they
were out. And while it’s possible that Chambers snuck into State and took the documents
himself, he’d have had to buy some nice clothes and take a bath. Moreover, J. Edgar Hoover

445
See Weinstein I at 557.
446
GJ at 4492-93.
447
First Trial at 1898-901, 2156-59; see also Galbraith at 307; Tony I at 94.

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or my Grandmother could have walked into the State Department in 1938 and walked out
with an armload of documents; but the single person who had by far the easiest access to all
the State Department documents that Chambers produced was Alger Hiss.

A final problem for The Hiss Defense, and I think another big one, is to explain what
is Chambers’ motivation to lie. There was no legal requirement that Hiss as the defendant in
a perjury case explain the accusing witness’s motive, but the Defense has to explain it if it’s
going to tell a convincing story.

One theory was that Chambers formed an alliance with the Republican Party at the
start of the 1948 Presidential campaign and sought to bring down Hiss in order to injure
President Truman and the Democratic Party in general. Hiss was a tempting target. He was
not too big to bring down, but he was big enough to make a loud noise when he hit the
ground. He had been associated with the parts of the Roosevelt-Truman foreign policy –
Yalta and the UN – that were hot buttons with the right wing.448

But this theory has problems. The Republican Presidential campaign in 1948 had
avoided controversial issues like Communism in government. And the fact that Chambers’
story helps the Republicans doesn’t mean that it’s not true.

Sure, Chambers is a fanatical anti-Communist. It’s possible for fanatical anti-

Communists to tell the truth. But a bigger problem with this defense is that Chambers can be
a fanatical anti-Communist by staying right where he is at TIME MAGAZINE, writing unsigned
cover stories in complete anonymity (no risk of perjury and libel suits, no cross-examination)
and without exposing his own past misconduct. In 1948 Chambers had everything he always
wanted all his life – a marvelously paying job that gave all his skills an outlet, a perfect
platform for his views, a happy family life, and the concealment of his past misconduct.
Why would he lie in public and risk losing all of that?

Chambers seemed to have no rational motive to lie. So, The Hiss Defense began to
think of what irrational motive he might have to lie. Maybe he is crazy. Chambers
sometimes seems like he’s transmitting at strange frequencies. One of Hiss’s lawyers, named
Harold Rosenwald, speculated that Chambers was a homosexual (the same as being crazy
back then), that Chambers had lusted after the handsome Hiss. When Hiss un-friended him,
Chambers sought revenge years later by making false accusations. Rosenwald wrote:

“The psychiatric theory has been criticized because it may be regarded as an

unjustified smear of Chambers as a homosexual. Surely we intend to smear
Chambers in any event. I have no objection to such smearing and hope that it will be
very thoroughly and effectively done. But I see little difference between smearing

448
Weinstein I at 402.

99
 Chambers as a homosexual and smearing him as a liar, a thief, and a scoundrel.”449

Is Chambers crazy? Shortly before the first trial, Hiss’s lawyer Edward McLean went
to the Chambers’ farm in Westminster. He asked Chambers if he had anything else he had
been given by Hiss. Chambers produced a piece of cloth from a chair that Chambers said
Hiss had given him.450 I can’t help imagining Chambers holding the cloth like a holy relic,
the finger of a saint, and Ed McLean saying “Ohhhh kaaaaay” and edging towards the door.
But, strange as Chambers is, there’s all the circumstantial evidence supporting his story of a
long relationship with Hiss, and there are all those documents.

These are the dilemmas of The Hiss Defense.

The last things in this Chapter: I want to describe two important events that occurred
not long before the first trial.

From the moment Chambers produced the typed documents at the deposition in
November, everyone had been looking for The Hiss Home Typewriter. Dozens of FBI
agents looked for it. About six weeks before the first trial, Hiss’s lawyer Edward McLean
did what the mighty FBI had been unable to do. He found what everyone agreed was the
typewriter the Hisses had had and kept at home in 1937 and 1938 – The Hiss Home
Typewriter. The typewriter Ed McLean found was an “office” model manufactured in the
Chicago suburb of Woodstock, Illinois, in 1929 by the Woodstock Typewriter Company. It
bore the serial number N230099.

Here is the history of The Hiss Home Typewriter (as best I can make it out). The
Woodstock Typewriter Company manufactured it, probably in the second or third quarter of
1929. Not long after it was made, it was purchased by an insurance partnership in
Philadelphia, one of whose partners was Mrs. Hiss’s father, a Mr. Fansler.

When Mr. Fansler retired in 1931, he took the Typewriter with him and gave it to his
daughter, Daisy. It appears that she had it for a short time and that Alger and Priscilla Hiss
got it in 1932.451 It was with the Hisses for about five years. The Hisses gave it away to two
black teenagers in Georgetown, who were sons of their cleaning woman, Claudi Catlett. The
kids’ names were Raymond Sylvester (nicknamed “Mike”) and Perry (nicknamed “Pat”), the
so-called “Catlett Kids.” The Catlett Kids did odd jobs for the Hisses and helped them move
within Georgetown.452 The Hisses gave The Catlett Kids The Hiss Home Typewriter
sometime in late 1937 or the first half of 1938. Exactly when The Catlett Kids got it

449
Weinstein I at 403.
450
First Trial at 1035; Second Trial at 485-87.
451
GJ at 3910; Weinstein I at 431; First Trial at 2284.
452
Raymond/Mike was 27 in 1949, making him 16 in 1938. Weinstein I at 466; First Trial at 1679-
80, 1706, 1731, 1759.

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becomes extremely important.

The Catlett Kids had the Typewriter for several years in the Catlett family home in
Georgetown, at 2728 P Street. What they did with it, as we will learn, is rather funny. Then,
in or around 1940, it was briefly in the possession of Perry Catlett’s wife Ursula,453 and then
came into the possession of a Catlett sister, Burnetta. She used it in school.454 She was being
raised by, and was living with, a Dr. Easter, in a house in Washington that was owned by a
man named John Marlowe.455 Burnetta kept the Typewriter in the house. Dr. Easter died in
early 1945 and, around then, Burnetta moved to Detroit456 and left Typewriter in John
Marlowe’s house.457 John Marlowe left it out in the back yard, even in the rain.458 A relative
of his, Vernon Marlowe and his wife, took the Typewriter459 and, in February 1945, gave it to
a man named Ira Lockey.460 Lockey was a Washington trucker, junk dealer, and night
watchman461 and took the Typewriter as part payment for moving services he provided the
Marlowes. By the way I assume Marlowes and Lockeys are black; I know they were
complete strangers to the Hisses and Chamberses.

Lockey got The Hiss Home Typewriter in 1945 and his daughter used it in typing
462
class. Then one of his grandchildren used it and then it came back to him and, it seems,
remained in his possession into the late 1940s.463

After months of off-and-on detective work by Donald Hiss, Hiss’s lawyer Ed

McLean, and Raymond Catlett in late 1948 and early 1949, Woodstock 230099 was found in
Ira Lockey’s possession on April 16, 1949.464 McLean bought Woodstock 230099 from
Lockey for $15.465 I wonder if Mr. Lockey asked himself what all the fuss was about.

I must add a few background notes. First, we are not talking about today’s throw-
away society where we get a new smart phone every year. That a 20-year old typewriter was
in use in 1949, especially among poor people, is totally believable. No one had money to

453
Second Trial at 2220.
454
First Trial at 1648, 1672, 1687-89, 1722-24, 1740-41, 1763-64, 1769; Second Trial at 2171-72,
2222-23, 2358, 2373.
455
First Trial at 1687, 2478-81.
456
First Trial at 1671.
457
Second Trial at 2174.
458
Second Trial at 2125.
459
Second trial at 2174.
460
First Trial at 1793-94; Second Trial at 2125.
461
Second Trial at 2123.
462
Second Trial at 3787-88.
463
Second Trial at 2125-27.
464
First Trial at 1692-1701, 1792-93, 1798-1800; Second Trial at 2127.
465
Weinstein I at 410-17, 432 (footnote); First Trial at 1791 (night guard).

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buy new typewriters in the Depression of the 30s, and in the War years very little was
manufactured for civilians. By 1949 the post-War boom was just taking off. I remember
used typewriter stores in midtown Manhattan as late as the mid-1960s.

I must add something else personal here. I once met Edward McLean, when I was
about 15 and he was a federal Judge in Manhattan. He was a friend of my first step-father
and came to our house for cocktails one evening. He made an indelible impression on me,
but I couldn’t name it until I went away to college and saw my first W.C. Fields movie.

McLean was impressive, very talkative, highly intelligent but seeming very laid back,
charmingly relaxed– country smooth, I think the expression is. Ed McLean could talk a dog
off a meat truck. I can just imagine him getting Lockey to part with this typewriter – and for
only $15!466

By the way, the Hisses said that in the 1930s they had several typewriters in addition
to the Woodstock (a name they could not remember for a long time), and they said they
occasionally borrowed other typewriters from friends and neighbors. The Hisses’ alleged
bad memory about all this troubled William Marbury, and he wrote them a letter to that
effect.467 This letter is a big red flag to me as an attorney – this is what you do when you
sense that your client is lying, you’re afraid he’s going to get in big trouble – not just for
what he did in the past but for the lies he’s telling now – and you’re afraid that you may be
charged as his co-conspirator, and you want to create a paper record that you had nothing to
do with whatever shady business he’s engaged in now.

That’s enough about the famous typewriter – for now.

The final event I want to describe before the trial occurred in January 1949. It tells
you what lots of people were thinking at the time. Onto the stage of this drama walks a man
whose name will be instantly recognizable if you are a very senior citizen – Dean Acheson,
the personification of the haughty Northeastern White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite, son of
the Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut, boyhood summer campmate of Alger Hiss, partner in
the super-prestigious Washington law firm now called Covington & Burling, Undersecretary
of State, and in January 1949, nominated by President Truman to be Secretary of State.

In confirmation hearings before the Senate (not HUAC), Acheson was asked his
opinion about the whole Hiss-Chambers Case, especially because lots of people thought that
he and Alger Hiss were non-identical twins who had been separated at birth. Acheson comes
on stage twice during this Case and plays a role sort of like the Chorus in ancient Greek
dramas, saying what lots of people in the audience were thinking.

466
First Trial at 1792.
467
Weinstein I at 196, 303.

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 What Acheson said was roughly as follows. Before I tell you Congressmen what I
think of the Case, let me lay some facts on the table. I am not close friends with Alger Hiss,
although everyone thinks we are non-identical twins who were separated at birth. He worked
in the State Department at the same time I did and was briefly under my supervision, but we
seldom had much contact – I was only Acting Under-Secretary when I was his boss and was
frequently away at conferences. But I am close friends with Donald Hiss – whom you may
remember Chambers had said was in The Ware Group but not sufficiently developed for
more serious underground work.468 Donald Hiss, said Acheson, is my friend, and my
friendship is not easily given or easily withdrawn, and he is my partner in the practice of law,
with all that the term partner implies. You never know anyone completely, we all have been
disappointed, but if Donald Hiss has ever done anything disloyal to the United States, I will
be the most surprised and disappointed person in the world. Acheson did not say the same
about Alger.

Having laid those facts on the table, let me answer your question about what I think
of this case. Acheson asked that they go off the record, which they did, and it seems that
they went through Alger Hiss’s conduct, and then Chambers’, on the assumption that each
was lying. Acheson seems to have commented that whichever of them is lying started out by
acting irrationally and then – by telling ever more lies and seeking an investigation that can
only reveal him as such and ruin his life – which one of these men is lying has been behaving
in a way that leads you to doubt his sanity. Acheson said, and he spoke for many people at
the time, “One has a feeling that there is something here that one does not understand. . . . It
seems to me that there must be something which has not yet been brought out, that there is
some other fact in this situation which we do not yet know.”469

Acheson was confirmed as Secretary of State.

Next, a brief review the major characters at the first trial whom you have not yet met.

18. THE LAWYERS, THE JUDGE, AND THE JURY

The first trial of Alger Hiss began on May 31, 1949, in the federal courthouse on Foley
Square in lower Manhattan in New York City.

The government's prosecutor at both trials was a youngish man named Thomas Murphy.
Murphy was 6 foot 4; it was said that his tailor was Omar the Tent Maker and that Omar ordered
cloth for Murphy not by the yard, but by the acre. Prosecutor Murphy used to say that he was the

468
Second Trial at 150.
469
Dean Acheson, PRESENT AT THE CREATION: MY YEARS IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT (Norton
1987) at 250-52; Beisner at 289-90; Chace at 195; Weinstein I at 408-09.

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less famous brother of Johnny Murphy, a famous relief pitcher for the New York Yankees.

Hiss retained as his trial lawyer at the first trial Lloyd Paul Stryker, totally forgotten today
but probably the best criminal defense lawyer in America after the death of Clarence Darrow.470 It
was said that he charged up to $75,000 per case471 – multiply that by about 10 to get 2014 values!
He was famous for defending gangsters, quoting literature and doing everything but cartwheels and
handstands before juries, and for writing legal history books in his spare time. He was short and
stocky, with close-cropped hair, like the proverbial Roman Senator.

A word about Stryker’s strategy. Reading a little between the lines of some books on this
Case, I think Stryker said to Hiss: given all the evidence there is against you and the anti-
Communist temper of these times, I am not going get you off. No lawyer is going to get you a Not
Guilty verdict. A lot of them will tell you they will, because they want to get a big case. But they
won’t get you off. What I will do, and the best that anyone can do, is get you endless deadlocked
juries – “hung” juries, as we call them. After the second or third hung jury, the Government will
give up.

Here’s how I’m going to do this. Forget the typewriter and the documents. Hope they put
the jury to sleep. I am going to pitch this Case very high and ask the jury “Are you going to ruin a
man with the record of Alger Hiss based on the word of Whittaker Chambers – a man with his
record of treachery and lying?” I will get at least one juror to buy that argument and stick with you
to the bitter end.472

Professor Younger thought, moving down from strategy to tactics, that Stryker’s plan was
not to take the Government seriously. I‘m going to try and reduce the Government’s case to a
laughingstock or a joke. All their witnesses are professional liars and Commie weirdoes! This is a
dangerous strategy, by the way. Everyone else starts taking the case seriously – the Judge, the jury,
the prosecutors, the witnesses. No one else wants to laugh at it. To make the jury laugh at it
requires great skill – but Stryker was great.473 See if you think he did that.

Stryker’s bottom line was – I’m not going to get you off, but so long as I am your lawyer,
Mr. Hiss, you will not be convicted.

The judge at the first trial was Samuel Kaufman, not the better known Irving Kaufman of
the same court and later Rosenberg trial fame. He looked like something out of ‘Guys and Dolls.’ I
think he was a new Judge; some said he was a political hack of Tammany Hall. He seems to have
been perfectly competent to me. It was commonly said in the courthouse that he was heavily

470
Smith at 281.
471
Weeds, Roses & Jam, TIME (July 18, 1949) at 15.
472
Tony Hiss, THE VIEW FROM ALGER’S WINDOW: A SON’S MEMOIR (“Tony II”)(Knopf 1999) at
87; Smith at 297, 399.
473
Younger Book at 546.

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favorable to Hiss.474 In my opinion, some of his rulings favored Hiss, but some did not – indeed,
some of his rulings were major disappointments to The Hiss Defense – and all of them, even the
pro-Hiss ones, seem within the discretion that trial judges are given.

On the morning of June 1, 1949, a jury was chosen of twelve persons; all white, ten men and
two women. They had the following occupations:
a General Motors manager
a marine accountant
an office manager
a gasoline delivery superintendent
a credit analyst
a real estate broker (one of the two females)
a clerk
a dressmaker
a production manager
an unemployed hotel manager
a secretary and
a mail-advertising man.475

Two things to note about this jury, which are also true of the second one. The people seem
middle class or lower middle class, the kind of people who don’t live in Manhattan any more.
Second, maybe the dressmaker had a PhD in philosophy, but judging from their occupations, it
appears that there was no one on the jury (or the second jury) who was like Hiss or Chambers. It
would not surprise me if none of them had been to college. These, I suspect, are not people who
spend all day sitting in big rooms thinking what our trade policy should be with Japan, or agonizing
over whether The Big Answer is God or Communism. In the trials, these people were being taken
into a new world, the world of upper middle class conceptual thinking and Soviet espionage.

This posed a challenge to each of the opposing teams of lawyers. How to make its view of
the Case and of this foreign world not only understandable to the jury, but credible and
sympathetic? How to make a bunch of ordinary people identify with an extraordinary man –
Chambers if you’re The Prosecution, Hiss if you are the Defense? As we will see, there was a fair
amount of posturing to this end by each side – my client is a normal, everyday, down-home,
ordinary American just like you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Although, of course, both Hiss
and Chambers were anything but ordinary.

OK, with the next Chapter, the trial starts.

474
Younger Book at 545.
475
Cooke at 103.

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 19. THE OPENING STATEMENTS

The indictment charges that Alger Hiss swore falsely when he told The Grand Jury under
oath that:

1) he never turned over to Whittaker Chambers, without authorization, any confidential

State Department documents or copies of such documents; and

2) he did not see Chambers after January 1, 1937.

Prosecutor Murphy’s opening address to the first jury lasted only 23 minutes and was as
“undramatic[] as if he were reading a directors’ report.”476 Here are excerpts – with, as it often the
case in my presentations to you – has many cuts and some minor re-phrasings to make things move
more smoothly.

"If your honor please, ladies and gentlemen, the ultimate issue you have to
decide is whether or not Alger Hiss lied and lied deliberately concerning two
subjects.

"How are we going to prove that? Lying, as we know, is a sort of mental

process. It goes on underneath the bone and hair, and you just have to prove it by
other means. It is not like taking a photograph.

"Let us suppose that a child of yours came home and said he or she was in
school on Tuesday, and you had some slight doubts about it, but you decide to
investigate. So you went to the school and you found that the child was marked
absent the whole day in question. Then if you pressed it a little further and you
found your brother saw the child in a movie on that day, I daresay you would come
to the conclusion that the child was lying.

"That is what we are going to do here. We are going to put Mr. Chambers on
the stand and he is going to tell you in the most explicit fashion how, over a period
of time from 1937 and part of 1938 this defendant, violating his sworn duty, handed
over secret and confidential documents to him, Chambers, a Communist, when
obviously he did not have any right to them at all.

"He handed them over in wholesale fashion. The documents were all secret.
In fact, one of them is secret to such an extent that we are going to have the Judge
not permit you to see it.

"We are going to have the State Department men tell you that the documents

476
A Well-Lighted Arena, TIME (June 13, 1949) at 20.

106
 Chambers produced are identical to documents on file in the State Department,
highly confidential.

“I want you to examine Chambers. I want you to listen attentively; watch his
conduct on the stand; watch the color of his face; watch the way his features move,
because if you don't believe Chambers then we have no case under the federal
perjury rule. So, watch Mr. Chambers. Examine what motive he would have for
lying, and I daresay you will be as convinced as I am that he is telling the truth and
what Mr. Hiss told the grand jury were lies. Thank you." 477

Lloyd Paul Stryker, for the defense, gave the opening address to the first jury, speaking for
an hour without notes.478 Here are highlights:

"Mr. Foreman and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we are glad to be here.
The days of the Klieg lights, the television, and all the paraphernalia, the propaganda
which surrounded the beginning of this story are over. We are here in a dignified,
calm and quiet and fair court of justice.

"Mr. Murphy told you that if you do not believe Chambers the Government
has no case. I think that is a fair statement of the case. You will want to evaluate
Mr. Chambers, and Mr. Hiss, the accused, just as if, as Mr. Murphy said, your child
were accused of lying, you would want to evaluate both the accuser and your dearly
beloved child.

"Who is the accused? What is he? What is his life? What has he done?

“Alger Hiss was born in Maryland and educated in the Baltimore schools,
finally going to John Hopkins University, one of the distinguished seats of learning
in this country. Alger Hiss went through Johns Hopkins with honor, with credit,
with distinction, with high honors, winning the confidence and the favorable opinion
of all who knew him at that early period of his life.

"From Johns Hopkins he went up to the Harvard Law School, one of the very
great law schools in this country.

"His conduct was such and scholarship was such that he was chosen a
member of the Board of the Harvard Law Review.

"There was each year a post given only to a young man not only of signal

477
First Trial at 15-25.
478
Weinstein I at 438; A Well-Lighted Arena, TIME (June 13, 1949) at 20-21 (“His voice ranged
from a soothing whisper to a thundering roar”).

107
scholarship but of character, and that great post was the post of secretary to the great
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Out of some five or six hundred, Alger Hiss was
chosen for that post.

"Mr. Hiss was trusted with secrets the revelation of which might bring
infinite disaster to various people or to the Court itself.

"Well, Alger Hiss was good enough for Oliver Wendell Holmes, and of the
many character witnesses I shall call if the case gets that far, I shall summon, with all
due reverence, the shade of that great member of the Supreme Court.

"Alger Hiss then received the trust and confidence of fine lawyers in Boston
and New York, and the New Deal, then an important investigation in the United
States Senate picked Alger Hiss as counsel, when he was just turned thirty, then the
Office of Solicitor General of the United States.

“He was weighed in all these crucibles and never found wanting in the
slightest possible particular or degree. He was trusted so much that he came under
the eye of the President of the United States.

“As people live, so they are. I mean a person could get by maybe a year or
six months, but here the years roll on. Yalta with President Roosevelt, the great
conference in San Francisco. The UN Charter, which may someday be enshrined
like our Constitution – who was the man that was chosen to take it to the President
of the United States? Why, it was Alger Hiss.

“Many years ago a great philanthropist in this City, Andrew Carnegie, set up
a huge trust to found the endowment for international peace, and the first president
chosen for that great, splendid philanthropy was one of the greatest statesmen we
have had in a century, Elihu Root. When he died, a great gentleman of this City, a
president of a great university, Nicholas Murray Butler, was chosen as the second
president.

“When there was the need of choosing a third president, those men are not
stupid men, those trustees, and they looked around in the United States to get the
best man they could in America, the most trustworthy man they could find in
America. Whom did they select? Alger Hiss.

“I will take Alger Hiss by the hand, and I will lead him before you from the
date of his birth down to this hour even, though I would go through the valley of the
shadow of death I will fear no evil, because there is no blot or blemish on him.

“So much, ladies and gentlemen, for the accused.

108
 “Now who is the accuser? He is a man who now styles himself as J.
Whittaker Chambers. He began changing his names early. Chambers began using
an alias even before he joined the Communist Party. Even as a teenager he was a
furtive, secretive, deceptive man.

“At an age when Alger Hiss was giving the best example I can think of of
being a fine citizen, this man Chambers chose to become a member of the
Communist Party. It was not a hasty choice. It was a considered choice. He chose
to enter into a conspiracy to overthrow the United States Government by any means.

“It was an organization that believed that wrong was right; that anything that
would aid and abet the overthrow of this dear land of ours was a thing that the
conspirators were for. He belonged to that organization that believed it right to
commit any crime, and here I see you will be interested, especially lying – lying.
That is one of the main tenets of this group of conspirators with which this man
Chambers, alias Adams, alias Crosley, alias Cantwell, alias a great many other
things, chose to connect himself.

“He was a member of this low-down, nefarious, filthy conspiracy twelve

long years. Twelve long years our accuser was a voluntary conspirator against the
land that I love and you love. Every crust of bread that went down his throat for
those twelve years of his criminal life was given to him by his Communist
confederates. He cheated his government on income taxes and filed no returns for
the money that he was being paid for the prostitution of his soul.

“He had written a filthy, despicable play about Jesus Christ when he was at
Columbia, and was dismissed, and how did he get back? By lying. A communist,
conspirator, and thug, destitute of honor, destitute of credit for twelve long years, an
avowed enemy of your country and mine.

“When Chambers accused him in public before HUAC, did Mr. Hiss sulk?
He went and denied that charge. Then he said to Chambers “Say these things out of
court, will you?” Chambers made the statements, nothing about espionage, because
that was a later invention.

“So Alger Hiss sues, the good old-fashioned thing for an American to do. Of
course, no man that was guilty would dare bring an action for libel.

“Chambers then, when the libel suit was tumbling around his head for the
first time he comes forward with his statement about spying. How many other
opportunities had he had to tell this story before? Under oath, sixteen times he
denied espionage.

109
 “Alger Hiss testified before this grand jury and he never refused to testify on
constitutional grounds, not Alger Hiss. He brought the papers Chambers produced
to the attention of the authorities. His lawyer, Ed McLean, found the typewriter, and
Alger Hiss said ‘I will suppress nothing.’ I ask you again, is this the conduct of a
guilty man?

“When Mr. Hiss met Chambers, he found him a glib and interesting talker.
Mr. Chambers is all that. You will hear him. He is a very able man. He is a writer,
a dramatic writer. Alger Hiss was interested in what he thought was another Jack
London. No one was there to warn him about this man, as I now am alerting you.

“In the warm southern countries, you know, where they have leprosy,
sometimes you will hear on the streets perhaps among the lepers a man crying down
the street ‘Unclean, unclean’ at the approach of a leper.

“I say the same to you at the approach of this moral leper [Chambers]!”479

They don’t make ‘em like Lloyd Paul Stryker any more.

20. THE PROSECUTION:

WHITTAKER AND ESTHER CHAMBERS

Chambers’ direct examination was quite rocky. This was mainly because objections to
much of it were made by the defense and sustained by Judge Kaufman.

Prosecutor Murphy had wanted to go into Chambers’ life as a Communist, and Chambers’
version of Hiss’s life as a Communist, and Chambers’ break with Communism. Judge Kaufman
wouldn’t allow it.

A judge is allowed to exclude evidence, even if it is relevant, if the Judge finds that what it
proves (its usefulness, its “probative value”) is substantially outweighed by the danger that it will
cause prejudice against a party. Calling someone a Communist is very prejudicial in this day and
age, the Judge said, and will distract the jury from the real issue in this case. The issue here is very
simple – read the indictment – did Hiss pass Chambers State Department documents without
authorization in 1937 and 1938? That's all. The indictment says nothing about the passing being
part of Communism, a Soviet spy ring or The Ware Group or the dark night of the soul under
Communism. Hiss would be guilty if he, in 1938, gave Chambers a draft of the new menu in the
State Department cafeteria without authorization. Also – again, read the indictment – the first

479
First Trial at 25-54.

110
material event in this case occurred on January 2, 1937. Trials are not general inquiries into the
past, however interesting that may be. Criminal trials are limited to the terms of the indictment, and
I’m keeping this trial within those limits.480

This was a very narrow reading of the case, in my opinion, but a permissible one.

Another problem The Prosecution had was that Chambers tried to use questions as a
springboard to tell long and interesting stories that the questions didn't quite call for. For example,
when Murphy asked him to tell the jury what conversation occurred between him and Hiss when
the two first met, and Chambers began his answer with "The meeting was for the purpose of
introducing me to" and Judge Kaufman cut him off.481 The question was not what was the purpose
of the meeting or what you thought was the purpose of the meeting, but who said what to whom.
Who spoke first? What did he say? Who spoke next? What did he say?

Later, when Murphy asked Chambers who said what at a certain meeting, Chambers began
"I tried to set forth . . ." and the Judge cut him off, saying "Don't tell us what you tried to do. Tell
us what you said and what they said . . ."482

Judge Kaufman made many evidentiary rulings that limited Chambers’ testimony.
Chambers fans consider these rulings to favor Hiss because they limited how much Chambers could
say about all his dealings with Hiss and Communists in general. But I think the net effect may have
been good for Chambers and The Prosecution. When you let Chambers 'tell his story' any way he
wants, when you give him free rein, after a while he starts vibrating at strange frequencies and
talking about the dark night of the soul under Communism. Some people start to wonder whether
he's adding details to make a better story, or even whether he's insane.

Chambers, perhaps precisely because he was limited to “just the facts,” did get across his
basic story without all the doubt-creating filigrees and curlicues. By the end of his testimony, no
one on the jury would doubt that Chambers testified that Hiss regularly passed him State
Department documents without authorization in 1937 and 1938. He also said that the last batches
of documents he got from Hiss included the four notes in Hiss’s handwriting, the 65 pages of typed
documents, and the 58 images on the two rolls of film that were developed when they came out of
the pumpkin.

Chambers’ testimony was not very lively or memorably theatrical, but maybe the lack of
those attributes made it more credible than it would have been if Chambers had been allowed to
bring in the trombones and kettle drums.

Then came cross-examination, of which the following is an approximation of the most

480
First Trial at 118-19, 132, 146, 175.
481
First Trial at 149; see also First Trial at 161.
482
First Trial at 217-18.

111
memorable part. Stryker’s first, and essentially only, question was:

Stryker: Mr. Chambers, do you know what an oath is?483

Chambers: An oath is that declaration which a man makes when he promises

to tell the truth.

Stryker: And it is an affirmation made by a man who calls on Almighty God

to witness the truth of what he says, is that right?

Chambers: That is right.

Stryker: I show you a copy of a certain paper, your application for

employment by the federal government in October 1937, and ask you if you
recognize your signature on that paper.

Chambers: Yes.

Stryker: At the time you signed that paper, you were an active Communist,
an underhanded enemy of your country, doing all you could to aid a foreign country
and to help overthrow our country by force and violence, is that right?

Chambers: Yes.

Stryker: In this paper, you took an oath, did you not?

Chambers: Yes.

Stryker: Quoting from the paper, "I, Jay David Chambers, solemnly swear
that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all
enemies, foreign and domestic." You took and subscribed that oath, did you not?

Chambers: Yes.

Stryker: And it was false from beginning to end, was it not?

Chambers: Of course.

Stryker: And it was perjury, wasn't it?

Chambers: If you like.

483
First Trial at 228.

112
 Stryker: And you told it to deceive and cheat the United States government
into giving you a job that you well knew you were not entitled to, is not that true?

Chambers: That is correct.

Stryker: And is it not a fact that during all the years you were a Communist
you would have with perfect readiness committed perjury?484

Chambers: That is correct.

Stryker: You would have cheated and defrauded the government?

Chambers: That is right.485

Stryker: Did your conscience bother you at all? Yes or no.

Chambers: No.

Stryker: And all that period when you were in the Communist Party your
conscience was dead?

Chambers: My conscience was not dead.

Stryker: Dormant?

Chambers: I had an entirely different point of view. I solved problems of

right and wrong along Communist lines.486

Stryker: But then came the dawn! Then you repented and reformed and
became a God-fearing Christian, an honest man, you did away with lying and
stealing, you turned from the ways of treason, disloyalty, crime, and perjury. Let us
look at your testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
You denied to HUAC that you and Mr. Hiss had engaged in any espionage. That
was false testimony under oath, wasn't it?487

Chambers: Yes.

484
First Trial at 277.
485
First Trial at 247.
486
First Trial at 250.
487
First Trial at 277-80, 293.

113
 Stryker: And you made the same false testimony under oath before the
Grand Jury in this building, didn’t you?

Chambers: That is right.488

Stryker: After taking an oath on the Bible, in which you now believed, you
gave false testimony?

Chambers: Yes.489

Stryker: After taking the same oath you took in this court before these
people on the jury?

Chambers: That is right.490

Stryker: And when you gave that false oath, this was after you had rejected
atheistic Communism and you had become a Christian, wasn't it?

Chambers: That is true.

Stryker: And you gave that false testimony before God, did you not?

Chambers: Of course.

Stryker: And you revered the American flag, didn't you?

Chambers: I did.

Stryker: And in the HUAC Committee room, there was an American flag,
was there not?

Chambers: There must have been.

Stryker: So, when you swore falsely and testified falsely and knowingly, you
lied under oath before the American flag!

Chambers: Of course.491

488
First Trial at 301.
489
See First Trial at 677.
490
First Trial at 328-29, 463.
491
First Trial at 480, 484.

114
 Stryker: And at this time you had ceased to be a traitor and were tying to
help the American government and paralyze the Communist conspiracy, weren’t
you?

Chambers: Yes.

Stryker: And yet you did not produce the papers and films that would have
shown the existence of a spy ring in the State and Treasury Departments, did you?
You withheld that vital information from your own land? Sworn to tell the whole
truth, you suppressed such parts of the truth as you felt it expedient to suppress?

Chambers: I felt I had a Christian duty.

Stryker: Did you feel you had a Christian duty to comply with the oath that
you had registered in heaven to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you God?

Chambers: I felt one outweighed the other.492

And so it went. Stryker took Chambers through every time he denied espionage by Hiss or
omitted specific mention of it – when Chambers talked with Berle and several times with the FBI,
and in his early testimonies to HUAC and the Grand Jury. And by mentioning the oath, God, and
the flag, Stryker turned every lie Chambers ever told under oath into many lies. Stryker’s one and
only point, which he made indelibly on the jury, was that Chambers had been a professional liar for
twelve years and had lied under oath sixteen times, including recently, about the very events
involved in this trial. Does that not create at least a reasonable doubt about what he’s saying under
oath now?

Stryker’s final question was:

Stryker: Don’t you recognize that your explanation for your silence these ten years
on ground of your friendship with Mr. Hiss is another piece of perjury, is a sham, and a
fraud?

Chambers: I do not.493

Thus ended three and a half days of the cross-examination of Whittaker Chambers. I am
sure Stryker loved every minute of it. He also seemed to be getting on in years, maybe playing the
role of the old trial lawyer taking one last case because he believed in it so much, asking from time
to time for a magnifying glass and needing to be corrected by his co-counsel about numbers and

492
First Trial at 675-76.
493
First Trial at 683.

115
dates once in a while.494 Perhaps he was play-acting; if he was, he was magnificent.

Note again the McCarthyite tone of The Hiss Defense. Communism is totally contemptible,
once a man is a Communist, you can’t believe a word he ever says.

One other observation, about Stryker’s theatrics. Prosecutor Murphy had to get the Judge to
remind Stryker to follow the procedure in the Southern District of New York. It is a very confining
procedure. The attorney doing the questioning stands still at a lectern at one end of the jury box,
with the witness at the opposite end on the witness stand. If you’re the questioning lawyer, you do
not walk around, you keep your eyes on the witness, you do not look and speak directly to the jury.
Stryker, claiming he couldn’t hear Chambers’ mumbled answers, would put his hand up to his ear
and step out from behind the lectern, and would inch closer to him. Then Stryker would turn to
face the jury and display his trademarked expressions of shock and disgust.495 The Judge would
have to tell Stryker to get back behind the lectern. When Prosecutor Murphy was examining
witnesses, sometimes Stryker would walk around because allegedly he had trouble hearing them
and he’d look at the jury and make faces again.496 Once, when Stryker was describing the walk to
the pumpkin patch, which Stryker was making out to be some occult procession by the light of
flickering lanterns and throbbing bongos, Stryker said “You have rather a flair for the dramatic,
have you not, Mr. Chambers?”

Murphy objected, saying “I think that can well be divided among the courtroom” and the
Judge told Stryker to ask less argumentative questions.497

Chambers, for his part, sat there like a sack of potatoes and gave his monosyllabic or
tentative ("It must have been") answers, taking every one of Stryker's punches passively. His voice
often trailed off at the end of sentences so that he could not be heard.498 Sometimes he looked up at
the ceiling. Chambers certainly did not put on a dazzling performance, he didn’t bite back at
Stryker, but he didn’t crack or seem crazy, either.499

In the second trial, Hiss’s lawyer bored in on Chambers’ story in much more detail. He got
Chambers to admit to considerable fuzziness and ‘changes of memory’ about the color of one Hiss
house,500 whether a certain party with the Hisses had been for Christmas or the New Year,501 and
whether or not he had ever spent a night in a house the Hisses lived in on 30th Street in

494
First Trial at 233, 268, 347, 655.
495
First Trial at 235-36, 353-54, 402-03.
496
First Trial at 859, 879.
497
First Trial at 389.
498
See, e.g., First Trial at 144, 147, 170, 177, 196, 199.
499
Weinstein I at 440, 451.
500
Second Trial at 568-70.
501
Second Trial at 610-12.

116
Georgetown.502

This is as good a time as any to show the several residences the Hisses had, all in or near
Georgetown in Northwest Washington.

The Hisses’ Residences503

Address Time Period

2831 28th Street July 1934 – June 1935

2905 P Street June 1935 – June 1936
1245 30th Street June 1936 – Dec. 29, 1937
3415 Volta Place Dec. 29, 1937 – 1943

The 28th Street apartment is the one that Hiss said he subleased to George Crosley; the P Street place is
the one where Hiss said the Crosleys lived in with the Hisses for a few days; the 30th Street place,
which is very small, is where the Hisses lived when, according to Chambers, they did most of their
spying and Mrs. Hiss did most of her typing; and the Volta Place house is a large place they moved to
just before the end of 1937 and a few months before Chambers bugged out of the underground. I
should note that this seems to be a lot of moves, and that all these places were rented. All of them
are still standing.

As I said, at the end Chambers had gotten into the record his detailed testimony that Alger
Hiss had passed him confidential State Department documents without authorization repeatedly
during 1937 and early 1938.

The Prosecution’s next witness was Mrs. Chambers. She claimed to have known nothing of
her husband’s secret Communist activities, including especially the spying. I wonder if she was
really that ignorant.

She did, however, corroborate in great detail her husband’s story of a close relationship
between her family and the Hisses lasting several years. She testified that she had met Alger Hiss
several times when the two couples socialized together at one or another of their houses; they went
to the movies together in Baltimore.504

More particularly, Mrs. Chambers testified that Mrs. Hiss had come up to Baltimore or she
(Mrs. Chambers) had come down to Washington on several occasions and the two had gone

502
Second Trial at 498-99.
503
Weinstein I at 41 (footnote), but HUAC at 1085 indicates that Hiss moved into 2905 P in May
1935; but HUAC at 1087 seems to say what’s in the text above; re move to DC, see First Trial at
2254. Photos of Hiss houses are Gov’t Exhs. 7-10 in the second trial.
504
First Trial at 982-83.

117
shopping, had lunch, and/or perambulated their babies together. The two couples, she said, visited
places you’d go with a friend in Washington or Baltimore, such as Haynes Point, Mount Vernon,
and Hutzler’s Department store.505 Mrs. Hiss even drove the Chambers’ furniture from Washington
to New York506 – quite a favor (if it happened)!

Perhaps most memorably, Mrs. Chambers remembered being over at the Hiss’s 30th Street
house when her baby wet the floor and Mrs. Hiss gave her “a lovely old linen towel to use as a
diaper”507 – this was after the Hisses said they had got the deadbeat Crosleys out of their lives.
Mrs. Chambers also remembered painting a Bucks County landscape and the Hisses hanging it in
their home.508 Both Chamberses also described overnight car trips with the Hisses in Bucks
County, Pennsylvania, and other rustic areas.509 Mr. Chambers testified that on one of these trips
the families were returning south on Easter Sunday and, in Norristown, Pennsylvania, they stopped
at an intersection. Past them walked a policeman carrying an Easter lily, which pleased Alger
Hiss.510

Mrs. Chambers remembered Mrs. Hiss trying to register for a nursing course at Mercy
Hospital, which was in Baltimore, Maryland.511 That Mrs. Hiss had taken a course in 1937 in
Inorganic Chemistry was later proved from the records of the University of Maryland.512 Thus, it
seemed that Mrs. Chambers knew something about Mrs. Hiss’s life two years after the Hisses said
they had got the Chamberses out of their lives.

Mrs. Chambers remembered she and her husband being with the Hisses in late 1937 – thus
making her a second witness to Hiss seeing Chambers after January 1, 1937, the second count in the
indictment.513

When Lloyd Paul Stryker cross-examined Mrs. Chambers, she proved feistier than her
husband. She barked and bit back.

