Chapter VIII: Preface: XI (7)

Hiss had told him that he had a sister who lived with his mother. In fact “he once drove me past their house, which as I recall, was on or near Linden Street.” But he had never seen either the mother or the sister. As for Hiss’ younger brother, Donald, he had met him “within the same week in which I met Alger Hiss.” But, whereas “my relationship with Alger Hiss quickly transcended our formal relationship,” Chambers’ contact with Donald was confined to collecting party dues from him. He couldn’t remember much about Donald except that he was married to a non-Communist and that “everybody was worried about her.” He had a general impression that the younger Hiss “was much less intelligent than Alger” and that “he was interested in the social climb.”

Mrs. Hiss’ maiden name was Priscilla Fansler and “she came from the Great Valley near Paoli, Pa.” In fact, Chambers had once taken a trip with the family, and Mrs. Hiss had shown him “the road down which their farm lay.”

MR. NIXON: You drove with them?

MR. CHAMBERS: Yes.

MR. NIXON: Did you ever go on a trip with them other than by automobile?

MR. CHAMBERS: No.

MR. NIXON: Did you ever stay overnight on any of these trips?

MR. CHAMBERS: No.

While he was fairly certain that Mr. Hiss did not go to church because he was forbidden to do so, he did not know about his wife who “came from a Quaker family.”

Before subsiding, Nixon asked the witness if he had seen Hiss since 1938. Chambers’ answer was as definite as it could be. “No: since the time I went to his house and tried to break him away, I have never seen him since.” Hébert then took over and exhibited a marked interest in the house occupied by the Hiss ménage. When Chambers had first met Hiss “he was living on Twenty-eighth Street.” Some time later, he had moved to a house in Georgetown, possibly “on the corner of P Street.” He had the impression “it was a three-story house with a kind of porch in back where people sat.” After that, “he moved to a house on an up-and-down street, a street that would cross the lettered street, probably just around the corner from the other house and very near to his brother Donald.” This house had a basement, dining room and a small backyard. “I think he was there when I broke with the Communist Party.” When he tried to persuade Hiss to leave the Party, too, the latter had been living in a house “beyond Wisconsin Avenue.”

Before the sub-committee adjourned at 1:10 p.m., Nixon suddenly asked Chambers if he was “willing to submit to a lie detector test on this testimony.” The witness said he would if Nixon thought it was necessary.

MR. NIXON: You are that confident?

MR. CHAMBERS: I am telling the truth.

Before Messrs. Nixon, Hébert and McDowell returned to Washington that afternoon, they had decided to recommend to the full Committee that Hiss be recalled.

On Friday, August 13th, J. Parnell Thomas, the regular chairman, sent a telegram to Hiss, asking him to appear before the Committee the following Monday. That same Friday, Donald Hiss denied at a public hearing “every statement made by Mr. Chambers with respect to me. I am not, and never have been, a member of the Communist Party, or of any formal or informal organization affiliated with, or fronting in any manner whatsoever for, the Communist Party.” He had belonged to nothing more subversive than the Y. M. C. A., the Washington Racquet Club and the Harvard Law School Association. As for his accuser, “I have no recollection of ever having met any person by the name of D. Whittaker Chambers nor do I recognize his photograph which I have seen in the public press.”

MR. NIXON: As I understand your statement, you have made an unqualified statement that you have never known a man by the name of Carl who resembled that man?

DONALD HISS: I have never known that man by the name of Chambers, Carl, or any other name, sir.

When he suggested that whoever was lying ought to go to jail, Mundt seconded the motion.

On August 16th, Alger Hiss faced the Committee once more, this time in executive session. Reassured by the fact that the President of the United States had publicly labeled his case as “a red herring,” deliberately designed to hide the failures of the Eightieth Congress, Hiss eased himself into the witness chair with a visible air of confidence. Again, it was Nixon who asked most of the questions. The first order of business was to try to determine whether Hiss had ever known Chambers, under one name or another. Nixon handed the witness two photographs and asked him “if you can remember that person either as Whittaker Chambers or as Carl or as any other individual you have met.”

This time, Hiss admitted that “the face had a certain familiarity.” Although, he would still like to see Chambers face to face, he was “not prepared to say that I have never seen the man whose pictures are now shown me.” But that was as far as he cared to go until he had the opportunity of “seeing the man, hearing him talk, getting some much more tangible basis for judging the person and the personality.”

MR. NIXON: Would your answer be any different if this individual were described to you as one who had stayed overnight in your house on several occasions?

MR. HISS: I think Mr. Nixon, let me say this: In the course of my service in the government ... I have had a great many people who have visited in my house. If this is a picture of anyone, I would find it very difficult to believe that that individual could have stayed in my house when I was there on several occasions overnight and his face not be more familiar than it is.

When the chairman asked him whether he thought he would recognize a man who had spent a week in his house in the past fifteen years, Hiss was sure that he would “if he hadn’t had a face-lifting.”

MR. THOMAS: No doubt in your mind?

MR. HISS: I have no doubt whatsoever.

After a brief recess, Hiss announced that “I have written a name on this pad in front of me of a person whom I knew in 1933 and 1934 who not only spent some time in my house but sublet my apartment.” The name of this man was George Crosley and the witness remembered him as a free-lance writer who had occasionally interviewed him when he was counsel to the Nye Committee. As he recalled it, “this fellow was writing a series of articles ... which he hoped to sell to one of the magazines.” In June of 1935, when the Hisses had purchased the P Street house, they had rented their Wardman Park apartment to Crosley and his family which consisted of a “strikingly dark” wife and an infant daughter. Because all of Crosley’s furniture hadn’t arrived, “we put them up 2 or 3 nights in a row, his wife and little baby.”

He had also thrown in an old Ford with the apartment. It was an early Model A coupé with “a sassy little trunk on the back.” He had purchased a new car--a Plymouth sedan--and, since Crosley “wanted a way to get around,” he had decided to let him have the Ford.

MR. NIXON: You gave this Ford car to Crosley?

MR. HISS: Threw it in along with the apartment and charged the rent and threw the car in at the same time.

MR. NIXON: In other words, added a little to the rent to cover the car?

MR. HISS: No; I think I charged him exactly what I was paying for the rent and threw the car in in addition. I don’t think I got any compensation.

MR. STRIPLING: You just gave him the car?

MR. HISS: I think the car just went right in with it.

No, he had not given Crosley a bill of sale; “I think I just simply turned it over to him.” He didn’t know whether the writer had recorded the title or not.

He had driven Crosley around Washington in the Ford on several occasions. Once he had given him a lift to New York “when I was going to make a trip to New York City anyway.”

MR. STRIPLING: Was Mrs. Hiss along?

MR. HISS: That I wouldn’t recall. She may have been.

MR. STRIPLING: Did you go to Paoli?

MR. HISS: If Mrs. Hiss was along; yes.

His tenant had left the apartment when the lease expired in September. Although, Crosley had never paid his rent, Hiss had lent him some money but “never got paid back.” He had not heard of him since 1935.

MR. STRIPLING: You wouldn’t say positively George Crosley and this person are the same?

MR. HISS: Not positively.

MR. STRIPLING: You would not say positively?

MR. HISS: I think they are not. That would be my best impression from the photographs.

At one point in the questioning, Hiss stated that both he and his wife were amateur ornithologists. McDowell, who was no mean bird watcher himself, asked him if he had ever seen a prothonotary warbler. The witness replied that he had, “right here on the Potomac.” McDowell replied that he once had observed one in Arlington. Hiss, lost in reverie, seemed to forget that he was in a hearing room. “They come back and nest in those swamps,” he told McDowell. “Beautiful yellow head, a gorgeous bird. Mr. Collins is an ornithologist, Henry Collins. He’s a really good ornithologist, calling them by their Latin names.” Nixon brought him abruptly back to earth with a question about the schools his son had attended from 1934 to 1937.

The three-and a half hour hearing drew to a close with a lawyers’ discussion between Hiss and Nixon as to the reliability of the lie detector test. Nixon had asked the witness whether he was willing to submit to Dr. Leonardo Keeler’s polygraph test, reminding him that Chambers had agreed to do so. Hiss wanted to consult further. He had “talked to people who have seen ... Dr. Keeler’s own test and that the importance of a question registers more emotion than anything else.” While he didn’t want to beg the question, he “would rather have a chance for further consultation before I gave you the answer.” But he would be interested in knowing if Mr. Nixon had ever used the test in his own law practice.

MR. NIXON: No; I have not.

MR. HISS: But you do have confidence in it?

MR. NIXON: Frankly, I have made a study of it in the last week before I put the question. In fact, for the last two weeks I have been studying it and have been in correspondence with Mr. Keeler.

Ten days later, Hiss wrote to the chairman and informed him that since “no Federal Court in the United States relies upon any ‘lie detector’ ... I do not at present feel in a position to make a final decision with respect to the Committee’s suggestion.”

Before Hiss left Washington, he was asked to return at 10:30 a.m. on August 25th when he and Chambers would “have an opportunity to confront one another.” The next morning, a member of the Committee’s staff telephoned him at his New York office and asked him if he would be able to meet with Mr. McDowell later that afternoon. Hiss replied that he would. Shortly before 5:30 p.m., McDowell called and invited him to come over to Room 1400 of the Hotel Commodore. Hiss asked Charles Dollard, a colleague at the Carnegie Corporation, to accompany him, and the two men walked the few blocks to the Commodore. When they entered the hotel suite, Hiss was asked to sit in a chair facing Nixon and McDowell, the only two members of the Committee present.

A few minutes later, a door behind him opened and Chambers was ushered into the room. Nixon asked the two men to stand and face each other. “Mr. Hiss,” he said, “the man standing here is Mr. Whittaker Chambers. I ask you now if you have ever known that man before.”

MR. HISS: May I ask him to speak? Will you ask him to say something?

MR. NIXON: Yes. Mr. Chambers, will you tell us your name and business?

MR. CHAMBERS: My name is Whittaker Chambers.

MR. HISS: Would you mind opening your mouth wider?

Will you go on talking?

MR. CHAMBERS: I am senior editor of _Time Magazine_.

MR. HISS: May I ask whether his voice, when he testified before, was comparable to this?

MR. McDOWELL: I would say it is about the same now as we have heard.

MR. HISS: I think he is George Crosley, but I would like to hear him talk a little longer.