Stryker kept referring to Chambers as that underground Communist, that conspirator, that
deceiver, that secret enemy of the United States, that liar who misrepresented himself to the world
as a decent citizen.514 Finally, Mrs. Chambers could stand it no more and burst out “I resent that.
My husband is a decent citizen, a great man.”

505
First Trial at 855-94, 1040-41; Second Trial at 1209; see also Depos at 530-31.
506
First Trial at 863; Second Trial at 132.
507
First Trial at 874; Second Trial at 1221; see also Second Trial at 1321-22.
508
First Trial at 870.
509
First Trial at 864; Second Trial at 179-80, 283, 440 et seq.
510
Second Trial at 179-80.
511
First Trial at 869.
512
First Trial at 2280-81, 2672; Alonso at 76.
513
First Trial at 875-87, 908, 987-88; Second Trial at 1328.
514
First Trial at 910-35 passim.

118
 Stryker quickly asked her “Was he a great, decent citizen in October, 1937?”

“When he was in the underground?”

“I just asked a simple question. Was he a great and decent citizen in October, 1937? Yes or
no.”

She shouted back “Yes, and always.”

“And so that the jury will understand your conception, [i]t is your idea that a man who was
plotting and conspiring by any and all means to overthrow the Government of his country, who had
been sneaking around for 12 years under false names, that is your conception of the great, decent
citizen, is that right?”

“No, but if he then believed that is the right thing to do at the moment I believe that is a
great man, who lives up to his beliefs. His beliefs may change, as they did.”515

On cross-examination, Mrs. Chambers proved even fuzzier than her husband on some dates
and places. For example, she initially remembered a New Year’s Eve in 1937-38 at the Hisses’
Volta Place house. (The Hisses said that neither of the Chamberses had even been in the Volta
Place house.) On cross-examination she was very confused whether it was a New Year’s Eve
Party, a housewarming, or a celebration of the Hisses’ wedding anniversary. This is perhaps
important because the party can’t have been about the Hisses’ wedding anniversary because their
anniversary was December 11 and they didn’t move into the Volta Place house until the 29th.516
She hemmed and hawed under Lloyd Paul Stryker’s contemptuous cross-examination for hours.
But she was certain that she and her husband had been the Hisses’ guests in the Volta Place house
in 1937.517

At the second trial, when Hiss’s lawyer chided Mrs. Chambers for remembering things for
the first time, she answered “Yes. There is a new recollection, yes. I will probably keep on
recollecting for the rest of my days – too late perhaps for this trial.”518

At another point in the second trial, Mrs. Chambers was describing she and her husband
hiding out in Florida just after he had fled the Communist underground. For the first time she
testified that when she slept in those days, she kept a hatchet under her pillow in case they were
attacked by Communists. Hiss’s lawyer chided her for not having mentioned the hatchet at the first
trial – “Did you purposely leave out the reference to sleeping with the hatchet under your pillow?”

515
First Trial at 934-35.
516
First Trial at 963.
517
First Trial at 951, 960, 963-64, 988-96.
518
Second Trial at 1259.

119
Mrs. Chambers shot back “I was not asked that question, sir. It is no great pleasure to remember
it.”519

My general impression of Mrs. Chambers is that she was far from a perfect witness when it
came to dates and places, but she was trying to remember what happened – sincerely but not totally
successfully. She does not seem to be rehearsed and forgetting her lines, or making it up as she
goes along.

Next, the documents. What was in all those spy papers?

21. THE PROSECUTION:

THE DOCUMENTS

Some of the most boring testimony I have ever read concerned the various typed,
handwritten and photographed documents. I used to work on telephone rate cases, so I know
boring.

It took about two days to establish that every one of the hand written notes, the typed
documents, and The Pumpkin Papers that The Prosecution was introducing into evidence –
each piece of paper Chambers swore he had received from Hiss – was, indeed, all or part of a
real document in the files of the US State Department.520 Sort of, “Ladies and gentlemen of
the jury, in my left hand is a document in Alger Hiss’s handwriting, which Mr. Chambers
produced at the deposition in Baltimore in 1948; and in my right hand is an actual telegram
that the State Department received in 1938. As you can see, the two documents are identical;
what Mr. Chambers had is a copy of an actual State Department telegram.”

What’s in the documents, you ask? Let me answer that about all the documents that
Chambers produced, including the ones he said he did not get from Hiss. And let me deal
with non-Hiss ones first, to get them out of the way – Chambers produced more than just
what he said Hiss gave him.

There was, first of all, the roll of camera film that Chambers pulled out of the
pumpkin and had been struck by light before it could be developed. Nothing could be
gleaned from that.

Then there were the two rolls of film on which photos had been taken in 1938, but
which had not been developed when Chambers gave them to the HUAC staffers in the
pumpkin patch in 1948. Images were ultimately coaxed from them and the documents

519
Second Trial at 1345.
520
Second Trial at 891 et seq.

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photographed on them were seen to be not from the State Department, but from the Navy.
One of these documents is laughably trivial; it gives instructions on how to paint fire
extinguishers. I’m sure KGB Central in Moscow was thrilled to see that one. Others state
technical data about aircraft parts. This data may have been in the public domain, or may
have been secret. Chambers said he got these documents from one Ward Pigman, who was
in the Bureau of Standards and reviewed Navy documents. Pigman totally denied Chambers’
accusation.521

Incidentally, that Chambers produced silly and non-secret documents indicates to me

that there was no frame-up of Hiss. If I were trying to frame Hiss with stolen government
documents, I wouldn’t throw in anything about painting fire extinguishers. I’d have
drawings of the atom bomb and notes in FDR’s handwriting.

Chambers also produced a handwritten memo, several pages long, by Harry Dexter
White. In 1938 he was in the Treasury Department; later he became an Assistant Secretary.
White’s memo describes various issues that were “hot” in the Treasury Department in
January 1938; a significant number of them concern Japan. As you will hear me say about
one Hiss document, it’s hard to think of why White would write this memo in the normal
course of his job; but the Soviet Union would have been interested in his insights from the
inside.

OK, now we get to the documents that were introduced in evidence in the trials,
which Chambers swore he got from Hiss. There are, first, 4 pages of handwritten notes.
Second, there are 65 pages of typewriting, constituting 41 documents (some documents are
several pages long); except that one of the typewritten documents (one page long) turned out
not to have been typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter. Chambers, after first saying he got it
from Hiss, was not sure whom he got it from.522 Then, third, we have the last two rolls of
film that were pulled from the pumpkin; they had been developed in 1938. All these
Pumpkin Papers came from the State Department. They were 58 pages, constituting seven
documents.

Incidentally, each photograph or document on these two rolls of film was numbered
consecutively by the diligent photographer. The last photo on one roll is numbered 36; the
first photo on the other roll is numbered 37. Therefore, presumably, all 58 pages/photos were
made in one picture-taking session and were all, presumably, gotten one day from one person
in the State Department. One person in State gave Chambers all 58 photographed pages.
Early on, Chambers was not sure he got these Pumpkin Papers from, but ultimately he was
sure he got them from Hiss.523

521
Weinstein I at 258-59.
522
Weinstein I at 275; Second Trial at 747 et seq.
523
Second Trial at 758.

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 So we have a total of 126 pages of paper, constituting 51 documents, all of which
Chambers testified Hiss gave him without authorization and after January 1, 1937. So much
for the numbers.

The documents date between December 31, 1937, and April 1, 1938 – there are a few
attachments that are dated earlier. It would not surprise me if none of the original documents
were created in Hiss’s office. 98% of them were obviously were created elsewhere and were
sent to Hiss’s boss, Assistant Secretary of State Sayre, more for his information than his
action.524 Part of Hiss’s job was to read papers that were sent to Sayre “on an FYI basis” but
that Sayre himself did not have time to read.525

Most of the documents are telegrams or similar messages to the State Department in
Washington from American diplomats or other government people in Europe or Asia. The
authors abroad are advising the State Department in Washington about something that has
happened or something someone has said.

OK, on to the substance at last. Some of the documents directly concern the specialty
of the office in which Hiss worked – American trade relations with foreign countries. These
documents concern our trade with Germany or Japan,526 the two countries that were of the
greatest interest to the Soviet Union. Concerning Germany in particular, in early 1938 the
State Department was considering making our trade with Germany more favorable to that
country and there was debate about that within the State Department.527

Most of the documents describe recent events in foreign countries – the Spanish Civil
War528 and the Chinese Civil War;529 Japanese activities, especially in the areas of China it
had conquered or was conquering and that were near the Soviet Union;530 Hitler’s takeover of
Austria (which occurred in March 1938);531 Hitler’s threats to Czechoslovakia (which he
began gobbling up a few months later);532 and the reactions of the U.S. and European
democracies to what Hitler and the Japanese were doing.533 A significant number of the
documents are labeled “confidential,” “strictly confidential,” and “strictly confidential for the

524
First Trial at 1851; Second Trial, Gov’t Exh. 76 at 3249.
525
Second Trial at 2517.
526
Second Trial, Gov’t. State Exhs. 48-52. There is no Government Exhibit 49.
527
Weinstein I at 268-69.
528
Second Trial, Gov’t Balt. Exhs. 11 (3rd page, Spain, Jan. 21), 40 at 3505, 43.
529
Second Trial, Gov’t Balt. Exh. 2; this is the subject of #10, but #10 was not typed on a
Woodstock; Gov’t Balt. Exhs. 54-55 (54 is an interesting memo from Colonel Stillwell, presumably
later the controversial General “Vinegar Joe” Stillwell).
530
Second Trial, Gov’t Balt. Exhs. 4-8 et seq., 11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 21, 32, 42, 46.
531
Second Trial, Gov’t Balt. Exhs. 18, 22, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35.
532
Second Trial, Gov’t Balt Exhs. 36, 39, 44, 47.
533
Second Trial, Gov’t Balt. Exhs. 3, 9, 16, 19, 37 (from Joseph Kennedy), 45.

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Secretary.” The originals of many of the documents were in secret code, usually the lowest
level of secrecy.

A few documents were not sent to Hiss’s office in the normal course of business, but
could have gone there informally.534 All these documents are on the two rolls of film that
had been developed when they came out of the pumpkin.

One final mind-numbing level of detail. The “FYI” documents were sent to many
parts of the State Department, not just Hiss’s.535 Some of the original bulletins from China or
Austria or wherever, when they arrived in the State Department, were made into as many as
40 copies, which were sent all over the State Department.536 Especially in the second trial,
The Hiss Defense plumbed the depths of the fascinating subject of paper flow in the State
Department in 1938 – how many people got copies of each document, who initialed each
copy (showing that he had actually received it), whether the copy Chambers produced was
the typewritten original, or a carbon copy, or a mimeograph; which of them went where Hiss
was working, which ones went to where other people were working; which documents were
attached to which others (by paper clip or staple); who had access to the Burn Room and the
archives. I am certain that this testimony put the jury into a deep sleep. In a later Chapter I’ll
get to why this may have mattered.

Many of these documents, especially the ones about Japan’s and Germany’s military
activities, are not directly pertinent to Hiss’s job, but would have been of great interest to the
Soviet Union in early 1938. By then, Stalin has realized he was probably going to fight a war
in Europe with Hitler someday, maybe soon. He would have been intensely curious to know
whether Germany was preparing to attack him soon or how many democracies Hitler was
going to gobble up before turning to the big prize, the limitless lebensraum of the Soviet
Union; and whether the Soviet Union would also have to fight Japan on a second front in
Asia.

One of the four documents in Hiss handwriting537 I’m going to spend a lot of time on.
It is called The Robinson-Rubens Telegram. If there is a “smoking gun” document in this
case, this is it.

In the United States, there were two members of the Soviet underground, husband
and wife. They made false passports. Their real names, although this is always murky, were
Arnold and Ruth Ikal. She was a US citizen; he was not, he was a Latvian (Latvia was a
country, with its capital in Riga, before the Soviet Union gobbled it up in 1940). Chambers

534
First Trial at 1228.
535
Second Trial, Gov’t Exh. 77.
536
First Trial at 1209.
537
First Trial at 1839.

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knew these two in the underground under the false name of Mr. and Mrs. Ewald.538 They,
like Chambers, had not been faithful Stalinists all along, and when in the late 1930s Stalin
took his purges to Communist Parties in foreign countries, including the US, Mr. Ikal was
summoned to Moscow for “consultations.”

Like an idiot, he went. He and his wife traveled there in late 1937 under false
passports, apparently two sets of forged U.S. passports, which identified them by the names
Robinson and Rubens. (This whole thing became known as The Robinson-Rubens Affair.)
Once they arrived, the KGB arrested Mr. Ikal and charged him with criminal anti-Soviet
activity of some kind. Mrs. Ikal began complaining, to our Embassy and to western
journalists, that her husband, while travelling under the protection of a US passport, had
disappeared into the clutches of the Soviet government. Then the Soviets grabbed her, too.

One of the top men in the US Embassy in Moscow, Loy Henderson, was granted an
interview with her. A Red Army officer was in the room during the interview and Mrs. Ikal
professed to be totally happy and not to need any help from our Embassy, please go away.
The incident died.

Mr. Ikal died in prison years later; Mrs. Ikal was released from prison but was not
allowed to leave the Soviet Union. Mrs. Ikal’s parents in the United States were visited and
told not to make a fuss about what had happened to their daughter if they did not want more
harm to come to her.539 Communists are such charming people; just like the early Christians,
as Professor Laski and Vice President Wallace told us.

This became an ‘international incident’ after Mr. Ikal, and then Mrs. Ikal, were
arrested. Our government had to consider two matters, it seems to me. One was how loudly
to protest. Two US citizens (as far as we know) have been snatched by the KGB, so we have
to protest. But on the other hand we don’t want to spoil our whole relationship with the
Soviet Union over one incident. How big a stink to make? Second, I imagine our
government was also interested to know exactly who these people were – very few
Americans traveled to the Soviet Union back then and even fewer got seized by the KGB!
What the heck is going on here?

When the ‘incident’ was going on, on January 28, 1938, our Embassy’s man
Henderson sent a telegram to the Secretary of State in Washington. After the address, the
date and that sort of thing, Henderson tells the Secretary of State:

538
Weinstein I at 330.
539
John Earl Haynes & Harvey Klehr, VENONA: DECODING SOVIET ESPIONAGE IN AMERICA (Yale
Univ. Press 1999) at 83-84; Morgan II at 159-60; Katherine A.S. Sibley, RED SPIES IN AMERICA:
STOLEN SECRETS & THE DAWN OF THE COLD WAR (University Press of Kansas 2004) at 261 n.116;
see also Second Trial at 2671, 3057.

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 Have received following telegram from Mary Martin, widow of Hugh Martin,
formerly employed for special work by Legation at Riga. [Mrs. Martin says:]
Remember well Rubens while working for Hugh, be strict if needed, write Library
Congress, Law Division.540

I guess this means a few things:

- that Mr. Henderson got a telegram from a person named Mary Martin, whose
husband Hugh had worked with Mr. Ikal in Latvia;

- if “special work” means spy stuff, perhaps Mr. Ikal was pretending to work for the
Russians but was actually working for us, a ‘double agent’;

- it seems to me that someone, perhaps the US Embassy, is recommending that the US

“be strict” with the Soviets. This could mean be very tough with the Soviets or
could mean just follow the standard procedure strictly and don’t do more than you
have to – don’t make a big stink;

- and that more information on these people can be found in the Library of Congress’
Law Division, where Mary Martin is working now.541

Henderson’s words above are, in the handwriting of Alger Hiss, Government

Baltimore Exhibit 1. The whole substance of Henderson’s message except details at the
beginning and end.

Two observations. First – I cannot think of any work-related reason that Hiss, who
specialized in foreign trade agreements, would write this out word for word. Second – the
Soviet Union would have been intensely interested to know every word of this telegram –
especially the apparent recommendation “be strict.”542

Some Americans spied for the Soviet Union because they were incredibly naive
idealists who wanted international cooperation. But this is the real Alger Hiss, stool pigeon
for the cops. And not just any cops, but Stalin’s secret police.543

It’s unclear whether Chambers passed this note on to the KGB,544 but Hiss was
willing for him to do so. If this document did get passed to the Soviet Union, both men had

540
Second Trial, Gov’t State Exhs. 1 & 1A.
541
Second Trial at 3068.
542
Weinstein I at 263-64.
543
Kempton II at 103-04.
544
Depos at 828, 842, 846 (indicating he did not); but see GJ at 4465-66 (perhaps indicating he may
have).

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two lives on their consciences.

That Chambers knew all about this in the 1930s and was not cooking it all up first the
first time in 1948 is very clear. Remember Chambers’ late-night chat with Adolph Berle on
September 2, 1939? In Berle’s handwritten notes of that chat, just after his notation about
Alger Hiss, Berle wrote: “When Loy Henderson interviewed Mrs. Rubens his report
immediately went back to Moscow. Who sent it? - Such came from Washington.”545

Hiss admitted that he had written this note and the three other handwritten
documents, but said the he had probably thrown them away and Chambers or someone else
filched them from his scrap basket when he was gone from his office. None of the four
handwritten documents, however, was crumpled, torn, or smudged.546 Two of them had had,
at their tops, the printed words “Department of State, Assistant Secretary.” The tops had
been torn off.547

One final matter about other documents in this case. Do you remember the scene in
the Commodore Hotel, where Hiss asked Chambers to open his mouth wider and finally
identified him as George Crosley? Prosecutor Murphy read much of the transcript of that
scene read to the jury.548

22. THE PROSECUTION:

RAYMOND FEEHAN

A little known witness named Raymond Feehan may have been doom for Alger Hiss. He
testified, in substance, as follows:549

My name is Raymond C. Feehan. I work for the FBI. I am a member of a

profession called The Examination of Questioned Documents. I am an expert about
typed documents.550 I have worked on tens of thousands of documents in many
investigations and testified in many courts.551

I will hit the “Pause” button on Mr. Feehan’s testimony for a moment and note a few things
about typewriters. We are back in the old days of manual typewriters, where you had to hit the

545
Second Trial, Gov’t Exh. 18, last page; Hartshorn at 200.
546
Weinstein I at 261; Second Trial, Gov’t Baltimore Exhs. 1-4.
547
Second Trial at 523-26.
548
First Trial at 2170-88; Second Trial at 2778-803.
549
First Trial at 1291 et seq.; Second Trial at 1379 et seq.
550
First Trial at 1290.
551
First Trial at 1291-91a; Second Trial at 1381.

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keys and make levers and arms move. At the end of each arm was a metal block with a raised letter
that banged on the ribbon and left some ink on the piece of paper you’d put in the roller. The
typewriter in this case was made in the late 1920s, almost certainly in 1929, by the Woodstock
Typewriter Company of Woodstock, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.552 This is long before today’s
laptops with 50 different kinds of fonts and sizes. Each typewriter in those days had one font, of
one size, that was literally burned into each block at the factory.

Typewriter makers often changed their fonts a little, just like car makers do every year. An
expert like Mr. Feehan could look at a typed document and say with certainty ‘This document was
typed on a 1940 Smith Corona “Presidential” model. I know that because only that company, that
year, and that model had the t, the w, and the g that I see in this typed document.’ Like a friend of
mine who is a car expert; he can identify a passing car as, say, a 2006 Mazda XYZ because only
that car had that front grille, those hubcaps, and that arrangement of parking lights.

Over years of typing, all the movements and hitting occur millions of times. Also, the
typewriter gets picked up and put down, moved around, and people spill coffee on it and whack it
when they get angry. All the moving parts get a little loose; and when a non-expert typist strikes
two keys at the same time, sometimes the two bocks of metal at the ends of the arms hit each other.
One is knocked slightly off center and the other gets chipped or dented a bit. Over the years, each
typewriter develops its own unique collection of what I’ll call ‘peculiarities of type.’ Just like each
car builds up its own unique collection of scratches, dents, spots on the carpet, and buttons that you
have to push real hard and handles that wobble a bit. To the expert eye, a typewriter’s peculiarities
of type are visible in every document typed on that typewriter, just as you can see the scratches and
dents on the side of a car and the beverage stains on the carpet.553

Finally, each person types slightly differently. To the eyes of an expert like Mr. Feehan, on
an old manual typewriter like this one, a tall person’s typing looks different from a short person’s
typing, a right-handed person’s is different from a southpaw’s, and so on. An expert can look at
two documents typed on the same typewriter and, sometimes, tell whether they were typed by the
same typist.

OK, back to Feehan. He testifies:

Before Woodstock 230099 was found, in the last days of the Grand Jury, I
was presented with a pile of 65 typed documents, which I will call The Spy
Documents.

I was asked to bring my expert skills to bear on the issue whether The Spy
Documents were typed on a typewriter that the Hisses had at home in 1938, which I

552
To the grand jury, however, Feehan seems to imply it was a 1930. GJ at 4245.
553
See generally Ordway Hilton, SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS (Elsevier
1984) at 255-56.

127
 will call The Hiss Home Typewriter. In order to resolve this, it would have been
nice to have The Hiss Home Typewriter, but we did not when I was brought in on
the case.

But we did, at that time, have something just as good – some documents that
we knew for certain were typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter. How do we know?
The FBI did some snooping around and found a letter to the school where Mrs. Hiss
wanted to take a chemistry course. It is dated May 1937, in the middle of the alleged
spying.

We also found a letter that Mrs. Hiss’s sister Daisy typed on it in 1931; a
lengthy description of Mrs. Hiss’s son by her first marriage, prepared for a private
school he went to; and, in the files of the Washington Alumnae of Bryn Mawr, the
Annual Report from the Washington Chapter typed by Mrs. Hiss in May 1937.554
This second set of documents I will call The Hiss Standards. So, the question
became for me whether The Hiss Standards and The Spy Documents were typed on
the same typewriter.

The Hiss Standards were typed on a Woodstock typewriter, and one of The
Spy Documents was typed on a different brand of typewriter, so let’s forget about
that one.555 It was from the War Department, by the way, not State where Hiss
worked.

To answer the question about the remaining 64 Spy Documents, I followed

the standard procedure in the profession. That is, I made copies of The Hiss
Standards blown up five times the original size, got out my magnifying glass, and
looked for peculiarities of type. I found ten in The Hiss Standards. For example, in
the lower case ‘g,’ in the oval on the bottom, on its right side, there is a flattening, as
if the circular part of the oval was hit and flattened. Second, in the lower case ‘e,’
the part of the letter that ends in mid-air should be a graceful a curve but actually is
thrust upwards and inwards. Third, the lower case ‘i’ is always a little lower than the
other letters on the same line. Fourth, the lower case ‘o’ is sometimes, but not
always, a little thin on the left side and a little thick on the right side. And so on for
a total of ten peculiarities of type on The Hiss Standards.556

Then, I took The Spy Documents and made copies of them five times the

554
Weinstein I at 418-19, 461; First Trial at 685, 739-40, 751-55, 761-64, 825-35, 1294-95
(Feehan); Second Trial at 815-16, Gov’t Exhs. 34 (Mrs. Hiss letter to University of Maryland), 36
(1933 letter to insurance agent), 37 (1931 letter by Daisy Fansler), 39 (Bryn Mawr Alumnae
Report), 46 A & B (description of Timothy Hobson); see also Second Trial circa 820, 879, 1383.
555
First Trial at 1296; Second Trial at 1383-84, 1420-21 (probably a Royal, maybe an Underwood).
556
First Trial at 1297-1314; Second Trial at 1383 et seq.

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 original size, got out my magnifying glass, and looked for peculiarities of type. And
in the Spy Documents I found all ten of the peculiarities of type I had found in The
Hiss Standards.

The odds that two different typewriters of the same manufacture, year, and
model will have the ten identical peculiarities of type are practically non-existent. I
am not stating it as a fact, it’s just my opinion, but it’s my expert opinion, that (with
the one exception just noted) The Hiss Standards and The Spy Documents were
typed on the same typewriter.557

Feehan did not say explicitly, but he didn’t need to – that because we know The Hiss
Standards were typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter, we know that The Spy Documents were typed
on The Hiss Home Typewriter.

At the first trial, Lloyd Paul Stryker did not ask Feehan a single question on cross-
examination.558 At the second, Feehan was asked only inconsequential ones. Also at the second
trial, Hiss’s lawyer told the jury “we have consulted some experts and they say that in their opinion
it [The Spy Documents were] done on the Woodstock typewriter.”559 So, please note, Hiss is going
even further than Feehan. Feehan just said The Spy Documents were typed on The Hiss Home
Typewriter. Hiss’s lawyer went further and said that that Typewriter was 230099.

Mr. Feehan spoke in plain English, with little technical jargon. I think that, for an expert, he
made an excellent witness. Feehan posed to The Hiss Defense the question it had to answer – how
could 64 pages of documents, obviously prepared for spying, be typed on the home typewriter of an
innocent man?

23. THE PROSECUTION:

HENRY JULIAN WADLEIGH

The next major Prosecution witness was a former “fellow traveler,” a pathetic and
sometimes comical refugee from The Popular Front of the 1930s. His name was Henry
Julian Wadleigh. One very perceptive writer on the Case, the liberal intellectual Leslie
Fiedler, described him as “the cartoonist’s pink-tea radical, with . . . thick glasses, disordered
hair, and acquired Oxford accent.”560

557
First Trial at 1296; see also Hilton at 232.
558
First Trial at 1332.
559
Second Trial at 64.
560
Fiedler at 7.

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 Wadleigh’s story in substance was as follows:561

I am the son of an Episcopalian minister. I was born in Massachusetts, but

spent most of my youth in Europe. I have degrees in Economics from Oxford and
London University School of Economics. I did some more study at Kiel in Germany
and the University of Chicago, but received no degree from either. I came to believe
in Fabian Socialism and joined the Socialist Party, but never believed in
Communism or joined the Communist Party. (Wadleigh is one of those people to
whom these “isms” are very important.)

I went to work for the US government in 1930 at the Federal Farm Board,
and in 1932 in the Department of Agriculture. A few years later I learned that one of
my fellow Socialists, Eleanor Nelson, had joined the Communist Party. In 1935, I
told her that, because of the rise of Fascism and the Soviet Union’s stance against
Fascism, I would like to collaborate with the Communist Party. It seemed that the
Soviet Union was offering the only effective opposition to the Fascists in Italy,
Germany, and Japan.562 I asked Ms. Nelson if there was anything I could do.

In March 1936, I joined the State Department, working in the Trade

Agreements Division and specializing in money and trade controls – how foreign
countries managed their currencies and trade with the US.563 I was far below Alger
Hiss’s level and, although each of us knew who the other was, we seldom met.
Maybe once or twice a year I was at a meeting in his office.564

Ms. Nelson got back to me very soon after I had joined State in 1936. She
said that it would be useful if I could supply information about economic conditions
in Germany and Japan, the two Fascist powers that were threatening the Soviet
Union. I agreed to do this and began passing documents to, as they put it, “the other
side,” which I understood meant the Soviet Union.565 I passed only documents that
crossed my desk in the normal course of business.566 Almost all of them concerned
economic conditions in foreign counties, especially Germany and Japan.567

561
First Trial at 1334-51; Second Trial at 1432 et seq. In the “testimonies” herein by Wadleigh and
other witnesses, I have included statements they made in depositions, to the Grand Jury and in their
writings, but not in court. I hope that any distortion of the true trial transcript is justified by the
added fullness and color of the narrative.
562
GJ at 4076, 4084-86.
563
Second Trial at 1442, 1535.
564
First Trial at 12 49, 1266; Second Trial at 1496.
565
GJ at 4068-70, 4084. At second trial he says he passed some paper when he was at DoA.
Second Trial at 1468.
566
First Trial at 1339, 1344-45, 1353; Second Trial at 1437.
567
Second Trial at 1487-91.

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 I knew Colonel Bykov; he was especially interested in documents detailing
any preparations that the Fascist powers were making for war against the Soviet
Union.568 I continued passing State Department documents to the Soviet Union
without authorization, about once a week, until a distinct lull in this passing occurred
in early 1938. Then, in mid-February 1938, my contact (the man to whom I was
passing the documents) told me to stop. On March 9, 1938, I left Washington on a
long trip to Turkey and did not return until December 31, 1938.

Most weeks, the person who got the State Department documents from me –
which I passed him in a briefcase when we met at a street corner in downtown
Washington during the workday and he would return to me the next morning – was a
man who called himself Harold Wilson but whom I now know is actually named
David Carpenter. But on several other occasions in this period, I don’t remember
how many, I gave my State Department documents to another person. The other
person was introduced to me as Carl Carlson, but I now recognize him as Whittaker
Chambers. I remember his remarkably bad teeth – one of his front teeth was chipped
diagonally – and a puzzling accent, which I took to be foreign.569 I thought he might
be Russian.

I returned from Turkey on December 31, 1938, and shortly thereafter was
summoned to another meeting by Mr. Chambers. He said to me “I just deserted,
that’s all. I am going to become a bourgeois now.” Then he patted me on the
shoulder and said “That is what you will have to do too.”570 He said that he had
been summoned to Moscow and feared for his life.571

A few weeks later Chambers called me on the phone again, at the State
Department, loud and desperate. He said “Carl, Carl, Carl,” said he had to meet me
again, in Jackson Place, right across from the White House and the State
Department. On the phone he asked “Do you want me to starve?” It was a terribly
dangerous place to meet, but I went anyway, half expecting him to be flanked by
FBI agents. When we met, he said that he was absolutely destitute and needed
money, $10. Just in order to avoid a scene in downtown Washington, I looked in my
wallet and saw that I had a $1 bill and a $20 bill. I gave Chambers the $20. That
was the last time I saw him until recently. He never paid me back.572

I did not deliver any documents to any unauthorized person after mid-

568
Second Trial at 1527-28.
569
Second Trial at 1484-85; GJ at 4080.
570
Second Trial at 1541; GJ at 4072.
571
GJ at 4073; Second Trial at 1538.
572
Second Trial at 1541-46.

131
 February 1938. After the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was made public in Fall
1939, I realized that I had been naïve, even a fool,573 in thinking that helping the
Soviet Union was a good way to fight Fascists. There had always been something
“quite distasteful” in this work.574 Since World War II, I have worked for the UN
and the government of Italy.

I assumed all along that what I was doing was breaking the law, but I thought
of myself as a fighter against Fascism before it was fashionable. I didn’t think I was
doing anything morally wrong or unpatriotic and I still feel the same way now. I
cannot imagine that the documents I passed – about trade with foreign countries –
would be used to injure the United States or would hurt the security of the US; I
wanted to help fight Germany and Japan.575 Everybody likes to forget it now in
1949, but a few years after what I did what I did, we and the Soviet Union were
allies again Germany and Japan. If what I did brought forward the defeat of Fascism
by one hour, I think I did nothing wrong and my conscience is clear.

That’s Julian Wadleigh’s direct testimony. I have never heard it claimed or hinted, by the
way, that anything he said was untrue. Who does he help?

If his testimony is to be believed, he helps The Prosecution. He shows that Chambers is not
making it all up. There was a spy ring in the State Department, Chambers was one of its hubs. The
way Wadleigh said he operated was consistent with the way Chambers said that he and Hiss
operated.

Also, Wadleigh undercuts Hiss’s defense of reputation, that well educated Americans with
nice incomes simply don’t spy for the Soviet Union. Here is a man who looks, walks, and talks
much like Alger Hiss who says he did all those things.

But does Wadleigh also present an opportunity for the Defense? They had been saying all
along that Chambers was a spy, there was a spy ring in State run by Chambers, but the documents
Chambers pulled out of the manila envelope and the pumpkin did not come from Hiss. The Hiss
Defense had been saying that Chambers got the documents from another, un-named spy in State, a
mysterious “Mr. X.”

The Defense would like to be able to say “Aha, Wadleigh is Mr. X,” a confessed flesh-and-
blood person and not a shadowy letter in the alphabet.

At both trials – and I’m going to combine them for simplicity here – Hiss’s counsel labored

573
Henry Julian Wadleigh, Wadleigh Begins to Pay for ‘Feeding’ Spy Ring, WASH POST (Aug. 7,
1949) at B-3.
574
First Trial at 1348.
575
Second Trial at 1488.

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mightily to convince the jury, that Wadleigh was the source of the documents Chambers said he had
got from Hiss.

When Lloyd Paul Stryker cross-examined, Wadleigh started out with “a tense and
confident jauntiness.”576 Lloyd Paul Stryker tied to make him look like an absurd snob, and
an over-educated dreamer, just like Chambers. All Communists are like that, you know,
unlike the solid, two-feet-on-the-ground, respectable and innocent Alger Hiss. Wadleigh was
enough of an oddball to give Stryker a good chance.

Stryker asked Wadleigh, might you not have snuck into someone else’s office at State
(Hiss’s or someone else’s) and filched documents from his scrap basket or out box?

No, said Wadleigh. Even if I had seen a “sufficiently rich find” on someone else’s
desk, “I never did anything so foolish” as to steal from someone else’s office. “Certainly
not” from a wastebasket!577

Oh, so treason is OK, but looking in someone else’s scrap basket? Heavens to Betsy,
there are certain things that an Oxford Man simply doesn’t do.

Well, said Stryker, how do we know you’re telling the truth? Weren’t you
sympathetic to Communists, and isn’t one of their tenets lying?

Wadleigh: “I would hardly call that a tenet. . . . I would call it a procedure.”

Stryker: “I am not going into semantics. I did not go to Oxford.” 578 Did you ever
eavesdrop? “Your conscience would have kept you from that?”

Wadleigh: “I just did not do that kind of thing.”579

Stryker’s eyebrows shot up.580

Stryker: But not a matter of conscience? “You would not have had the slightest
conscientious scruple . . . in pilfering documents from other desks, would you?”

Wadleigh: “Well, I never did so, and the question [of conscience] never arose in my
mind. . . . One gets conscientious scruples when one contemplates doing something, when
the question arises, but the question never arose in my mind and therefore I have no

576
Cooke at 171.
577
Second Trial at 1448.
578
First Trial at 1354.
579
First Trial at 1357.
580
Cooke at 172.

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recollection of having had any conscientious scruples against doing it. In other words, your
question is a hypothetical one.”

During Wadleigh’s long answer, Stryker had gone from his accusatory pose to being
open-mouthed, his eyes roving waggishly around the courtroom (Alistair Cooke’s words).
He, the greatest trial lawyer in America, begged Wadleigh’s forgiveness: “I daresay, [my
question] is very faulty, but you will have to bear with me. I do the best I can. I realize you
have the benefit of – what was it? London University and Oxford, too?”

Wadleigh (not realizing he’s being made a fool of): “That is right.”

Stryker: “By the way, you still seem to have some of the Oxford accent, don’t
581
you?”

Murphy objected like a trombone – anything to stop his witness from making a bigger
fool of himself. Judge Kaufman was unable to rule on Murphy’s objection for a while
because he was trying very hard not to laugh.582

Note that Stryker is aiming very high here and planting in the jury’s mind the
possibility that Wadleigh is the man who gave Chambers the documents. But he’s not going
into detail – he never asked Wadleigh point blank if he had given Chambers any of the State
Department Documents. It’s as if Stryker is walking down the Boulevard of The Hiss
Defense, and he comes to a side alley that’s labeled “Wadleigh Gave the Papers to
Chambers.” Stryker just shines his flashlight down the alley and moves on. He doesn’t
really want to look hard down that street. Stryker told newsmen afterwards that he had gone
light on Wadleigh because he was “just a poor thing, laying there bleeding.”583

Hiss’s lawyer at the second trial took the opposite approach and decided to go down
the “Wadleigh Gave the Papers to Chambers” alley, bathe every corner in white light and
turn over every rock in it. He took Wadleigh through every document produced by
Chambers, one by one. It went on for hours. It must have been torture for the jury.

Wadleigh disappointed Hiss’s lawyer. He testified that he gave Carpenter or Chambers only
documents that crossed his desk in the normal course of his job, and those were documents about
foreign trade that a mid-level staff specialist would see.584 None of Chambers’ documents about
military matters or high-level diplomacy or breaking news from the Chinese Civil War could have
come from him into Chambers’ hands. Wadleigh would never have gotten them in the first place.
The high-level stuff is so far above my pay grade I get a nosebleed just thinking about it.

581
First Trial at 1361-62.
582
Cooke at 173.
583
Weinstein I at 501.
584
First Trial at 1339, 1344-45, 1353, 1356.

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 Wadleigh was adamant, too, that none of the four notes in Hiss’s handwriting were given by
him to Chambers.585 I do not go into people’s offices and snatch notes from their scrap baskets.
The very idea!

The typewritten documents? Most of them were dated after March 9, 1938, the date on
which Wadleigh left Washington on his nine-month trip to Turkey. On the day most of the
typewritten papers were created and whatever day they were handed to Chambers, Wadleigh was on
the other side of the planet, and in no position to pass papers to Chambers. In fact, said Wadleigh,
for several weeks before I left for Turkey, I was told not to deliver any more papers.586

Wadleigh did say, about the papers typed before late February, that a few of them concerned
foreign trade and so might conceivably have crossed his desk and he might conceivably given them
to Chambers. But at the end of excruciatingly detailed cross-examination (and re-direct and re-
cross and so on) Wadleigh was adamant that there was no way that he gave most of the typewritten
documents to Chambers, and it was only conceivable that he gave a few of them to him, and he
very much doubted that he gave Chambers a single one.

Perhaps, about the typewritten documents, at this point you are asking: Wait a second. The
Hiss Defense conceded that all the typed documents were typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter.
That means they didn’t come from Wadleigh. If Wadleigh gave Chambers a document, why would
Chambers have a typed copy of it made on The Hiss Home Typewriter? Chambers would just have
it photographed and pass it on to Moscow? Why add the totally unnecessary step of typing a copy
on The Hiss Home Typewriter? It makes no sense for Wadleigh to be the source of any of the
documents typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter.

That leaves, for stuff you can pin on Wadleigh, some of The Pumpkin Papers, the two rolls
of film that contained pictures of seven State Department documents totaling 58 pages. They all
dated from when Wadleigh was still in Washington, not gone to Turkey. Maybe, Hiss’s lawyer at
the second trial thought, I can pin at least them on Wadleigh.

Five of The Pumpkin Papers concerned a pending US-German agreement on trade.

Wadleigh testified that he might have given them to Chambers.587 It was “conceivable,”588
“remotely possible.”589 But he thought it “most improbable,”590 “extremely improbable”591 because
he did not remember working on that agreement and so the documents very likely never crossed his

585
Second Trial at 1462.
586
First Trial at 1347-48.
587
Second Trial at 1598-1601, 1617-18.
588
Second Trial at 1444.
589
Second Trial at 1598.
590
First Trial at 1340; see generally id. at 1340-42.
591
First Trial at 1346.

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desk.592

There was another problem with Wadleigh being the source of any of those papers. The two
rolls of pictures were all taken on one night;593 that meant that Chambers got all of the
photographed documents from one guy in the State Department. The other documents on the rolls
concerned the Chinese Civil War and Japanese machinations in China, and the possibility of the
Soviet Union going to war against Japan in alliance with the US. Those Pumpkin Papers, because
of their subject matter, would never have crossed Wadleigh’s desk.594 He was not the source of
those documents, so he was not the source of any of the documents on the developed films.

This, if you think about it, means that Chambers got the documents on those films from
someone in State who had access to Wadleigh’s documents and other documents, meaning someone
higher than Wadleigh. Gee, who could that be? The two Pumpkin Papers that never went to
Wadleigh went to the office where Hiss worked and bore the initials “AH” in pencil.595 Perhaps
this is why Lloyd Paul Stryker at the first trial simply pointed out to the jury that Wadleigh could
have been the source of Chambers’ documents and did not go into that in any detail.

Also at the second trial, the Judge allowed much more cross-examination about
Wadleigh’s motives and mores, and I think this may have had an impact on the jury. Hiss’s
lawyer berated him, but Wadleigh answered that he did not consider that he had done
anything wrong.

Wadleigh was asked “You knew you were a traitor to the United States, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“Well, you knew that those papers were being turned over to the Communist Party,
didn’t you? Yes or no.”

“I did not consider myself a traitor and I still don’t. I felt that I was doing the right
thing. I was acting in accordance with my convictions as of that time.”

“Well, those convictions were those of a communist, were they not?”

“My views were pretty close to communist views. I was not a member of the
Communist Party.”

“Well, let us see how much you did subscribe to the communistic theory or tenets.

592
Second Trial at 1442-45.
593
Second Trial at 655.
594
Second Trial at 1613.
595
Second Trial at 1606 (Sayre’s office), 3131 (Hiss admits).

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Did you believe in the forceful overthrow of the Government of the United States by any
means whatsoever at the proper time?”

“I don’t think I did, no.”

“Did you believe in the church?”

“No.”

“Did you believe in the American way of life?”

According to Alistair Cooke, “Wadleigh put his index finger on his cheekbone and
thought deeply for a moment.”596

“Substantially, as I conceived it at that time, yes.”597

Wadleigh’s answers took the jurors by the hand and led them down the intellectual
path by which a man who seemed to come from the same world as Alger Hiss could decide
to spy for Soviet Union and not feel the slightest twinge of conscience about it. Indeed, he
could spy for the Soviets and feel superior, could feel that he was serving American interests
in the long run rather than betraying them.

Leslie Fiedler found Wadleigh equally laughable and reprehensible. Wadleigh, Fiedler later
wrote,

“attempted to declare his innocence and guilt at the same time. With no sign of
contrition, he admitted passing secret documents to Chambers but insisted that his
course had been justified by history; . . . .

“The clowning of Wadleigh reveals what is not so easily read in Hiss: a

moral obtuseness which underlies the whole case. . . . [T]he true protagonist of
tragedy suffers and learns. Wadleigh has learned nothing. He cannot conceive of
having done anything really wrong. He finds in his own earlier activities only a
certain excessive zeal, overbalanced by good will, . . . . That the irony of events
made him, just in so far as he was more idealistic and committed, more helplessly
the tool of evil, he cannot conceive. In the end, his ‘confession’ is almost as crass a
lie as the denial of Hiss – a disguise for self-congratulation, a device for clinging to
the dream of innocence. He cannot . . . believe that a man of liberal persuasion is
capable of wrong.”598

596
Cooke at 322.
597
Second Trial at 1472-75 (with several ellipses).
598
Fiedler at 7-8.

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 I think that, when all was said and done, Wadleigh did damage to The Hiss Defense. He
corroborated Chambers’ testimony about the spy ring; the Defense’s attempt to make Wadleigh into
the real thief of documents failed; and he explained to the jury how men like Alger Hiss came to
spy for the Soviet Union.

24. THE PROSECUTION:

WERE THE TWO FAMILIES FRIENDS,
AND FOR HOW LONG?

There were two disagreements between Hiss and Chambers. One was whether Hiss had
been a secret Communist and spy in the 1930s. The other was whether the two men (and their
wives) had had a close friendship lasting several years into 1938, as the Chamberses said, or only a
brief, unpleasant business relationship that was over by mid-1935, as the Hisses said. If you could
prove who was lying about the relationship, that would be a powerful indicator of who was lying
about the spying.

The Prosecution presented testimony and evidence about transactions that supported the
Chamberses. The Hisses had contrary interpretations of each one.

There was evidence about several transactions.

The Ford with the Hand-Operated Windshield Wipers and the Sassy Little Trunk.
Hiss, as shown in the HUAC hearings, gave away his old Ford in a strange transaction at the
end of which it was owned by a Communist. Chambers knew about this transaction
although it occurred a year after Hiss said he had kicked Chambers out of his life.

The $400 Loan.599 This is something that Chambers appears to have remembered only
after he was shown the Hisses’ bank records.600 Chambers said “Ah, now I remember,”
that when he was secretly planning to escape from the Communist underground and start a
new life, he needed a new car and got the Hisses to loan him $400 in late 1937.

Evidence showed that the Hisses had a joint savings account at Riggs Bank in
Washington and that on November 19, 1937, Mrs. Hiss withdrew $400 from the savings
account, practically emptying it.601 Mrs. Hiss took the $400 in cash, not a check.602 This

599
See generally Second Trial at 159 et seq.
600
Fred J. Cook, THE FBI NOBODY KNOWS (Macmillan 1964) at 315.
601
First Trial at 728, 2288; Second Trial at 801-02.
602
First Trial at 729.

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 was shown by the Riggs Bank’s records.603 Four days later, according to the records of the
Schmidt Motor Car Company in Randallstown, Maryland, Mrs. Chambers bought a new
Ford for $800604 – made up of $325 trade in value on the Chambers’ old car and $475 in
cash.605 Chambers said that $400 of the $475 was the money that Mrs. Hiss had withdrawn
from the Hiss savings account a few days earlier, and that the Hisses had given that $400 to
the Chamberses.606

The Hisses, at both trials, denied the loan completely, denied lending or giving
Chambers a cent in late 1937 – or having anything else to do with Chambers in 1937.607
They said they withdrew this large sum, $400, for a totally different reason. Alger had just
gotten a promotion at the State Department, they were going to move into a larger house
(the Volta Place house) and start doing some semi-formal entertaining. They withdrew the
$400 to buy new furniture, stemware, and other household items that an up-and-coming
diplomat needs. They also wanted to buy some new things for Timmie Hobson (the
stepson) and a fancy dress for Mrs. Hiss to wear to a reception at the White House.608

Problems for this explanation developed, again. $400 is a large sum of money in
1937, half the price of a nice new car, maybe $8,000 thousand dollars today. If you were
buying major items of furniture today, would you withdraw that much from your savings
account (where you kept your life savings in those years) and carry it in cash around in your
wallet or purse? The Hisses had a checking account at Riggs and the 1930s’ equivalent of
credit cards – charge accounts at many leading Washington department stores. They had a
habit of paying for major purchases by check or by ‘charging it.’609 Why didn’t they use
checks or say “Charge it”? The Hisses said that some stores where they bought things were
specialty shops that didn’t have charge accounts, didn’t take checks, and only took cash on
the barrel.610

Another problem with the Hiss’s story was that on the day Mrs. Hiss withdrew the
$400 from the savings account, they had not signed a lease on the big new house. Would
you buy lots of furniture for a big new house that you weren’t yet sure you’d move into?
Hiss said that the agent had given him a verbal commitment for the house the day before
Mrs. Hiss withdrew the $400.611 But no agent corroborated that and, in fact, although the
$400 was withdrawn on November 19, 1937, the Volta Place house was still being

603
Second Trial at 801.
604
First Trial at 736.
605
First Trial at 737; Second Trial at 705, 838, 1228-29, Gov’t Exh. 40.
606
First Trial at 196.
607
See, e.g., First Trial at 1909.
608
First Trial at 1913 et seq., 2288-91; Second Trial at 2613, 2872, circa 3402.
609
First Trial at 2296.
610
First Trial at 1914.
611
First Trial at 1912; Second Trial at 2775, 2872.

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 advertised for rent in the Washington papers on December 5612 and was shown to potential
renters on that day.613 Thus, the Hisses’ innocent explanation for draining their savings
account had some problems.

The Oriental Rug.614 Third, think back to oriental area rug that Hiss told HUAC that
Chambers/Crosley had given him one dark and stormy night long after they had parted on
unpleasant terms. Chambers said ‘Ah, yes, now I remember about that rug,’ and told the
following story. In late 1936 my boss in the spy ring, Colonel Bykov, gave me $1,000 to
pass on to my best sources, sort of a cash bonus for traitors. I told him this was a terrible
idea – these people are doing it for love, not for money. They would be insulted at being
paid – these people are Communists, after all! Bykov told me that the money was already in
the budget, we have to spend it (bureaucracies are the same everywhere). Bykov had a
brainstorm and told me to use the money to buy presents for my best sources, presents that
looked like they came from the Soviet Union. Gifts from the grateful Soviet People.615

Strong support for this story is the fact that Chambers, at about this time, suddenly
has about $1,000. In the 1930s, this is a non-trivial sum of money; it’s the price of a
medium-sized car or the down payment on a nice house. There is only one place in
Chambers’ life in 1936 that he could have got that sum of money, and that is the Communist
movement.616

Chambers thought – aha, rugs that look like they came from the Soviet Union, that’s
a great idea. Then Chambers’ problem was getting four rugs that looked like they came
from the Soviet Union. I can’t do that, he thought. Who do I know that can? I know, my
old friend Meyer Schapiro, ex-Columbia classmate, European travel buddy, now Professor
at Columbia, and already becoming the world’s greatest art historian. Meyer will know how
to do that. Chambers wrote Schapiro asking him, if I gave you $900 – I guess Chambers
kept $100 for himself – could you get me four area rugs that look like they came from the
Soviet Union? Chambers didn’t tell Schapiro that this had anything to do with espionage.
Schapiro said ‘Sure,’ corresponded with rug people and, late in 1936, Schapiro paid just
under $900 for four area rugs.617

The four rugs arrived in New York City on December 29, 1936,618 and reached

612
Second Trial at 4398, Gov’t Exh. 73. Hiss signed the lease on December 2, or at least it was
dated December 2. First Trial at 2111; Second Trial at 4399.
613
Second Trial at 4457.
614
See generally Second Trial at 146 et seq.
615
Chambers I at 414-16.
616
Younger Book at 566.
617
Weinstein I at 231; Depos at 1196 et seq.; First Trial at 767-74.
618
Second Trial at 853.

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 Washington in early January 1937.619 That all this happened in late 1936 and early 1937
was shown in court not only by Chambers’ testimony, but Dr. Schapiro’s matching
testimony and testimony by rug dealers and by paperwork showing that all this had
happened at that time – it seems that Schapiro was a pack rat who kept all his old papers.

Chambers said that the rugs were picked up from Union Station by one of his
sources in the Treasury Department, a man named George Silverman.620 Silverman was
supposed to keep one for himself and give one each to Harry Dexter White and Julian
Wadleigh. Then, Chambers said, one night in January 1937, Silverman drove the fourth rug
to the parking lot of a restaurant that was shaped like a boat621 on the Baltimore Pike near
College Park, Maryland. Silverman left the trunk of his car a little open. In another car in
the same lot, said Chambers, were I and Alger Hiss, waiting. I moved the rug from
Silverman’s trunk to Hiss’s so that neither of them saw the other. Then we all went our
separate ways.622 That’s how Alger Hiss got the rug from me, in early 1937. We were still
friends then.

The testimonies of Dr. Schapiro and the rug people and the records – regularly kept
business records from several parties – showing the rugs’ arrival in Washington in 1937
show, if Chambers is believed, the Hiss-Chambers relationship lasting into 1937, more than
a year after the Hisses said it had ended.

Hiss, at the trials, had a very good answer to all this. He said: I have no reason to
doubt that Chambers bought four rugs through Dr. Schapiro in December 1936, no doubt
about it. But the rug I got from Chambers/Crosley I got earlier, sometime in the spring of
1936, the last time I ever laid eyes on Chambers when he turned up like a bad penny at my
front door with the rug.623 Chambers must have imported rugs at least twice in 1936.

Chambers said that he only imported rugs once, in late 1936.624

One weakness in Hiss’s defense that some people have pointed to is that, you may
recall Hiss saying to HUAC that he still had the rug. Some people said that if that rug was not,
in fact, one of the rugs that Dr. Schapiro got, then Hiss would have bought it into court when
Schapiro was on the stand. Hiss’s lawyer would have unrolled it and asked the world’s greatest
art historian, “Is this one of the rugs that you got for Mr. Chambers?” It would have been
vintage Stryker drama. If Hiss were telling the truth, Schapiro would have said “My God, no,

619
Weinstein I at 231; Second Trial, Gov’t Exhs. 41, 42, 44.
620
Depos at 1196-97; First Trial at 822.
621
Depos at 1197; GJ at 4101.
622
Weinstein I at 231, 673 (note 40); Depos at 1196 et seq.; GJ at 4098-107; First Trial at 181 et
seq.
623
First Trial at 1993-94.
624
Weinstein I at 230-33.

141
 this rug is blue and the rugs I got for Chambers were all red” or something like that. Hiss did
not bring the rug into court.625

A bigger problem to me is that there is only one person in the whole wide world who
ever said that he got a rug from Whittaker Chambers in spring 1936, and that’s Alger Hiss. A
final weakness in Hiss’s story is that, if Chambers had imported rugs before, if he knew how to
import rugs, why would he have someone else (Professor Schapiro) do it for him in late 1936?

Make of all these transactions what you want. In my opinion, if there had been only one
transaction alleged by Chambers and only one rococo excuse by Hiss, you might be well willing to
give Hiss the benefit of the doubt. But can you believe his rococo explanations of all these
transactions, which collectively show a close friendly relationship lasting into 1937?

In addition, there was a lot of testimony and evidence at both trials that we just don’t have time to
go into but that I want to summarize so you know it is there.

Both Chamberses described the outsides and insides of the Hisses’ various houses, and
witnesses testified that they were right or wrong about outward appearance and wallpaper back in 1936
or 1937. I have not made a minute analysis of all sides of this testimony. But it seems to me that the
Chamberses got much of this right. They also got much of it wrong, saying that a house or feature was
such and such in the 1930s although they were describing conditions that existed only in the 1940s.626

Most elaborately, Chambers alleged a 3-day car trip by him and the Hisses to Peterborough,
New Hampshire, in the second week of August 1937. He said that the three (not including Mrs.
Chambers) stayed at a guest house in Peterborough called Bleak House (after the Charles Dickens
novel) and attended a summer stock production of the classic English comedy She Stoops to
Conquer.627 Chambers testified that on that trip, he also (and unbeknownst to Hiss) had a chat with
another Soviet spy, Harry Dexter White, who had a summer rental in Peterborough.

The Hisses absolutely denied that 90% of the socializing alleged by the Chamberses ever
happened. They denied, for example, that either of the Chamberses had ever set foot in their house on
30th Street, where they lived starting in the middle of 1936, or in their house on Volta Place, which the

625
Garry Wills, LEAD TIME: A JOURNALIST’S EDUCATION (“Wills Education”) (Doubleday 1983) at
59.
626
See, e.g., Richard B. Morris, FAIR TRIAL: FOURTEEN WHO STOOD ACCUSED, FROM ANNE
HUTCHINSON TO ALGER HISS (Harper & Row 1967) at 449-51; Doreen Rappaport, BE THE JUDGE,
BE THE JURY: THE ALGER HISS TRIAL (Harper Collins 1993) at 74-77, 98; Martin Roberts, SECRET
HISTORY (Author House 2012) at 174; First Trial 1644 & surrounding pages (Mrs. Catlett saying
that all the details Chambers recalled about furniture and layouts were from the P Street house;
Chambers wanted them to be at the (later) 30th Street house).
627
First Trial at 209-10, 818-20 (Hiss vacation); Second Trial at 180 et seq., 408 et seq.

142
Hisses moved into in December 1937.628 They also denied the trip to Peterborough, New
Hampshire.629 The Hisses claimed that on the dates of the alleged trip to Peterborough, they were at a
summer rental in Chestertown, Maryland, and that Alger daily visited his stepson at a nearby summer
camp where the boy was recovering from a broken leg.630

To show you how much detail the trials went into, no fewer than 15 witnesses testified about
some aspect of the alleged trip to Peterborough.631 Suffice it to say that neither side scored a knockout
blow. I think that all these issues, despite their memorable aspects, paled before the handwritten and
typed spy documents.

And that was The Prosecution’s case at the first trial. When The Prosecution rested, Lloyd
Paul Stryker moved Judge Kaufman to dismiss the case. Ruling in his chambers, Judge Kaufman
said that he was close to dismissing the case because of Chambers’ long line of perjuries and the
weakness of evidence corroborating him. Those words may just have been a consolation prize for
Mr. Stryker, however. Judge Kaufman denied his motion to dismiss and required the Defense to
put on its case.632

25. INTERMEZZO:
THE SLEEPER ISSUE OF HOMOSEXUALITY

Before going into Hiss Defense, I want to discuss an issue that, when all was said and
done, did not figure large in the case in public. It was backstage, however, occasionally
rustling the curtains and threatening to rush out into the footlights and upset everything. The
issue is homosexuality, who is “a homo.” And remember, we are talking about revelations of
homosexuality not today, but in 1949. It was unmentionable in polite society; men still went
to jail for homosexual acts. Conservatives thought it was a sin and a crime; many caring,
humane liberals thought was that it was a mental illness for which shock treatments or even
frontal lobotomies were the best medicine.

628
First Trial at 1905, 1964-65.
629
First Trial at 1908, 1966.
630
First Trial at 1910, 2138-50.
631
Whittaker Chambers; Harry E. Coleman (Second Trial at 2307); Lucy Davis (First Trial at 1457;
Second Trial at 2293); Thomas Fansler (Second Trial at 2320); Marian Finney (First Trial at 2661);
Henry Norman Grieb (First Trial at 2676, Second Trial at 4386); Alger Hiss (Second Trial at 2570-80);
Priscilla Hiss (Second Trial at 3258); Joseph Sagona (First Trial at 818, Second Trial at 883); Paul A.
Solandt (First Trial at 2610); J. Kellogg Smith (First Trial at 1464); Margaret Kellogg Smith (Second
Trial at 2449); Florence T. Stafford (First Trial at 2671, Second Trial at 818); Edith Bond Stearns (First
Trial at 811-14); Mrs. Alexine Wickes (First Trial at 2695).
632
First Trial at 1415.

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 When ex-Communists came forward and began naming names, it was common
practice for the Party to smear them as “sex perverts” (in addition to being alcoholics or,
worse yet, having talked with a psychiatrist).633 Some people thought Hiss was doing this
when, before HUAC, he said that Chambers’ life was “not, like those of normal men, an open
book,” and when he described Chambers’ story four times as “somewhat queer.”

Hiss may have also been hinting at the same shameful secret when he began
identifying Chambers as “George Crosley.” For George Crosley was a name that Chambers
had indeed used, as a nom de plume or pen name during the 1920s. Some of Chambers’
poems that were published in the 20s were, by the standards of that day, obscene, and at least
one was homoerotic.634 When Hiss said the name “George Crosley” to Chambers for the first
time in the Commodore Hotel, he may have been sending Chambers a little message that
‘We’ve been looking into your background and we’ve found out your dirty little secret. And
if you keep telling what you know about me, we’ll start telling what we know about you.”
Such threats must have been terrible for Chambers; exposure could easily have cost him his
job and his family life. This explains in part the sense of dread Chambers seems to have felt
all though the Case and makes his attempted suicide more understandable.635

Please note: The Hiss Defense not only pre-figured Joe McCarthy in denouncing
Chambers for being unbelievable because he had been a Communist, they also tried to use
homosexuality to silence him. In the same vein, an article in the Communist Party’s
newspaper, THE DAILY WORKER, published shortly after the HUAC hearings, described
Chambers as “a small, pudgy man with effeminate manners.”636 Standards for political
correctness sure have changed.

Let’s move ahead a few months. You’re the FBI and you’re helping Prosecutor Murphy
prepare his case. You are talking a lot with Chambers, whom you know is going to be your ‘star
witness.’ You know that he’s got a lot of vulnerabilities – a former Communist; a confessed traitor;
a confessed perjurer many times recently about the very events of the case; and, if not insane, a man
who tends to melodrama.

Then, at the end of your meeting with him on February 15, 1949, Chambers gives you a

633
Stripling Interview at 4; concerning the rumors about Chambers that were so disgusting as to be
indescribable in past decades, see Cooke at 334; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Whittaker Chambers & His
Witness” (“Schlesinger Book Review”) SATURDAY REVIEW at 8, 9 (May 24, 1952).
634
Brodie at 219; Hiss II at 209; Tanenhaus at 41-42; Weinstein I at 56; Meyer A. Zeligs,
FRIENDSHIP & FRATRICIDE: AN ANALYSIS OF WHITTAKER CHAMBERS & ALGER HISS (Viking 1967)
at 203, 214-16. One homoerotic poem, Lothrop, Montana, was published under Chambers’ real
name in THE NATION MAGAZINE on June 30, 1926, page 726. It is available on that magazine’s
web page.
635
Gary Wills, Book Review of Weinstein I, NEW YORK REV. OF BOOKS, Apr. 20, 1978, at 30.
636
Weinstein I at 301.

144
written document and leaves the room. The document, in his handwriting, says in part as follows:

“We have now reached a point in my testimony where I must testify to certain facts
which should be told only to a priest. . . . . Alger Hiss’s defense obviously intends
to press the charge that I have had homosexual relations with certain individuals. . . .
. I did not know what homosexualism meant until I was more than thirty years old.
Until then, some of my friendships with men were too intense but they were
completely innocent. . . . . My relations with women were slow to develop, but
were normal. . . . . In 1933 or 4, a young fellow stopped me on the street in [New
York] and asked me if I could give him a meal and lodgings for the night. I fed him
and he told me about his life as a miner’s son. I was footloose, so I took him to a
hotel to spend the night. There he presently taught me an experience I did not know
existed. At the same time he revealed to me, and unleashed, the . . . tendency of
which I was still unaware. It was a revelation to me. As a matter of fact it set off a
chain reaction in me which was almost impossible to control. Because it had been
repressed so long, it was all the more violent when once set free. . . . For three or
four years, I fought a wavering battle against this affliction. [C]ontinuing up to the
year 1938, I engaged in numerous homosexual activities both in New York and
Washington, D.C. . . . I never had any prolonged affair with any one man and never
visited any known places where these types of people were known to congregate. . .
. I am positive that no man with whom I had these relations . . . ever knew my true
identity, nor do I at this time recall the names of any of them. . . . Ten or more years
ago, with God’s help, I absolutely conquered it. This does not mean that I am
completely immune to such stimuli. It does mean that my self-control is complete
and that for years I have lived a blameless and devoted life as husband and father. . .
. . At no time did I have such relations, or even the thought of such relations with
Hiss or with anybody else in the Communist Party or connected with Communist
work of any kind. I kept my secret . . . jealously . . . I tell it now only because, in
this case, I stand for truth. Having testified mercilessly against others, it has become
my function to testify mercilessly against myself. I have said before that I am
consciously destroying myself. This is not from love of self-destruction but because
only if we are consciously prepared to destroy ourselves in the struggle can the thing
we are fighting be destroyed.”637

If you are the FBI, doesn’t this Case just keep getting better and better? Your star
witness was already a Communist, a traitor, and a multiple perjurer. Now, he’s a pervert,
too!! This statement did not come out at the trials; it became public only in the 1970s.

OK, now imagine you’re The Hiss Defense. Something on the same subject came
into their hands. A man named Leon Herald Srabian came to the defense lawyers and

637
Edith Tiger (Ed.), IN RE ALGER HISS, VOL. 1 (Farrar Straus Giroux 1979) at 259-66, 430-31;
Weinstein I at 129-30.

145
offered to testify as follows.

‘I knew Whittaker Chambers in the 1920s; if it matters, I was a Communist

Party member until around 1937. In 1932, I attended a meeting in Chicago of the
John Reed Club, an organization of writers and artists that was closely linked to the
Communist Party.638 I was staying at a cheap rooming house. One night I woke up
in bed to find myself in the middle of having an orgasm. A man was crouched over
me, “laboring at my penis still in his mouth.” I was utterly revolted by this and
shooed the man away. The man stayed in my room for over an hour begging me to
continue. I said no and eventually the man slinked off into the night. The man was
Whittaker Chambers. I am absolutely certain of the identification.’639

If you are The Hiss Defense, do you call Srabian as a witness? Do you smear
Chambers as a homosexual – a man who is therefore unfit to be believed? For the moment,
assume away all ethical concerns with such smearing; you have an obligation to represent
your client vigorously.

One of Hiss’s lawyers believed that Chambers/Crosley must have lusted after the
handsome Hiss, maybe even propositioned him. Then, when Hiss threw him out of his life,
Crosley stewed and sulked until his rage burst forth fifteen years later in the form of false
accusations of treason.640 Hiss denied ever having been propositioned by Chambers,641 but
found the ‘vengeful, spurned, tormented homosexual’ theory a good explanation of
Chambers’ behavior.642 One reason I doubt this is that, if every homosexual reacted to being
turned down for sex by making false accusations of espionage, there would be a lot more
false accusations of espionage.

But back to the potential witness Srabian. The first question you (The Hiss Defense)
ask yourself is did this incident in Chicago happen? Will this story hold up under cross-
examination?

There is some evidence that Chambers was at that Chicago meeting of the John Reed
Club.643 But I find Srabian’s story dubious – not incredible, just dubious. It may be true, but
there are several aspects of it that are hard to believe.

638
One founder (or, at least, founding member) of the John Reed Club was Esther Shemitz, later
Mrs. Whittaker Chambers! Depos at 456-59.
639
Weinstein I at 406-07; Zeligs at 216 (“laboring” words).
640
Weinstein I at 403, 639-41.
641
Weinstein I at 639.
642
Hiss II at 208.
643
Chambers is listed in the minutes of the Chicago meeting as being on its Executive and
Resolutions Committees. Harvey Klehr, THE HEYDAY OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM: THE
DEPRESSION DECADE (Basic Books 1984) at 426 (note 17).

146
 First, from what we know of Chambers’ secret Communist life, 99% of it occurred
between New York and Washington. It would have been unusual – not incredible, but
unusual – for him to have gone to Chicago.644

Second, I believe that by the time of this alleged incident, Chambers had joined the
underground. When you did that, you disappeared, you cut off your friends who were in the
open Party, and you stopped going to open Party functions. It would have been a breach of
this rule – again, not incredible, but unusual – for Chambers to have gone to a meeting of the
John Reed Club, which was, in effect, a meeting of the open Communist Party.645

Third, the Communist Party’s attitude towards homosexuality was complete hostility.
The Party considered homosexuality a symptom of last gasp, decadent late-stage Capitalism.
It would disappear along with greed and unhappiness once The Worker’s Dictatorship was
established.646 It would have been incredibly risky – not impossible, buy incredibly risky –
for Chambers to have had gay sex with a man he knew to be a fellow Party member. He
would have risked blackmail and exposure – especially risky for someone like Chambers for
whom practically his whole life was The Party. Again, I’m not saying I’d bet my last dollar
that this didn’t happen – lust makes people engage in risky behavior – but it seems unlikely
to me.

Finally, something basic about Srabian’s story is implausible. He says that he awoke
from a deep sleep when he was in the middle of an orgasm. If I were in a hotel room and a
stranger entered the room, climbed into bed with me, and began performing oral sex on me, I
think I would wake up before I was halfway through orgasm. Maybe I’m just a light sleeper.
But this implausible part of Mr. Srabian’s story may be his way to say “I am absolutely
certain that it was Whittaker Chambers who was doing gay stuff on me, it’s not that I saw
him 20 feet away in the bushes on a dark night, no doubt about it, . . . but I’m not ‘one of
those people.’” Mr. Srabian’s narrative is too convenient to be easily credible to me.

The Hiss Defense ultimately decided not to use Srabian to make an explicit gay smear
against Chambers, but for other reasons. One reason was, I guess, their policy that only
Proper Citizens and The Top People will be witnesses for The Hiss Defense. Srabian was a
confessed former card-carrying Communist. Horrors!

Another was a long string of thought that begins with the Defense being afraid that the jury

644
Second Trial at 103 (Chambers says he went to Chicago in 1929, after he had dropped out of the
Party).
645
Weinstein I at 407 (footnote).
646
Wikipedia, Communism & Homosexuality, Early History, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Communism_and_homosexuality (visited Aug. 5, 2013) (the Soviet government in Stalin’s time
believed “that homosexuality was only practiced among fascists or the aristocracy”).

147
would think that Hiss himself was gay. Suspicions that Hiss was gay began early, although I’ve
never seen a scrap of evidence that he was. Hiss is, though, the kind of person who lots of people
think is gay – a thin, un-muscular, urban brain worker; he went to elite universities; he’s in the
State Department, one of those striped-pants cookie-pushers; he’s married to a strong woman; his
hobby is bird-watching. Do I have to spell it out? Chambers may have added to these rumors
when he said that Hiss walked with “a slight mince sometimes” and had “rather long, delicate
fingers.”647

The Hiss Defense feared that if it were proved that Chambers had a gay side, the jury
would leap to an answer of one of the toughest questions in the case, which is what attracted
the handsome and upper crust Hiss to Chambers, the smelly, toothless man who looked like
he crawled out from under a rock. The Hiss Defense was afraid that the jury would think ‘we
always knew that Hiss was one of those people. Now it turns out that Chambers is one, too –
aha!! – that explains the relationship. Now I see what was going on, now it all makes sense.
That’s the missing piece of the puzzle that Dean Acheson was talking about. Gee, I guess
when Alger wants his man meat, he doesn’t go to the Harvard Club. He goes way down
market, ‘rough trade’ as they used to call it.’

The Hiss Defense was afraid that, if it proved that Chambers was a “sex pervert,” as
the saying went in 1949, the jury would think that what happened is that Hiss and Chambers
met as sexual partners. Maybe some emotional attachment developed, maybe it was just a
chemical reaction. But then Chambers either sweet talked Hiss into giving him the State
Department documents, or maybe Chambers blackmailed Hiss into giving him State
Department documents – sexual blackmail being an ancient technique of the espionage
profession.

If you are The Hiss Defense, do you want the jury to think that this is what
happened? On the positive side, it makes Hiss look less like a traitor and more like a – by
the standards of that time – flawed human being, and perhaps sympathetic as the victim of
blackmail.

But the problem is that, if that’s what happened, then Hiss is guilty. He did pass
government documents to Chambers without authorization in 1937 and 1938, and he
committed perjury when he denied doing so. This is one place where the absence of the
mention of Communism from the indictment hurts Hiss.

In the end, The Hiss Defense decided not call Mr. Srabian as a witness and not to
smear Cambers explicitly as gay. We could cover Chambers with mud, but some of the
mud might splatter back on Alger. The risk of that is not worth running, and the issue as a
while is just too unpredictable.

647
Chambers I at 566-67 (quoting from HUAC transcript); Second Trial at 587.

148
 Another way that homosexuality could have arisen openly, but did not, in the case is that
Mrs. Hiss’s son by her first marriage was homosexual. Not long before the Case began, this fellow,
whose name is Timothy Hobson, was discharged from the Navy for emotional grounds related to
being gay.648 The FBI visited him and his friends and, Hobson says, implicitly threatened to “out”
him,649 which would have been very painful in 1949 for him and perhaps for his stepfather’s
defense.

Hobson now says that he wanted to testify for his stepfather but the Defense lawyers feared
that his homosexuality would be exposed. Remember, only The Top People will be Hiss witnesses,
no sex perverts. Dr. Hobson says that he would have testified consistently with his parents that
their relationship with Chambers/Crosley was businesslike, unpleasant, and brief. Hobson is certain
that his testimony would have “made a difference” in the trials.650

I have two reflections on this. First, I doubt that anything Hobson would have said would
have helped much. I have seen witnesses give exculpatory testimony for family members that was
clearly sincere and laughably incredible. Family members’ general testimonies in favor of other
family members have little credibility in such contexts; they are “Dog Bites Man” stories. Also,
young Master Hobson testified to the Grand Jury, but it still indicted Hiss.

My second reason for doubting his testimony’s value is that, at the time Chambers was
allegedly coming by the Hiss house at 6 to pick up documents and returning them at 10 at night or
later, and when the two families allegedly socialized in the Hiss home and on trips, the stepson was
eleven years old. I have asked myself: how much do I remember of my parents’ social life when I
was that age? I remember very little. The few of their friends I remember from those years are
ones who were there when I was five and when I was 15, constant presences, relatives and best
friends for a decade or more. It is entirely possible that my parents had a friend who dropped by
once every ten days, and took a few trips, when I was eleven and it has totally escaped my memory,
especially if most of the visits were when I was watching the Mickey Mouse Club in the late
afternoon and way after my bed time.

Finally, I doubt that young Master Hobson, had he testified, could have explained how 64
pages of spy documents got typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter.

All in all, the way that of homosexuality came up in this Case, and did not come out in
public, is a fascinating glimpse into how complex cases unfold and how some things do not come
out in court. It also shows, in my opinion, how much healthier our society is today when
homosexuality is not a secret shame and is not a subject of blackmail. We are a better country for

648
Weinstein I at 425.
649
Gentry at 363; Weinstein I at 425.
650
Lynn Duke, Stepping Out of the Shadows, WASH. POST (April 5, 2007), http://www.
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040402714.html (visited Aug. 5,
2007).

149
that.

I’ll have a fair amount more to say at the end about what else did not come out in
court.

OK, back to trial. Next, The Hiss Defense begins its case and Alger Hiss takes
the stand!

26. THE DEFENSE:

ALGER HISS

Alger Hiss took the stand on June 23, 1949, and stayed there for all or part of 4 days. He
did very well, on the whole.

Stryker first asked him if he had committed perjury before the Grand Jury and Hiss
answered no.651

The Stryker walked Hiss through the resume to die for. The emphasis was on all the times
and places – at the Supreme Court, in private law practice, at the Yalta Conference and the San
Francisco Conference – that Hiss had been trusted with secrets, by people who were very good at
picking trustworthy people.652 Hiss had never breached a confidence he had been given (or been
shown to have done so). The implication was, however self-serving it sounded coming from his
own mouth, that Hiss was a trustworthy man.

Stryker asked Hiss about every single bad act that Chambers had attributed to him – passing
handwritten State Department documents, asking Mrs. Hiss to type up documents to be passed on to
Chambers, and about the two families’ social life, especially driving hither and yon together on
trips, visiting each other’s homes, the alleged trip to Peterborough, New Hampshire, the alleged
$400 car loan,653 and on and on. Hiss denied emphatically that any of those events or anything like
them had ever happened.654

Hiss described his ‘actual’ dealings with the alleged freelance journalist and deadbeat
subtenant George Crosley, from their first meeting, which he now put around the turn of the year
from 1934 to 1935;655 to the two men agreeing to the subtenancy at lunch in April 1935;656 to

651
First Trial at 1839-41.
652
First Trial at 1841 et seq.
653
Second Trial at 2600-01, 2942.
654
First Trial circa 1900; Second Trial at 2539-40 (State spy papers), 2557 (Nye papers).
655
First Trial at 1882-83; Second Trial at 2551.

150
Crosley having trouble moving his things down to Washington and living (along with his wife and
baby daughter) with the Hisses for a few days in late April 1935;657 to Crosley moving out and
moving into the Hisses’ empty apartment for May and June; then moving out at the end of June
without paying Hiss any rent but a pittance; a few more encounters between the men, some by
phone and some face-to-face at the Nye Committee offices, in which Crosley promised to pay the
rent; Hiss giving Crosley his 1929 Ford in late May or early June 1936 (Hiss’s story is now close to
consistent with the records of the Cherner Motor Company and the DMV);658 and Crosley showing
up at Hiss’s front door unexpectedly one evening in the late spring of 1936 and giving Hiss the
rug.659 The last time they met, Hiss said, was when Crosley asked him for another small loan in late
May or early June 1936 and Hiss told him ‘No, and go away.’660

Hiss also came up with explanation #2 of how The Spy Documents came to be typed on his
Home Typewriter. You may recall that the Grand Jury found incredible his first story, that
Chambers broke into his house and typed them up there himself when no one was looking, then tip-
toed off and waited for years to spring them on Hiss.

On the witness stand, Hiss identified Woodstock N230099 as The Hiss Home Typewriter.661
And now he testified that he had given it away before The Spy Documents were typed on it.

Specifically, he said, it was in connection with our move from P Street to Volta Place, in
late December 1937. We got help in moving from two sons of our house maid, Claudi Catlett. The
two sons, Raymond and Perry, were both in their mid-teens at the time. They lived in Georgetown,
at 2728 P Street NW, with their mother and a couple of other people. The Catlett Kids were sort of
neighborhood handymen. They would wash your car and your windows, mow your lawn, that kind
of thing.

Raymond and Perry helped us move, Hiss said, and their payment for their services was that
we gave them things we didn’t want to take with us to our new house, and one of these things was
the big old Woodstock office typewriter, The Hiss Home Typewriter. My wife gave it to them, I
don’t recall exactly when or where. But the main point is that the move, when we parted with The
Hiss Home Typewriter, occurred in December 1937. Therefore, when all The Spy Documents were
typed on it, in the first quarter of 1938, that Woodstock was out of my and my wife’s ownership
and possession.662

656
First Trial at 1887; at 2257, Mrs. Hiss says it was in early May; Second Trial at 2566-67.
657
Second Trial at 2569-70.
658
First Trial at 1890 et seq., 2040; Second Trial at 2588-91; Weinstein I at 474.
659
First Trial at 1902; Second Trial at 2594.
660
First Trial at 1892; Second Trial at 2597. For Hiss’s earlier versions, see generally Weinstein I
at 157-59.
661
First Trial as 2113.
662
First Trial at 2063.

151
 Finally, Stryker asked “Mr. Hiss, you have entered your formal and solemn plea of not
guilty to the charges here against you . . . And in truth and in fact are you not guilty?”

Hiss answered “I am not guilty.”

Stryker said “Your witness.”663

How would you cross-examine Alger Hiss, a former Editor of the Harvard Law Review and
probably the smartest guy in the courtroom? He is obviously not going to blubber out a confession
in open court. Congressman Nixon advised Murphy to keep Hiss on the witness stand for a long
time. Hiss makes a very good first impression, Nixon counseled, and you can’t afford for that to be
the impression that the jury is left with.664

Murphy did about as good as job any anyone could have done, I think, but he didn’t do
much damage. I think that Murphy was doing was trying to do a few things – dent Hiss’s armor a
little here and there; get past the good first impression Hiss makes; get Hiss to repeat his rather
hard-to-believe explanations for the car, the $400, the rug, and so on, and hope Hiss sounds
incredible to the jury; and try to get Hiss irritated so he goes off his choir boy behavior and gets
pompous and offends the jury with his ‘I went to Harvard and you didn’t’ superiority. See if you
think Murphy achieved any or all of those goals.

First, Murphy got Hiss to admit that, even accepting his innocent version of his relationship
with Chambers, the two men had met twelve or sixteen times – counting the Crosley’s two-or-three
days living in the Hiss home as one meeting and including Hiss driving Chambers to New York
City. So, this is not a casual or slight acquaintance, even in your version, Mr. Hiss.665

He got Hiss to admit that he had known several far-left wing people, one or two of whom
were widely believed to be Communists by 1949,666 and that he had been affiliated with a group
called the International Judicature Association,667 which had radical tendencies. None of this
makes you a Communist or a traitor, of course. The point was to dent Hiss’s claim that I’ve been
just another the middle-of-the-road New Dealer all along. No, Alger, you’re not as boring as you
look.

Prosecutor Murphy zeroed in on The Robinson-Rubens Telegram in Hiss’s handwriting.

Hiss had originally doubted it was in his handwriting,668 but he now admitted that it was.669

663
First Trial at 1972; see also Second Trial at 2772.
664
Tiger at 121.
665
First Trial at 1973-2004.
666
First Trial at 2082-85 (Lee Pressman), 2160, 2214-15.
667
First Trial at 2015, 2087.
668
First Trial at 2209, 2213-14.
669
First Trial at 2028-30.