After Chambers had read a portion of a _Newsweek_ article about Truman’s failure to appoint a new Secretary of Labor to replace Lewis B. Schwellenbach, Hiss announced that, although his voice was less resonant than that of the man he had once known, “I believe ... that he must be George Crosley.” But the man he had known in 1934 and 1935 had had terrible teeth. The teeth of the man he was now asked to identify “look to me as though they have been improved upon or that there has been considerable dental work done since I knew George Crosley.” Nixon asked Chambers whether he had “had any dental work since 1934 of a substantial nature.” It seemed that he had, “some extractions and a plate.”

But Hiss still wasn’t certain. Chambers looked “very different in girth and on other appearances--hair, forehead, and so on, particularly the jowls.” But it was obvious to everyone in the room that he was beating a slow but steady retreat. After Nixon made him go over his previous testimony about subletting the 29th Street Apartment to the “Crosleys,” He asked for--and received--permission to question his accuser.

MR. HISS: Did you ever go under the name of George Crosley?

MR. CHAMBERS: Not to my knowledge.

MR. HISS: You did not?

MR. CHAMBERS: No; I did not.

MR. 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?

MR. CHAMBERS: I most certainly did.

MR. HISS: Would you tell how you reconcile your negative answers with this affirmative answer?

MR. CHAMBERS: Very easily, Alger. I was a Communist and you were a Communist.

Finally, Hiss was “perfectly prepared to identify this man as George Crosley.” When Stripling asked him if he thought he could produce three people who would swear that they, too, had known Chambers as Crosley, Hiss said that he would try. The only ones he could think of offhand were Stephen Raushenbush, Robert Wohlford and Elsie Gullender who had worked with him on the Nye Committee in 1935. But he couldn’t remember whether Chambers had ever called on any of these people.

McDowell then turned to Chambers and asked him whether he was prepared to identify Hiss as the man “who was a member of the Communist Party at whose home you stayed.” He was.

MR. McDOWELL: You make the identification positive?

MR. CHAMBERS: Positive identification.

While Chambers was talking, Hiss rose from his chair and walked over toward him. Livid with anger, he invited “Mr. Whittaker Chambers to make those same statements out of the presence of this Committee without their being privileged for suit for libel. I challenge you to do it and I hope you will do it damned quickly.” By the time he had finished hurling his gauntlet, he was so close to Chambers that Louis J. Russell, one of the Committee’s investigators, threw himself between the two men. “I am not going to touch him,” Hiss exclaimed. “You are touching me.” McDowell ordered Hiss to sit down and the hearing was adjourned for a few minutes to clear the air.

The great confrontation was over. Before McDowell brought it to its official close at 7:45 p.m., he announced that, in view of the testimony, the full Committee would meet in Washington on August 25th and that both men would be subpoenaed to appear before it. Hiss told him that he would be happy to show up without putting the Committee to the trouble of serving him with a subpoena. But there was still some unfinished business, he told Messrs. McDowell and Nixon--he had been asked to “make arrangements for Mrs. Hiss to come down from Vermont to meet in executive session with a subcommittee” and he was prepared to oblige if her presence was still required. Because Hiss was uncertain about schedules, it was agreed that he would telephone Mr. Nixon at the Commodore as soon as Mrs. Hiss arrived in town.

MR. HISS: May I come with her?

MR. McDOWELL: Yes.

MR. HISS: Thank you. Am I dismissed? Is the proceeding over?

MR. McDOWELL: Any more questions to ask of Mr. Hiss?

MR. NIXON: I have nothing.

MR. McDOWELL: That is all. Thank you very much.

MR. HISS: I don’t reciprocate.

MR. McDOWELL: Italicize that in the record.

MR. HISS: I wish you would.

Later that evening, Hiss called Nixon and told him that his wife had arrived in town and would be available as originally scheduled. The next morning, the Hisses, accompanied by Dollard, met with Nixon at the Commodore. The hearing took only ten minutes. After Mrs. Hiss had affirmed that she would tell the truth, she stated that she had known a man by the name of George Crosley between 1934 and 1937. She remembered that Crosley and his wife had spent a few days with them before moving into their old apartment on P Street. As far as she could recall, she had never taken a trip with this man whom she described as “a little too smiley.” Before Nixon dismissed her, she informed him that, if he wanted her opinion, the man who had called himself Crosley was nothing but “a sponger.”

The next act in what was rapidly beginning to have all the appearances of a Greek tragedy was scheduled to take place on August 25th in the Caucus Room of the Old House Office Building. Long before Chairman Thomas gavelled the hearing into being at 10:30 a.m., the chamber was filled to overflowing with more people than it had ever held before. Television cameramen, newspaper photographers, radio commentators, and the less spectacular members of the Fourth Estate crowded every corner of the long room. Thomas welcomed them all in the name of the Committee. “We are glad,” he announced, “to have as many representatives of the American public as is possible to crowd into this room today.” He was also mighty happy to put Hiss and Chambers on view together before a nationwide audience.

The first order of business was to determine whether anyone but Alger Hiss had ever known of George Crosley’s existence. At the Commodore confrontation, Hiss had suggested the names of three former Nye Committee employees whom he thought might have run into Crosley when the latter was scrounging for magazine fodder. Stripling’s investigators had discovered that one was dead, another could not be traced, and the third couldn’t remember ever having met anyone named Crosley. A search of the records of the Library of Congress, the Copyright Division and the Public Catalogue had uncovered only two writers by that name--an obscure 1905 poet and a doctor who had published a treatise on the effects of ultra-violet light. If George Crosley had ever existed, he was now a case for the Missing Persons Bureau.