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Murphy asked Hiss what possible work-related reason Hiss would have for writing out The
Robinson-Rubens Telegram. Hiss testified that, when he was working for Assistant Secretary
Sayre, who was in charge in international trade agreements, lots of documents were sent to Sayre
that Sayre didn’t have time to read. Hiss would read those documents for him and would then brief
him on the parts of them that Hiss thought Sayre should know about. Sometimes, especially if Hiss
was going to do this briefing over lunch with Sayre, Hiss said he would write out, on little pieces of
State Department note paper, summaries of documents or important parts of them. He would use
these handwritten notes as aids to his memory when he lunched with Sayre.670

Murphy got Hiss to describe the Robinson-Rubens Telegram as such a little summary to
help Hiss in briefing the Assistant Secretary. Murphy did not thrust home the knife; he saved that
for his closing speech. But the thrust home is that

- the Robinson-Rubens Telegram has nothing to do with foreign trade, and even though
it was front page news and Sayre might want to be briefed about how the incident was
unfolding, he would likely not want to be told about all the details in the Telegram; so,
this is not a work-related document, one of those memory aids for lunch; and, more
important,

- this note in Hiss’s handwriting is not a short summary of a long document. It is almost
the entire Telegram. If Hiss did want to brief Sayre about the Telegram over lunch, he
would have brought along the Telegram itself. There was no work-related reason for
Hiss to write out a copy of almost the entire Telegram in his own hand, no innocent
explanation for the existence of the document. But, of course, the Soviet Union would
be intensely interested to know every word of what it said.

Murphy reminded Hiss of his forgetfulness (or dishonesty, if you wish) about many
important facts that had emerged:

You had heard the name Whittaker Chambers before he testified to HUAC, hadn’t you?

Yes.

Once in 1947 and once in early 1948 you heard that a man named Chambers, who was at
TIME MAGAZINE, had said you were a Communist, didn’t you?

Yes.671

You made no attempt to find out who he was and why he was saying these vile things?

670
First Trial at 1852, 1943-44, 2092-101, 2211-13; see also Second Trial at 2024-25 (Sayre
corroborating briefings at lunches).
671
First Trial at 2005-2005a, 2011, 2017, 2089-90; Second Trial circa 2970.

153
 That is correct.672

So, when you told HUAC six months later that the name Whittaker Chambers meant
“absolutely nothing” to you, you were ‘forgetting’?

Yes, but several times starting in 1946 I heard that there were rumors that I was a
Communist. I went right to the FBI and asked to see J. Edgar Hoover. I eventually saw one of his
associates and answered all questions I was asked.673

Before the Grand Jury, you remembered the brand of every typewriter you had – and you’d
had a lot of them – but you left out the Woodstock.

Yes.

The Grand Jury asked you if you had given any gifts to the Catletts, and you named some,
but you left out the Woodstock.

Yes, admitted Hiss.674

At about the same time, you told the FBI that you had had the ‘big office machine’ into
1938 – which you now deny, didn’t you?

Yes.675

And you told the FBI that your wife had sold it to a second hand dealer or the Salvation
Army or a junkman – and you gave them several other explanations before you came up with the
one you’re using now, isn’t that true?

Yes.676

In describing his chameleon-like changes of testimony about when he got rid of the
Woodstock and to whom he got rid of it, Hiss drew a distinction between his memory, which he
called “independent recollection,” and what other people told him that he found believable, which
Hiss called “knowledge.” My wife and my lawyer Mr. McLean have told me that we gave the
Woodstock to the Catletts. I believe them totally. I therefore have knowledge that we gave it to the

672
First Trial at 2090.
673
First Trial at 2013-14, 2016-17, 2242.
674
First Trial at 2091.
675
Second Trial at 2767.
676
GJ at 3527; First Trial at 2021-23, 2063, 2066, 2216-18.

154
Catletts, but I have no independent recollection of that fact.677 This is why, in some of my earlier
testimonies, I said I didn’t remember anything about the Typewriter, but did not deny that I knew
about it. If the precise question I was asked was whether I remembered what happened to the
Typewriter, and I answered ‘no,” and that was the truth, because I did not remember. I had no
independent recollection. If I had been asked point blank who got the Typewriter, I would have
given more informative answers. I was only asked about what I remembered. (Tee hee, you missed
me.)

In your testimony to HUAC, you remembered the name of every household servant you
ever had in Washington, except Claudi Catlett. Even though she was the only one who worked for
you full time, the one who worked for you the longest, the only one whose family had become
involved with your family (you even attended a Catlett family wedding in the 1940s) – and the one
to whose sons you gave the Woodstock. Hiss said he had thought she was dead – which is not a
reason for not naming her.678

Murphy also forced Hiss to re-tell the less credible parts of his version of his dealings with
Chambers/Crosley.

You let the deadbeat Crosley drive your car around Washington, even though it was your
only car.679 You even gave him the title certificate so that Chambers could have passed himself off
as Alger Hiss if a policeman had stopped him.680

You, a cautious lawyer with two big law firms, sub-leased an apartment to a stranger who
was obviously down on his luck – with no approval from the landlord, no signed sublease,681 no
background check or references, no security deposit, no first or last month’s rent. You didn’t even
ask him for the rent until the end of the lease period.682 You charged him only what you were
paying the landlord, even though you left furnishings there?

And then, after you realized he would never pay you all the money he owed you, you gave
him a car.

Yes, said Hiss.683

Hiss added that he once did another short-term oral sub-lease with another person, so this is
not totally uncharacteristic behavior for this cautious lawyer. Although, Hiss had to admit, his other

677
First Trial at 2064-68, 2113.
678
First Trial at 2091; see also First Trial at 2250; Weinstein I at 40.
679
First Trial at 1987-88.
680
First Trial at 1988-91.
681
First Trial at 2038.
682
First Trial at 1981.
683
First Trial at 2005.

155
oral sub-tenant was a man with a government job, a regular paycheck, and an office where he could
be reached if Hiss needed to find him, obviously many levels more trustworthy than the disheveled
Mr. Crosley.684

Hiss said, look, the sublease was just for two months, I was on the hook for the rent anyway,
and even if Crosley only paid me five cents, I would still have been five cents better off than I
would have been if I hadn’t let him move in. I had nothing to lose by letting him in.

But, answered, Murphy, that’s not true. You actually lost money on the sub-lease because
you kept the public utilities going in your name685 and you paid for the Crosleys’ public utilities,
didn’t you,686 you were worse off to that extent?

True, said Hiss.

You paid for their gas bill, Murphy asked.

Yes, said Hiss.

You paid their electric bill, Murphy continued.

Yes, said Hiss.

You paid their phone bill, said Murphy.

Yes, said Hiss, but phone bills were only three or four dollars a month back then.687

But, continued Murphy, the Crosleys could have made lots of long distance calls the last
month of their stay, you wouldn’t have gotten the bill until they were long gone, and you would
have been stuck with paying for all those expensive long distance calls, wouldn’t you?

Well, Hiss answered, “If he had had a long distance call of any size I certainly would have
taken that up with him.”

“You would have ran after him for that?” asked Murphy.

Hiss answered “I would have run after him.”688

684
First Trial at 2075-77.
685
Second Trial at 217, Gov’t Exh. 3.
686
Second Trial circa 2818.
687
First Trial at 2032-35.
688
First Trial at 2035.

156
 Alger Hiss, under cross-examination in the trial of his life, has so many spare brain cells that
he can correct the Prosecutor’s grammar!

After two days of direct examination and two days of cross-examination, Alger Hiss had
told his story and suffered little obvious damage. But he is a hard man to like.

27. THE DEFENSE:

PRISCILLA HISS
AND
THE CHARACTER WITNESSES

Mrs. Hiss took the stand immediately after her husband.

She gave a version of her family’s dealings with the Crosleys that was very consistent with
her husband’s and, in all meaningful respects, hugely different from that testified to by Whittaker
and Esther Chambers.689 Her only difference with Alger was that she remembered a few times her
husband didn’t of Mr. or Mrs. Crosley dropping by the Hisses for social reasons.690 Mrs. Hiss said
that Mr. Crosley was a dropper-inner691 and that she was rather embarrassed one day when Mrs.
Crosley was over and a second friend of Mrs. Hiss dropped in, too, because the second friend was a
dignified lady and, in Mrs. Hiss’s words, “Mrs. Crosley was not very presentable.”692 Mrs. Hiss
testified, interestingly, that all she could recall about Mr. Crosley’s conversation was that “he
laughed a great deal.”693

As he had done with Alger, Lloyd Paul Stryker asked her again and again about some
meeting or dinner or shopping trip or travel to the country that one or both of the Chamberses had
testified to – or, most explosively, about typing State Department documents on The Hiss Home
Typewriter. Every time, Mrs. Hiss swore that nothing of the kind ever happened.694 Mrs. Hiss also
recalled, admittedly vaguely, giving the Woodstock to The Catlett Kids in mid-December 1937,
shortly before the Hisses moved into the Volta Place house (on the 29th).695

On cross-examination, Prosecutor Murphy took her, as he had her husband, through all the
parts of her story that had changed between the Grand Jury and the courtroom: her earlier fuzzy

689
First Trial at 2254 et seq.; Second Trial at 3254 et seq.
690
First Trial at 2394-96a.
691
First Trial at 2380 (quotation from Grand Jury).
692
First Trial at 2396a (quotation from Grand Jury).
693
Second Trial at 3273.
694
See, e.g., First Trial at 2269, 2274-75, 2278, 2315, 2336.
695
First Trial at 2343. At the second trial, Mrs. Hiss was not specific about the time. Second Trial
at 3342-43.

157
memory about what kind of office typewriter they had had in the 1930s, about when it had left the
family’s possession (she told the Grand Jury that she remembered The Hiss Home Typewriter in the
Volta Place house), and about whether Claudi Catlett was alive.696

There were a few new things that came out in her cross. To her surprise and disbelief, the
voting and Party records of New York City indicated that she had been a member of the Socialist
Party in 1932.697 She said that she had typed, on the family Woodstock, The Hiss Home
Typewriter, several of The Hiss Standards.698 They included her letter to the University of
Maryland about the organic chemistry course and her President’s Report to Fellow Alumnae of
Bryn Mawr for the year 1936-1937. Both of them were typed in May 1937.699

This was significant. It meant that the Woodstock was workable in May 1937 and that the
Hisses still had it then – that they did not give it to the Catletts when they moved to 30th Street in
mid-1936. The only move in connection with which they could have given it to the Catletts was the
December 1937 move to Volta Place. The Hisses were stuck with the Woodstock in their home
until mid-1937, at least.

As important as anything she said on the stand was how Mrs. Hiss looked. Prosecutor
Murphy’s cross-examination of Mrs. Hiss was very polite – she was female, and a lady, after all,
and this was 1949. Nevertheless, a journalist wrote that, an hour into cross-examination, “Mrs.
Hiss’s face had lost all its color. Her eyes were dead as raisins in a circle of dough. Towards the
end she fingered inside her bag and it seemed she must be about to break. But she didn’t.”700 After
about two full days on the stand, she was off.

In the end, neither Chambers nor Hiss nor either of their wives cracked.

The Defense then presented a glittering procession of witnesses who testified to Alger
Hiss’s excellent reputation for honesty, loyalty, and truthfulness. These are called “character”
witnesses, but they should be called “reputation” witnesses. They give not their own opinions of
someone, but what everyone else thought of someone – the reputation that someone (in this case,
Hiss) has built up among people who knew him or worked with him. Hiss’s character witnesses,
who testified to his good or excellent reputation, were:

- two sitting Supreme Court Justices, Felix Frankfurter and Stanley Reed

- Chief Judge Calvert Magruder of the federal Court of Appeals in Boston

696
First Trial at 2339-62, 2380-84, 2423-36; Second Trial at 3572.
697
First Trial at 2314-15; Second Trial, Gov’t Exh. 63; Second Trial at 3379-80.
698
First Trial at 2316-28.
699
First Trial at 2319-20, 2330. The Woodstock was far from perfect, however. First Trial circa
2330.
700
Cooke at 221.

158
 - a famous U.S. District Court Judge from Boston, Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr.701

- John W. Davis of Davis, Polk & Wardwell, one of the most eminent lawyers in
America and former Democratic candidate for President702

- former Chairman of the General Board of the Navy & Admiral Hepburn

- Charles Fahy, former Solicitor General of the United States

- the Governor of Illinois, Aldai Stevenson

o who was the Democratic candidate for President in the next two elections

- many other lawyers, American diplomats, and distinguished citizens.

Two of Hiss’s character witnesses may have done more harm than good:

- Dr. Stanley K. Hornbeck, former Assistant Secretary of State, former Ambassador to

the Netherlands,703 and Hiss’s boss from 1939 to 1944704

o on cross-examination, Hornbeck admitted that

 in 1939 or the early 1940s, our Ambassador to France, William Bullitt,

told Hornbeck that Alger Hiss was a fellow traveler or a Soviet agent705
and that

 probably in 1947, Ambassador Bullitt had, in Hornbeck’s presence,

referred to Hiss as a Communist.706

- Francis B. Sayre, former Assistant Secretary of State and Hiss’s boss during the time
when Chambers said that Hiss was a spy

o the right question for Hiss’s lawyer to ask Sayre was what Hiss’s reputation
was (past tense) among people who worked with him – in other words, back in
1938, what did the people you know who worked with Hiss think of him then.

701
First Trial at 1945.
702
First Trial at 1271.
703
First Trial at 1276.
704
First Trial at 1278; Second Trial at 1807.
705
Second Trial at 1819; see also Weinstein I at 350, 370.
706
First Trial at 1285, 1288-89; Second Trial at 1853.

159
 Instead, Hiss’s lawyer asked what Hiss’s reputation is (today, in 1949) among
people who had worked with him back in the 30s. Sayre answered “I am a
little at a loss to answer it because there have been so many varying opinions
expressed. . . . There are some who believe absolutely in the integrity of his
character . . . – there are others who do not.”707 Ouch.

o also Sayre, when confronted with the Robinson-Rubens Telegram in Hiss’s

handwriting, stated (as I noted earlier) that it’s not a summary of a long
document (the kinds of note that Hiss said he prepared for his chats with
Sayre); it’s an exact copy of almost the entire Telegram.708 He had also stated
to The Grand Jury that he had a hard time believing that a copy of the
Telegram was even sent to his office on an FYI basis – the subject matter was
of no interest to those of us who were working on foreign trade matters.709

 later, it turned out that some papers about The Robinson-Rubens Affair
were indeed sent to Sayre’s office, though not the Telegram.710

28. THE HISS DEFENSE:

THE CATLETT FAMILY

Claudi Catlett was the Hisses’ full time (8 AM to 8 PM) housemaid from 1935 through
1938. This included most of the time Chambers said he and the Hisses were spying and were close
friends.711 During this period, Chambers said, once every ten days or so he would drop by the Hiss
house around 6 to pick The Spy Documents and, after having them photographed, would return a
few hours later with the ones that Hiss had to take back to the office the next morning. Mrs. Catlett
took some afternoons off,712 but she was usually there in the early evening when Chambers said he
came by. She would have been long gone by the time Chambers returned the documents. Mrs.
Catlett might have been there, too, at some of the social interactions that the Chamberses alleged
and the Hisses denied.

Mrs. Catlett testified that she only remembered seeing Chambers once in the Hisses’
presence, and it was at the P Street house, where the Hisses lived from June 1935 to June 1936.713
Specifically, Mrs. Catlett said that, one evening, Chambers appeared at the door and Mrs. Hiss

707
Second Trial at 2026.
708
Second Trial at 2050.
709
Second Trial at 2061-62.
710
Second Trial at 3055, 3060.
711
First Trial at 2282-83.
712
First Trial at 2351-52.
713
Second Trial at 2142-43.

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asked him in and told Mrs. Catlett to make tea for the two of them. Chambers, she testified, called
himself Crosby,714 or maybe Crosley,715 or maybe Carl,716 or Carlton or Crofton or Cross717 and was
not well dressed.718 That was the only time, Mrs. Catlett testified, that she ever saw Chambers.719
You would think, if he were at the Hiss house once every ten days when Mrs. Catlett was there, she
would have seen him more often. Mrs. Catlett paucity of recollections is consistent with the Hisses’
story that Chambers was a minor character in their lives whom they had pretty much gotten rid of
by the end of 1935.

On cross-examination, however, Mrs. Catlett said she had little memory of any of the people
who called on the Hisses; she had no memory of any of their names, except for Chambers/Crosby720
and her memory that Chambers called himself Crosby was recent.721

The Catlett Kids – Raymond and Perry, the neighborhood handymen who helped the Hisses
move in 1936 and 1937 and got The Hiss Home Typewriter – testified at length.

Under direct examination by Hiss’s lawyers, they testified that they got the Woodstock, The
Hiss Home Typewriter, from the Hisses as part of one of the Hisses’ moves, either from P Street to
30th Street (in June 1936) or in their move from 30th Street to Volta Place (in late December
1937).722

Now, if The Catlett Kids got the typewriter from the Hisses before The Spy Documents
were typed on it (in early 1938), Mrs. Hiss can’t have typed Spy Documents on it in the first four
months of 1938. That pretty much lets Hiss off the hook, doesn’t it? Yes, at least as to the typed
documents, but you still have to deal with the two rolls of Pumpkin Papers and the four notes in
Hiss’s handwriting.

But there were problems with The Catlett Kids’ testimonies. The first is racial. These are
black people, in their 20s at the time of the trials, testifying in court in an era when America was
still pretty segregated and black people were just beginning to get their full rights. The Catlett Kids
had grown up in a Washington that was very southern and rigidly segregated. Here they are in New
York City, hundreds of miles from home, in a court surrounded by powerful white people and being
asked to remember the precise day on which they got a typewriter ten years ago.

714
First Trial at 1607-08, 1617-18, 1623, 1673, 1675.
715
First Trial at 1649-50.
716
First Trial at 1654.
717
First Trial at 1665.
718
First Trial at 1622, 1658.
719
First Trial at 1604-05, 1608, 1617-18; Second Trial at 2142-43.
720
First Trial at 1623-24.
721
First Trial at 1626.
722
First Trial at 1761; Second Trial at 2164-65; see also First Trial at 1609-10 (Mrs. Catlett).

161
 In my brief career as a litigator in the early 1980s, a few times I had as witnesses black
people who grew up in the time and kind of places The Catlett Kids did. Those people, more often
than not, were very unreliable witnesses. Probably from the School of Hard Knocks where they
grew up, often they would tell the lawyer who was questioning them whatever they thought he
wanted to hear; then they’d tell the next lawyer who questioned them whatever they thought he
wanted to hear. They sometimes did the same with any authority figure, too, outside of court.

This may be what happened with The Catlett Kids. They made several inconsistent or
contradictory statements about when they got the Typewriter. Sometimes they couldn’t remember
when at all.723 Sometimes they were sure they got it in connection with the 1936 Hiss move.724
That can’t be true, however, because Mrs. Hiss typed 2 Hiss Standards on The Hiss Home
Typewriter in May 1937.

Other times The Catlett Kids were sure they got it at the time of the Hiss move to Volta
Place in December 1937.725 That’s cutting it close, but still good news for the Hisses, because then
The Hiss Home Typewriter was not in the Hisses’ house when The Spy Documents were typed on
it in early 1938.

Other times they just said it was in connection with one of those moves,726 maybe before or
maybe after.727

And then yet other times The Catlett Kids said they could have got The Hiss Home
Typewriter several months after the Hisses’ move to Volta Place, maybe in April 1938.728 That’s
bad news for the Hisses (if that’s the date the jury believes), because that puts the Typewriter in the
Hiss’s home when The Spy Documents were typed on it. Their Mother, Mrs. Catlett, remembered
the Typewriter being taken to the Volta Place home.729

Take your pick.

Concerning the April 1938 date, it’s hard for me to grasp why you would give someone a
big old typewriter as part payment for helping you move several months after the move. That’s the
kind of big thing you’d give them on moving day, preferably before you lugged it to your new
house.

Unless . . . the Hisses gave the Woodstock to The Catlett Kids months after they moved into

723
Second Trial at 2212.
724
Second Trial at 2164-65, 2212-13.
725
First Trial at 1761; Second Trial at 2368-69.
726
First Trial at 1683, 1707-11.
727
First Trial at 1773, 1778, 2526-27; Second Trial at 4354-55.
728
First Trial at 1778-79, 2529-31.
729
First Trial at 1660, 1665.

162
their Volta Place house, in April 1938, because of something else that happened in April. That’s
the month in which Chambers defected from the spy ring. Maybe the Hisses found out and realized
‘Oh, my God, he’s got documents we typed up on that Woodstock. How careless we were (in
perfect hindsight)! How can we get rid of it? We could take it halfway across the Key Bridge and
drop it in the Potomac. No, someone might see us. We could sell it to a second hand store or give
it to the Salvation Army. No, there will be a paper record and maybe someone else will buy it. I
know! Let’s give it to The Catlett Kids – they’ll leave it in the back yard and it will disintegrate.’730

The Catlett Kids were uncertain about when they got The Typewriter, but they were certain
about a few other things.

The first was that they had never seen Chambers until the scandal began.731

The second was they got the Woodstock, The Hiss Home Typewriter, they took it right to
where they lived, at 2728 P Street, near the Hisses in Georgetown.732

The house where the Catletts lived still stands, and there is a front door from which you
enter the house from P Street. From P Street south to the river, the land drops off sharply, and by
the time you get to the alley back of the house, there is another floor below P Street – a basement if
you’re on P Street. This new floor has its own door that opens onto the backyard and the alley.

Well, in this basement you enter from the backyard, The Catlett Kids (who, remember were
teenagers when they got the Typewriter) had a “den,” in which they frequently had a party going
on, presumably for the other black teenagers in the neighborhood.733 There was a lot of testimony
from both Catlett kids about what went on in the “den.” Sometimes they had electricity, they said,
sometimes just kerosene. They had a radio (on which they liked to listen to ‘Jackson Low’), they
had a record player, they had an old musket mounted on one wall, and there were two crossed
swords mounted on another wall. Sometimes there were hot dogs and potato salad. I imagine you
could get something to drink and smoke, too, for a price. And there were a few chairs in case you
got tired of dancing.734 Raymond testified that “Sometimes it would be so crowded that you
couldn’t even get around.”735

Also in the den was a box, on which they put The Hiss Home Typewriter, maybe a kind of
early pop art. Sometimes the Typewriter was in a closet or in an upstairs bedroom,736 but most of

730
Second Trial at 4735.
731
First Trial at 1682, 1760-61; Second Trial at 2178, 2353-54.
732
Second Trial at 2236-37 (Mrs. Hiss drove it to their house), 2238 (not sure), 2270-75 (not sure –
repeating from first trial).
733
First Trial at 1720-21, 1739; Second Trial at 2167-69; Younger Book at 572.
734
First Trial at 1739-40; Second Trial at 2168-69.
735
Second Trial at 2168.
736
Second Trial at 2221-22, 2357, 2373.

163
the time it was in the den.737 The only typing The Catlett Kids ever did on the Typewriter was to
type their names.738

Now, if what the Hisses testified was true and The Hiss Home Typewriter was in the Catlett
kid’s den when The Spy Documents were typed on it – then a few things must have happened.
Chief among them is that Chambers decided to frame Hiss in 1938 by faking typed documents that
he would keep hidden for ten years; that somehow Chambers found out that The Hiss Home
Typewriter was in The Catlett Kids’ den; and that one day the smoke in the den is thick and the
smell of hot dogs fills the air and all the black teenagers are doing whatever dances black teenagers
were doing in 1938, suddenly there is pounding on the door to the backyard, the door flies open,
and CHAMBERS JOINS THE DANCE!! No, Chambers IS the dance!!! And this fat 40-year old
white man who stinks to High Heaven and is missing half his teeth Lindys or Bunny Hops over to
the Typewriter and starts typing – he dances, he types, he dances, he types – and, doing all this,
blends in so perfectly with the black teenagers that ten years later they swear he was ever there. Or
Chambers did his typing when the Typewriter was in the closet and he got light from a candle that
he put in the gap between his teeth. That, I think, is what you have to believe if you believe The
Spy Documents were typed after the Hisses had given the Typewriter to The Catlett Kids.

As we will see, Prosecutor Murphy had a lot of fun with this at the second trial.

Back to the issue of when The Catlett Kids got The Hiss Home Typewriter. Great efforts
were made to resolve that by means other than their wandering memories.

When did the Catletts move into 2728 P Street? That would be the first day they could have
taken it there. The Catletts, unfortunately, were unsure about what year. It could have been 1936,
1937, or 1938!739 This vagueness is hard to understand. But there it is.

Another black man, George Roulhac, lived at 2728 P Street – there was a whole bunch of
people living there – and he actually signed the lease on the place.740 He was a Sergeant in the
Army in 1950 and had been stationed in Alaska. He testified that he remembered when he and the
Catletts moved into the house – in mid-January 1938.741 That would make it impossible for The
Catlett Kids to take the Typewriter from the Hisses to 2728 P Street when the Hisses moved to
Volta Place two weeks earlier. Roulhac signed the lease on January 17, and it took effect on the
18th.742 Also supporting his memory were the records of the electric company, which showed that
the Catletts had the electricity turned on at 2728 P and turned off at their previous address, on
January 17, 1938. Sgt. Roulhac stated that they had electricity from the second day they were there,

737
First Trial at 1739-40, 1769-71 (later in closet).
738
Second Trial at 2219-20.
739
Second Trial at 2132-33, 2217.
740
First Trial at 1735.
741
Second Trial at 4313; see also Second Trial at 2216 (Raymond sort of agreeing & disagreeing).
742
Second Trial at 4313, Gov’t Exh. 70.

164
never used kerosene.743 So, January 17, 1938, is the first date The Hiss Home Typewriter could
have been the cool new thing at The Catlett Kids’ non-stop dance party.

Roulhac also testified that he remembered seeing The Hiss Home Typewriter for the first
time three months after they all moved in, which would be April 1938. He said he saw it “out in the
hallway on the washing machine”744 near the door to the infamous den. That would place The Hiss
Home Typewriter back at the Hisses’ Volta Place house when The Spy Documents were typed on
it.

Frankly, I find this recollection a little hard to believe. I doubt that I would remember, 10
years later, exactly when I first saw a certain typewriter that wouldn’t have meant much to me at
that time. Or maybe a typewriter was big deal to a poor black household in the 1930s.

The third and final thing The Catlett Kids were sure of is another way that might prove
when they got the Typewriter, and another sign of the amazing level of detail into which the trials
descended. The Catlett Kids were adamant that when they got the Woodstock from the Hisses, it
was not in good working order.745 And that “shortly after” they got it, when the weather was warm,
Perry Catlett took it to a typewriter repair shop.746 He said the shop was a big one, in downtown
Washington, at the northwest corner of Connecticut and K Streets, or maybe on K near
Connecticut,747 on the ground floor.748

This turned out to be probably bad news for The Hiss Defense. Uncontradicted evidence
from real estate agents showed that there were several typewriter repair stores on or near that
corner. The first day each store opened for business would be the first day The Catlett Kids could
have taken it there, ‘shortly after’ they got it from the Hisses. One store opened in May 1938;749
another, a Woodstock repair shop no less, on the corner of Connecticut and K (but on the second
floor), opened in mid-September 1938750 – all consistent with The Catlett Kids getting the
Typewriter after The Spy Documents were typed on it, meaning that The Spy Documents were
typed on the Typewriter when it was in the Hisses’ Volta Place home.

743
Second Trial at 4314.
744
Second Trial at 4315.
745
First Trial at 1683-84, 1761, 1785-86; Second Trial at 2229-30.
746
Second Trial at 2369-70.
747
First Trial at 1761 (“K Street and Connecticut Avenue”), 1766 (“shortly after . . . to K Street”),
1773-74 (corner of Connecticut and K or a door from the corner, on the ground floor), 1779
(“northwest corner of K and Connecticut,” “in the warm weather),” 1784-85 (“big repair shop”),
1789 (“soon after” he got it); Second Trial at 2369-79 (sometimes on the corner where drug store
and radio station, sometimes in the neighborhood).
748
First Trial at 1773, 2535.
749
First Trial at 2655.
750
First Trial at 1788 (question by Murphy), 2491-95; Second Trial at 4327.

165
 But there was a glimmer for The Hiss Defense – another typewriter repair shop, not a
Woodstock repair shop, but a general typewriter repair shop had been near there as early as January
1938.751 If that was the shop Perry Catlett was talking about, then he could possibly have gotten the
typewriter before The Spy Documents were typed on it.

As with many aspects of this Case, there are versions that are helpful to the Hisses, but the
most credible and likely versions are harmful to them.

And that, in essence, is The Hiss Defense at the first trial.

Next, the summations and the outcome! This is the last chance you’ll have to hear Lloyd
Paul Stryker. Don’t miss it.

29. THE SUMMATIONS AND THE VERDICT

Here are excerpts from Lloyd Paul Stryker’s summation to the jury, with some small
changes by me for clarification.752 He spoke for four hours.753 By the end he was hoarse and
exhausted.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, . . . now . . . I have a chance to look at

you without being criticized for doing so.

“There is only one witness in the world, only one in the world, who says that
Mr. Hiss furnished, transmitted and delivered these papers [to Mr. Chambers]. That
is Whittaker Chambers.

“This is Mr. Murphy’s opening to you: . . . ‘if you don’t believe Chambers
then we have no case.’

“In good orchestration – perhaps some of you ladies and gentlemen go to

Carnegie Hall sometimes and hear the great orchestras, there is always a theme,
sometimes a very simple theme. I have heard Toscanini and so have you, leading
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Some of you remember that Symphony, just about
four notes. That is all. A simple thing, really; so simple that a child could play it
with one finger on the piano. And then after you have heard him strike his baton,
and they begin, perhaps the first violins lightly with that theme, and then when they
have finished, you look up into the wood section and maybe the bassoons and the

751
First Trial at 2540.
752
First Trial at 2724-843.
753
First Trial at 2844

166
oboes start the same thing and then the boys up in the rear with the trombones and
the French horns, as though they were saying, ‘Wait a minute, Mr. Toscanini, we
want to show you how to do it. Listen to us,’ and then as though the whole orchestra
had gone mad, with the kettle drums and cymbals sounding, the whole stage of
Carnegie Hall is alive with that one simple theme, until you sit back in your seat
when the conductor bows and the audience is erect with applause from the emotion.

“Now I am not going to appeal to your emotion. But I would pray that I
could stand here in the presence of this orchestra of justice and take the theme ‘If
you don’t believe Chambers, we have no case.’

“If I didn’t know anything else about a man but that he had engaged in a
criminal conspiracy over long years to overthrow the government of our country by
force and violence, I would not believe him if the FBI erected a stack of Bibles as
high as this building, and I say, to ask any intelligent man in his conscience to say
that he could believe the man, such a man beyond a reasonable doubt, staggers my
imagination. On this man’s sole word they are asking you to destroy Alger Hiss.
[On the word of a] man who is an enemy of the republic, a blasphemer of Christ, a
disbeliever in God, with no respect either for matrimony or for motherhood, trained
in every form of Russian depravity. There is not one decent thing that I can think of
that Whittaker Chambers has not shown himself against.

“He had no doubt hoped to be a commissar in the Communist Party, perhaps

the New York commissar, where he could run us all out to City Hall to apply the
lash or pull our fingernails out by the roots. But he gave up that thought and got a
job at TIME. Mr. Hiss didn’t recognize him at once because he has gained 30 pounds
or more since he left the hardtack of Communism where for 12 years every crust of
bread he ate was fed to him by American traitors. And he had put on quite a girth
under our much disabused competitive system. Also he had time now to get his
teeth fixed.

“Is it likely that the Hisses would give every kind of incriminating evidence
against themselves by publicly appearing with Chambers and his wife? Would you
drive 400 miles with a co-conspirator and see a play with him? Did Benedict Arnold
go all around with Major Andrè before they tried to betray West Point, going to
cocktail parties saying ‘Here we are together’? It is absurd. ‘She Stoops to
Conquer’ is a good play for Mr. Chambers, because if a man ever stooped to
conquer, that man has.

“Clidi Catlett told you that Chambers never came to that 30th Street house or
the Volta Place house. I ask you if she is not at least as credible as a man who spent
12 years of his life trying to tear down his country and who has perjured himself ten
times since he said he was reformed? Would any of you ladies and gentlemen here

167
 say that they believed Chambers beyond a reasonable doubt in place of Clidi Catlett?

“Look at the handwritten spy documents. The top has been torn off, the top
part of the paper that said ‘Secretary’ or ‘Under Secretary.’754 Would Alger Hiss
have torn off the tops? No, the documents were in his own handwriting, they clearly
came from him. Who would have torn them off? Someone who was not authorized
to be in those offices – Wadleigh or some other thief who would not like to be found
with documents from an office to which he did not belong.

“Mr. Feehan’s testimony? He never mentioned Woodstock. I listened to his

testimony. I was not convinced by any of it and did not choose to cross-examine
him because I know by that time that we did not have that typewriter in our
possession at the time of the dates of these documents, namely, in February and
March of 1938.

“There was a great deal of discussion. I remember something about an ‘i’ or

a ‘g.’ Well, you can look at all the ‘g’s you want. I have looked at them. They
seem to me like perfect ‘g’s.

“Please note that the last Hiss Standard, the last document from the Hisses
that the government could find anywhere in the United States, was typed on the
Woodstock in May 1937, and that fits with them not having the Woodstock when
The Spy Documents were typed on it. That’s corroborated by the testimony of Pat
and Mike Catlett, undoubtedly very ignorant colored boys but honest.

“You heard Mr. Hiss. You watched him through his long, long, bitter ordeal.
He did not have to take the stand. He could have sat silent just as he could have
claimed a constitutional privilege before the grand jury. He did not have to testify to
the House Committee. He mentioned the Ford car first; he mentioned the rug first;
he had The Spy Documents handed over to the Justice Department. He did not have
to sue Chambers for defamation. His lawyer Ed McLean found the typewriter. Is
this the conduct of a guilty man?

“Everywhere he has been and everywhere he has gone and everything he has
done and every trail he has left behind is pure, wholesome, sound, clean, decent,
strong, fine.

“This is not a case. It is an outrage. Mr. Murphy, I hope that when you had
your preparatory talks with Mr. Chambers, you have left none of your handwriting
around upon the table.

754
See also Second Trial at 1176.

168
 “That is not so funny, either, because I have defended district attorneys and
sometimes the rascals they deal with turn on them.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have been called florid-faced. They tell me I have
gray hair. Alas, I am afraid it is true. It seems only a moment ago when people were
commenting on my extreme youth. I don’t know when it was I was in the right spot.
I never seem to have been there, but with all my faults if I have done anything that
you don’t like, if I have offended any one of you in any way, hold it against me, not
against Alger Hiss.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this case will be in your hands. I beg you, I pray you
to search your consciences and I have no fear, ‘Yea, though I have walked through
the valley of the shadow of death’ in this case.

“Alger Hiss, this long nightmare is drawing to a close. Rest well. Your case,
your life, your liberty are in good hands.”

The Prosecution goes last because it has the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Murphy’s speech, until the end, was as calm as Stryker’s had been emotional.755 I should add that
Murphy had heard that the foreman of the jury was in favor of Hiss. Following is an approximation
of what Mr. Murphy told the jury:

“To find Mr. Hiss guilty, you must find beyond a reasonable doubt that he lied to the
Grand Jury when he denied delivering documents to Chambers in 1938. What is a
reasonable doubt? A doubt based on reason. You can’t find Hiss not guilty because you
don’t like Chambers, you don’t like the way he combs his hair. Under your oath, you have
to have a reason. Now, let us see if we can analyze the facts by applying reason and not
emotion.

“Now this case in its essence is rather simple. First, there is no doubt that Mr.
Chambers had in his possession copies of original State Department documents. That fact is
uncontradicted. These are undoubtedly copies, in some cases verbatim copies, of original,
secret, confidential State Department documents.

“What is the next uncontradicted fact? The documents themselves are all dated in
the first three months of 1938.

“The next uncontradicted fact is that the typewritten documents were all copied,
except one, on the Hiss typewriter.

“Those are the facts that I am going to ask you to apply your reason to. What

755
First Trial at 2845-910.

169
inferences do you gather from those undisputed facts? I submit to you, ladies and
gentlemen, that only one inference can be drawn, only one, and that is that the defendant,
that smart, intelligent, American-born man gave them to Chambers.

“You have one witness, Chambers, plus corroboration, the admitted, ucontradicted
fact that the documents were typed on the Hiss typewriter. That satisfies the requirement for
a perjury conviction.

“Who is the moral leper? Is it Whittaker Chambers? Alger Hiss, by his own
admission, knew him longer that you have. Hiss associated with him, gave him an
apartment, gave him a car.

“What do you call a Government employee who takes Government papers and gives
them to a communist espionage agent? Who is the moral leper? Mr. Stryker’s bumpkin
stuff is old, old. It is all window-dressing to avoid the facts, the documents, typed on the
Hiss typewriter.

“This Harvard man, a brilliant law student, then a lawyer expects you to believe that
he permitted a man whom he did not know too well, did not know where he worked, did not
know where he could reach him, permitted him to become a sub-tenant of his without a
written lease, without demanding money in advance, and then, to clinch the bargain, gave
him a car.

“Later on he said ‘I did not give him the car, I gave him the use of the car.’ That is
Mr. Hiss’s forte. He is able to distinguish, to combine truth with half-truth, a little bit to
color it, a little bit more to testify, and then, if placed in the corner to rely upon the truthful
part, and you have to be pretty good to do that, and he is pretty good.

“Of course Hiss testified all over and gave evidence. What else could he do? Tell
HUAC ‘Well, you got me at last’? No, he denied everything, and he wanted to help. Then
he began forgetting about Claudi Catlett, telling the Grand Jury she was dead, and sending
the government on a wild goose chase looking for their typewriter in second hand shops and
Salvation Armies, everywhere.

“Years before, the same month that Chambers broke with the underground, the
Hisses – very intelligent, smart, cunning people – they gave the typewriter to two
uneducated boys who couldn’t type and they figured it would fall into disuse, get banged
around, and end up in some ashcan.

“Has any of you ever given away a car? Has any of you ever emptied your savings
account and walked around with your life savings in cash in your pocket book buying
furniture for a new home you hadn’t even rented yet?”

170
 “I can explain why the last Hiss Standard is dated May 1937. It’s not because the
Hisses had given away their Woodstock. It is because from June 1937 and through April
1938 that typewriter was otherwise engaged. It was humming. Smoke was coming from
that typewriter.

“These and others like it were being made.

“You are all individual jurors. The foreman . . . has no authority other than to
announce the verdict.”

Then Murphy looked at the foreman and said “today I ask you as a representative of the
U.S. Government to come back and put the lie in [Alger Hiss’s] face.”

The foreman’s face turned beet red.756

Now, if you were here, I would ask you to vote, if you wish. To keep things simple, let’s
vote the same way, guilty or not guilty, on both counts. That’s what Judge Kaufman instructed the
jury to do.757 You have two choices:

- Guilty: the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Hiss lied to the Grand
Jury when he denied two things, (1) passing government documents to Chambers
without authorization and (2) seeing Chambers after January 1, 1937; or

- Not Guilty: Hiss was objectively innocent, or the government did not prove its case
beyond a reasonable doubt.

What actually happened was that, after receiving Judge Kaufman’s charge, the jury
retired to deliberate at 4:20 P.M. Stryker and Hiss put on confident faces.

The jury deliberated into the evening and all of the next day until 9 P.M. This was
not a good sign for Hiss. If the jury had bought Stryker’s argument that the Government’s
case was a joke and an outrage, they would have been back in an hour. But remember,
Stryker had told Hiss he was hoping only for a hung jury.