With Crosley out of the way, the Committee turned to Fords and photostats. Hiss had previously testified that after he had purchased a new Plymouth in the Spring of ’35, he had either given Crosley-Chambers “the use of the car” or “the car outright.” According to the records of the District of Columbia’s Motor Vehicles and Traffic Bureau, Hiss had bought the Plymouth on September 7, 1935. If the dates were correct, then Hiss had given Chambers the old Ford _before_ he had obtained the Plymouth.

Nixon was obviously fascinated by the business of the cars. Would Mr. Hiss enlighten him as to whether he had sold, or given the car to Crosley?

MR. HISS: I gave Crosley, according to my best recollection....

MR. NIXON: Well, now, just a moment on that point. I don’t want to interrupt you on that ‘to the best of my recollection’ 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?

MR. HISS: I have only had one old car of a financial value of $25 in my life. That is the car that I let Crosley have the use of.

When Mundt reminded the witness that, a week earlier, he had sworn that he had “sold him an automobile,” Hiss promptly swallowed his words and conceded that, if that’s what the transcript said, it must be correct.

After Nixon had read into the record most of Hiss’ previous testimony about the Ford roadster, he confessed to the chairman that he was “amazed to hear Mr. Hiss say this morning that he can only testify to the best of his recollection as to whether he ever gave Crosley a car at all, that he is not sure as to whether or not he transferred the car to Crosley, that he might have given it to him for his use only, and that he is not even sure when the transaction occurred....” As far as he was concerned, Hiss ought to “tell us exactly what did happen to that car.”

The witness was only too happy to oblige. His testimony, “based upon the best recollection I have, is that I gave Crosley the use of the car, as I gave him the use of the apartment.” He thought that the transfer had taken place at the same time as he had subleased the apartment to the Crosleys but it could have taken place “several months after the rental transaction.” When Mundt asked him whether he had ever given the Ford “to anybody else in any way besides to Mr. George Crosley,” Hiss insisted that he could not answer the question “without consulting the records.”

The reason for the Committee’s preoccupation with the Ford’s disposition became clear when Stripling called Louis Russell, one of its own investigators. Russell testified that he had checked the records of the District’s Director of Vehicles and Traffic and that he had discovered that one Alger Hiss had assigned a 1929 Ford automobile to the Cherner Motor Company on July 23, 1936. He identified a photostatic copy of the assignment of title as a copy of the original document which he had seen on file. It was signed by Hiss and notarized by W. Marvin Smith, an attorney in the Solicitor General’s office.

After some shilly-shallying about “photostatic signatures,” Hiss admitted that “it looks like my signature to me, Mr. Chairman.” He was also prepared to go a little further and own that Mr. Smith had indeed notarized his signature. When Stripling produced a sales slip which indicated that the vehicle had been sold by the Cherner Motor Company to one William Rosen a few hours after Hiss had turned it in, that was the last trace of the saucy little car that was carrying the Committee to glory.

Just before the noon recess, Hébert wanted to ask a question.

MR. HÉBERT: Mr. Hiss, now that your memory has been refreshed by the development of the last few minutes, do you recall the transaction whereby you disposed of that Ford that you could not remember this morning?

MR. HISS: No, I have no present recollection of the disposition of the Ford, Mr. Hébert.

MR. HÉBERT: In view of the refreshing of your memory that has been presented here this morning?

MR. HISS: In view of that, and in view of all the other developments.

MR. HÉBERT: You are a remarkable and agile young man, Mr. Hiss.

In the afternoon, Hiss read a letter he had written to Chairman Thomas the preceding day. After spelling out for the Committee his record as a public servant, he read a list of questions which he wanted Chambers to answer in public. He was informed that Chambers would “take the stand directly after you finish on the stand today.” Before he subsided, Hiss challenged Chambers “to make the statements about me with respect to Communism in public that he has made under privilege of this Committee.”

It had grown dark when Chambers took the stand, and Thomas ordered the lights turned on. Led by Nixon and Stripling, the portly witness repeated much of his former testimony about Hiss and Communism. Since his predecessor on the stand had raised a question about the editor’s mental condition, Nixon asked him whether he had ever been “treated for mental illness.”

MR. CHAMBERS: Yes; I have never been treated for a mental illness--period.

MR. NIXON: You have never been treated in a mental institution?

MR. CHAMBERS: Never.

MR. NIXON: Never. Have you ever been treated for a mental illness or been in an institution during the past four years, which was the charge made?

MR. CHAMBERS: Of course, not; and anyone at _Time Magazine_ can tell you that.

Just before eight o’clock, Nixon wanted to know if Mr. Hiss was the witness’ closest friend. Chambers replied that he “was certainly the closest friend I ever had in the Communist Party.”

MR. NIXON: Mr. Chambers, can you search your memory now to see what motive you can have for accusing Mr. Hiss of being a Communist at the present time?

MR. CHAMBERS: What motive can I have?

MR. NIXON: Yes, I mean do you--is there any grudge that you have against Mr. Hiss over anything that he has done to you?

MR. CHAMBERS: 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.

The chairman’s gavel signified the end of the hearing.