Then, on the afternoon of the third day of its deliberation, it reported that it was
hopelessly deadlocked.758

The Judge sent them back twice for a few more hours, but to no avail. They kept
telling the Judge that they were hopelessly deadlocked.

756
Weeds, Roses & Jam, TIME (July 18, 1949) at 16.
757
First Trial at 2687.
758
First Trial at 2952.

171
 Judge Kaufman dismissed the jury and the first trial was over, without a verdict.

The government announced immediately that it would re-try Hiss.759 After the verdict, Hiss
begged to be spared any questions and got into a friend’s car to go home. Hiss hid his face in a
magazine.760

The vote in the jury room was 8 for guilty, 4 for not guilty. A shock to Hiss.

There are several and contradictory accounts of what went on in the jury room. According
to one source, the vote was eight to four from the start, with the “Not Guilties” including the
Foreman to whom Murphy had referred in his summation; the Foreman was Hiss’s main supporter.
Interestingly, two Guilty votes were offended by Hiss’s character witnesses – too many upper class
snots telling the smelly peasants what they should believe.761

In another version, all the jurors agreed that the typed Spy Documents had been typed on
The Hiss Home Typewriter, which was in the Hiss home when they were typed on it; but some
thought someone else did the typing there.762

According to another account, the four not guilty votes doubted Chambers’ credibility and
evidently thought, as Murphy had said and Stryker had shouted, ‘If you don’t believe Chambers, the
government has no case.’763 In other words, Stryker’s strategy worked.

Chambers made the following statement: “I am very reluctantly and grudgingly step by step
destroying myself so that this nation and the faith by which it lives may continue to exist.”764

30. THE SECOND TRIAL

At the second trial, Prosecutor Murphy appeared again. He did much better than at the first.
Murphy had tried the case before and didn’t make the same mistakes. No more ‘If you don’t
believe Chambers, we have no case.’ In the second trial, Murphy had a new strategy. This time,
his star witness was the documents, corroborated by Chambers. Chambers may change his story,

759
Weinstein I at 492.
760
Weeds, Roses & Jam, TIME (July 18, 1949) at 16.
761
Nora Sayre, PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE 1950S (Rutgers Univ. Press
1995) at 248.
762
Weeds, Roses & Jam, TIME (July 18, 1949) at 16; Weinstein I at 493.
763
Cooke at 276.
764
Second Trial at 609.

172
but the documents don’t change their story. They are the immutable witnesses, he told the jury.765

Hiss made a major, and I think fatal, change in strategy. He fired Lloyd Paul Stryker and
abandoned Stryker’s strategy of trying to produce endless hung juries. I suspect Hiss was out of
money and was running out of energy. Also, his A-List lawyers may have been running out of un-
billable time they could give to his defense; they may have begin thinking he was guilty, too. Hiss
wanted his second trial to be his last. He had also put off by Stryker’s “rather florid,” histrionic
style.766

Hiss thought that, based on his summer residence in Vermont, he might get the second trial
moved there – because, he argued, all the publicity from the first trial in New York City had made
an impartial jury there impossible.767 He was told that Vermont juries do not deadlock, they reach
verdicts. Hiss’s motion for a “change of venue” to Vermont was denied, however, and the second
trial was held in lower Manhattan, same as the first.

But, in anticipation of his second trial being in Vermont, and before his motion was denied,
Hiss fired Lloyd Paul Stryker. I imagine Vermont juries in 1949 being composed of taciturn, tight-
lipped, granite-faced maple syrup farmers. Hiss thought that Stryker’s cartwheels and handstands
would go over poorly with them. So, he hired instead a prominent Boston trial lawyer, Claude
Cross of Withington, Cross, Park, and McCann (like Edward McLean, a former law school
classmate of Hiss’s). He was “wry and diffident, a transplanted southerner” in one expert’s words,
who was used to trying complex corporate cases. He was industrious and thorough. Where Stryker
shouted, Cross persuaded (or tried to). According to some, this was his first criminal trial.768

The basic strategy of The Hiss Defense in the second trial was the same as the first –
blacken Chambers and emphasize Hiss’s sterling record. But Cross, perhaps inspired by Hiss’s
legalistic mind, emphasized the particular rather than Stryker’s high-level contrast of the two men.
In my opinion, there were lots of notes to The Hiss Defense in the second trial, but no music. If
Stryker had an instinct for the jugular, Claude Cross had a genius for the capillaries. Here is one of
Claude Cross’s most remarkable questions, which he asked of Whitaker Chambers:

“On or about October 18, 1949, did it come to your attention that counsel for the
defendant had inquired from the Passport Division of the United States, of the
Department of State, whether or not an application had even been issued under the
name of Jay Vivian Chambers, Jay David Whittaker Chambers, David Chambers,
David Whittaker Chambers, Whittaker Chambers, Charles Whittaker, Charles
Adams, Arthur Dwyer, David Breen, Lloyd Cantwell, Carl Carlson?”769

765
Second Trial at 9 (“the immutable documents themselves, documents that just can’t change”).
766
Tony I at 132; Tony II at 87 (quoted words).
767
A. J. Liebling, THE PRESS (Pantheon Books 1975) at 208.
768
Busch at 268; Weinstein I at 495-96 (quoted words).
769
Second Trial at 256.

173
What a question!

Cross wanted to prove in a hundred little ways that the Chamberses’ stories were factually
implausible. He also tried to prove, more than Lloyd Paul Stryker, that the man who gave
Chambers the documents produced in 1948 was not Alger Hiss, but Julian Wadleigh and a third
person, Mr. X.770

Perhaps Cross’s greatest disadvantage was that he was trying this case for the first time.
Murphy, of course, knew the case cold and the second time around he was much, much better.

There was also a new Judge in the second trial. Judge Kaufman had come under scathing
public criticism from Nixon and others for favoring Hiss. (As I’ve already said, I think this was a
bum rap.) The Judge at the second trial was Henry Goddard, the oldest Judge in the District and a
Harding appointee. He looked like a bald eagle, not visibly overflowing with the milk of human
kindness.

He was much more liberal in letting in evidence than Judge Kaufman had been at the first
trial, and Judge Goddard was liberal for both sides. This made the second trial significantly longer
than the first had been. Professor Younger noted that there were 112 witnesses in the second trial,
and the Professor opined that that was too much for a two-count conspiracy case.771

Hiss supporters have said that Judge Goddard napped frequently during the trial,772 but no
dispassionate people at the trial said so and I see no sign of that in the record. He intervened in the
questions and answers frequently, which indicates that he was wide awake.773

The second jury consisted of seven women and five men, all white like the first jury. Their
occupations were:

seven housewives
a company treasurer
a lawyer’s mortgage expert
an optician
an electrical company’s manager and
a retired manufacturer of plastics.774

The second trial was, 80%, a rehash of the first. As at the first one, neither Hiss nor

770
Second Trial at 57.
771
Younger Book at 549.
772
Roger Morris at 493; Tony I at 134.
773
See, e.g., Second Trial at 114-18.
774
Cooke at 284; Weinstein I at 496.

174
Chambers nor either of their wives cracked or made a big mistake on the witness stand. Chambers
was more communicative at the second trial, and I’m sire that Claude Cross was less intimidating
than Lloyd Paul Stryker. Judge Goddard let Chambers (and every other witness) tell his story more
than Judge Kaufman had.775

I want to concentrate on a few key differences between the first and second trials. There
were three major witnesses who testified at the second trial and not the first.

One was for The Prosecution. A petite, middle-aged woman took the stand and testified, I
imagine with a thick Central European accent.

Her story was roughly as follows:

My name is Hedda Massing, nicknamed Hede. I was born in 1900 in Vienna

and became, there, an actress and Anti-Fascist. I have been married three times and
divorced twice [– quite a shocker in those days, but you know those ‘theatre
people’]. My first two husbands were Communists. I was sympathetic to
Communism, but never became a formal, card-carrying member of the Party. It was
better if I could do Anti-Fascist work in cooperation with Communists but without
any formal ties to the Party, without my name on any membership list. So, I did
Anti-Fascist work from outside the Communist movement, starting in Vienna in
1919. My first husband was Gerhard Eisler, a major operator of secret Soviet and
Communist organizations in the US and elsewhere. He recently skipped over the
Iron Curtain to East Germany.776 My second husband owned a book publishing
company. I have been married to my third husband, Paul Massing, for 18 years now.

My husband Paul and I were in Germany when Adolph Hitler came to power
and my husband was put into one of Hitler’s first concentration camps. He got out,
came to the US in 1934, and wrote a book about his horrible experience.

I came to the United States in 1933777 and began doing secret Communist
work. As before, in my own mind my main purpose was fighting Fascism. In 1937,
I and my husband became disillusioned with what we learned was going on in the
Soviet Union and we broke all relations with that country and the Communist
Party.778

But back in 1934, when I was a dedicated worker acting in concert with the

775
See, e.g., Second Trial at 109-13.
776
Scott Martelle, THE FEAR WITHIN: SPIES, COMMIES, & AMERICAN DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL
(Rutgers Univ. Press 2011) at 53; First Trial at 2596.
777
Second Trial at 1669.
778
Second Trial at 1702; Weinstein I at 213.

175
 Communist underground in the United States, I was moved to Washington and
charged with finding people in government who would be willing to give
information to the Soviet Union – all, of course, with the goal of helping to fight
Hitler and defend progressive mankind.779

A man named Noel Field, a longtime employee of the State Department, had
been impressed by my husband’s book and we got in touch.780 I got to know him
well, which is what I was supposed to do with good prospects. Once, after we had
both had dinner and he had become drunk, we walked around the monuments in
downtown Washington. At the Lincoln Memorial, Mr. Field waved his hands in the
air as he sang The Internationale, the Communist Party anthem, to the statute of
Abraham Lincoln – in Russian, no less.781

When I finally ‘popped the question’ to Noel Field – would he pass me paper
from the State Department that I would pass on to the Soviet Union? – he reacted
strongly. He had a great conflict of loyalties. First, he had great sympathy for
Communism, but did not want to betray his country.782 Second, someone else was
already trying to get him into another Soviet spy ring. I was offended that someone
else was trying poach in my territory, as it were, and steal someone I had spent a lot
of time developing. I asked who this poacher was. He was, Mr. Field said, a friend
of his, a very wonderful man, a man of high ethics and moral standards, an educated
Marxian.783 I asked Mr. Field to introduce me to the poacher.784

Mr. Field told me to come to his house for dinner in a few nights.

The appointed night came – and this was in the late summer or early fall of
785
1935. I arrived first, Mr. and Mrs. Field were there, and then in walked Alger
Hiss. We had a few cocktails, got a bit tipsy, and then, at some point, Mr. Hiss and I
had a brief tête-à-tête by ourselves. I don’t recall exactly who said what, of course,
after all these years and all those drinks, but the gist was as follows.

I said “I understand that you are trying to get Noel Field away from my
organization and into yours.”

Mr. Hiss replied “So you are this famous girl that is trying to get Noel Field

779
GJ at 3687 et seq.
780
GJ at 3691.
781
Koch at 162; Hede Massing, THIS DECEPTION (Duell, Sloan & Pearce 1951) at 171.
782
GJ at 3693.
783
GJ at 3695, 3701.
784
Massing at 172.
785
Second Trial at 1669.

176
 away from me.”

I said “Yes.”

He said “Well, we’ll see who is going to win.”

I said “Well, you realize that you are competing with a woman,” implying
that we have wiles that no man can match.

Then either I or Mr. Hiss said “Well, whoever is going to win, we are
working for the same boss.”786

Hiss denied Massing’s story completely.787 So did Noel Field, but not in court. Field’s
indignant denial came from Communist Czechoslovakia, whither he had skipped when the HUAC
hearings began.

Massing was, perhaps, weakened on cross-examination when she admitted that she would
write a book about her colorful life,788 which arguably gave her a financial motive to invent exciting
stories; and that at a party, when she was recounting her conversation with Hiss, she faltered, and
asked a journalist at the party what happened next. The journalist replied that she ought to know
herself and Massing said that she had repeated the story so often recently that she was beginning to
be confused. At the party, Massing said nothing about her or Hiss saying that they were working
for the same boss.789

Incidentally, Judge Kaufman did not allow her to testify at the first trial. Why?? Consistent
with his crimping attitude to Chambers’ direct testimony, Judge Kaufman wanted to minimize
mention of Communism; there’s no mention of it in the indictment and it’s so prejudicial in this day
and age.790 And recall that it was his reading of the indictment, and a correct one, that the first
material in this case occurred on January 2, 1937, and Massing said that this happened in mid-1935,
18 months before. And although this showed Hiss in the Soviet underground, Massing’s testimony
had nothing to do with Chambers or passing documents.791 Too prejudicial, not very probative, and
too remote in time – sorry, said Judge Kaufman, it doesn’t pass my test for admissible evidence.

Judge Goddard at the second trial took another view, obviously. He thought that showing
Hiss in the Soviet underground and with a motive to help the Soviet Union’s spying made it

786
Second Trial at 1675-76; see also Flora Lewis, RED PAWN: THE STORY OF NOEL FIELD
(Doubleday 1965) at 73; Massing at 174-75; GJ at 3700-01, 3705, 6268.
787
First Trial at 2161-63.
788
Second Trial at 1714-15.
789
Second Trial at 1689, 3806, 3809.
790
First Trial at 2581.
791
First Trial at 2578.

177
relevant enough, even if the underground conduct Massing alleged was not the precise kind
mentioned in the indictment.792 And trying to minimize mention of Communism in this Case is
really closing the barn door after the cow has gotten out.

Next, is subject you may have wondered about. What would a psychiatrist say about the
mental condition of Whittaker Chambers?

31. THE SECOND TRIAL:

CHAMBERS’ MENTAL CONDITION

If Judge Goddard allowed The Prosecution more latitude at the second trial than Judge
Kaufman had at the first, he was equally generous to Hiss. In doing so, he may have given Hiss
enough rope to hang himself.

Hiss’s major new witness was Dr. Carl Binger, a psychiatrist in New York City. He had
graduated from Harvard, and from Harvard Medical School cum laude in 1914 and had studied also
at Cornell and Vanderbilt; had worked at Mass General in Boston, Johns Hopkins, and the
Rockefeller Institute. His career had taken him to France, Germany, The United Kingdom,
Macedonia, Switzerland (where he worked with and was psychoanalyzed by Dr. Carl Jung793), and
several states in the US. He had done significant work in internal medicine, high blood pressure,
heart disease, tuberculosis, respiration, circulation, neurology, epidemics (especially meningitis and
influenza) and, most recently, mental illnesses. He had published three books and was a licensed
psychiatrist in the State of New York with a private practice just off Park Avenue in the 70s and an
Associate Professorship at Cornell and the prestigious Payne-Whitney Clinic.794 He had seen
Chambers testify at both trials and had read some of his writings and translations.

The way we do psychiatric testimony in this country is not for Claude Cross to ask Binger
“Doctor, do you think Whittaker Chambers is crazy?” The way it works, and what Judge Goddard
allowed, was that Claude Cross asked Dr. Binger a so-called “hypothetical question.” It began
“Suppose there was a person named Whittaker Chambers who . . .” and then listed every unusual or
spooky or bad thing Chambers had ever done that The Hiss Defense had been able to find out
about. The hypothetical question was almost 40 pages long and took 65 minutes to read.795 Then,
Cross asked Dr. Binger: if the foregoing were true of Whittaker Cambers, would you, as a

792
Second Trial at 1691.
793
Second Trial at 3711-12; CLASSICS OF THE COURTROOM, THOMAS MURPHY’S CROSS
EXAMINATION OF DR. CARL BINGER IN UNITED STATES V. ALGER HISS (HISS II) (Professional
Education Group 1987) at 91.
794
First Trial at 2446-48; Second Trial at 3601-08.
795
Weinstein I at 510; Second Trial at 3611-49.

178
psychiatrist, have a reasonably certain opinion about his mental condition?796

Prosecutor Murphy objected fiercely to Binger being allowed to answer. He claimed that
there had never been a case in federal court which testimony was allowed about the mental state of
a mere witness, a person who was not a party to the case, when that witness had never been in a
mental hospital or under any treatment for any mental illness. This is just another attempt to smear
Mr. Chambers, Murphy said, who has been smeared enough already. It’s prejudicial even to let the
question be asked in the jury’s presence, this parade of unsavory acts.

Judge Kaufman at the first trial had refused to allow Binger to testify. Kaufman said that
Chambers’ credibility was certainly an issue and that the trend of the law was to allow more and
more psychiatric testimony, but that the members of the jury could evaluate it based on their own
experience in life.797 Judge Kaufman said that he did not want to take any chance that an expert
would usurp the jury’s function of deciding in their own minds about Chambers’ credibility.798
Sounds strange to me, but that’s what Judge Kaufman said. That, by the way, was a blow to The
Hiss Defense and disproves claims that he was totally pro-Hiss.

Judge Goddard ruled that the outcome of the trial depended so much on Chambers’
credibility that the jury should hear experts about the issue.799 Prosecutor Murphy kept coming
back and asking the Judge to reconsider, but ultimately Judge Goddard told Murphy to sit down and
let Dr. Binger address the jury.800

Binger testified in a deep voice801 that Whittaker Chambers was suffering from a mental
illness called “psychopathic personality.”

Dr. Binger, what is “psychopathic personality”?

Psychopathic personality, Binger stated, is a recognized mental illness in “a kind of middle

ground between the psychotic and the neurotic.”802 (Professor Younger said “if you have a taste for
this stuff, you will relish it. It feels so wonderful when you say it.”803)

Psychopathic personality, Dr. Binger continued, is “a defect in the formation in

796
Second Trial at 3650.
797
First Trial at 2475.
798
First Trial ay 2587.
799
United States v. Hiss, 88 F. Supp. 559 (S.D.N.Y. 1950).
800
See Second Trial at 3597.
801
Eric F. Goldman, THE CRUCIAL DECADE— & AFTER: AMERICA, 1945-60 (Random House 1960)
at 106.
802
Second Trial at 3654.
803
Younger Book at 561.

179
conscience,”804 "a disorder of character, of which the outstanding features are behavior of what we
call an amoral or an asocial and delinquent nature,"805 behavior “which has no regard for the good
of society and of individuals, and is therefore frequently destructive of both.”806

Dr. Binger, how do you recognize a psychopathic personality? What are the symptoms?
Binger said that the primary sign of a psychopathic personality is “chronic, persistent, and repetitive
lying.”807 Also, we look for ten other ‘confirmatory things’ that are common among psychopathic
personalities: stealing, acts of deception, alcoholism and drug addiction, abnormal sexuality,
panhandling, vagabondage, inability to form stable attachments, a tendency to make false
accusations,808 bizarre behavior and impulsive acts,809 and neglect of personal appearance.810 I find
“a great majority” of these behaviors in the hypothetical question.811

I think the crucial opinion that Dr. Binger asserts is that psychopathic personalities make
false accusations that they sincerely believe to be true – that Chambers really believes he spied with
Hiss even though he didn’t. He said “These unfortunate people have a conviction of the truth and
validity of their own imaginations, of their own fantasies without respect to . . . reality; so that they
play a part in life, play a role. . . . [T]hey will claim friendships where none exist, just as they will
make accusations which have no basis in fact, because they have a constant need to make their
imaginations come true.”812

The point: you cannot believe the accusations of such a person, do not believe the
testimony of Whittaker Chambers. The fact that he is a psychopathic personality, that fact alone,
alone creates a reasonable doubt of Hiss’s guilt.

Do you think that this ties up the last loose end of a successful Hiss Defense – giving
Chambers a plausible motive to lie? Did you think “Yes, that’s Chambers” as you read Dr.
Binger’s list of symptoms?

Then came Prosecutor Murphy's cross-examination of Binger. He died hard trying to keep
the Doctor’s testimony out. See if you think he had a good “Plan B.”

Isn’t it true, Doctor, that you graduated from medical school in 1914 but
were certified as a psychiatrist only in 1946?

804
Second Trial at 3663.
805
Second Trial at 3650.
806
Second Trial at 3651.
807
Second Trial at 3652.
808
Second Trial at 3652.
809
Second Trial at 3679-80.
810
Second Trial at 3684.
811
Second Trial at 3669.
812
Second Trial at 3655.

180
 Yes.

And that you were refused admission by the American Psychiatric

Association because of lack of experience in psychiatry?

My application was deferred, . . . maybe more than once.813

You're not saying that Chambers is insane, are you?

Chambers is not insane.814

Psychopathic personalities are capable of telling the truth, aren't they? They
don't lie all the time, do they?

Correct.815

You're acquainted with the Hisses, aren't you, and you're not charging a fee
for your testimony, aren't you?

Yes.

Is it possible that your opinion about Mr. Chambers is shaped to some degree
by your association with the Hisses and your regard for them?

No.816

You saw Chambers at both trials, and that is your only contact with him, isn't
it?

Yes.

You have never spoken with him.

Correct.

You can't get a complete psychiatric opinion about someone just by looking
at him, can you?

813
Second Trial at 3708-09.
814
Second Trial at 3715.
815
Second Trial at 3727.
816
Second Trial at 3736-38.

181
 Of course not. But I did hear him testify at both trials.

Yes, but you were willing to give your opinion about Mr. Chambers to the
Grand Jury, and at that time you had never laid eyes on him, had you?

That’s right.817

What do you now about Chambers’ childhood?

Practically nothing.

Isn't it important, in diagnosing a person psychiatrically, to know something

about their childhood?

Yes.818 But I am basing my diagnosis on behavior over a long period of

819
time.

By far the most important evidence that someone is a psychopathic

personality is chronic, persistent, repetitive lying. How many lies are there in the
hypothetical question?

After a meticulous review of every sentence in the hypothetical question, and counting
Chambers’ supposedly false accusation of spying against Hiss as one lie (assuming that it’s a lie,
too), they came up with about 20 lies that Chambers had told in the almost 50 years he had been
alive.820 The first lie he had told in his life was when he was in his 20s, when he told the Dean of
Columbia that he wanted to study history.821

Is that chronic, persistent, and repetitive lying? That’s not a lot of lies, is it?

No, but in psychiatry, quantity is not nearly so important as quality.822

Oh, so parents telling children that there is a Santa Claus, that lie would not
be evidence of psychopathic personality?

No, that’s an accepted piece of folk mythology.

817
Second Trial at 3715-17.
818
Second Trial at 3719.
819
Second Trial at 3725.
820
Second Trial at 3672, 3849.
821
Second Trial at 3768.
822
Second Trial at 3726.

182
 How about parents telling their children that babies are bought by the stork?
Would that be a symptom that the parents are psychopathic liars?

“Well, if the parents believed it I would think it might.”823

(I think it’s seldom a good idea to crack jokes on the witness stand, especially if you are an
expert branding someone a psychopath.)

Well, suppose one of our soldiers is caught in battle and becomes a POW.
The enemy interrogates him. They ask him “Where are your troops going to attack
us tomorrow? North or south?” Our soldier, the POW, lies. Would that lie indicate
to you that the POW is a psychopathic liar?

Of course, not, answered Binger, you’re supposed to lie in those

circumstances.824

Well, asked Murphy, aren’t several of Chambers’ 20 lies a lot like the
POW’s lie? Among “The Lies of Chambers” that you have listed is that, when he
was a Soviet spy, he signed a passport application and a job application saying that
his occupation was “writer” and that he was a loyal American.

Chambers, answering questions that were asked by the government he

wanted to overthrow, was sort of ‘in enemy territory’ being interrogated by the
enemy at those moments just like the POW in my hypothetical, wasn’t he? He could
hardly have told the truth and said he was a Soviet spy and refused to sign the
loyalty oath, could he?825

What Chambers told the government was still lies, said Binger. “I am not
attempting to pass on the nature of his lies.”826 (But earlier Binger had said that
quality was so much more important than quantity.)

You also counted it as a lie when he applied for a passport under the false
name David Breen. If a CIA agent, following the orders of the head of the CIA, got
a passport under a false name as part of his job, would that indicate that the CIA
agent was a psychopathic liar?

Of course not, said Binger, the agent would just be doing his job.

823
Second Trial at 3762-63.
824
Second Trial at 3764-65.
825
Second Trial at 3859.
826
Second Trial at 3860.

183
 Well, asked Murphy, isn’t that exactly what Chambers was doing? If a CIA
agent does it, he’s a fine fellow, but if a Communist does it, it’s evidence that he’s a
psychopathic personality?

It all depends on what else they did in their lives.827

This became a theme with Binger. Whenever Murphy pointed out an

arguable flaw in the basis for Binger’s opinion, Binger told him to look at the other
supports for his testimony. No one factor is all-important. “I attach no significance
to any single episode. It is the totality of the picture that I pay attention to.”828

Looking at the ‘confirmatory things,’ you listed alcoholism, drug addiction,

and abnormal sexuality. There is nothing in the hypothetical question that even
touches on any of these, right? [Murphy might have added panhandling and
vagabondage.]

That is right.829

(Please note, nothing in the hypothetical question of abnormal sexuality. Close call for
Prosecutor Murphy, assuming that he knew of Chambers’ confession of gay sex.)

You testified on direct, Dr. Binger, that you diagnosed Mr. Chambers’
mental condition, in part not just from some articles he has written himself, but also
from stories and books he has translated, right?

Yes. Chambers translated Franz Werfel’s novella Class Reunion, which

concerns a man who ruins a friend’s life by making false accusations against him.
The victim of the false accusation is named Adler and has a ludicrous walk when
seen from behind.830

(Binger testified that he was struck by the extraordinary analogies between

the plot of Class Reunion and Chambers’ accusations against Hiss. It seems Dr.
Binger thinks that that plot Chambers translated suggested behavior to him and that
Chambers behaved like the false accuser character in his real life, making false
accusations against Hiss.831 How this fits into the criteria for psychopathic
personalities I do not see. Maybe it fit the conclusion Binger wanted to reach so

827
Second Trial at 3773-74.
828
Second Trial at 3864; see also Second Trial at 3733, 3735, 3861.
829
Second Trial at 3760.
830
Second Trial at 3963.
831
Second Trial at 3960-62.

184
 well that he threw it in despite its lack of any professional validity.)

Chambers wrote cover stories for TIME MAGAZINE about The Pope and
Albert Einstein. If he follows the plots of what he translates, why doesn’t he follow
the plots of his own writings? Why isn’t he going around delivering Papal
Encyclicals and formulating a Theory of General Relativity? Or, to get back to what
he has translated, would you predict Chambers’ behavior based on the plot of
another work of fiction that he translated – Felix Salten’s Bambi? Why isn’t
Chambers frolicking out in the woods on all fours, looking for Thumper?

“I have other things to do. I didn’t read everything that Mr. Chambers
wrote.”832

Dr. Binger, you said in your direct testimony that you faulted Chambers, at
the first trial, when Lloyd Paul Stryker was taking him through all the times he had
lied under oath, that Chambers showed no contrition or remorse for all his false
testimonies. Doctor, are you so extraordinary a psychiatrist that you can tell, at a
distance of 25 feet, what someone is feeling?

No.833

Binger had testified that one ‘confirmatory thing’ of Chamber’s psychopathic

personality was that he was unable to form stable attachments.

But this is a man who worked for TIME MAGAZINE for ten years and has been
married to the same woman for nineteen years. Isn’t that evidence of stable
attachments?

Yes, though I don’t know the quality of the marriage, and he was unstable in
his relationship to the Communist Party – in, then out, then in again.834

Speaking of instability, Doctor, during your medical career, you've practiced

several different specialties in several states and lived in numerous countries.

Yes.

Whittaker Chambers is Steady Eddie compared to you. Any sign that you
have difficulty in maintaining stable relationships, Doctor?

832
Second Trial at 3966.
833
Second Trial at 3981-83.
834
Second Trial at 3989-92.

185
 No.835

Let’s discuss another “confirmatory thing” of psychopathic personality –

inattention to personal appearance. Oh, dear. Thomas Edison, Will Rogers, Albert
Einstein – are they psychopathic personalities?

I saw Einstein once at Harvard and he was well dressed; I have never looked
at Will Rogers’ linen.836

Let’s discuss another ‘confirmatory thing,’ bizarre behavior and impulsive

acts. One of them you mentioned was Chambers at Williams College skipping a
student dinner so he could read the Bible. Is it bizarre behavior, confirmatory of a
psychopathic personality, for a troubled college student to read the Bible in search of
a solution to a personal problem?

“Well, to a man who thinks of himself as an atheist, it might be, . . .”837

So, any atheist who reads the Bible may be branded a psychopath?

You also mentioned Chambers being bizarre by getting rid of a typewriter by

leaving it on a New York subway train. Don’t thousands of married women who go
to Reno to get quickie divorces go to the Virginia Street Bridge and throw their
wedding rings into the Truckee River?

I would believe it if you told me so.838

How about the most bizarre behavior Chambers engaged in, hiding the spy
documents in a pumpkin. When Moses’ mother hid him in the bulrushes to keep
him from being found and killed by Pharaoh, was that a confirmatory thing that she
was a psychopathic personality?839 How about the patriots of Connecticut hiding the
state charter in an oak tree to keep it from falling into the hands of the British
Governor? Were the Mother of Moses and the founders of the State of Connecticut
psychopathic personalities?840

“Well, she could hardly put it in a safe deposit vault. . . . I don’t know the

835
Second Trial at 3740-41.
836
Second Trial at 3988.
837
Second Trial at 3906.
838
Second Trial at 3913.
839
Second Trial at 3917.
840
Second Trial at 3915, 3917.

186
 circumstances and I wouldn’t know where else she had to hide the child.”841

Doctor, isn't it true that the term 'psychopathic personality' is a rather vague
term, a sort of waste basket classification for lot of symptoms that don't fit anywhere
else?

Amazing to say, Binger answered “Well, I think that is fair, . . .”842

A book about psychiatry, published in 1944, states that the concept of

‘psychopathic personality’ is highly unsatisfactory and is useless in psychiatric
research.

Yes, and “I agree with every word. I think it is excellent.”843

You also testified that another indication that Chambers is detached from
reality was that he looked up at the ceiling “frequently.”

We kept a count of how many times you have looked up at the ceiling,
Doctor – 59 times in the past 50 minutes. [One juror laughed.] By your own
standard, Doctor, aren’t you many times more the psychopath than Whittaker
Chambers?

Not on that ground alone.844

You also testified that another indication that Chambers is detached from
reality is that, when he was asked questions calling for a simple factual answer (like
“It was Tuesday”), he began his answers with conditional phrases like “must have
been,” “should have been,” “would have been.” You think that shows he’s a
psychopath. Do you know how many times Chambers used those phrases in his 717
pages of testimony?

Ten times.

Do you know how often Alger Hiss used those same phrases in his 590 pages
of testimony?

No.

841
Second Trial at 3917.
842
Second Trial at 3743.
843
Second Trial at 3744-46.
844
Second Trial at 3830-31.

187
 158 times. Doctor, by your own standard, isn’t Alger Hiss more than fifteen
times the psychopathic liar that Whittaker Chambers is?

I form no conclusions from the use of those phrases.845

You have testified that psychopathic personalities care nothing for the
feelings of others and therefore often hurt them. Do you have any evidence, from all
the bad things that Mr. Chambers has done in his life, that he has ever deliberately
and vengefully hurt a friend?

No.846

That was the end of Dr. Binger’s cross-examination. There was nothing left. Not even
mincemeat. People I know and whose opinions I trust have told me that, in his private practice, Dr.
Binger did fine things. My own opinion is that what he tried to do in that courtroom was witchcraft
and that Dr. Binger deserved every bit of humiliation he got.

Dr. Binger’s testimony was a disaster for The Hiss Defense, for several reasons. The first is
what you have read in the last few pages – he was simply torn to shreds on cross-examination.
Professor Younger, when he used to lecture about this Case, said that when he was a young lawyer,
he knew that Murphy was a great trial lawyer and that cross-examination generally should be short
and sweet. Younger always wondered why Murphy had cross-examined Binger for all or part of
three days. Why did he take so long? Then, Younger said, I read the cross and I realized why.
Murphy couldn’t stop. He was having too much fun.847

Murphy’s cross-examination of Binger has been published in book form to teach law
students how to destroy the other side’s expert witness.848 Professor Younger called it the most
devastating cross-examination of a psychiatrist ever.849

Second, Dr. Binger’s belly flop left glaringly obvious a failure of The Hiss Defense – to
explain what Chambers’ motive was for lying. They could think of no rational motive for him to
lie, and their attempt to give him an irrational motive looked ridiculous.

Third, no one has ever suggested any mental illness from which Mrs. Chambers was
suffering. She has no motive to lie, rational or irrational, especially to invent her lengthy and very
detailed account of her social life with Mrs. Hiss. No one has ever suggested that she was even

845
Second Trial at 3921.
846
Second Trial at 3730-32.
847
Younger Book at 562.
848
CLASSICS IN THE COURTROOM: THOMAS MURPHY’S CROSS EXAMINATION OF DR. CARL BINGER
IN UNITED STATES V. ALGER HISS (HISS II) (Professional Educational Group 1987).
849
Younger Book at 562.

188
slightly mentally ill.

More importantly, Dr. Binger could not explain Chambers’ possession of the documents.
Alistair Cooke, who was very sympathetic to Dr. Binger, wrote that he was “rather like a magician
who has pulled out wonderful and frightening objects but failed to perform the final trick of making
. . . the documents disappear.”850

But perhaps the deepest self-inflicted wound of the psychiatric testimony was that it silently
undermined a foundation of The Hiss Defense, and that is Hiss’s sterling reputation. Part of this
was that Binger may have come across as another Harvard-credentialed supremo who turned out,
upon close examination, to be less impressive than he originally seemed. Just like Hiss himself?

But I think worse still was that the whole thrust of Dr. Binger’s testimony, in the abstract,
was that it is possible to seem to be one kind of person but to really be a very different (and sinister)
kind of person. Well, if, as Dr. Binger testified, Chambers could seem a patriotic journalist but
really be a psychopathic liar, then isn’t it just as possible that Alger Hiss seemed a distinguished
diplomat but really was a Communist spy?

32. THE SECOND TRIAL:

THE SURPRISE WITNESS

What does every great trial have that this trial has not yet had? A “Surprise Witness”!

Recall the Chamberses said that they and the Hisses were good friends from 1934 through
1938. The Hisses, on the contrary, said that their acquaintance with the Chamberses – they
wouldn’t call it a friendship – was over by the end of 1935 and that they (the Hisses) never visited
the Chamberses in Baltimore.

A middle-aged black woman came into the courtroom and testified as follows:851

‘My name is Edith Murray and at all pertinent times I lived in Baltimore. I was a
domestic servant. From time to time in 1934, 1935 and 1936, I worked as a cleaning
woman and cook for a family that I knew as the Cantwells but whom I now recognize
as Mr. and Mrs. Whittaker Chambers. [Professor Younger used to say that he imagined
members of the jury looking at each other and mumbling ‘Only in America do
Communist spies have servants. What a country!852] The last time I worked for them

850
Cooke at 312.
851
Second Trial at 4400 et seq.
852
Younger Book at 556.

189
 was in the spring of 1936.853

‘”Mr. Cantwell” was there only in the weekends. I was told that he was a traveling
salesman. The Chamberses had no social life, no friends – except for one young white
married couple.854 I now recognize that couple as Mr. and Mrs. Alger Hiss. I
remember that the name I used for the woman whom I now recognize as Mrs. Hiss was
“Miss Priscilla.”855 (When Mrs. Murray stood up on the witness stand and pointed at
Mrs. Hiss, Mrs. Hiss turned “deathly white.”856)

Mrs. Murray continued: Mr. and Mrs. Hiss visited the Chamberses' house in
Baltimore together once and I remember Mrs. Hiss visiting Mrs. Chambers in
Baltimore three more times. There were probably more visits that I witnessed, but I
distinctly remember only four.857

The two women were good friends. Once, Mrs. Chambers had to go to New York
to see a doctor when she was pregnant with her second child – this would be in the
spring of 1936. Mrs. Hiss came up from Washington and, when Mrs. Chambers left to
go to New York, Mrs. Hiss stayed at the Chamberses' apartment overnight and took
care of their two year old girl.858 The last time I saw the Hisses and Chamberses
together was also in 1936 – a year after Hiss now says he got the deadbeat Crosley out
of his life.

On cross-examination, Mrs. Murray may have been slightly embarrassed. It turned out that in
1942 she had had some kind of nervous breakdown and had hardly left home in the following years.
This mental infirmity from her past was brought out.

Also, to get her to identify the Hisses, the FBI used a method that was more suggestive than
would be allowed today. They showed her a picture of Mrs. Hiss and asked Mrs. Murray if she knew
this lady. Mrs. Murray said ‘yes,’ though at first she thought Mrs. Hiss “maybe . . . was an actress,”859
“maybe I saw her in the movies.”860 Today, she would have been presented with lots of photos of
youngish white women, not just one.

Personally, I have little doubt that Mrs. Murray’s recognition of the Hisses was honest on her

853
Second Trial at 4401, 4409.
854
Second Trial at 4402.
855
Second Trial at 4403-05.
856
De Toledano & Lasky at 265.
857
Second Trial at 4412; see also Second Trial at 1215-16 (Mrs. Chambers to the same effect).
858
Second Trial at 1215-16 (Mrs. Chambers describing this event); Second Trial at 4403-04, 4416.
859
Second Trial at 4413; see also In re Hiss, 542 F. Supp. 973, 985 (S.D.N.Y. 1982), 722 F.2d 727
(2d Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 890 (1983).
860
Second Trial at 4437.

190
part, not the product of diabolical suggestion, and that it was accurate. To believe that she was mis-
identifying the Hisses, you have to believe that the Chamberses knew another white couple whose
identity has remained a mystery for over 60 years and whose female half had the first name Priscilla.
Who else could “Miss Priscilla” be but Priscilla Hiss? And maybe Mrs. Murray had thought Mrs. Hiss
might be an actress because, as she testified, she had gone to the movies despite her breakdown.861
She might well have seen the Hisses in a newsreel.

Mrs. Murray, like the car transfer and the rug and so much else, undermined Hiss’s story that
his relationship with Chambers had been brief, strictly business, unpleasant and ended in 1935; and it
supported Chambers’ story that the relationship had been long and, especially in the overnight care of
the Chambers’s two year old, friendly and trusting.

Hedda Massing, Dr. Binger, and Mrs. Murray are the main ways that the testimony in the
second trial differed from the first.

Next, the final summations and the verdict.

33. THE SECOND TRIAL:

THE SUMMATIONS AND THE VERDICT

Here is an approximation of the summation by Claude Cross for The Defense at the second
trial. It lasted five hours.862 He was no Lloyd Paul Stryker. In my opinion, Cross did a totally
competent job but went into too many details that do not finally come together into a coherent
picture.

‘Chambers told you of a trip with the Hisses from New York City to Long
Eddy, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles. Chambers testified that they drove in the
Hisses’ new Plymouth.863 Chambers said the trip occurred on June 16, 1935.864 But
the Hisses didn’t buy the Plymouth until September. The only car they had in June
was the Model A Ford, which means that Chambers would have had to ride 100
miles in a rumble seat. Goodness knows, Chambers would have remembered that if
it had really happened.865 The trip never occurred; Chambers made it up.’

Mr. Cross made about a dozen of these tiny cuts in the fabric of the story Chambers

861
Second Trial at 4422, 4439-40.
862
Busch at 280.
863
Second Trial at 133.
864
Second Trial at 445-46.
865
Second Trial at 4557.

191
had told. He hoped that their collective effect would be to make the whole fabric come
apart, or at least to raise a reasonable doubt in the Jury’s mind.

Then Cross described Hiss’s conduct as that of an innocent man:

“I told you in the beginning that my client has always come forward when he
had an opportunity to tell the facts and my client would, as he did in the first trial, he
did at the grand jury, he did at the House Committee – he would take the stand and
answer every question asked him.”866

Hiss volunteered that Chambers had given him a rug and offered to bring it
into court. “Is that the action of a man who is trying to conceal something? This
very day it is on his floor. Did [The Prosecution] ask that it be brought in here or
identify it or anything like that? No.”867

Cross finally faced the elephant in the corner, the most difficult part of the defense, an
explanation of how The Spy Documents got typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter:

Did the Hisses want to get rid of their typewriter, to hide it or conceal it? If
they had, “they certainly would not have given it to their colored maid’s children to
have all the people coming in there and banging on it.

“I say, well, how did Chambers know about that? How did he get it? . . . He
didn’t do it himself, you can bet your life on that. He gets through confederates,
anybody who can get through confederates and steal top secret documents from the
State Department would not have much trouble locating a big office typewriter.
Now I can suggest there might be several ways. I can suggest a way that he could
have easily found out. Suppose someone had called up, or come over, when he knew
the Hisses weren’t there, and asked Clidi, saying that they were a typewriter repair
man and had come to repair the Woodstock typewriter. What would she have said?
‘Why, they have given it to my boys.’ He wouldn’t have much difficulty locating
Clidi’s place, and with that open house, with the cellar there, I mean the closet; with
all the people coming and going, with all the people living there, and their friends
and the dances and all. How easy.”868

Chambers’ motive to lie? “The testimony is that he is a psychopathic

personality, . . . . The testimony . . . might be helpful to you in trying to rationalize
the action of Mr. Chambers who did all the things . . . as to which there is no dispute:
the pumpkin papers, the withholding of a number of these documents; the various

866
Second Trial at 4518-19.
867
Second Trial at 4554.
868
Second Trial at 4623-24.

192
 lies that he has told either to you or to the grand jury, . . . . The testimony is about
the action of a man who is almost unexplainable. The hiding of papers in the
pumpkin . . . after he had had it in his house. No reference to hiding the charter in
the charter oak . . . is comparable to that. Could you rationalize anyone deliberately
writing the ‘Play for Puppets’ and a lot of other actions that he did?”869

“Ladies and gentlemen, I think it not only proper but fair for me to say that I
believe in the innocence, the honesty and innocence, of my client, or I would not
have spent the time here that I have.

“This case is going to you tomorrow afternoon and I believe by your verdict
you will put the stamp of honesty and innocence upon Alger Hiss. I thank you.”870

Prosecutor Murphy went last. He emphasized what he called “the immutable documents.”
Unlike Chambers’ story, they do not change.871

The first highlight his summation was about all of Hiss’s character or reputation witnesses.
He said:

“The defendant has called 19 character witnesses, more than one-third the
number of his total witnesses, and the have testified to his reputation for integrity,
loyalty and honesty, veracity. . . .

“I ask you ladies and gentlemen what kind of reputation did a good spy have?
Of course it must be good. The fox barks not when he goes to steal the lamb. It has
to be good. But we are here on a search for the truth. We are not concerned with
reputations. Poppycock.

“Just think how many people could call good reputation witnesses. Just
think. Benedict Arnold, a major general in our Army . . . and he sold out West Point
to the enemy. Before [he did that] don’t you believe that Major General Benedict
Arnold could call George Washington? Couldn’t he call all of the members of the
General Staff?

“And Brutus: before he stabbed Caesar don’t you think he could have stood
in front of the Roman Senate and called upon the great Augustus and said, ‘Tell
them what a man I am.’

....

869
Second Trial at 4631-32.
870
Second Trial at 4642.
871
Second Trial at 4672.

193
 “And lastly the devil himself. . . . The devil was a fallen angel and before he
was thrown out of Heaven he was in the sight of God. He could have called upon
the Almighty himself for his reputation.

“Ladies and gentlemen, character witnesses belong to another era. This is the
age of reason. This is the age of common people. And what we want are facts. We
are here, you are here, Judge Goddard is here to ascertain the facts. We don’t want
gossip.”872

Concerning possible misconduct by the FBI, Murphy told the jury:

“If you think that any bit of evidence in this case, any bit, material or
immaterial, was manufactured, conceived, or suborned by the FBI, acquit this man.
The FBI ought to be told by you that they can’t tamper with witnesses and evidence,
if you believe that to be the fact. . . . It is the thing to do today – call the FBI
conspirators. It sounds good. A lot of the press likes it – some of the press. Smart.
The intelligentsia like it, love it.873

Then Murphy moved to Hiss’s and Claude Cross’s theory of how Chambers typed The Spy
Documents on The Hiss Home Typewriter:

“Now, let us get back to the theory No. 103 as to who did it. This is No. 103.
And how was it proved? Well, you start off with the fact that the Catletts had the
typewriter, and here is the picture of their hall. You see how these two things
follow. The Catletts had it. Here is the hall where they used to keep it. Here is the
picture of the back entrance. You see all that space back there, people come in and
out there all the time. Then there is the den, then there are the dancers.

“Now, what probably happened, Mr. Cross testified, is that somebody, not
Chambers – he is too smart, but one of his conspirators, one of his confederates –
those are good names, ‘conspirators,’ ‘confederates,’ – he went up to the Volta Place
house and asked innocent Clidi Catlett ‘I am the repair man. Where is the machine?’

“I can just see it now. It’s terrific. You can have this guy coming in with a
Woodstock hat on, ‘Woodstock repair,’ with a jumper “Woodstock’ ringing the bell .
. . and saying to Mrs. Catlett, ‘I am the repair man to fix the typewriter.’

“Then Clidi says ‘Well, which one do you want? The Remington, the Royal,
the L.C. Smith? Which one?’

872
Second Trial at 4674-77.
873
Second Trial at 4739-40.

194
 “’No. We want the Woodstock.’

“’Oh, that’s over in my boy’s house, over at P Street.’

“And then, in the next scene, it is the middle of one of these dances. And
you see Chambers sneaking in at night, mingling with the dancers, and then typing,
typing the stuff, holding the State Department document in one hand –

“Oh, Mr. Cross, you got to do better than that.”874

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, consider again those proofs. Take them
with you to the jury room, those photographs; take the machine, the instruments.
What do they prove? Ladies and gentlemen, it proves treason, and [Alger Hiss] is
the traitor. And come back with the courage of your convictions and tell this world
that our faith in the American jury system is well founded.

“Thank you.”875

Based on what you have heard occurred at the second trial, would any of you change your
vote from the first time?

I wonder, if you would vote Not Guilty, is it because you believe:

- probably Hiss was guilty, but The Prosecution did not prove its case beyond a
reasonable doubt;

- the truth lay somewhere between the two men’s stories; Hiss told less than the truth,
and Chambers told more than the truth

 this was said to be the opinion of the Judge at the first trial876 and seems to
me to be the opinion of a British judge who wrote about the Case877

- the “nullification” option, that Hiss was technically guilty, but his motives were to
fight Hitler and further international friendship, so he was obeying ‘the higher law’
and was morally not guilty.

874
Second Trial at 4740-41.
875
Second Trial at 4750.
876
Tony I at 135.
877
See The Earl Jowitt, THE STRANGE CASE OF ALGER HISS (Doubleday 1953) at 339.

195
 - Hiss was innocent in every way, was never a Communist or a spy, the only way he
ever knew Chambers was as the deadbeat subtenant George Crosley; and Mr. and
Mrs. Chambers were complete fantasists.

The second jury began deliberating at 3:10 PM on January 20, 1950. It asked to see The
Spy Documents, and returned with a verdict after lunch on January 21.878 It found Hiss guilty on
both counts. As the verdict was announced and the jury members said “It is” or “I do”879 24 times
as they were polled, there was not another noise in the courtroom. Hiss’s “face paled. His wife’s
right cheek twitched. Claude Cross was white. A young member of the defense teamed wiped
tears away.”880

Hiss and his defense team were stunned. They had expected an acquittal.881

Hiss later complained that Judge Goddard was prejudiced against him,882 but something that
happened next makes me disbelieve that. Back in the courtroom, Judge Goddard had to decide
right then and there whether Hiss should be taken into custody immediately or be allowed to walk
free pending sentencing and appeal. Prosecutor Murphy was on his feet immediately asking that
Hiss be taken into custody then and there.

Judge Godard said simply “I think not” and let Hiss go.883 I suspect that Judge Goddard
sensed the total ruin that had just descended on the life of Alger Hiss.

TIME MAGAZINE wrote: “The courtroom emptied except for the lawyers. The chair in
which Priscilla Hiss had sat presented a picture. There, in grotesque imitation of life, lay two
slightly soiled white gloves. The right glove was clasping the left. On the red leather chair, they
seemed to be the limp hands of someone long dead.”884

Chambers was on his farm and learned of the verdict from a phone call. After hearing the
news, he put down the phone and left the room.885 He felt no satisfaction.

Chambers said the following that night:

“The verdict is a great victory for the democratic process. I hope the American
people will realize the debt that they owe to this jury, to Mr. Murphy, and to the

878
Weinstein I at 521.
879
Cooke at 335.
880
Grunwald at 170 (quoting TIME).
881
Hiss II at 156.
882
Hiss II at 155, 158.
883
Second Trial at 4798.
884
Grunwald at 170 (quoting TIME).
885
Chambers I at 794.

196
 tireless and splendid efforts of the FBI. Nor should they forget Congressman Nixon
of California, who almost singlehandedly forced the House Committee on Un-
American Activities to pursue the Hiss investigation.”886

Four days later, it was time for sentencing.

Clause Cross, fidgeting, asked Judge Goddard to spare Hiss any time in prison. He is
disgraced and broke, he has suffered continuously for 18 months. Since 1939, he has served his
country admirably – perhaps a hint that Hiss spied but wised up after the Nazi-Soviet Pact.

“[A]ny punishment further than what he has undergone is unnecessary for any effect
upon the individual. . . . I accept the verdict of the jury. That is our judicial system.
[But] there are only two or three people who know the real facts. . . . [T]here will
always be the lingering doubt which was manifested by a hung jury at the first trial .
. . I have attempted to present all the facts within my command. I have done it, and
I did not convince the jury, and,”

Cross said with his head down and his hands trembling,887 “I feel that I should tell your Honor
frankly that I still believe in Alger Hiss.”888

Judge Goddard rebuffed Cross’s swipe at the verdict, saying that the second jury considered
the case for 24 hours and seems not to have arrived at any snap judgment. The length of their
deliberations indicates full consideration and conscientiousness.889

Prosecutor Murphy, as quiet as Cross had been, said that this was not a time for a prosecutor
to be prolix. But he disagreed strongly with Mr. Cross’s attempt to hang a cloud over the jury’s
verdict. The Defendant has had two trials, and trials are how we find things out in this country; to
add a new air of mystery is not quite fair. Murphy recommended two five-year sentences, one for
each count, to run concurrently.890

Hiss, “ashen faced,”891 then spoke: "I would like to thank Your Honor for this opportunity
again to deny the charges that have been made against me. I want only to add that I am confident
that in the future the full facts of how Whittaker Chambers was able to carry out forgery by
typewriter will be disclosed."892

886
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SKG6yYMW_E.
887
Cooke at 338.
888
Second Trial at 4804-06.
889
Second Trial at 4806.
890
Second Trial at 4806-08.
891
Miami Daily (using AP), http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YTs0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=
cOsFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5089,4897004&dq=alger-hiss&hl=en.
892
Second Trial at 4809.

197
 Judge Goddard, without elaboration, sentenced him to the maximum, five years in prison on
each count, the sentences to run concurrently.

The Court of Appeals upheld Hiss’s conviction in a ho-hum opinion later that year893 and
the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.894 Mr. Justice Douglas thought Hiss had been framed,
but he was unable to get the necessary votes from other Justices.895

In March 1951, two and a half years after the first HUAC hearing, Alger Hiss entered
prison.

34. THE IMPACT OF THE GUILTY VERDICT

ON AMERICA

The verdict of the second jury that Alger Hiss was guilty was an important event in
American political and cultural history.896 No other single event created as much fear – justified
fear – of Communist treason by fellow Americans.

Any remaining doubts about Hiss’s guilt fell almost to zero when, shortly after the second
jury’s Guilty verdict, in Britain, one of the scientists whom that country gave to our atom bomb
project, a German refugee named Klaus Fuchs, confessed that he had passed atomic secrets from
our atom bomb project to the Soviet Union.897 Fuchs was another of those ‘the last person you’d
ever expect to be a Soviet spy’ people.898 And he confessed. There could no longer be any doubt
that inconspicuous, honorable-looking people, and members of The Establishment from elite
universities, could be traitors of the most serious kind.

Hiss’s conviction was a disaster for American liberalism, the Democratic Party, and the
Establishment. A man who symbolized the best and the brightest of the governing class of the
previous 16 years was convicted of what amounted to treason.

Most Democrats and liberals and Top Drawer People had taken his side by donating money
or free legal help, sending letters to the Editor, and speaking up for him, or trash-talking

893
United States v. Hiss, 185 F.2d 822 (2d Cir. 1950).
894
Hiss v. United States, 340 U.S. 948 (1951).
895
William O. Douglas, GO EAST, YOUNG MAN: THE EARLY YEARS (Random House 1974) at 378-
79.
896
See, e.g., Nash at 98; Victor S. Navasky, NAMING NAMES (Viking 1980) at 4.
897
Rebecca West, THE NEW MEANING OF TREASON (Time 1964) at 201.
898
Weinstein I at 531; see also Norman Moos, KLAUS FUCHS: THE MAN WHO STOLE THE ATOM
BOMB (Grafton 1989).

198
Chambers, at cocktail parties and other social occasions.899 These types stood almost equally
condemned, not as Communist traitors themselves, but as people who couldn't recognize one in
their midst. These people claim to be so smart and wise, to have better brains than the smelly
peasants who didn’t go to Harvard. But, in this crucial case of treason, they were completely
wrong. Perhaps their flaw was the basest kind of tribal loyalty, the feeling the Alger is one of us
and laws are for little people. But we smelly peasants always thought that being Top Drawer
meant that you had especially good judgment, keen analytical skills. In fact, the opposite is true.
Such people, whom we trusted with our national security, turn out to be especially unfit to be
trusted with it.900

Hiss’s conviction was red meat for Republicans who didn’t read THE HERALD TRIBUNE. It
proved that there had been Soviet spies in the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations, at
shockingly high levels and despite repeated warnings. There had always been people yelling that
there were “Commies hiding in the woodwork” and that maybe Social Security was hatched in the
Kremlin, too.901 Hiss’s guilt gave them a credibility they had not had before.902

While the second trial was nearing its end, a first-term Republican Senator and three
acquaintances were having dinner in Washington’s fashionable Colony restaurant. The Senator
bemoaned that he had been in the Senate for four years, had to run for re-election in 1952, and
really hadn't made much of a reputation for himself. He was thinking of becoming a spokesman
on transportation or pensions. One of his dinner mates suggested that he try Communism in the
US, subversion. The Senator said he thought it was a good idea. “The government is full of
Communists. The thing to do is hammer them.”903 The Senator's name was Joe McCarthy, and in
a speech about 20 days after Hiss’s conviction,904 McCarthy said (according to one account, there
is no recording):

"While I cannot take the time to name all of the men in the State Department who
have been named as members of the Communist party and members of a spy ring, I
have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the
Secretary of State and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of

899
Cerf at 242-43.
900
See Goodman at 261; see also William L. O’Neill, A BETTER WORLD: THE GREAT SCHISM:
STALINISM & THE AMERICAN INTELLECTUALS (Simon & Schuster 1982) at 314-15.
901
See, e.g., William A. Reuben, THE ATOM SPY HOAX (Action Book 1955) at 170 (quoting
Marquis Childs).
902
Ellen Schrecker, MANY ARE THE CRIMES: MCCARTHYISM IN AMERICA (Little Brown 1998) at
184; Weinstein I at 531.
903
Fred J. Cook, THE NIGHTMARE DECADE: THE LIFE & TIMES OF SENATOR JOE MCCARTHY
(Random House 1971) at 139-41; Richard M. Fried, MEN AGAINST MCCARTHY (Columbia Univ.
Press 1976) at 43-44; Richard H. Rovere, SENATOR JOE MCCARTHY (University of California Press
1996) at 122-23.
904
Bernstein & Matusow at 401-07; Weinstein I at 531.

199
 the State Department."905

That speech is usually taken as the start of The McCarthy Era.

McCarthy used Hiss against Adlai Stevenson, who became the Democratic nominee for
President in 1952. He made Stevenson pay for being one of Hiss’s character witnesses. McCarthy
referred to Stevenson as "Alger, I mean Adlai."906 I don’t fault McCarthy for this. If you are
running from President, saying “Trust me to pick generals and diplomats who will defend this
country,” at a time when Joe Stalin is still alive, the overthrow of democracy in Czechoslovakia,
Poland and Hungary is only a few years past, and we’re in a shooting war with the Communists in
Korea, it doesn’t look good that you testified as a character witness for a Soviet spy. You might be
a dandy Governor of Illinois, but we shouldn’t let you anywhere near the national security.

The McCarthy Era, whose merits and demerits are beyond the scope of these Chapters, is
often viewed as a left-versus-right event. I think it was more a rebellion of the middle and working
classes, or the Un-Beautiful People, against the upper crust types like Hiss who had sold the
country out to a vile foreign dictatorship or, in many more cases, been too stupid to notice Hiss
doing that.907

If anyone embodied the upper crust more than Hiss, it was his old colleague in the State
Department, Dean Acheson. Acheson, by the time of Hiss’s conviction, was Secretary of State
under President Truman. He now comes on stage for the second time in this Case, again playing
the role of Greek Chorus, saying what was on the minds of some people.

At a press conference the day Hiss was to be sentenced, he was asked if he had any
comment on Hiss’s conviction. His answer showed the best and worst of the old WASP
establishment – its high standards of personal integrity, but also its appearance of snottyness and
tone-deafness to public opinion. Acheson said:

"Mr. Hiss’s case is before the courts and I think that it would be highly
improper for me to discuss the legal aspects of the case or the evidence or anything
to do with the case.

“I take it the purpose of your question was to bring something other than that

905
Fried at 44; see generally Goldman at 139-43.
906
Edwin R. Bayley, JOE MCCARTHY & THE PRESS (University of Wisconsin Press 1981) at 107;
Weinstein I at 535; see also Bernstein & Matusow at 427-28, Fried at 232 (Senator Jenner saying
“If Adlai gets into the White House, Alger gets out of the jail house.”).
907
See generally Michael Kazin, THE POPULIST PERSUASION: AN AMERICAN HISTORY (Basic
Books 1995) at 170-71, 175, 190, 249; see also Fried at 12 ("Impeached with Hiss were his charm,
intellect and wit, his handsome features and trim tailoring, his ivy league background and
sophistication.").

200
 out of me. I should like to make it clear to you that whatever the outcome of any
appeal . . . I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss. I think every person who
has known Alger Hiss or has served with him at any time has upon his conscience
the very serious task of deciding what his attitude is . . . . For me, there is very little
doubt about those standards or those principles. I think they were stated for us a
very long time ago. They were stated on the Mount of Olives and if you are
interested in seeing them you will find them in the 25th Chapter of the Gospel
according to St. Matthew beginning with verse 34."908

The pertinent verse is: “For I was hungered and you gave me meat: . . . I was a stranger, and ye
took me in; Naked, and you clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came
unto me. . . . Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of my
brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Republicans howled with outrage. Representative Walter Judd demanded that President
Truman ‘turn his back’ on Acheson.909 Senator McCarthy asked whether Acheson would “not turn
his back any other Communists in the State Department.”910 Senator Homer Capeheart of Indiana
won applause when he said, on the floor of the Senate, “How much more are we going to have to
take? Fuchs and Acheson and Hiss and [Soviet] hydrogen bombs threatening outside and New
Dealism eating away at the vitals of the nation. In the name of Heaven, is this the best America
can do?”911

Acheson saw President Truman later that day and offered his resignation. The President
said ‘You did the right thing, Dean. You’re still my man. You must stick by your friends when
they're in trouble.’ Truman reminded Acheson that when he (Truman) had been a bankrupt
haberdasher, he had got a new start in life from Kansas City's corrupt Democratic boss, Jim
Prendergast. Decades later in 1945, Prendergast had died just after getting out of prison, and
Truman went to his funeral. He took a lot of criticism for it, but always felt he had done the
honorable thing by standing by ‘a friendless old man just out of the penitentiary.’912 “In the long
run, after all the hullabaloo is over, people will remember that you’re a man who stuck by his
friends, and that’s what counts.”913

Later, Acheson tried to explain to a Senate Committee why he said what he had said:

“First, the refusal to discuss the merits of the case sub judice did not seem to

908
Acheson at 360; Chase at 227-28; Weinstein I at 529-30.
909
Beisner at 296.
910
David McCullough, TRUMAN (Simon & Schuster 1992) at 760.
911
Weinstein I at 531.
912
Chace at 227-28.
913
Merle Miller, PLAIN SPEAKING: AN ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF HARRY S. TRUMAN (Berkley Books
1974) at 414.

201
 be debatable.

“Second, why did I not let the matter rest there? Because, as the hubbub had
shown, some regarded my attitude towards Alger Hiss as relevant to my fitness to
hold office, and these people were entitled to know it. . . . One must be true to the
things by which one lives. The counsels of discretion and cowardice are appealing.
The safest course is to avoid situations which are disagreeable and dangerous. Such
a course might get one by the issue of the moment, but it has bitter and evil
consequences. In the long days and years which stretch beyond that moment of
decision, one must live with one’s self; and the consequences of living with a
decision which one knows has sprung from timidity and cowardice go to the roots of
one’s life. It is not merely a question of peace of mind, although that is vital; it is a
matter of integrity of character.

“Third, regarding the substance of my attitude, Mr. Hiss was in the greatest
trouble in which a man could be. The outcome of his appeal could have little
bearing on his personal tragedy. It was toward a man in this situation that I found
applicable the principle of compassion stated in the Gospel. It represented a
tradition in which I had been bred going back beyond the limits of memory.

“Fourth, I could not believe that what I said carried the slightest implication
of condoning the offenses that Mr. Hiss has been charged with or of which he had
been convicted. But for the benefit of those who would create doubt where none
existed, I will accept the humiliation of stating what should be obvious – that I did
not and do not condone in any way the offenses charged, whether committed by a
friend or a by a total stranger, and that I would never knowingly tolerate any disloyal
person in the Department of State.”914

A few years later, perhaps after the scars had healed, Acheson admitted that he had chosen
an “awful phrase.”915

Not all liberals felt like Acheson. One criticized Acheson for “indulging in a personal
luxury that could only damage the State Department.”916 This critic and other liberals believed
that treason is grounds for turning your back on a friend.

Suspicion of The Establishment occurred among members of The Establishment itself – a

self-doubt that was justified in many cases. John Foster Dulles, Hiss’s former mentor at the
Carnegie Endowment, became Secretary of State a few years later when Eisenhower became
President. Dulles became concerned about a certain nominee to an ambassadorial post and began

914
Acheson at 361 (some quotation marks omitted); Beisner at 293-98.
915
Beisner at 297.
916
Straight at 232.

202
asking him if there was anything in his past that might be, you know, damaging. "I couldn't stand
another Alger Hiss," Dulles explained.917

A few liberals, whom I call the "our boy Alger crowd" of fellow Harvard graduates and The
New Yorker readers, could not bring themselves to believe that their boy could be guilty. Or, if he
was, he was certainly a more civilized fellow than that dreadful man Chambers. One dignified Park
Avenue matron once told me that Chambers was the real scoundrel, for telling tales that are better
left untold. Mostly from these people, several versions of ‘the real lowdown’ on the Case began
circulating, trying to exculpate Hiss to some extent.

The most widespread of these was that the real culprit was Mrs. Hiss. She had never been a
favorite with Alger's friends. She had either committed the espionage all by herself, or had led
Alger to do it. He, being a mere liberal but weak, had followed her wifely enticements. And, being
the perfect gentleman, he had gone to prison for her. This, supposedly, was the belief of Hiss’s two
lawyers who had known him longest, William Marbury and Edward McLean, and of Mrs.
Roosevelt.918

This does not hold up to examination. The man who knew Mrs. Hiss best other than Alger
Hiss was her first husband. He is supposed to have said that to imagine Priscilla leading Alger was
to imagine a rowboat pulling The Queen Mary.919 Besides, Alger Hiss is over 18 and is fully
responsible for his acts. As to the possibility that she did the spying and typing all by herself
without his knowledge, that fails to explain why Hiss, in the first place, would take home
documents that had little or nothing to do with his job at the State Department, and why he would
write out notes like The Robinson-Rubens Telegram.

It also requires you to believe that Priscilla could filch documents from his briefcase, type
up copies of them, and then put them back night after night for more than a year without Hiss ever
knowing. This picture is almost as silly as Chambers doing The Bunny Hop and typing at The
Catlett Kids’ dance party. Imagine, after dinner at the Hiss house, Clydie Catlett washing the
dishes, Alger drying them, and Mrs. Hiss upstairs every night typing up a storm. After a few
months, Alger asks her as they are undressing, “Prossie, what’s all this typing you’re doing every
night?”

And she says “Yikes! Oh, it’s my Bryn Mawr Old Girls Newsletter, that’s all, dear.”

“Ten pages of news every night. My, what a whizbang class you have!” It’s incredible.

917
Bohlen at 322; Townsend Hoopes, THE DEVIL & JOHN FOSTER DULLES (Little Brown 1973) at
142, 158-59; Walter LaFeber, AMERICA, RUSSIA, & THE COLD WAR 1945-75 (John Wiley & Sons
1976) at 142.
918
Berle at 583; Gentry at 366 (footnote); Olmstead at 137; Tony I at 2, 135; Weinstein I at 174,
179, 299, 400-01, 407 (bottom footnote), 583, 623 (2013 edition); White Book at 162, 174-75.
919
Kempton I at 21.

203
 Someone whom I once met and who knew Mrs. Hiss has a simpler explanation for the
“Priscilla Did It” crowd. He told me "You have to remember who it is that is saying these things
about her. They're all Alger's friends from Harvard and Georgetown and the State Department.
They're all liberals of the 30s and 40s, but they're all male chauvinist pigs." They didn’t like her
because she was an uppity woman, not content to spend her life pouring tea for other State
Department wives.

Some liberals and intellectuals also attempted to justify Hiss’s conduct by saying that he
was “a greater Wadleigh,” just trying to fight Fascism by ‘sharing information’ with the Soviet
Union when it was the major anti-Nazi government in the world.

This theory was scorned by the famous British feminist and Socialist writer, Rebecca West.
She said that it showed “chaotic moral and intellectual values.”920 Her main point was that, in order
to fight Hitler, it was not necessary to become either a Communist or a traitor. Second, Ms. West
said, from her experience in Britain’s Anti-Fascist movement, the Communists were in the Anti-
Fascist movement only sporadically, only when it was consistent with the foreign policy of the
Soviet Union, and for the sole purpose of hijacking the Anti-Fascist movement and making it a
wholly owned subsidiary of the Communist Party.

Third, Ms. West said, this explanation, if it excuses anyone, doesn’t fit Hiss. It fits only the
people who began spying for the Soviet Union when Hitler became a menace, such as after the
Munich Sellout in 1938. According to Chambers – and the people who make this excuse for Hiss
are accepting Chambers’ story as factually true – Hiss was a dedicated underground Communist in
the summer of 1934. At that time, Hitler had been in power for all of 15 months. To attribute
Hiss’s Communism in mid-1934 to anti-Fascism means that he traveled the enormous distance from
being a middle-of-the-road Democrat to being a functioning member of the Communist
underground in 15 months. That makes Mr. Hiss, Ms. West wrote, very quick off the mark.

And the final problem with the “greater Wadleigh” explanation, Ms. West said, is that Hiss
has never uttered such nonsense. He simply says he didn't steal the documents.

Of all the aftershocks of the Guilty verdict, the one I find most interesting is that it
provoked something among many Democrats and liberals that you see seldom among political
activists – genuine soul-searching and self-criticism. Many Democrats and liberals said ‘I hate to
admit it, but when we’re in charge for 16 years – we control the Presidency and both Houses of
Congress, we appoint the bureaucrats, we’re responsible for the national security – and at the end
of that time, with Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss, there are two Soviet spies holding sub-
Cabinet rank (and God knows how many more at lower levels and in the atom bomb project, too),
we blew it. That doesn’t just look bad. That is bad. For all the areas where we Democrats and
liberals can give ourselves “A”s and gold stars for what we’ve done in the last 16 years, this is one

920
West Book Review at 673.

204
area where a lot of us have to give ourselves “D”s and “F”s.

‘We need to apologize to the American people; we need to clean house (and to err on the
side of cleanliness – no one has a right to a government job); and we need to put systems in place
to make sure this never happens again.

‘And then, after we’ve done that at the office, a lot of us have to go home and look in the
mirror and say to ourselves that we were very naïve about Communism, the Communist Party in
the US, and the Soviet Union. We fell for their pose that Communists were just “liberals in a
hurry” and “the Shock Troops of the New Deal.” I remember a college professor of mine, who
had been a leftie in the 30s, warning us in the 60s. He said: “We had a saying in the 30s that
‘there are no enemies on the left.’” He shook his head and said “Boy, did we get that wrong.”

A wise analysis of the Case along these lines came from Leslie Fiedler, a liberal college
professor and literary critic. He said that many liberals still want Hiss to be innocent because we
ourselves don’t want to face our earlier naïveté about Communism, the Communist Party, and the
Soviet Union. If Hiss is innocent, then we are still innocent. If he can bury his sins, we can bury
ours – an especially shameful act for people who claim to be especially endowment with intellect
and ethics. Fiedler wrote:

“Certainly, a generation was on trial with Hiss – on trial not . . . for having
struggled toward a better world, but for having substituted sentimentality for
intelligence in that struggle, . . . What is involved is not any question of all or most
of the younger New Dealers having been, like Hiss, secret agents of the GPU, but the
question of their having been so busy denying that there was a GPU, or that it
mattered, that they could not identify an enemy of all the values in which they most
profoundly believed.

....

"It is not necessary that we liberals be self-flagellants. We have desired

good, and we have done some; but we have also done great evil. The confession in
itself is nothing, but without the confession there can be no understanding, and
without the understanding of what the Hiss case tries desperately to declare, we will
not be able to move forward from a liberalism of innocence to a liberalism of
responsibility."921

Taking up on this challenge, in the next years a number of liberals, perhaps most
prominently Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Sidney Hook, fashioned a liberal view in this country that
was just as anti-Communist as the conservatives', but which they claimed was more sincere

921
Fiedler at 21, 24; see also Guenter Lewy, THE CAUSE THAT FAILED: COMMUNISM IN AMERICAN
POLITICAL LIFE (Oxford Univ. Press 1990) at 80-82.

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because it was genuinely concerned with civil liberties, civil and labor rights – all the things that
Communism does not produce and that most conservatives don't want government to promote.922
Schlesinger also argued that some New Dealers were soft on Communism and lax about
Communist spies because of the New Deal’s naïveté, not because liberals and Communists had
anything common. Our naïveté was a bug, not a feature.923

Only a very, very few people left of center could say “I told you so” along with
conservatives and Republicans. These were old leftists who had had actual experience with the
Communist Party and Soviet underground, and who hated it. Diana Trilling, one of these people,
wrote that The Hiss Case produced, in her circle, the shock of recognition.924 She said that
everyone in or near the Communist Party in New York in the Thirties knew there was a secret,
hidden wing of the Party. Indeed, one day in 1932 one of them had tried to recruit her – and it was
Whittaker Chambers.925 She wrote that many liberals, looking at Hiss and Chambers (please note
she named both of them) said to themselves "There but for the grace of God go I.”926

The Trillings, by the way, and a few other old leftists from New York, who were still
intellectual Marxists, had known Chambers during his Communist period and vouched for his
honesty – that while he was distressingly given to extremes in his political judgments, he was too
honorable a person to lie in order to destroy the life of someone who had been his friend.927

Professor John Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard had a view of the Case that is insightful and
unusually intelligent. He had an explanation of why the Guilty verdict was such a raw nerve for
some liberals for so long. What I am about to say is what Galbraith wrote, with a little added
interpretation by me. At the beginning of the HUAC hearings, Chambers had not accused Hiss of
any crimes and had gone out of his way to be sympathetic to his fellows from the Thirties.
Chambers described secret Soviet work like The Ware Group as a sin, but a forgivable one, one for
which you could atone – as Chambers had tried to do in his writings at TIME.

Chambers left Hiss an opening. Hiss, in his first statement to HUAC, could have admitted
to being in The Ware Group, that in his youth he had done some foolish things (and who hasn't?),
much in the way that politicians nowadays admit they smoked pot when they were in college, and
it’s no big deal. More than a few observers speculated that had Hiss done that, and had he used his
first time at the microphone to create an understanding of why people like him fell for
Communism in the 1930s, not only would he have gotten off but perhaps there never would have

922
See generally Michael Kimmage, THE CONSERVATIVE TURN: LIONEL TRILLING, WHITTAKER
CHAMBERS, & THE LESSONS OF ANTI-COMMUNISM (Harvard Univ. Press 2009); Sidney Hook, The
Faiths of Whittaker Chambers, in Swan at 77.
923
Schlesinger Book Review at 8, 40.
924
Diana Trilling at 358.
925
Diana Trilling at 216-17.
926
Diana Trilling, A Memorandum on the Hiss Case, in Swan at 42-43.
927
Diana Trilling at 389; Weinstein I at 537-47.

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been a Senator McCarthy, perhaps the next few years would have been less harsh.928

But, Galbraith recalled, Hiss didn’t say that. He (and his lawyers at the trials) insisted that
Hiss had never had a remotely pro-Communist thought in his entire life, had never had a
Communist friend, never spoken to a Communist. How dare you insinuate that I, the great Alger
of The Hopkins and Harvard, would ever consort with Communists? He implied that to have done
any of those things would have been an unspeakable crime. His said that because Chambers had
been a Communist, he was despicable and a traitor. Hiss, rather than Chambers, set the tone for
the McCarthy era.

By the standard, Galbraith said, that Hiss created, a lot of us liberals had some explaining
to do. When Alger not only denied but excoriated his own past, he denied and excoriated ours,
too. Many of us recalled – there was that fund-raiser for The Scottsboro Boys Defense Fund I
went to all those years ago where I donated a dollar. How was I to know it was a Communist
front?

We didn’t have as much explaining to do as Alger, Galbraith went on, but then again we
wouldn’t have the best lawyers in the country giving us free advice and Eleanor Roosevelt writing
sympathetic newspaper columns.929 This is the source of the anxiety that so many liberals felt
about The Hiss Case for so long, said Galbraith. Alger Hiss, by his absolute denial of any
Communistic activity, gave a glass jaw to an entire generation of liberals, and millions of us
walked through the next ten years hoping, in most cases successfully, that on one would take a
swing at it.930 In the same vein, the transplanted Brit, Alistair Cooke, said that Alger Hiss was “the
true father of McCarthyism.”931

A final effect of the Guilty verdict in the second trial was that Richard Nixon became
famous.932 The gamble he took with his career paid off. Never, before or since, in American
history has a first term Representative received such publicity. In 1950 Nixon won a Senate seat
and said good-bye to the penny-ante world of the House and HUAC. And in 1952, Eisenhower
chose Nixon as his running mate.

Nixon's role in The Hiss Case left a permanent bad impression among educated, morally
shallow progressives in this country. Their intense distaste with Nixon began with The Hiss
Case.933 Alger Hiss was one of them – he walked, talked, and acted like them, or claimed to. Hiss

928
Latham at 10; Weinstein I at 533; but see Williams at 142 (if you’re guilty of the ultimate crime,
espionage, “you have to stonewall the whole thing.”).
929
Beisner at 288.
930
Galbraith at 309-10.
931
Nick Clarke, ALISTAIR COOKE: A BIOGRAPHY (Arcade Publishing1999) at 288.
932
William Costello, THE FACTS ABOUT NIXON: AN UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY (Viking 1960) at
191.
933
See, e.g., Jeremy Isaacs & Taylor Downing, THE COLD WAR: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY, 1945-

207
fooled them, and Nixon was the guy who proved Hiss to be a traitor and proved them to be fools.
Nixon said to his assistant in the 1990s “They never forgave me,”934 and he was right, although the
person they should never forgive was Hiss.935

Nixon reciprocated. During his famous Checkers speech in the 1952 campaign, he said:

“I remember in the dark days of the Hiss case, some of the same columnists, some of
the same radio commentators who are attacking me now and misrepresenting my
position were violently opposing me at the time I was after Alger Hiss. But I
continued to fight because I knew I was right. And I can say to this great television
and radio audience that I have no apologies to the American People for my part in
putting Alger Hiss where he is today.”936

And, when he ran for Governor of California in 1962 and lost and then had his famous "last
press conference," retiring from politics and saying "You won't have Nixon to kick around any
more," he said to the assembled journalists that "for sixteen years, ever since the Hiss case, you
have a lot of . . . fun, . . . you've had an opportunity to attack me."937

Next, we go back to court. And we delve into the theory that Hiss dined out on for the rest
of his life – that his conviction was the result of Forgery by Typewriter. If you like conspiracy
theories, if you think there was a second shooter on the grassy knoll and that aliens crashed at
Roswell, you will like the next chapter.

35. FORGERY BY TYPEWRITER

Alger Hiss entered the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, on March 22, 1951, and
served 44 months. Through this time and until he died, he continued calmly to claim innocence.
His first official attempt at vindication came in 1952, in a Motion for a New Trial on Grounds of
Newly Discovered Evidence. For much of what follows, both ideas and some phrases, I give some
credit to Professor Irving Younger of Cornell and Minnesota law schools and much to Professor

1991 (Little Brown 1998) at 109; Parmet at 380; Lionel Trilling at xxiv.
934
Monica Crowley, NIXON OFF THE RECORD (Random House 1996) at 147; see also Jeffrey Hart,
THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MIND: NATIONAL REVIEW & ITS TIMES (ISI Books
2005) at 213.
935
Cooke at 340.
936
VHS Cassette by Video Images, Video Yesteryear: 629. Richard Nixon, “Old Glory,”
“Checkers,” “Resignation” at 22:01-22;30.
937
Bruce Oudes (Ed.), FROM THE PRESIDENT: RICHARD NIXON'S SECRET FILES (Harper & Row
1989) at xiv; Garry Wills, NIXON AGONISTES: THE CRISIS OF THE SELF-MADE MAN (Hougton
Mifflin 1969-70) at 414-15; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AmDkAV0KeI at 0:25.

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Herbert Packer of Stanford Law School.

Hiss got a new lawyer, another old Harvard Law classmate938 named Chester Lane. He was
described as “flamboyant.”939 I think his desire to zealously represent his client sometimes got the
better of his professional judgment. But he had been General Counsel of the Securities and
Exchange Commission, so presumably he was no second-rater. Indeed, I was struck by his
cleverness and dedication, but not by the sobriety of his judgment.

Mr. Lane thought of the words Hiss uttered just before being sentenced – that Whitaker
Chambers had been able to commit "forgery by typewriter." Lane came to believe, correctly I
think, that what damaged Hiss most in his trials, the hole that he dig himself and could not get out
of, was his admission that the typed documents Chambers produced, The Spy Documents, had been
typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter.

Now, I am going to try to explain the ins and outs of the "Forgery by Typewriter" theory as
clearly as I can, but let me warn you at the start that this gets very, very complicated. I’ll try and be
clear, but there’s no way this is simple.