Two days later, Chambers accepted Hiss’s challenge to repeat his accusations in public. When he appeared on the _Meet the Press_ radio program, Edward T. Folliard of the _Washington Post_ asked him, “are you willing to say ... that Alger Hiss is or ever was a Communist?” When Chambers replied that “Alger Hiss was a Communist and may be now,” Folliard wanted to know if he was “prepared to go to court to answer a suit for libel or slander?” The answer was short and to the point. “I don’t think Hiss will go to court.”

On September 27th, Hiss proved him wrong by filing a $75,000 defamation suit in a Baltimore federal court. Although Chambers announced that he welcomed the litigation, he became convinced during some pre-trial hearings that, unless he could document some of his charges, he was reasonably sure of losing the suit. However, hidden behind a dumbwaiter shaft in the Brooklyn home of Nathan Levine, one of his nephews, was a bulky manila envelope. In it, were forty-seven typed copies of State Department reports, five rolls of microfilm, and four memoranda in Hiss’s handwriting. Chambers counted on these to save him from a civil judgment. They didn’t fail him.

William Marbury, Hiss’ attorney in the Baltimore libel suit, had asked Chambers whether he could produce “any documentary proof of your assertions?” On November 17th, Chambers complied by dumping the copies of official documents and the Hiss memos on the long conference table in Marbury’s office. These, he claimed, Hiss had turned over to him in 1937 after meeting a Colonel Bykov, a Soviet secret agent. Hiss would bring classified reports home for his wife to type. He would return the originals to the files the next morning while the typed copies would be delivered to Chambers for transmission to Bykov.

Hiss immediately directed his attorneys to turn the documents over to the Department of Justice. Alexander Campbell, chief of Justice’s Criminal Division, rushed up to Baltimore and took possession of all the papers. At the same time, he ordered John F. X. McGohey, the United States Attorney in New York, to convene the Federal Grand Jury. But, with the exception of a provocative little item in Jerry Kluttz’ column in the _Washington Post_ that “some startling information” had been uncovered in the Baltimore libel suit, what Chambers was later to refer to as his “lifeline” didn’t seem to have made much of a stir.

Bert Andrews of the _New York Herald Tribune_ thought that he smelled a rather large rat. He decided to play his hunch and, on December 1st, cabled Nixon, who was on the high seas bound for a Central American vacation, that a “bombshell” had exploded in Baltimore. Nixon ordered Stripling to visit Chambers at his Maryland farm where the latter blandly admitted that he had been less than frank with the Committee. Twenty-four hours later, Nixon, with the help of the Coast Guard, was back in Washington, and Chambers had turned over the five rolls of microfilm which he had cached in a pumpkin in his backyard to William Wheeler and Donald T. Appell, two Committee investigators. Three of the rolls, which had not yet been developed, were still in their aluminum cylinders while the developed rolls were wrapped in oilpaper bags.

On December 3rd, the day before Nixon & Company announced its strike, the New York Federal Grand Jury was called back into session. Its first step was to subpoena both Hiss and Chambers, a step that forced the Committee--most regretfully--to cancel a scheduled public hearing. On December 15th, the grand jurors, by one more than a bare majority, returned a two-count indictment against Alger Hiss. In it, it was charged that he had lied twice in his testimony: once, when he denied that he had turned State Department documents over to Whittaker Chambers, and again when he swore that he had not seen his rotund accuser “after January 1, 1937.” According to the grand jury, Hiss had delivered Government reports to Chambers in February and March of 1938 and had seen him during those months.

Hiss’ trial was originally scheduled for January 24, 1949 but, because of six adjournments, it was not until May 31st that it officially began with the selection of a ten man--two woman jury. McGohey had entrusted the case for the prosecution to the hands of Thomas F. Murphy, an Assistant United States Attorney noted for the thickest and droopiest mustache in New York County. Hiss had selected Lloyd Paul Stryker, a white-haired veteran of the criminal courts, as his attorney-in-chief. There were others--Thomas J. Donegan, who had been sent by the Attorney General to lend a helping hand, and Edward C. McLean, who used up a chair at the defense table--but it was Murphy and Stryker who carried the biggest swords. The judge was Samuel H. Kaufman, a wizened little man who could hardly see over the edge of the bench without rising from his abundantly stuffed chair.

The jury had been selected in less than three hours. Early on the afternoon of the trial’s first day, Murphy heaved his 6’ 4” bulk out of his chair and opened the Government’s case. He was going to prove, he announced, that Hiss had lied as the grand jury charged. Although he intended to corroborate Mr. Chambers’ testimony, he admitted, somewhat over-generously, that “if you don’t believe Mr. Chambers’ story, we have no case under the Federal perjury rule.” Stryker was more than willing to do battle on these terms and he assured the jury that he would do everything in his power to prove to their satisfaction that the man who accused Alger Hiss could only be described by the term used “in the warm southern countries” to warn of the approach of lepers--‘Unclean, unclean!’

Chambers was the Government’s first witness. Dressed in a baggy blue suit, he wearily repeated the testimony he had given on so many occasions in the past. He described his years in the Communist underground, his intimate friendship with the Hisses, the help the defendant had given him in obtaining secret State Department papers, and his own torturous break with the Party in 1938. This was all old hat to those who had followed the House Committee hearings, but suddenly Chambers added something new. He swore that Hiss had lent him $400.00 in the fall of 1937 to buy a new car for a trip to Florida, a trip that was to mark his disappearance from the Communist scene.