Mr. Lane recalled that the evidence that had linked The Hiss Home Typewriter to The Spy
Documents was the opinion of the FBI expert, Mr. Feehan, that The Hiss Standards and The Spy
Documents were typed on the same typewriter. Therefore, because we know that The Hiss
Standards were typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter, The Spy Documents must have been typed on
The Hiss Home Typewriter. Mr. Feehan based his opinion on the occurrence in both The Hiss
Standards and The Spy Documents of ten identical peculiarities of type – and it was the accepted
rule of the profession of document examiners that if ten identical peculiarities of type occur in two
documents (or two sets of documents), then you can be certain that they were typed on the same
typewriter.

Mr. Lane began to wonder if it might be possible to make one typewriter have the same
peculiarities, the same nicks and scratches, as another typewriter. That is, if I gave an expert a
typed document, could he or she look at the document and determine what make, year and model
the typewriter that typed it was? Then, could that expert notice ten peculiarities of type in the
document (and therefore in the typewriter that typed it); and then could the expert go out and find
another typewriter of the same make, year, and model? Yes, that’s all easy – any expert can do all
that.

Here comes the hard part. Could the expert then take his typewriter, the one he found, and
could he put into its keys the same ten peculiarities of type in the document he had been given. For
example, could he see in the typed document the flattening on the right side of the oval on the
bottom of the lower case ‘g’ and, perhaps with a tiny hammer and chisel, put the same flatness on

938
Weinstein I at 522.
939
Tony II at 120.

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the right side of the lower case ‘g’ in his typewriter? Do that nine more times, and there would be
two different typewriters with the same ten peculiarities of type. If each typewriter were used to
type up a document and the documents were given to Mr. Feehan, then he – acting in total good
faith, at the height of his professional expertise, and applying the standard tests of his profession –
would conclude that the two documents had been typed on the same typewriter although, in fact,
they had been typed on two different ones.

If this were possible, Mr. Lane thought, some doubt might be cast on the conclusion that
The Spy Documents had been typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter.

Mr. Lane found a typewriter expert in lower Manhattan, a Mr. Martin Tytell, and asked him
if he could do what I just outlined. Mr. Tytell, apparently not inhibited by false modesty, answered
that not only could he import ten peculiarities of type into a typewriter of his own, but that he could
make a fake typewriter that duplicated all the peculiarities of another typewriter – so well, in fact,
that no expert could tell the difference between documents typed on the "real" typewriter and those
typed on Tytell’s "fake" typewriter, even an expert who had been forewarned that forgery by
typewriter might have occurred.

Mr. Lane said “Tytell, you’re hired!”

I should add at once that even if Mr. Tytell did as he boasted, he would have demonstrated
only that it was possible to commit forgery by typewriter. Mr. Lane would still have to make a
case that forgery by typewriter had actually occurred in this case.

Mr. Lane took the typewriter introduced at the trials as The Hiss Home Typewriter,
Woodstock N230099, typed up some documents on it, and gave them to Mr. Tytell for him to work
with.940 These documents I will call The 230099 Samples. (So, now we have a third set of
documents. I told you this was going to get complicated.)

Mr. Lane gave Mr. Tytell The 230099 Samples – Tytell never saw 230099 itself. Mr.
Tytell, by chance, had a Woodstock office model typewriter, made in the same year as 230099, in
his basement – people in his profession had large “morgues” of old typewriters in their basements
and paper bags full of keys from old typewriters. And Mr. Tytell set to work making his fake. He
got more than 500 typefaces and nearly 2,000 pieces of type from old Woodstock office typewriters
as far away as Detroit and Chicago and tried to put the flatness on the right side of the oval in the
lower case ‘g’ and all the rest.

To make these tiny alterations, Mr. Tytell used, among other tools, a binocular comparison
microscope, diamond-tipped chisels for making the dents, a triangular India stone for rubbing down
the chisel marks, and a superfine dental buffing tool to finish the surfaces. He also noticed that

940
See generally Martin Tytell & Harry Kursh, The $7,500 Typewriter I Built for Alger Hiss, TRUE
MAGAZINE (Aug. 1952) at 17.

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documents typed on 230099 had the effect of their letters getting closer to each other as each line
went from left to right. This was caused by the roller on 230099; I guess it was thicker on the right
than on the left. Mr. Tytell had 30 rollers made before he had one for his typewriter that had the
same effect. To do this, he used another rare tool, something called an Ames Densimeter.

Tytell also enlisted the help of two other document experts, Mss. McCarthy and Erlich. Ms.
McCarthy helped him by looking at documents produced on his fake typewriter as he worked on it
and suggesting improvements – you’ve got the flatness in the ‘g’ right, but the lower case ‘e’ still
needs work. Tytell worked so hard on this that at one point he went “font blind,”941 which I think
means he lost the ability to distinguish one font from another.

More than a year after he had started,942 Mr. Tytell had to wind up his work – the time for
filing papers in court was approaching. He had made a fake Woodstock office typewriter. But was
it good enough to fool an expert? Mr. Tytell typed some documents on it, thus creating a fourth set
of documents, which I will call Mr. Tytell’s Fabulous Fakes. He and Ms. McCarthy and Ms. Erlich
compared The 230099 Samples and Mr. Tytell’s Fabulous Fakes – Ms. Erlich was seeing them for
the first time. Each of them asked – do I see ten identical peculiarities of type in all the documents,
which would lead an unwarned expert to think they were all typed on one typewriter? Or can I tell
the difference, and tell that these documents were typed on two different typewriters?

Each expert stated his or her opinion in an affidavit that was filed with Mr. Lane’s Motion
for a New Trial on Grounds of Newly Discovered Evidence. The affidavits, despite some
differences, all said basically the same thing on the crucial issue. Each expert said that I can tell the
difference between The 230099 Samples and Mr. Tytell's Fabulous Fakes, but I don’t think that any
other expert in the world could unless that expert had been forewarned about the possibility of
forgery by typewriter and had his or her eyes peeled looking for it. So, we have not committed
forgery by typewriter, but we have come close. As the old saying went, close but no cigar.

This expert opinion is very unhelpful to Hiss’s case. After heroic labors by all involved, we
are back where we started – with a theory that it might be possible to forge a typewriter that would
fool an expert. We do not have a fooled expert. Three experts, working for more than a year, had
not succeeded in committing forgery by typewriter – well enough to fool an expert.

But Mr. Lane was not through. He asked Ms. Erlich to issue another opinion. He asked her
to compare The Spy Documents, The Hiss Standards, and The 230099 Samples and give her expert
opinion about whether either or both of the first two sets were typed on 230099. Ms. Erlich opined
that it was possible that The Spy Documents had been typed on 230099, but that The Hiss
Standards had not – in other words, that 230099 was not The Hiss Home Typewriter.

This was a surprising possibility – that 230099, the typewriter found in the night

941
Weinstein I at 626.
942
Weinstein I at 625.

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watchman’s home, typed The Spy Documents, but not The Hiss Standards. 230099, then, was not
The Hiss Home Typewriter, but had been found where The Hiss Home Typewriter should have
been – in the night watchman’s home. Someone must have pulled a dirty deed in the dark, taken
away the real Hiss Home Typewriter and planted the fake (230099) in its place.

This was the theory that Mr. Lane asserted in his 1952 Motion for a New Trial on Grounds
of Newly Discovered Evidence. In his motion, Hiss (through Mr. Lane) asserted that Woodstock
230099 was not The Hiss Home Typewriter, but was a fake; that Chambers fabricated it (all by
himself or with the help of "some Communist friends") in late 1948 in a desperate attempt to defeat
Hiss’s libel suit; that Chambers used the fake he had made by typing the summaries of State
Department papers – papers that he had gotten in 1938 from his real spies in the State
Department.943 That’s how The Spy Documents were created, not by Mrs. Hiss in early 1938 but
by Chambers in late 1949.

But Chambers wasn’t finished yet. He then found out that the real Hiss Home Typewriter
was in the night watchman’s home, broke in there with his fake typewriter (230099), planted his
fake there and took away the real Hiss Home Typewriter and threw it away. Then Chambers
presented his forged documents at the deposition, knowing that eventually someone (The Hiss
Defense or the FBI) would come to where The Hiss Home Typewriter should be (the night
watchman’s home), would find 230099 there, and would think it was The Hiss Home Typewriter.
Then it would be found that The Spy Documents has been typed on 230099, which everyone
mistakenly thought was The Hiss Home Typewriter, and Hiss goes to prison.

Mr. Lane argued on behalf of Hiss, that this theory and his experts’ affidavits showed that
the FBI expert Feehan's testimony at the trial was "absolutely worthless" because it did not disprove
the possibility of forgery by typewriter.

Judge Goddard, who had presided at Hiss’s second trial, ruled on the Motion. He found it to
be built on "an erroneous elementary assumption," that Feehan had compared only ten peculiarities
in The Hiss Standards and The Spy Documents. In fact, Feehan supplied an affidavit that, while his
testimony at the trials had covered only ten peculiarities, his actual examination of those documents
had included much more: "each typewritten character, . . . taking into consideration style of type,
alignment, horizontal and vertical spacing, footing, variations and defects." In other words, to fool
Mr. Feehan, anyone forging The Spy Documents would have to have made many more than ten
peculiarities of type appear in them – and Hiss’s experts couldn’t even accomplish ten. This
destroyed the foundation on which Hiss’s fake typewriter theory and affidavits were built.

As to the whole theory of forgery by typewriter and Chambers making a fake and planting it
in the night watchman’s home, it came under devastating criticism by Judge Goddard and, later,
Professor Packer and Smith College Professor Allen Weinstein, the author of PERJURY, the

943
United States v. Hiss, 107 F. Supp. 128, 130-34 (S.D.N.Y. 1952), aff’d, 201 F.2d 372 (2d
Cir.) (per curiam), cert. denied, 345 U.S. 942 (1953).

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definitive book in this Case. There are about ten problems with the Forgery by Typewriter theory
that Hiss stated in court.

First, in order to prevail in a Motion for a New Trial on Grounds of Newly Discovered
Evidence, you need newly discovered evidence, and Hiss had no newly discovered evidence. The
only evidence was the typewriter, 230099, which had been in evidence at both trials.

Second, you also need to have not only newly discovered evidence, but newly discovered
evidence that you could not have produced at your trial. For example, you couldn’t find your alibi
witness because he banged his head, got amnesia, joined the French Foreign Legion, went to Ivory
Coast for 2 years, and just came back in the country – there was no way you could have found him
and gotten him to testify at the trial.

Mr. Lane had come up with was a new theory of The Hiss Defense. Bravo, but Hiss could
perfectly well have advanced that theory at his trials. And Hiss, remember, had excellent counsel at
both trials. In no country I've ever heard of does a defendant who has had a fair trial get a second
one for thinking up a new theory of his defense that he could perfectly well have used at his earlier
trial.

Problem number 3 – even if 230099 was not The Hiss Home Typewriter, that does not
undercut The Prosecution's evidence. What I’m saying now is very picky, but it’s worth saying.
The Prosecution's evidence that linked The Spy Documents to The Hiss Home Typewriter,
remember, was Mr. Feehan's comparison of two sets of documents – The Hiss Standards and The
Spy Documents. The Typewriter itself was not part of The Prosecution’s evidence. 230099 was a
Hiss exhibit, found by Hiss’s lawyer, introduced into evidence by Hiss, and identified by many Hiss
witnesses as The Hiss Home Typewriter. It is true that after the Hisses had authenticated 230099 as
The Hiss Home Typewriter, The Prosecution said it was that more than once. But it us also true
that, as Professor Younger noted, the evidence that convicted Hiss would have been exactly the
same had 230099 never been found.944 This is a fact that is too often totally missed by people who
state ‘the typewriter was the crucial evidence in the Case.’945 That statement is simply wrong.

I say this is picky because, in fairness, if 230099 is not The Hiss Home Typewriter, then
something troubling has happened. 230099 was found where The Hiss Home Typewriter should
have been, in the night watchman’s home. Typewriter A does not turn up where Typewriter B
should be without someone having done a dirty deed in the dark. So, let's go back and examine Mr.
Lane's theory of Chambers, desperate for supporting evidence to defeat Hiss’s libel suit, making a
fake typewriter, typing up incriminating fake documents on it, and breaking into the night
watchman’s home, plating the fake (230099) and tip-toeing away with the real one. Is it supported
by any evidence?

944
See Weinstein I at 629 (quoting Younger).
945
See, e.g., T. Michael Ruddy, THE ALGER HISS ESPIONAGE CASE (Thomson Wadsworth 2005) at
150 (“The typewriter was a particularly integral part of The Prosecution’s case.”).

213
 Not a scintilla of evidence supports this theory. That’s the fourth problem with Hiss’s
forgery by typewriter theory.

Is this version of events even remotely plausible?

Well – and this is problem 5 – there is a problem of timing. Hiss sued Chambers in
September 1948. Chambers produced the typewritten documents in November, two months later.
Two months is not a very long time in which to make a fake typewriter. Recall that Tytell and his 2
helpers worked for more than a year and couldn't do it.

Sixth, obviously Chambers had none of the skills or equipment of Hiss’s experts, not to
mention ten year-old paper and typewriter ribbon, an envelope that looked like it had rested for ten
years in Nathan Levine’s mother’s dumbwaiter shaft,946 and original documents typed on The Hiss
Home Typewriter in the late 1930s (so he’d see the peculiarities he’d have to import into his fake).
Would he have stolen such documents, his own Hiss Standards, in 1938, knowing that he would
want to frame Hiss ten years later?

Chambers must have had help. But who? No "Communist friends" in 1948 to help him,
surely. The only organization that even arguably had the skills and tools to make a fake typewriter
in short order was the FBI. But one FBI Assistant Director said later that the Bureau didn’t have
that level of technical competence in the late 1940s.947 And no evidence has emerged from tens of
thousands of pages of FBI documents showing its participation in any such scheme. On the
contrary, all the FBI documents show that at the time any fakery would have to have been
accomplished – in the weeks before Chambers produced The Spy Documents at his deposition – the
FBI, far from cooperating with Chambers, was holding him at arms' length and viewing him with
intense suspicion.

Well, a conspiracy freak might say, maybe those documents are just a false paper trail
created by J. Edgar Hoover to cover up his forgery by typewriter. But the FBI documents, as I
explain more later, make J. Edgar Hoover look foolish. From all that I have heard of Mr. Hoover,
he would concoct a false trail of documents that make him look foolish.948

It’s also noteworthy – and I find it strange – that in this Motion for a New Trial, Hiss does
not claim that the FBI had anything to do with framing him. He points the finger only at Chambers.
I really wonder why Hiss took so long to accuse anyone else, given that Chambers was obviously
incapable of doing in a few weeks what three Hiss experts could not do in more than a year.

946
Hilton at 256 n.16; 107 F. Supp. at 132.
947
Roger Morris at 499.
948
A case for charging the FBI with incompetence, but not framing Hiss, can be found in Weinstein
I and in Athan Theoharis, CHASING SPIES: HOW THE FBI FAILED IN COUNTERINTELLIGENCE BUT
PROMOTED THE POLITICS OF MCCARTHYISM IN THE COLD WAR YEARS (Ivan R. Dee 2002).

214
 Seventh problem: this theory assumes that Chambers (or whoever) knew where the real
Hiss Home Typewriter was. Well, if you knew where the real Hiss Home Typewriter was, you
would use IT on which to type your incriminating forgeries. Why would you type up your
incriminating forgeries on a fake if you knew where you could lay your hands on the real
typewriter? In fact, if you knew where the real typewriter was, why would you make a fake to
begin with? It must be simpler to steal the real one for a day than to make a fake.

Eighth, how would Chambers find out that The Hiss Home Typewriter was in the night
watchman’s home? He would have to trace the chain of ownership, link by link, from the Hisses to
the night watchman. Consider the first link in the chain, the Hisses. How did Chambers find out
that they had given their Woodstock to The Catlett Kids in late 1937 (assuming that’s when they
gave it)? By far the most plausible way is that Chambers and Hiss are talking one day and
Chambers asks him “Gee, Hilly, where’s the typewriter that used to be on that table?” And Hiss
answers “Oh, we gave it to The Catlett Kids, they live down the street.”

Consider the implications of such a conversation occurring. That means that Chambers and
Hiss were still friends in early 1938. This is precisely the kind of association that Hiss denied from
start to finish. Professor Packer said that if, in 1949, Chambers knew where he could lay his hands
on The Hiss Home Typewriter, then much of what Hiss said about their relationship, and by easy
inference, Hiss’s denial of Communist activity, is untrue.949

Ninth, consider the next links in the chain. Remember that The Hiss Home Typewriter
passed through several owners between the Hisses and the night watchman. Chambers would have
to have found every one of them, starting with The Catlett Kids, then Burnetta Catlett and the
Marlowes, and ending with the night watchman. That’s a lot of knocking on doors and getting
people to tell you things. But every one of those people who was alive in 1949 – and all but one of
them were – was interviewed by The Hiss Defense and/or The Prosecution. None of them
remembered, then or ever after, anyone searching for the typewriter until after Chambers had
produced the typewritten documents at his deposition – after any forgery would have to have
occurred.

Tenth and last, assume away all the foregoing objections. You’re Chambers. You decide to
commit forgery by typewriter in late 1949. You are magically possessed with the tools, time, and
talent to do so, and you create your fake typewriter, 230099. Then you type up your 64
incriminating forgeries on it. What do you then do with your fake typewriter?

Two hints: the typewriter’s job is done, and you don’t want anyone to know that you made
a fake typewriter.

What you do with your fake typewriter is destroy it. You obliterate every trace that it ever

949
Packer at 38.

215
existed. The last thing you do, the one thing you do not do, is plant it somewhere and hope it’s
found. Then you are running the risk that it will be found, will be examined (as 230099 was) and
will be exposed as a fake. To paraphrase Professor Younger, anyone who is smart enough to make
a fake typewriter would be smart enough to destroy it once its job was done.950 The simple fact
that 230099 existed in 1949 was strong evidence that it was not a fake.951

Judge Goddard concluded that Hiss’s theory was only a theory, and an implausible one at
that.952 Based on the theory alone, no jury would likely find Alger Hiss not guilty. Judge Goddard
denied Hiss’s Motion for a New Trial on Grounds of Newly Discovered Evidence. The Court of
Appeals affirmed him without an opinion – a sign that they thought the denial was a “no brainer” –
and the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear the case.

Personally, I think that had Mr. Lane’s theory been presented to the second jury, they would
have reacted the same way the Grand Jury reacted to Hiss’s first explanation of the typed
documents. They would have laughed.

Next, what happened to Hiss, Chambers, and the other key players after the trials. This is a
story of almost total sadness and suffering.

36. HISS AND CHAMBERS AFTER THE TRIALS

And what happened to Hiss and Chambers? Murray Kempton wrote “I do not believe that
the worst enemy of . . . Alger Hiss . . . or Whittaker Chambers could really think that any crime
any of them committed is matched by the totality of his destruction. If ever . . . men have gone to
hell on earth, it is these . . .”953

Hiss entered prison on March 22, 1951, and served 44 months – five years with some
months off for good behavior. According to Murray Kempton, Hiss was very popular with the
other prisoners because he would hide their contraband in his cell. And, if you gave him
something to hide, when you asked for it back you would get it all back – he would not have taken

950
Younger Article at 37.
951
See Packer at 39.
952
Theories are most convincing when they fill the gaps between the proved facts. The Hiss
conspiracy theories must weave their way around the proved facts to reach the predetermined goal
of Hiss’s innocence.    Like  many  conspiracy  theories,  they  “implicitly  posit[]  a  omniscient  
Intelligence  that  sees  past,  present,  and  future  at  once  and  knows  how  to  act  in  all  three  
realms  to  disguise  the  truth.”    Jacob  Cohen,  Will  We  Never  Be  Free  of  the  Kennedy  
Assassination?,  COMMENTARY  (Nov.  2013),  https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-­‐5-­‐
JeCa2Z7halBEazA3V015WDA/edit.    
953  Kempton  I  at  333.  

216
part of it for himself as a storage/hiding fee. He got away with this because he was outwardly so
perfect that the prison authorities never suspected him of hiding stuff. All of which, Kempton said,
simply shows that Alger Hiss was just a consummate con man.954

Once his appeals had failed, Hiss dropped the McCarthyite excoriation of Communism that
had been a constant feature of his HUAC testimonies and his trial lawyers. He shifted to posing as
the victim of McCarthyism, the perfect gentleman set upon by a mob of ruffians. Chambers was
no longer the Communist and therefore the traitor who cannot be believed. (Indeed, Hiss now
studiously avoided criticizing Communists.) Now Chambers was the tormented homosexual
(aren’t they all?), the a puppet by a vast right wing conspiracy of HUAC, Richard Nixon, and J.
Edgar Hoover.955

Hiss emerged from prison in 1954 so disgraced that he had to make a living for years
selling women’s combs.956 His marriage did not survive.957 He lived “in rented rooms and
friends’ apartments”958 and, according to one historian, around 1960 in a Greenwich Village
“third-floor walk-up, a sad building with a tattered green awning over a vacant storefront piled
high with empty cardboard cartons.”959 One can only imagine the feelings of this proud man, who
had been an aide to Presidents, reduced to selling combs in the same years that his once-
insignificant pursuer Richard Nixon, became Vice President, and then President, of the United
States.

Through it all, Hiss never cracked (or, if you wish, never stopped telling the truth). He
stayed calm, gave interviews to anyone who asked,960 charmed many people,961 and sought
endlessly to have his conviction overturned. In all his court proceedings, which ended only in
1983, Hiss never convinced a single judge who ruled on the merits that there was anything wrong
with his conviction.

He wrote two books, which failed to sell well. One critic wrote that his first book was
“imbued with a strong power to tire.”962 Eventually, as the Sixties and Seventies weakened the

954  Kempton  II  at  100.

955
Parmet at 27.
956
David Caute, THE GREAT FEAR: THE ANTI-COMMUNIST PURGE UNDER TRUMAN & EISENHOWER
(Simon & Schuster 1978) at 566 (note 16); White Book at 127.
957
White Book at 119.
958
Hiss II at 190-91.
959
Brock Brower, The Problems of Alger Hiss, ESQUIRE (Dec. 1960) at 139, quoted in White
Article at 49.
960
See, e.g., Edward Robb Ellis, A DIARY OF THE CENTURY: TALES FROM AMERICA’S GREATEST
DIARIST (Kodansha Int’l 1995) at 434-41.
961
See, e.g., Ellis at 434-41; Matthew Stevenson, REMEMBERING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
LIMITED (Odysseus Books 2009) at 69-125.
962
Alvin Hyman, Book Review, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (May 26, 1957) at 18, quoted in

217
anti-Communist cause and exposed the excesses of Nixon and Hoover, Hiss carved out a life for
himself on the college lecture circuit and in Greenwich Village, the Upper West Side, and some
La-Di-Da circles in the Hamptons. For some people, he was a great catch for your cocktail party,
with his stories about “And then Franklin said to me, . . .” – although the two had barely known
each other.963 Among residents of the Hamptons, it was an open question whether, if Alger Hiss
showed up at your beach party, you would offer him a cocktail or ask him to leave.964

In the 1970s, Hiss won two court cases, one to have his pension restored and another to be
re-licensed to practice law in Massachusetts (despite being an unrepentant traitor). A poll of
lawyers, journalists, and intellectuals taken in the 1970s showed that 50% believed that Hiss was
innocent.965 Given his incessant campaign and the recently revealed misconduct of Nixon and
Hoover, it seemed plausible that Hiss had been framed.966 Hiss dared hope of living to see himself
vindicated and honored.

Then, in 1978, the major book on the case was published, PERJURY, by Allen Weinstein,
then a Smith College History Professor and later the head of our National Archives. Weinstein had
the benefit of more than 30,000 pages of documents from all over the federal government that he
sued to get under the Freedom of Information Act.967 Hiss also allowed Weinstein to inspect his
defense files, too.968 Weinstein came to the conclusion that Hiss was guilty. Although
Weinstein’s book has been criticized,969 the criticisms are minor and don’t undermine his
conclusion. The Weinstein book was a blow from which Hiss never recovered.

Hiss fell in love with another woman, one of whose previous husbands was Lester Cole,
one of the Hollywood Ten Communists; I think that’s Hiss’s true milieu. But Priscilla Hiss would
not give him a divorce. It seems she wanted to be the only Mrs. Alger Hiss.970 Being Mrs. Alger
Hiss was all she had to show for her life, I guess. When Mrs. Hiss died (in 1984971), Hiss re-
married.

In 1992, Hiss got an ex-Soviet official to state that a search of some Soviet files revealed

White Article at 40.

963
Tony II at 138; Weinstein I at 557.
964
Michael Wrezszin (Ed.), A MORAL TEMPER: THE LETTERS OF DWIGHT MACDONALD (Ivan R.
Dee 2001) at 463-64.
965
Philip Nobile, The State of the Art of Alger Hiss, in Swan at 204.
966
White Book at 144-45.
967
Weinstein I at 4.
968
Weinstein I at 7.
969
See, e.g., Victor S. Navasky, A MATTER OF OPINION (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2005) at 235-45;
White Book at 181-96.
970
Tony I at 186.
971
Weinstein I at 593.

218
nothing showing that Hiss had been a paid Soviet agent.972 Hiss had a big party and most of the
mainstream media, gullibly, took this as his definitive exoneration. But that was the last good day
that Hiss had.

A few weeks later, the ex-Soviet official recanted, saying that only a brief search had been
made and that he had had no idea that his statement would be made public. He had thought he was
just comforting a dying blind man and had no idea he was landing in the middle of a public
controversy.973 Also, Chambers was very clear from the first that he and Hiss spied for the Fourth
Branch of Soviet Military Intelligence, the GRU, and their files had not been searched.974 So, the
search of Soviet files that Hiss had trumpeted as his vindication was in the wrong files. One
wonders if Hiss knew what he was doing.

Hiss died in 1996; he outlived Richard Nixon by 18 months.

Nixon, incidentally, remembered the Case for the rest of his life.975 His chief White House
aide Haldeman said “How he loved that case! He was able, somehow, to compare every tough
situation we ever encountered . . . to his handling of the Hiss case.”976 Nixon mentions the Hiss
Case more than a few times in his White House tape recordings. Especially when some member of
the Watergate cover-up comes in to give him bad news. Nixon always urges them to fight on,
fight on, fight on, ‘just like we did in the Hiss case. The FBI was against us in the Hiss Case, the
Justice Department was against us, the newspapers were against us, and we still won!’977

The delicious thing is that what eludes Nixon entirely is that, now, in Watergate, he is Hiss.
He is no longer the pursuer, he is the one who got caught in a lie and has to cover up, and then
cover up the cover-up, and so on and finally being ground down to defeat and disgrace.

What of Chambers? At end of the trials, he was in a position not much better than Hiss.
Hiss in prison had a bed to sleep in and three meals a day. Chambers was unemployed and
unemployable and with a stack of unpaid legal bills.978 Despite a generous settlement from TIME,

972
Weinstein I at 595.
973
Serge Schemann, Russian General Retreats on Hiss, N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 18, 1992, at A-17, col. 1.
974
Weinstein I at 595-96; Brian Crozier, FREE AGENT: THE UNSEEN WAR 1941-1991 (Harper
Collins 1993) at 17-18.
975
See, e.g., Anthony Summers, THE ARROGANCE OF POWER: THE SECRET WORLD OF RICHARD
NIXON (Viking 2000) at 119.
976
Summers at 61.
977
Weinstein I at 578-81; see also John Fleming at 292-93; H.R. Haldeman, THE HALDEMAN
DIARIES: INSIDE THE NIXON WHITE HOUSE (Putnam 1994) at 280, 311, 313, 443, 623; Hunt at 36;
Kutler at 22, 92-93, 214-16; Richard Reeves, PRESIDENT NIXON: ALONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE
(Simon & Schuster 2001) at 338; Summers at 61, 72-73, 491 (footnote 7).
978
Griffith at 178, 226.

219
he had had no earnings for two years and his farm was running at a loss.979 Recall that when he
revealed that he had been a spy, he lost his job with TIME MAGAZINE – to paraphrase the art critic
Hilton Kramer, the only decent and decently paying job he had in his life.980 The Chattering
Classes, to which Chambers had belonged, pretty much accepted the correctness of the second
jury’s verdict but viewed Chambers with loathing as a snitch who had ruined a friend’s life. I
think the reason so many liberals loathed him was that he had also exposed their collective soft
underbelly.981 Very few of us like to be made fools of in public, and that’s what Chambers had
done to most liberals. Chambers found himself with few friends left. Henry Luce, his old mentor,
refused to see him, for example.982 Indeed, as I studied this case, I was appalled at the amount of
human suffering inflicted on almost everyone on both sides.

One thing about Chambers’ situation that is hard to understand today is that, in 1950, there
was no conservative movement in this country. All the elements of what later became the
movement were here, but they were so many disconnected arms and legs lying in corners waiting
to be sewn together and animated.983 There was nothing like today’s network of publishers,
magazines, talk shows, campuses and think tanks through which Chambers could wander with
honor for the rest of his life.

Chambers was also depressed. He believed that he had failed to expose the full extent of
Communist penetration of the government, that the government was still full of Communists and
Communist dupes, that the Soviet Union was going to win the Cold War and that, in just a few
years, the entire human race would sink into a new Dark Age. When I read some of his letters in
these years, he seems so depressed that I wonder why he bothered to get out of bed.984 In one he
wrote “it was all for nothing, . . . nothing has been gained except the misery of others.”985

Chambers eventually sat down in 1951 to turn into money the only asset he had left, which
was his life story. He wrote an autobiography, titled WITNESS. In it he claims to have emerged

979
Chambers I at 760 (footnote).
980
Hilton Kramer, Whittaker Chambers: The Judgment of History, NEW CRITERION (Feb. 1997),
available at http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Whittaker-Chambers--the-judgment-of-
history-3384.
981
The best abuse of Chambers is I.F. Stone’s essay, Whittaker Chambers: Martyrdom Lavishly
Buttered, in I.F. Stone, THE TRUMAN ERA: 1945-1952 (Little Brown 1972) at 182.
982
Griffith at 179-81.
983
John B. Judis, GRAND ILLUSION: CRITICS & CHAMPIONS OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY (Farrar
Straus & Giroux 1992) at 126; Nash at 58 (quoting Lionel Trilling, saying in 1950 that “In the
United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual
tradition.”).
984
de Toledano at 110-11; Goodman at 262-63; Nash at 104, 129-30.
985
De Toledano at 9; Weinstein I at 558; see also Whittaker Chambers, ODYSSEY OF A FRIEND:
WHITTAKER CHAMBERS LETTERS TO WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR., 1954-1961 (“Chambers II”)
(Regnery1987) at 36-38, 43-44, 81, 166.

220
from his Mother’s womb with a 14 inch shoulder span; it ends on page 799 describing how he
would like to die – at the same time as his wife, so that neither would have to live without the other.

The book was, in the popular phrase, a smash hit – at the top of the Best Seller List,986 one
of the ten best selling books of 1952, a Book of the Month Club selection,987 serialized by THE
SATURDAY EVENING POST for the then unheard-of sum of $75,000,988 and favorably reviewed even
by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.989 The issue of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST that began the
serialization sold an extra half million newsstand copies.990 Chambers read parts of it over
nationwide radio and television networks.991

Reading WITNESS was a major event in the lives of the columnist Robert Novak and a
liberal Democratic movie star and labor leader whose film career was waning and was looking for
new horizons – Ronald Reagan.992 WITNESS was one of Reagan’s favorite books. When Reagan
became President, he awarded Chambers a posthumous Medal of Freedom, this nation’s highest
civilian honor, and had his farm in Maryland declared a national historic landmark. Several
passages of Reagan’s most famous foreign policy speech as President, in which he described the
Soviet Union as the “evil empire,” are paraphrases of the first few pages of Chambers’ WITNESS.993

Another person who thought highly of WITNESS was the French author Andre Malraux, who
was Minister of Cultural Affairs under Charles De Gaulle. He wrote Chambers: “You have not
come back from hell with empty hands.”994

986
Kevin Mattson, JUST PLAIN DICK: RICHARD NIXON’S CHECKERS SPEECH & THE “ROCKING,
SOCKING” ELECTION OF 1952 (Bloomsbury 2012) at 28; Tanenhaus at 461-63.
987
Cerf at 243; Weinstein I at 560.
988
Abbott Gleason, TOTALITARIANISM: THE INNER HISTORY OF THE COLD WAR (Oxford Univ.
Press 1995) at 86.
989
Schlesinger Book Review at 8; White Book at 106; see also John P. Diggins, UP FROM
COMMUNISM: CONSERVATIVE ODYSSEYS IN AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY (Harper & Row
1975) at 245 (quoting favorable review by John Dos Passos).
990
William F. Buckley, Jr., MILES GONE BY: A LITERARY AUTOBIOGRAPHY (“Buckley Miles”)
(Regnery 2004) at 300-01.
991
Stone at 182.
992
Sidney Blumenthal, THE RISE OF THE COUNTER-ESTABLISHMENT: FROM CONSERVATIVE
IDEOLOGY TO POLITICAL POWER (Times Books 1986) at 250, 258; Lou Cannon, PRESIDENT
REAGAN: THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME (Simon & Schuster 1991) at 293; Robert D. Novak, THE PRINCE
OF DARKNESS: 50 YEARS REPORTING IN WASHINGTON (Crown 2007) at 20. Concerning Chambers’
influence on William F. Buckley, Jr., see, e.g., Richard Brookisher, RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE:
COMING OF AGE WITH WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR., & THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT (Basic Books
2009) at 44, 236; Chambers II passim.
993
Compare Chambers I at 8-9 with at Powers at 408-09.
994
Weinstein I at 561.

221
 I think WITNESS made Chambers financially secure for the rest of his life. It is one of the
sacred texts of the post-War right995 and is still in print.

Thereafter, for the most part, Chambers worked his farm as his health permitted and kept to
himself. He did not want to become a public conservative, always good for a quote about the
current hot topic. In the anti-Communist movement, he considered himself a single issue man. The
Hiss Case was his sacred trust and he had to husband his energies and exposure very carefully.996

Chambers eventually became disillusioned with Nixon, seeing him I think as an opportunist
with no deep commitment to anti-Communism. Shortly before he died he wrote William Buckley
that he thought Nixon was not up to the burden of being President.997 A wise observation.

Chambers’ relationship with Senator McCarthy? For a time, I think the two men had some
regular contact.998 Chambers said later that he had turned a blind eye to McCarthy’s excesses
because the Senator was willing to climb into the ring and duke it out with the other side on a daily
basis, while Chambers was back on the farm waiting for the end of the world. But eventually
Chambers, in private, denounced McCarthy to other conservatives as a “raven of disaster” for our
movement who “can’t lead . . . because he can’t think”999 and a man who did far more damage to
anti-Communism than he did to Communism.1000

Concerning Hiss, Chambers favored giving him a passport to travel to Europe.1001 He

remained sorry for Hiss, seeing both himself and Hiss as victims of Communism, the only two real
revolutionaries that Communism produced in the United States.1002 If the Hisses would say they
were sorry, they would be friends again. “I understood, as few others can, the rules of war that
Alger fought under . . . Nevertheless, if you take your eyes off those peculiar rules for an instant, . .
. Alger has behaved like a complete swine. Not a very bright swine, either.”1003

Chambers was briefly associated with Bill Buckley’s NATIONAL REVIEW starting in 1957.
He wrote a famous book review there savaging Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED for its arrogance and
inhumanity; his review was titled Big Sister is Watching You and can be found on the Internet.
Perhaps remarkably, he tried to pull the magazine towards the political center, urging it to work

995
See, e.g., John V. Fleming, THE ANTI-COMMUNIST MANIFESTOS: FOUR BOOKS THAT SHAPED
THE COLD WAR (Norton 2009) at 22-93.
996
Chambers II at 26.
997
Chambers II at 286-87.
998
Herman at 139; Tanenhaus at 453-55.
999
Buckley Miles at 302; Chambers II at 78.
1000
Chambers II at 23-28, 259; Herman at 165-66; see also Buckley Firing at 405.
1001
Buckley Miles at 310.
1002
Chambers II at 166.
1003
Chambers II at 240 (quotation marks deleted).

222
within the world as it is instead of sticking to pure ideals and achieving nothing.1004 Perhaps
towards the end of his life, he began to see the value of moderation.

A highlight of his last years was a trip to Europe in 1959, during which he was lionized by
other ex-Communist intellectuals, most notably the Hungarian Arthur Koestler – the ex-Communist
author of the 1940 novel DARKNESS AT NOON, a forerunner of Orwell’s 1984. Koestler called
Chambers “the most misunderstood person of our time”1005 and said that Chambers, when he ratted
out his best friend, had “knowingly committed moral suicide to atone for the guilt of our
generation.”1006

Among the prominent left of center intellectuals who believed that Cambers was telling the
truth were Leslie Fiedler,1007 Max Frankel,1008 John Kenneth Galbraith,1009 Christopher
Hitchens,1010 Sidney Hook,1011 Irving Howe,1012 John Judis,1013 Max Lerner,1014 Murray
Kempton,1015 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,1016 Diana Trilling,1017 Lionel Trilling,1018 James Wechsler,1019

1004
Griffith at 228-32; Charles Lam Markmann, THE BUCKLEYS: A FAMILY EXAMINED (Morrow
1973) at 107-13; Weinstein I at 566-67.
1005
Michael Scamell, KOESTLER: THE LITERARY & POLITICAL ODYSSEY OF A TWENTIETH-CENTURY
SKEPTIC (Random House 2009) at 475.
1006
Griffith at 178; see also Scammel at 414 (Koestler calling Chambers “one of the most
outstanding, most maligned, and most sincere characters whom I have ever met,” the victim of “a
bizarre and symbolic twentieth century martyrdom”), 475.
1007
Fiedler at 3-24.
1008
Frankel at 90.
1009
Galbraith at 305.
1010
Christopher Hitchens, UNACKNOWLEDGED LEGISLATION: WRITERS IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE
(Verso 2000) at 50-51, 101-08.
1011
Hook at 275-97.
1012
Irving Howe, God, Man & Stalin, in Swan at 81.
1013
Judis at 119-37.
1014
Sanford Lakoff, MAX LERNER: PILGRIM IN THE PROMISED LAND (University of Chicago Press
1998) at xix, 209.
1015
Kempton I at 14; Kempton II at 99 et seq.
1016
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., THE VITAL CENTER: THE POLITICS OF FREEDOM (Houghton Mifflin
1949) at 204, 213; A LIFE IN THE 20TH CENTURY: INNOCENT BEGINNINGS, 1917-50 (Houghton
Mifflin 2000) at 497-98, 502.
1017
Diana Trilling, A Memorandum on the Hiss Case, in Swan at 28.
1018
Lionel Trilling supra.
1019
Wechsler at 236.

223
and Rebecca West.1020 Even Ellen Schrecker, a chronic minimizer of Soviet espionage, has written
that it is likely that Hiss spied for the Soviet Union.1021

Chambers died in 1961, a sad and exhausted man (in the words of Lionel Trilling),1022 still
believing as he did when he left the Party in 1938, that he had left the side that was going to win
and had re-joined the side that was going to lose.1023

Mrs. Chambers outlived him by many years. She never gave an interview or did anything in
public – indeed, she did not want Bill Buckley to publish his and Chambers’ letters.1024

Chambers’ farm was divided into several parcels at his death. The location of the famous
pumpkin is now someone’s driveway.

A sympathetic biography of Chambers, written by the editor of the NEW YORK TIMES
Sunday Book Review, was published in 1996 and was nominated for a National Book Award.