After Chambers had identified the Baltimore documents and the pumpkin papers as having been received from Hiss, Murphy asked him when he had last seen the defendant.

A. I saw Alger Hiss around Christmas, 1938.

Q. And where did you see him?

A. I saw him at his home on Volta Place.

The Hisses had lived at 3415 Volta Place in northwest Washington from December 29, 1937 to November 1, 1943, and Chambers claimed that it was at this house that he would pick up the reports that Hiss had pilfered from State’s files. At first, all papers were photographed in Baltimore by a man named Felix Inslerman, but the procedure was changed in late ’37 when Bykov ordered Priscilla Hiss to type copies of the reports.

On his last trip to Volta Place, he had tried to convince Hiss to join him in breaking with the underground. His friend had told him that he was sorry that Chambers, whom he knew only as Carl, was leaving the party because he had heard that “a new and more important post was to be given to me.” Before they had said goodbye, Hiss gave Chambers a wooden rolling-pin as a Christmas present for the latter’s infant daughter. One year later, in a conversation with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr., he had named Hiss “as a member of the Communist Party.”

Stryker didn’t waste any time beating around the bush when Murphy turned the witness over to him. He wanted to know if Mr. Chambers knew what an oath was. His man did. “An oath is a declaration which a man makes when he promises to tell the truth.” He agreed with Stryker that “in our courts it is an affirmation made by a man who calls on Almighty God to witness the truth of what he says.” But, Stryker thundered, wasn’t it a fact that he had taken an oath in 1937 to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies?” He had.

Q. That was false from the beginning to the end, was it not, Mr. Chambers?

A. Of course.

Q. And it was perjury, wasn’t it?

A. If you like.

Q. And you did it in order to deceive and cheat the United States Government ... is that not true?

A. That is correct.

Q. You were an underhanded enemy of this country doing what you could to aid a foreign country and overthrow our constitution by force and violence?

A. Yes.

Chambers admitted that he had used more than seven aliases between 1924 and 1938 when he was in the underground. Furthermore, he had lied to the Dean of Columbia University, had stolen books from numerous libraries, and had lived with several women including a New Orleans whore with the fanciful name of “One-Eyed Annie.” While he was at Columbia, he had written an anti-religious play that was so offensive that he had been expelled from the university.

Chambers was prepared to admit everything--that he had been a liar, a thief, an atheist, a spy and a cheat. But he insisted that he had repented when he broke with the Communists in April of 1938. This was the opening Stryker had been waiting for.

Q. Did you have a high, God-fearing man’s regard for an oath in August of 1948?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you in October, 1948, testify before the grand jury in this building?

A. I did.

Q. When you testified before the grand jury, you were asked whether there was any espionage and you answered that there was not?

A. I answered I had no knowledge of it.

Q. Was that answer true or false?

A. That answer was false.

Q. Then you admit that you testified falsely and committed perjury before the grand jury in this building, is that right?

A. That is right.

After getting his pliable witness to admit that he had written erotic poetry and that his brother Dick had committed suicide after two previous attempts, Stryker called it a day. Murphy tried to repair some of the damage by asking Chambers to explain why he had perjured himself before the grand jury as late as 1948. The ex-_Time_ editor (he had resigned on December 10th), maintained that he had done so “to preserve from injury in so far as I could all individuals in the past in that conspiracy.... I was particularly anxious not to injure Mr. Hiss any more than necessary out of grounds of past friendship and because he is by widespread consent a very able man. Therefore, I chose to jeopardize myself rather than reveal the full extent of his activities and those of others.” Perjury was never more nobly explained away.

Before he called Esther Chambers, Murphy put a variety of witnesses on the stand to buttress the accuser’s story. A bank official testified that Mrs. Hiss had withdrawn $400.00 from a joint account on November 17, 1937, while an automobile salesman said that Mrs. Chambers had purchased a Ford sedan four days later. After some typewritten notes and reports sent to various people by the Hisses were identified, an Oriental rug dealer by the name of Edward H. Touloukian said that he had delivered four Bokhara rugs to a Dr. Meyer Schapiro just after Christmas of 1936. Since Chambers had sworn that he had been ordered by Colonel Bykov to give the defendant a rug, Dr. Schapiro’s testimony that he had bought the rugs from Touloukian at the editor’s request and with his money was of more than passing interest.

At last, the stage was set for Mrs. Chambers’ appearance. A tiny forty-nine-year-old woman dressed in an ill-fitting gray suit, she perched nervously in the witness chair, waiting for the indignities she was sure were in the offing. Under Murphy’s gentle questioning, she revealed a wealth of domestic detail about the Hisses that complemented the story told by her husband. The two families had been the best of friends, and she could even recall a wonderful New Year’s Eve party at Volta Place in 1937. Alger and Priscilla called her Lisa and her husband, Carl. When the judge asked her what their last name had been during this period of friendship, the witness stated, “We never had a last name to them.”

Stryker spent two days trying to destroy a woman who had much more endurance than her frail physique would have suggested. While she admitted that she didn’t have “a very good head for figures or dates,” she insisted that the Hisses and the Chamberses had known each other intimately and that she had once painted a portrait of Timmy Hobson. The relationship had been so close that Priscilla Hiss had willingly permitted one of her best linen towels to be used as a diaper by one of the Chambers infants.