One final post-trial incident, which I find touching, involves former President Nixon. In his
last years, The Case was still fresh in his mind. Nixon had a research assistant named Monica
Crowley, who was in her twenties. He said to her once, about his downfall in Watergate, "The
press didn’t trust me after Hiss, and they were just out there circling and waiting."1025 and "Those
who were after me during Watergate were after me for a long time. They weren't interested in
Watergate as much as they were interested in getting me on Hiss . . ."1026

One night around 1990, Nixon entertained some Chinese diplomats and a bunch of other
guests at his house in Saddle River, New Jersey. After achingly formal cocktails and dinner in
which Nixon referred to himself in the third person, Nixon took his guests on a tour of what he
called “Nixon’s house.”

At the end of the tour, in Nixon’s home office, Nixon asked his Chinese guests if they
would accept a gift, and when they said yes, Nixon suddenly became sincere and serious. One
witness wrote that Nixon said:

1020
Bonnie Kime Scott (Ed.), SELECTED LETTERS OF REBECCA WEST (Yale Univ. Press 2000) at
265-67.
1021
Ellen Schrecker, THE AGE OF MCCARTHYISM: A BRIEF HISTORY WITH DOCUMENTS (Bedford
St. Martin’s 2002) at 35, 134; Stealing Secrets: Communism & Soviet Espionage in the 1940s, 82
N.C.L. REV. 1841,1864 (2004).
1022
Lionel Trilling, THE MIDDLE OF THE JOURNEY (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1975) at xxv.
1023
Chambers I at 25.
1024
Weinstein I at 570.
1025
Monica Crowley, NIXON IN WINTER ("Crowley II") (Random House 1998) at 287.
1026
Crowley II 290.

224
 “There was a man in the forties and fifties, he said, whom Nixon had always
respected as a true patriot – a prophet without honor in his own country, a man who
had made great sacrifices for the truth, and had been martyred for his pains, but had
lived long enough to play an important part in Nixon’s own career. That man wrote
a book, Nixon continued, one of the most important books of the twentieth century, a
book that every American ought to read, and not just Americans, either, for its
message was universal.

"We stood around Nixon, spellbound by his emotion, for he was speaking, it
was apparent, from the heart, and his eyes, normally piercing, were humid. . . ."

". . . Nixon bent down and opened the bottom drawer of his big desk, and
withdrew a copy of Whittaker Chambers’s Witness. I was fascinated to see that the
drawer was full of hardcover copies of Chambers’ book."1027

I think, as an amateur psychologist, that maybe Nixon at the end of his life was saying that
life is full of suffering, especially life in the public eye, and that while Nixon suffered for his self-
seeking and opportunism, Chambers suffered for what he believed in, and that maybe that made
Chambers’ suffering more noble and maybe less painful.

Next, what important facts did not come out in court?

37. WHAT DID NOT COME OUT IN COURT?

I always love it when people raise an eyebrow and say mysteriously “Of course, there’s
a lot that didn’t come out in court.”

There is always a lot that doesn’t come out in court. In an adversary system, each party
introduces only the evidence that makes it look good. Evidence that makes neither side look
good tends to remain unseen. Rules of evidence and Constitutional provisions keep very
important facts from coming in, especially in criminal trials. Also, there are usually also a lot
of allegations that do not look solid enough to be brought out in court – stuff that is not ready
for prime time.

Perhaps there is more of all this than usual in The Hiss Case. The first major source of
“what didn’t come out in court” is papers from the files of the US Government, produced under
the Freedom of Information Act.

The government’s FOIA papers, like the dog that did not bark in the Sherlock Holmes

1027
Michael Korda, ANOTHER LIFE: A MEMOIR OF OTHER PEOPLE (Random House 1999) at 459-60.

225
story, are significant for what they do not show. There is no trace of any conspiracy to frame
Hiss. On the contrary, the FOIA documents reveal that, in 1948, the tentacles of the
governmental octopus, far from entwining Hiss with diabolical efficiency, were swinging
wildly and stinging each other. The papers lay bare bureaucratic brawls about possession of
Chambers’ documents and the films, control of the Case, and whom to indict.1028 The top
people in the Justice Department reacted to Chambers’ production of the typed and handwritten
documents by wanting to have Chambers indicted!1029 Nixon criticized the FBI early in the
HUAC hearings and Hoover conceived an intense dislike for the young Congressman.1030
Hoover spent most of his energy defending himself against accusations that he missed the spy
ring in the early 40s – accusations by Nixon, the Attorney General and the Secretary of
State.1031 Hoover wanted both Hiss and Chambers indicted.1032 HUAC had a small staff and
other things to do. Only in the last days of the Grand Jury did the Justice Department,
especially the lawyers examining Hiss in the Grand Jury room, get so angry at Hiss that they
swung against him.1033

One person especially comes out of the FOIA documents looking rather foolish – J.
Edgar Hoover. He learned about a lot of what happened in the Case by reading newspapers.
His files contain many handwritten notes on which he cries in anguish “Here again I heard
nothing of this for several days. I should have been advised at once. H” and, my personal
favorite “What are the facts? Was there any pumpkin involved at all? H”1034 I doubt that
these papers were a false trail to cover up Hoover master-minding a frame-up of Hiss. From
what I have heard of Mr. Hoover, he was not above creating fake paper in the appropriate case,
but he was not the kind of man who would create fake paper that makes him look foolish.
Hoover was not masterminding anything in this Case; he was ‘a day late and a dollar short,’
and frankly almost comic.

A final bunch of paper from the FBI files that tends to disprove any conspiracy to frame
Hiss shows that, when the FBI learned that Hiss’s lawyer Edward Mclean had found 230099,
which he proclaimed to be The Hiss Home Typewriter, the FBI went into a tizzy. This Case
had been rough on the Bureau and the image-conscious Hoover. Chambers had told his story
publicly to HUAC, not the FBI; he produced the typed and handwritten documents to Hiss’s
lawyers, not the FBI; he produced the Pumpkin Papers to HUAC, not the FBI. Chambers
didn’t trust the FBI in the beginning – they had written him off in 1942 – and the Bureau

1028
Carr at 124; Weinstein I at 293-95; Nixon I at 56-60 (HUAC shouting matches with DOJ),
Chambers I at 771-72 (same); Stripling Statement at 20-21 (same).
1029
Evans & Romerstein at 243-44; Weinstein I at 190-93, 289.
1030
Summers at 490 (note 10); Weinstein I at 192, 293.
1031
Firing Line, The Guilt Of Alger Hiss (March 21, 1978) at 56:00; see also Knight at 213-14
(FBI’s continuing defensiveness).
1032
Weinstein I at 669 (note 47).
1033
Weinstein I at 315-17.
1034
Weinstein I at 198.

226
reciprocated. The crowning humiliation for the Bureau was when Edward McLean, Hiss’
white shoe corporate lawyer who spent his life in corner offices and yacht clubs, did what
innumerable FBI agents could not do – he found Woodstock 230099 in the night watchman’s
home.1035 This meant that the FBI – supposedly a savvy judge of truth-telling – had fallen for
the lies of the Hisses that they had given their typewriter to The Salvation Army or sold it to a
second hand shop. So, the FBI’s first reaction to McLean’s discovery of 230099 was to think
that it was not the real Hiss Home Typewriter. McLean can’t have found it! The FBI feared
that 230099 was a fake created by The Hiss Defense; or, less skulduggerously, that the well
meaning amateur Ed McLean had found a Woodstock but not the Woodstock that everyone
was looking for.1036 All this, of course, is completely inconsistent with the FBI having
fabricated 230099 to frame Hiss.

So much for the theory that there was a vast right-wing conspiracy to frame Hiss.
Another problem with that theory is that it portrays Chambers, in Hiss’s words, as “the perfect
pawn” of the conspiracy.1037 Look at Chambers’ life in the large and ask yourself “What
manner of man was this?” The last word that comes to mind is pawn. Throughout his life,
Whittaker Chambers did what he thought was the right thing to do and to hell with the
consequences – and he paid the price you pay when you live your life that way. On the Ship of
State, Whittaker Chambers was a loose cannon on deck. In the Arsenal of Democracy, he was
an unguided missile. Whittaker Chambers was nobody’s pawn.

Hiss’s people waded through the FOIA documents to establish that The Prosecution
had not ‘played fair.’ FOIA documents showing alleged prosecutorial misconduct were the
subject of Hiss’s last foray into court, in 1978, a motion in essence to have his conviction
overturned. Nothing here tended to show that Hiss did not spy for the Soviet Union. Hiss’s
motion was dismissed in 1982 by a Judge who clearly thought it was frivolous and that his
second trial was a fair one by any standard. The Court of Appeals thought Hiss’s case was so
weak it affirmed the Judge without a written opinion, and the Supreme Court declined to hear
the case.

Hiss himself said of this effort that “We have no smoking gun.”1038 One thing Hiss
wished he had known about was Chambers’ confession of his gay acts. Alger Hiss, here, says
‘I am just seeking the truth’ out of one side of his mouth and, out of the other, ‘If only I could
have smeared him as a cock-sucker. Damn!’

Hiss is right that The Prosecution of him was not up to today’s standards. Standards for

1035
Latham at 184; Firing Line at 16:35; Second Trial at 4363 (35 agents).
1036
Weinstein I at 430.
1037
Hiss II at 202; at 207, Hiss calls Chambers a “political mannequin.”
1038
Joseph P. Ippolito, Herbert Travers, & Prof. Charles P. Kindregan, An Interview with Alger
Hiss: November 2, 1978, THE ADVOCATE (by The Suffolk Univ. Law School Journal), Vol. 10, No.
1 (Fall 1978) at 2, 4.

227
criminal prosecutions and the rights of criminal defendants have greatly increased since the
1940s. By today’s standards, neither side in this Case played fair. Both did some dirty tricks –
some dirty by recent standards, some dirty by historic standards.1039 To show that the
government did something in a long criminal investigation and trials in the 1940s that would
not be allowed today is the lawyer’s equivalent of taking candy from a baby or shooting fish in
a barrel. The information that Hiss claimed the government denied him – mostly about
Chambers’ changes in testimony or lies – would have been of little help to Hiss. No one
doubted that Chambers changed his story and lied a lot.

The most troubling accusation in Hiss’s last court filing is that a private detective who
had worked for Hiss communicated, after he was no longer working for Hiss, with the FBI and
Prosecutor Murphy. Hiss had authorized the detective to communicate with the government,
however, so for all the government knew the later meetings may have been authorized. More
important, the detective had uncovered almost nothing; maybe that’s why he wasn’t working
for Hiss any more. Even if the faithless detective told the government everything he knew, it
would have done The Prosecution no good. Indeed, most of what he told them the government
already knew from the earlier, authorized meetings.1040

Despite keeping his case in court for decades, Hiss was not able to get one judge to vote
his way on the merits.

The second source of new information on the Case, and a much more interesting one, is
the files of Hiss’s lawyers.

One thing revealed there is that maybe one reason that Mrs. Hiss was so scared throughout
this Case was that her ‘terrible secret’ might come out – that, between her marriages, she had gotten
pregnant and had had an illegal abortion. That did not come out; as far as I know, the government
didn’t know about it.

Another tidbit from The Hiss Defense files is that the Defense retained a handwriting
analyst who concluded that Chambers’ handwriting showed “marked narcissism,” “self-love,” a
drive to dominate his environment, and “extreme egocentricity,” but “there is no indication . . . of a
break with reality.”1041 This is very close to my own view of Chambers.

A remarkable revelation from The Hiss Defense files is that the Hiss family pediatrician saw
Chambers in the Hiss home in January 1937, long after the Hisses said they had kicked Chambers

1039
See, e.g., Gentry at 365-66 (alleged government misconduct); see generally Morton Levitt &
Michael Levitt, A TISSUE OF LIES: NIXON VS. HISS (McGraw-Hill 1979); Athan G. Theoharis (Ed.),
BEYOND THE HISS CASE: THE FBI, CONGRESS, & THE COLD WAR (Temple Univ. Press 1982)
passim.
1040
542 F. Supp. at 982 & n.17, 987-88.
1041
Weinstein I at 404.

228
out of their life. It was a bizarre scene. This is back when doctors made house calls. The doctor
came to attend to Mrs. Hiss’s son by her first marriage. She came and went – “Hello, Priscilla,
hello Timmy, goodbye” and so on -- and, when she got back in her car, she realized she’d forgotten
her gloves. She went back and rang the doorbell. The door flew open and a heavy set, gruff man
she had not seen before blocked her entrance and said “You may not come in!” The man, she
recognized years later, was Whitaker Chambers.1042

Do you remember William Rosen, the man whose name was used in the dummy transaction
involving the Hiss’s 1929 Ford, the one with hand-operated windshield wipers and the sassy little
trunk? (Hiss said he gave it to Chambers/Crosley; Chambers said it wound up in the Communist
Party.) A lawyer visited Hiss’s lawyer Edward McLean one day (March 9, 1949). The lawyer was
Emanuel Bloch, who later unsuccessfully defended the Rosenbergs. Mr. Bloch told Mr. McLean
that the transaction with the Ford had involved “a very high Communist” whose “name would be a
sensation in this case” and that the man who ultimately got the Ford is a Communist.1043 In other
words, the Party is telling McLean, don’t look too hard into what became of that Ford.1044

Incidentally, the historian Gary Wills writes that one Maurice Braverman, the lawyer who
represented the guy whose name was used in the Ford deal, wound up in the same prison with Hiss
(for reasons having nothing to do with the Hiss Case). He approached Hiss and told him that he had
been Rosen’s lawyer. Hiss said “Yes, I know” and never asked him about the Ford. Now, if I were
in prison unjustly, my life ruined, having been framed, and if part of the frame up included a car
transaction, and I was approached in prison by a man who knew all about the car transaction, I
would grab onto that man and not let go of him until I had squeezed every bit of information out of
him about that car. Hiss just walked away.1045

Another revelation that I find particularly fascinating concerns Hiss’s mental health. In
addition to Dr. Binger, there was a psychologist at the Harvard Medical School, Dr. Henry A.
Murray, who testified at the second trial that Chambers was a psychopath. Apparently, Dr. Murray
followed Hiss’s testimony and concluded that Hiss suffered from a self-image, in which he really
believed, that he had never done anything wrong and had never even made a mistake in his entire
life. Hiss insisted that his direct testimony about his life consist entirely of successes and
triumphs.1046 So maybe Hiss is the one who is out of touch with reality, maybe he really believed
he never was a Communist and all the rest, and maybe this explains Hiss’s insistence on his
innocence.

More from The Hiss Defense files: The Hiss Defense retained three typewriter experts. All
of them, separately, came to the conclusions harmful to Hiss. Two of them concluded, just like

1042
Weinstein I at 245.
1043
Weinstein I at 64.
1044
Wills Education at 59.
1045
Wills Education at 61-62.
1046
Weinstein I at 703-04 (note 33).

229
Mr. Feehan of the FBI, that The Hiss Standards and The Spy Documents were typed on the same
typewriter.1047 They went even further than Feehan and also said that that typewriter was
Woodstock 230099. The third expert did not disagree, but researched a different question,
concluding that The Spy Documents were typed on Woodstock 230099.1048 One of Hiss’s experts
went further still and concluded that the person who typed The Spy Documents was Priscilla
Hiss1049 and another inclined strongly in that direction.1050 If Priscilla Hiss was the typist, then
arguably it’s unimportant whether 230099 was The Hiss Home Typewriter. I can’t imagine a
realistic scenario in which Priscilla Hiss typed up The Spy Documents and Alger Hiss was
innocent.

One Hiss expert even opined that handwriting in The Spy Documents somewhat resembled
the handwriting of Alger Hiss.1051

Another expert, not hired by The Prosecution or the defense, reached the conclusion that
The Hiss Standards and The Spy Documents had been typed on the same typewriter.1052 He was
Ordway Hilton, who was like God in the field of analyzing typewritten documents.

Thus, we have five independent expert opinions contrary to the Forgery by Typewriter
Theory. In addition, seven eyewitnesses identified 230099 as The Hiss Home Typewriter. These
were Alger Hiss, Priscilla Hiss, Mrs. Catlett, her sons Raymond and Perry, Ira Lockey (the black
night watchman) and his daughter, all the people had lived under the same roofs with The Hiss
Home Typewriter for 18 years. The Catlett Kids’ and Lockey’s daughter’s identifications,
especially, were based not on the dents in the lower case ‘g,’ but on 230099’s external appearance
and operation – that the knob on the left was missing, that wheel was broken, something about the
carriage return lever (I think it was wobbly), that certain keys stuck at the top when you struck
them, and the ribbon did not move smoothly.1053 How could any forger have known to make those
external and operational alterations on his or her fake typewriter?

Most explosively, The Hiss Defense files show that the Hisses knew in late 1948 that the big

1047
Weinstein I at 280 (summary); 307 (J. Howard Haring – tentative conclusion that one Hiss
Standard and Spy Documents were typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter), 410 (same), 419-21 (J.
Howard Haring – Hiss Standards and Spy Documents were typed on HHT; Edwin H. Fearon – Spy
Documents were typed on 230099).
1048
Weinstein I at 432 (Harry E. Cassidy – Spy Documents were typed on 230099).
1049
Weinstein I at 499 (Harry E. Cassidy).
1050
Weinstein I at 682-83 (note 78).
1051
Weinstein I at 419 (J. Howard Haring).
1052
Weinstein I at 421 (footnote).
1053
First Trial at 1683-86 (Raymond Catlett), 1701-04 (same), 1750-51 (same), 1762-63 (Perry
Catlett), 2113 (Alger Hiss), 2284-85 (Priscilla Hiss); Second Trial at 2124-25 (Ira Lockey), 2155
(Claudia Catlett), 2186-88, (Raymond Catlett), 2163-64 (same), 2358 (Perry Catlett), 2372 (same),
3334 (Priscilla Hiss), 3790 (Margaret McQueen, Lockey’s daughter).

230
office typewriter they had had ten years before was a Woodstock and that they had given it to The
Catlett Kids. They knew this while they were denying such knowledge under oath to the Grand
Jury and airily remembering a slew of other typewriters – there was a Royal, there was a Corona,
there was an Underwood,1054 we may have borrowed other typewriters1055 – although no one in the
family did much typing. But the word “Woodstock” never passed their lips before the Grand Jury.
The Hisses, while pretending to cooperate with the FBI, concealed crucial facts from the Bureau,
and even from their own lawyer Edward McLean who was masterminding preparations for the
trial.1056 Claudi Catlett and The Catlett Kids also concealed their detailed knowledge of the
typewriter’s history and whereabouts from the FBI.1057

From the papers of Alger and Donald Hiss, Donald Hiss, Alger’s younger brother, comes
across as Chief of Black Operations for The Hiss Defense. He engaged in investigations about the
Woodstock typewriter, some of whose results were not shared with Hiss’s “A Team” of lawyers
(William Marbury, Edward McLean).1058 It seems that Donald Hiss also kept in touch with The
Catlett Kids, especially Raymond, to learn what they were telling the FBI and how well the FBI’s
investigation was going.1059

This leads to a final observation about theories of forgery by typewriter, especially the
possibility of an after dark switcheroo of the fake 230099 for the real Hiss Home Typewriter in the
night watchman’s basement. Based on the documents from the FBI and The Hiss Defense, it
appears that the first group of people who knew that The Hiss Home Typewriter was in the night
watchman’s home, and therefore the earliest candidates for any switching in the dark, are Donald
Hiss and Raymond Catlett.1060

A third source of information about the Case that didn’t come out in court is the private
papers of, believe it or not, a female novelist associated with Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
Josephine Herbst. She lived in Bucks County in 1934 with her husband, John Herrmann. Hermann
knew Harold Ware – remember ‘The Ware Group’? Mr. Herrmann was a member of the
Communist Party; Josie was not. Ware got Hermann an agriculture job with the government in
Washington. Against her better judgment (apparently, she was a country girl), she joined her
husband in the fall of 1934, moving into an apartment on New Hampshire Avenue.1061

Their marriage did not survive long. One of the things she didn’t like was that Herrmann

1054
GJ at 3527.
1055
First Trial at 2113.
1056
Weinstein I at 304-12, 410, 414.
1057
Weinstein I at 411-12; Second Trial at 2383-84 (Perry Catlett), 4343-44 (FBI agent).
1058
Weinstein I at 414.
1059
Weinstein I at 697 (note 32); see also First Trial at 1736-37 (Raymond Catlett saying nothing
(lying) to the FBI and then alerting Donald Hiss); Second Trial at 2226-29 (same).
1060
Weinstein I at 433, 634.
1061
Depos at 1148.

231
was clearly engaged in passing documents from the government to the Communist Party. His
‘drop,’ as they say in the espionage trade, came by their apartment from time to time to pick up the
documents. This man, Ms. Herbst said, was “slovenly” and “rotund,” spoke with a vaguely
Germanic accent, and went by the name of Karl. Sometimes he’d drop by when Herrmann wasn’t
there and Josie and he would have a chat – Carl was “boastful and paranoid,” but also had a
“cherubic” side and was “literarily inclined” and “articulate.”

Josephine Herbst also remembered her husband saying that Carl wanted to meet a young
lawyer at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration named Alger Hiss. She also remembered her
husband later saying that he had brought Carl and Hiss together at lunch at a Chinese restaurant in
DuPont Circle.

Late that fall, Josie left John, and one of the reasons was that she thought what he was doing
with Ware and Carl was totally silly, overgrown children playing cops and robbers. Fifteen years
later, Josie saw Carl’s picture in the newspaper and recognized him immediately; then she read the
caption – oh, my God, Carl is Whittaker Chambers and he’s spilling the beans!

Ms. Herbst talked with both the FBI and The Hiss Defense, but was never called as a
witness at the trials. This was because she withheld 90% of what she knew from the FBI, and The
Hiss Defense thought she would be an unsavory witness. In addition, although she knew nothing
about what happened between Hiss and Chambers after the fall of 1934, her testimony would have
been disastrous for The Hiss Defense because it placed Hiss in the middle of Communist intrigue in
general, and The Ware Group specifically, just as Chambers said. In the only biography of
Josephine Herbst, the author warns the reader that if your happiness depends on believing that
Alger Hiss was innocent, this Chapter is not for you.1062

A fourth source of information that did not come out in court is the memoirs of one Donald
Doud. He, like the FBI’s Mr. Feehan, was a member of the profession of Examiners of Questioned
Documents. He became the head of that profession’s association. Mr. Doud died in 2005, and left
a memoir that was published in 2009.1063 In it, he says that back in 1951, when Chester Lane was
spinning out his Forgery by Typewriter theory, Doud was fairly new in the business. He and an
elderly partner worked in Minneapolis. The clever Mr. Lane thought of what might be one more
source of documents that were typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter. Remember, the first owner of
that Typewriter was the Fansler-Martin insurance partnership in Philadelphia. Mr. Fansler was
Mrs. Hiss’s father. The partnership was the agent in Philadelphia for the Northwestern Mutual Life
Insurance Company, which was headquartered in Minneapolis. Mr. Lane wondered if the Company
might still have in its files some typed correspondence from the partnership, typed on what became
The Hiss Home Typewriter. Lane hired Mr. Doud and his partner to find that out from the latter’s
friends at the Company. The Company produced from its files 12 typed letters from the Fansler-

1062
Langer at 151-58, 268-76; see also Koch at 236; Weinstein I at 148-52.
1063
Donald B. Doud, WITNESS TO FORGERY: MEMOIR OF A FORENSIC DOCUMENT EXAMINER
(Orchard Knoll Publishers 2009) at 34-66.

232
Martin Partnership, dated between 1927 and 1930 inclusive. Mr. Doud spread them out in
chronological order on his desk and, his heart racing, began examining them. He compared them to
a full set of Woodstock Typewriter samples that his elderly partner had, dating back to 1919. All
12 of the documents, he saw, were typed on a Woodstock office model. But, most interestingly, the
first few were typed on a 1927 Woodstock and the letters dated July 8, 1929, and later, were typed
on a 1929 Woodstock. So, the partnership must have purchased two Woodstocks, one in 1927 and
one in 1929.

Mr. Doud also compared the “Northwestern Mutual Life Documents” dated between July
1929 and 1931; The Hiss Standards, which dated between 1931 and 1937; The Typed Spy
Documents, which were from early 1938; and The 230099 Samples, which dated from around
1950. All of those documents, Mr. Doud was certain, were typed on the same typewriter, and that
was 230099. So, 230099 was not a forgery; it was The Hiss Home Typewriter, and the typewriter
on which The Spy Documents were typed.

Finally, Mr. Doud compared The 230099 Samples and Mr. Tytell’s Fabulous Fakes (the best
forgeries that Hiss’s experts could make). I could easily tell, Doud said, that they were typed on
different typewriters. In other words, what Hiss’s experts had said to the court, that they had come
close to committing forgery by typewriter, was wrong. They hadn’t come close.

A fifth source of information that did not come out in the trials is the files of several
Communist governments that have been opened since the fall of Communism. The Czech and
Hungarian secret police had secrets to reveal about Noel Field, the man in whose apartment Hede
Massing may have said to Hiss “Whoever wins Noel, we’re all working for the same boss.” When
Field faded across the Iron Curtain in 1949,1064 he first went to Communist Czechoslovakia, then to
Hungary.1065 He cried “Save me!” The Communist governments chloroformed him, put him in
prison, and tortured him – that’s gratitude!1066 It seems that they had not expected him and were
unsure whose side he was really on.1067 He was kept in prison for many years and was tortured into
making false accusations against many other Communists, saying they had been American agents
working for him. He was the star witness in purge trials that Stalin’s local roadies put on in
Hungary and other Soviet satellites to rid the countries of Communists who were not totally loyal to
Stalin (along, as usual, with many who were). Field’s statements were all false, of course.1068

When Stalin died, this lunacy ended and Field was soon released and lived in comfort in
Communist Hungary. But what was found in the secret police files was a handwritten statement
dating from the end of his imprisonment, when the pressure to lie was off him, recollecting his

1064
Peter Grose, GENTLEMAN SPY: THE LIFE OF ALLEN DULLES (Houghton Mifflin 1994) at 302.
1065
Koch at 168.
1066
Herbert Romerstein & Eric Briendel, THE VENONA SECRETS: EXPOSING SOVIET ESPIONAGE &
AMERICA’S TRAITORS (Regnery 2000) at 135.
1067
Weinstein I at 597.
1068
Grose at 302-03; Srodes at 412-13; see generally Flora Lewis’ RED PAWN.

233
doings in the U.S. in the 1930s. In one statement he made to the Hungarians, Field writes that in
1935:

"Hiss . . . wanted to recruit me for espionage for the Soviet Union. I . . . carelessly
told him that I was already working for the Soviet intelligence. . . . I knew, from
what Hiss told me, that he was already working for the Soviet secret service. I drew
the conclusion that Chambers was Hiss’s upper contact in the secret service, too."

Field also disclosed many other details about Soviet espionage in the State Department – who else
was involved, who reported to whom, what they did, when, and how. These details match those in
the stories that Chambers (and other defectors) have told over the decades, thus lending further
support to Chambers. In fact, Field's statement dovetails very nicely with the testimony that Hede
Massing gave at Hiss’s second trial.1069

Even more powerfully, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, from time to time and briefly, a
few files of the old Soviet government and its secret services have been made public. These files
contain many documents referring to Hiss and/or Chambers as Soviet spies. Books have been
written about these documents and followers of The Case argue about the translation, interpretation
and meaning of not only individual documents, not only about individual words in the documents,
but individual letters in the Russian versions of these documents. I will spare you all that.

But unless all these documents are all false and/or misleading, Hiss and Chambers spied
together for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. And not only was Chambers telling the truth about what
happened in the 1930s, but Hiss continued spying for the Russians through the end of World War
II. When he sat behind FDR at the Yalta Conference and was functioning at a very high level
indeed, meeting daily with the Secretary of State, Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy.1070

1069
Maria Schmidt, The Hiss Dossier, THE NEW REPUBLIC (Nov. 8, 1993) at 17; Noel Field – The
American Communist at the Center of Stalin’s East European Purge: From the Hungarian
Archives, 3 AMER. COMM. HIST. 215, 238 (2004); see also Dallin at 495; Weinstein I at 218, 503
(footnote).
1070
See generally Andrew & Gordievsky at 285-87; Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, THE
SWORD & THE SHIELD: THE MITROHKIN ARCHIVE & SECRET HISTORY OF THE KGB (Basic Books
1999) at 104-05, 591, 599 n.81; Evans & Romerstein at 49, 101; Haynes & Klehr I at 92-137; John
Earl Haynes & Harvey Klehr, IN DENIAL: HISTORIANS, COMMUNISM & ESPIONAGE (Encounter
Books 2003) at 141-69; Haynes & Klehr II passim; Haynes, Klehr, & Vassiliev at 1-31 (chapter
titled Alger Hiss: Case Closed); Klehr, Haynes & Firsov esp. at 317-21; Romerstein & Briendel at
115-41; Shelton at 240-66; Pavel & Anatoli Sudoplatov, THE MEMOIRS OF AN UNWANTED WITNESS
– A SOVIET SPYMASTER (Little Brown 1994) at 227-29; Weinstein I at 346 (footnote); Allen
Weinstein & Alexander Vassiliev, THE HAUNTED WOOD: SOVIET ESPIONAGE IN AMERICA – THE
STALIN ERA (Random House 1999) esp. at 3-49, 267-69, 293-98; Eduard Mark, In Re Alger Hiss:
A Final Verdict from the Archives of the KGB, 11 J. COLD WAR STUD. 26 (2009).

234
 The final tidbit from the files of the Soviet Union is that the KGB considered, just before the
first trial, falsely accusing Chambers of having been a Nazi agent during World War II, but decided
against it.1071

Except among a few diehards,1072 The Hiss-Chambers Case is over. In the end, Chambers’
(and his wife’s) story holds up, supported by a mass of independent evidence. The Hiss Defense
has three structural defects:

- first, Chambers has no motive to lie;

- second, you have to write off as coincidence the friendship between Hiss and Chambers, to
which Hiss admitted and which is unthinkable outside the Communist movement;1073 and

- third, you have to come up with some explanation for Chambers’ possession of the
documents that isn’t so complicated that you burst out laughing.

Hiss was not only guilty as charged, but guilty of a great deal more. The only mitigation of his
crime is that, based on what we know he did, he may have damaged the reputation of The Eastern
Establishment, the Democratic Party, and liberalism more than he damaged the security of the
United States. But, of course, we know only a slight amount of what he actually did for the Soviet
Union.

I think there are only two mysteries remaining. First, what did Hiss do for the Soviets
during the War years? Presumably, someday the Kremlin will open its files again and we’ll know
the answer to that one.

Second, what was Hiss thinking all those years? When and why did he become a
Communist? When and why did he decide to spy for the Soviet Union – which is an entirely
different decision from becoming a Communist. Why didn’t Hiss “jump off the Moscow Express”
as so many other American Communists did when it became clear that what was going on in the
Soviet Union had nothing to do with building a better world, and especially after Stalin hopped into
bed with Hitler in the Nazi-Soviet Pact? What was Hiss thinking all through the HUAC hearings,
the trials, and his long afterlife? This, I suppose, we will never know.

1071
Weinstein I at 301-02.
1072
See, e.g., Tony II; Smith; The Alger Hiss Story: Search for the Truth,
https://files.nyu.edu/th15/public/home.html; John Lowenthal, Venona & Alger Hiss, 15
INTELLIGENCE & NAT’L SECURITY 98 (2000). For older assertions of Hiss’s innocence, see Beatrice
Gwynn, WHITTAKER CHAMBERS: THE DISCREPANCY IN THE EVIDENCE OF THE TYPEWRITER
(Mazzard 1993); Ronald Seth, THE SLEEPING TRUTH: THE HISS-CHAMBERS AFFAIR: THE SPY CASE
THAT SPLIT A NATION (Leslie Frewin 1968); E.J. Worth, WHITTAKER CHAMBERS: THE SECRET
CONFESSION (Mazzard 1993); Zeligs.
1073
See Fiedler at 10.

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 I offer two bits of speculation. It may be that Hiss was still a Communist in 1949, and
perhaps till the day he died. When you consider how much and how long Hiss lied, and the number
of innocent third parties he hurt, it is difficult to imagine someone acting badly on that scale simply
to cover up a youthful mistake and salvage his career. You can better accept someone lying that
much and hurting that many innocent people if he could tell himself “I am working for a good case,
helping in the long run to build a better world.” This makes Hiss, in a sense, a man who gave his
life for the cause in which he believed. The historian Gary Wills wrote in the 1970s that Hiss’s
refusal to volunteer autobiography, his total denial of any Communist activity, his hedged denials of
Chambers’ accusations until external evidence forced him to change his story

“make sense if Hiss had more to hide than the Chambers documents. That is why I
would not pay him the insult of believing his denials. I would rather think he has
been serving his own gods with hidden gallantry. It is only as a secret foe that he
regains the integrity people have always sensed in him. Chambers, confirmed in so
many other ways, would thus be confirmed in his belief that Hiss was still a
communist in 1949, an enemy he could salute even as he tried to destroy him.”1074

For her part, Rebecca West had some fascinating speculation about what was going through
Hiss’s mind early in the public scandal in 1948. She expects, logically, I think, that when
Chambers defected from the spy ring, the Russians did what is called a Damage Assessment Study.
They learned from Hiss the last day on which he had given Chambers documents (say, April 1) and
from Colonel Bykov the last day on which he received film from Chambers (say, March 28). Thus
the Russians learned that Chambers had kept the last batch of papers that Hiss had given him. A
question arose for the Soviets – do we tell Alger that Chambers has the goods on him? They
probably decided – no, no point in that. Hiss might panic or dry up as a source. So they lied to him
and told him ‘Don’t worry, Chambers doesn’t have anything on you.’ Ten years later, when Hiss
knew he’d have to answer Chambers’ charges to HUAC, Hiss probably got back in touch with the
GRU (if he hadn’t been in touch with them all along) and said ‘Just calling to confirm what you
told me ten years ago. Chambers has no proof against me, right? They lied to Hiss again, and Hiss
thought – OK, it’s going to be my word against his. And Hiss decided to tough it out and deny
everything.

If this is what happened, Ms. West wrote, can you imagine the feelings of Alger Hiss on
November 18, 1948, when his lawyer William Marbury told him that Chambers had produced the
handwritten and typed documents at the deposition?

“It is not easy to imagine the chill that must have stolen into Mr. Hiss’s heart when
he was told . . . that Mr. Chambers had produced these papers, and he experienced,
in terrible public solitude, the prime disadvantage of treachery: that the man who
becomes a foreign agent has thrown off his loyalty to his own state, but the foreign

1074
Wills at 61.

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 nationals for whom he works have not thrown off their loyalty to their own state, and
will always sacrifice him to it.”1075

38. WHY DO PEOPLE STILL CARE ABOUT THIS CASE?

I hope I have made this Case interesting for you. The biographer of the novelist Josephine
Herbst wrote about this case that it

“is one of the greatest miasmas of American politics and there is no one who has
been involved with it either as actor or scholar who has not in some measure been
harmed. There are no arguments which have not been shaken, there is no evidence
which has not been obfuscated, there are no sentences either uttered or written that
have not been parsed into nonsense.”1076

Why do people, or I, still keep coming back to it? I think there are several reasons. First,
the Case was an important event in American history. It was the overture, the curtain raiser to the
McCarthy era. It brings into sharp relief several important themes in twentieth century America –
the fatal attraction of extreme leftism to many intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s (and, in most
cases, their painful disillusionment with it); the split in our country between the "top people" with
all the panache and the "great silent majority" who turn out to have more common sense; and the
great struggle between freedom and totalitarianism.

Second, simply as a story, the saga of Hiss and Chambers is worthy of Arthur Conan Doyle
and Agatha Christie – with the difference that it really happened.1077 Many of the most fascinating

1075
West Book Review at 676.
1076
Langer at 269-70.
1077
At least one novel has been written about The Case, Bob Oeste’s THE LAST PUMPKIN PAPER
(Random House 1996). A character heavily based on Chambers is Giford Maxim, plays a major
role in Lionel Trilling’s novel about disillusionment with Communism, THE MIDDLE OF THE
JOURNEY (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1975). Characters based at least partly on Chambers appear
in three other novels. Forgotten today are the bank clerk John Temple in Eleanor Clark’s THE
BITTER BOX (Doubleday 1946) and Carl Winston in James T. Farrell’s SAM HOLMAN (Prometheus
1983). Alan M. Wald, THE NEW YORK INTELLECTUALS: THE RISE & FALL OF THE ANTI-STALINIST
LEFT FROM THE 1930S TO THE 1980S (University of North Carolina Press 1987) at 248, 259. Better
remembered is ADVISE & CONSENT, the 1959 novel and 1962 movie that have been called the best
works ever about Washington politics. The plot includes a State Department nominee (in the
movie, Henry Fonda) who is accused of past Communist associations by a mysterious and maybe
mentally ill malcontent (Burgess Meredith). The parallel to Hiss and Chambers is clear.
In the Alfred Hitchcock movie North by Northwest, as Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint flee
towards the top of Mt. Rushmore with microfilm in a small statue, he says to her “I see you’ve got

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figures of mid-century America played large roles in the case or had walk-on parts – Franklin and
Elanor Roosevelt, Truman, Nixon, Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, and J. Edgar Hoover – many
acting in ways different from their thumbnail images. Even the minor characters in this Case, said a
journalist who covered the trials, contain "the raw material for a shelf of unwritten novels by Proust,
Dickens, Henry James, Kafka, Conrad, and Koestler."1078

Third, to any lawyer the Case is a feast for study about dealing with difficult clients,
planning strategy and tactics, executing them, conducting investigations (and adapting to their
results), the influence of individual judges, and courtroom advocacy.

Finally and most enduringly for me, there is the battle between the two men. This continues
to fascinate at a deep level, I think, because each of us has within himself some of Hiss and some of
Chambers. Hiss is the face we like to see when we look in the mirror in the morning, the tightly
wrapped careerist with the perfect resume, the man who has never made a mistake – the brain or the
ego, if you will. Chambers is the heart and the soul, the unpleasant seeker after truth, even about
the dark past, willing to wallow in great issues of right and wrong and demanding impolitely that
right be done and the truth be told no matter what the cost. Chambers tells us that we all make
mistakes, probably big ones, but if we face up to them and atone for them, we may walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, but we may ultimately save ourselves and make the world better.
The conflict between these two men, between Hiss’s Goody Two Shoes pose and comforting lies
and Chamber’s messy honesty, will continue to fascinate as long as human nature feels the
contradictory tugs between what we would like to be and what we are, between what should be and
what is.

AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD:

I am a former attorney in the District of Columbia, New York, and

Pennsylvania, and a former Adjunct Professor of Law at George Mason University
School of Law.

The foregoing is, with minor corrections and stylistic improvements, the
script from which I read in 38 YouTube videos about the Hiss-Chambers case. The
videos are available on YouTube in response to search requests “John Berresford 1,”
“John Berresford 2,” and so on.

I welcome corrections, praise, and politely phrased criticism at

the pumpkin.” North by Northwest at 2:09:24.

Finally, the Three Stooges comedy Dunked in the Deep (1949) starts with a foreign agent
hiding microfilms in watermelons.
1078
Cooke at 11.

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[email protected], or on Twitter or Facebook.

If you are interested in further reading about the Case, I recommend Allen
Weinstein’s PERJURY: THE HISS-CHAMBERS CASE, Chambers’ autobiography
WITNESS, and the chapter titled Alger Hiss: Case Closed in John Earl Haynes,
Harvey Klehr, & Alexander Vassiliev, SPIES: THE RISE & FALL OF THE KGB IN
AMERICA.

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