During most of Stryker’s cross-examination, Mrs. Chambers, although frequently close to tears, managed to maintain her composure. It was only when the defense attorney began to attack her husband that her voice rose above a whisper. In October of 1937, when she had applied for a scholarship for her daughter, she had referred to Chambers as a “freelance writer and translator.” When Stryker asked her whether she “didn’t think it was much of a misrepresentation to present your husband to this school as a decent citizen,” she snapped back: “I resent that. My husband is a decent citizen, a great man.”

Q. Was he a great decent citizen in October, 1937?

A. When he was in the underground?

Q. I just asked a simple question. Was he a great and decent citizen in October, 1937, yes or no?

A. Yes, and always.

On her direct examination, Mrs. Chambers had first testified that the New Year’s Eve party at Volta Place had taken place at the end of 1936. When it was pointed out to her that the Hisses hadn’t moved to that address until December 29, 1937, she had pushed the date one year ahead. On cross, she was sure that the New Year’s Eve party which she had in mind had taken place at 1245 30th Street and not at Volta Place. She now remembered that it was a housewarming that had occurred at the latter house.

After Mrs. Chambers had stepped down, Murphy decided that it was time to introduce the State Department documents. Photographic enlargements were exhibited on a platform which was set up on the witness box. Walter Anderson, the chief of State’s records branch, identified the typewritten papers as cables received by Foggy Bottom during the first three months of 1938 from American diplomats scattered from Tokyo to Buenos Aires. They covered subjects as unconnected as Manchukuoan finances, Nazi relations with Austria, and British ship construction plans. The microfilm documents were, in the main, interdepartmental papers from the files of the Trade Agreements Section.

After a Miss Eunice A. Lincoln, Assistant Secretary of State Francis Sayre’s private secretary, had identified four of the Baltimore memos as being in the defendant’s handwriting, Murphy called Ramos S. Feehan, an FBI typewriter expert. It was the latter’s opinion that all but one of the Baltimore documents had been typed on the same machine as letters written by the Hisses during the thirties. Stryker was not prepared to dispute Feehan’s conclusions and conceded their accuracy.

With the documents out of the way, Murphy turned to the task of connecting Chambers with their theft from the State Department. For this purpose, he summoned Henry Julian Wadleigh, an Oxford alumnus, who freely admitted that he had begun “to take out documents and give them to unauthorized people as soon as I joined the State Department.” Although he had not given any of the papers in evidence to Whittaker Chambers, he had turned others over to him. However, he insisted that he had limited his thievery to papers which passed over his desk in the Trade Agreements Section. He, too, had been given a rug by Chambers in 1937.

It took Murphy three weeks to put in his case. Stryker’s defense was confined to showing 1.) that Hiss was a man of sterling character, and 2.) that Chambers was as chronic a liar as had ever lived. To prove the first proposition, he paraded to the stand as impressive a group of character witnesses as ever graced an American court. There was John W. Davis, the unsuccessful 1924 Democratic Presidential candidate, Charles Fahy, a former Solicitor General, Admiral Richard Hepburn, and Supreme Court Justices Felix Franfurter and Stanley Reed. They all agreed that Alger Hiss’s reputation “for integrity, loyalty and veracity” was excellent.

These imposing luminaries were followed by Mrs. Claudie Catlett, a rather stout Negress, who had worked as a maid for the Hisses during their early days in Washington. She remembered that Chambers had come to the P Street house once and that he had given his name as “Crosby, like in Bing.” When her employers had moved to either Thirtieth Street or Volta Place, they had given her children an old typewriter. But Murphy forced her to admit that “I don’t remember nothing about the typewriter.” In fact, it hadn’t been until 1949 that one of her sons told her that they had received a typewriter from the Hisses.

The Catlett boys, Raymond and Perry, succeeded their mother. Raymond had helped Ed McLean trace the machine--an ancient Woodstock--to one Ira Lockey’s house where the lawyer had purchased it on April 16, 1949, for $15.00. Raymond had kept the typewriter for a year or two after the Hisses gave it to him and then he had let his brother’s wife take it. She had transferred it to his sister and he lost track of it after that until it had been found in Lockey’s house. But he was unable to tell Murphy in what month or year he had received the machine. “I haven’t got no papers, no secretary to copy all that stuff down,” he explained.

Perry Catlett recalled that the Woodstock had been broken when he first saw it. He had taken it to a repair shop on K Street but some man there had told him that it wasn’t worth fixing. He was certain that the typewriter had been given to his family when the Hisses moved to Volta Street on December 29, 1936. But when Murphy asked him, “What if I tell you that the shop on K Street wasn’t opened for business until September, 1938?,” Perry shook his head and replied, “I don’t know the time.”

When Hiss, neatly dressed in a tan summer suit, finally took the stand, he denied almost everything that Chambers had said on his direct examination. He said that he had known a man named Crosley between 1934 and 1936 but that he had never, until the summer of 1948, ever associated him with Whittaker Chambers. When Stryker asked him if he had ever been a member of the Communist party “or a fellow traveler or a sympathizer,” he quietly answered, “I am not and never have been.” He had never given any “restricted, secret or confidential documents of the State Department of any kind” to Chambers “or any other unauthorized person.” Stryker, after taking his client from his birth in Baltimore to the high point of his government career as General Secretary to the San Francisco Conference, wound up with a crescendo.

Q. Mr. Hiss, you have entered your formal and solemn plea of not guilty to the charges here against you, have you not?

A. I have.

Q. And in truth and in fact you are not guilty?

A. I am not guilty.

With a perfunctory “your witness,” Stryker returned to the counsel table.

Never once during his cross-examination did the prosecutor refer to the defendant as anything but “Mr. Witness.” He took Hiss through the entire period of his acquaintance with Crosley-Chambers, pointing up, in the process, what he obviously regarded as a bold-faced fabrication--the gift of the Twenty-eighth Street apartment and the Ford. As for the Woodstock typewriter, didn’t Hiss tell the FBI agents, who had questioned him on December 4, 1948, that he thought that his wife had given it away “subsequent to 1938?” He might have said that but “my knowledge today is that we gave the typewriter to the Catletts at the time when we moved from 30th Street to Volta Place in December, 1937.” Finally, after eight long hours, at the end of which he was trying to make some hay out of the fact that the witness had not insisted on a lie detector test, Murphy was through.

Priscilla Hiss, a thin, graying woman, followed her husband. She, too, denied any intimacy with the Chamberses as well as any typing of State Department documents. She identified the Woodstock, which sat on the defense table, as the machine her father had given her in the twenties, but insisted that she had never used it after buying a portable in the fall of 1937. Although she had told the Federal Grand Jury that she had given the Woodstock to either a junk dealer or the Salvation Army, the Catletts’ testimony had reminded her that she had turned it over to them just before the move to Volta Place.

Murphy scored early. After the witness denied that she had been a Socialist in 1932, he produced photostats of her registration showing that he had indeed enrolled as such that year. When he asked her whether she knew “that the records of the Socialist Party Morningside Branch list you as a member,” she replied, with some heat, that she did not. Lastly, remembering that Mrs. Chambers had sworn that Prossy, as she called her, had enrolled at Baltimore’s Mercy Hospital “to learn nursing,” he asked Mrs. Hiss whether this was true. It was not. Then how did she explain a letter which she had written on May 25th to the University of Maryland, applying for admission to a course in inorganic chemistry as a prerequisite for “Mercy Hospital’s training course in medical technology?” All the witness could say was that “medical technology” was different than “nursing.”

Stryker’s last witness was a mysterious man who had been sitting just behind the courtroom’s rail making copious notes as Chambers was testifying. At Murphy’s request, he had been identified on the trial’s third day as Dr. Carl Binger, a psychiatrist. After posing a hypothetical question which included every dereliction in Chambers’ past life, the defense attorney asked Binger, “now, assuming the facts as stated in the question to be true and taking into account your knowledge of his writings and translations, have you as a psychiatrist an opinion within the bounds of reasonable certainty as to the mental condition of Whittaker Chambers?” Before Binger could answer, Murphy stormed up to the bench to remind Kaufman that Chambers’ credibility was the central issue of the case and that the psychiatrist’s answer would be a usurpation of the jury’s function. The judge agreed and the good doctor walked out of the courtroom with the answer to Stryker’s question locked behind his beetled brow.

The defense promptly rested and Murphy called Burnetta Catlett, Claudie Catlett’s daughter, as his first rebuttal witness. Burnetta had begun working for a Doctor Easter when she was still in high school and had taken the Woodstock with her to type her homework.

When her employer died, she had left the machine at his house. A Vernon Marlow had found it among the doctor’s effects and finally passed it on to Ira Lockey in return for a hauling job the latter had done for him. Lockey had turned it over to his daughter who had used it to practice typing until she moved to New York in October of 1948. Finally, Ed McLean, Stryker’s cocounsel, had bought it from Lockey for fifteen dollars barely two months before the trial.

Since Perry Catlett had testified that he had taken the Woodstock to a repair shop on the corner of Connecticut Avenue and K Street, Murphy produced one Henri P. Henry, a real estate operator who managed the building. Henry was sure that there had been no typewriter repair stores on Connecticut Avenue at the time, although he did remember that the Woodstock Typewriter Company had rented a second-floor office on September 15, 1938 for two years. When the defense intimated that the company may also have had an office on K Street, a block or so away, just before it moved into Henry’s building, Murphy produced another real estate man who swore that it had done nothing more than sign a lease for the K Street quarters which had been cancelled on June 18, 1938.

John Foster Dulles was easily the Government’s most impressive witness. He said that he had sounded out Hiss at the end of 1945, when both men were en route to England for the first meeting of the United Nations, as to whether he contemplated leaving public life. Although it was Hiss’s recollection that Dulles had, during this voyage, “asked me whether I would be interested in becoming President of the Carnegie Endowment,” the latter denied that he had done so. “I don’t think,” he testified, “I discussed at that time with him the presidency of the Carnegie Endowment, because I was only one of twenty or more trustees, and the trustees did not until their main meeting take up definitely the matter of seeking a president.”

In December of 1946, after Hiss’ election as President of the Carnegie Endowment had been announced, Alfred Kohlberg, the late publisher of _Plain Talk_, wrote to Mr. Dulles that he had reason to believe that Hiss had been a Communist. Although Hiss had testified that Dulles had contacted him at once and asked him for help in preparing an answer to Kohlberg, the witness insisted that “I did not discuss with Mr. Hiss about the letter ... until some days later on.” As far as the letter’s writer was concerned, “I never wrote a letter to Mr. Kohlberg.”