Part 14

_A Traitor from Harvard_

The United States of America

_versus_

Alger Hiss

A few minutes after eleven o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, August 3, 1948, a portly little man walked slowly to the front of the Ways and Means Committee Room in which the House Committee on Un-American Activities was holding an open session. After he had been sworn, he sat down gingerly in a wooden chair that was perched directly in front of a raised platform behind which acting Chairman Karl Mundt and five of his colleagues were ensconced. Robert Stripling, the Committee’s counsel, began the hearing.

Q. Will you state your full name?

A. My name is David Whittaker Chambers.

Q. Where and when were you born?

A. I was born April 1, 1901, in Philadelphia.

Q. How long have you been associated with _Time Magazine_?

A. Nine years.

Q. Prior to that time, what was your occupation?

A. I was a member of the Communist Party and a paid functionary of the party.

The witness asked if he might read a prepared statement. In a voice that was barely audible at the press table, he told of his fifteen years’ service as a Soviet espionage agent. In 1939, two years after he said that he had “repudiated Marx’ doctrines and Lenin’s tactics,” he had gone to Washington to report what he knew “about the infiltration of the United States Government by Communists.” At that time, he had told Assistant Secretary of State Adolph A. Berle, Jr., that there was an underground Communist movement in the government. “The head of the underground group at the time I knew it was Nathan Witt, an attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. Later, John Abt became the leader. Lee Pressman was also a member of this group, as was Alger Hiss, who, as a member of the State Department, later organized the conferences at Dumbarton Oaks, San Francisco, and the United States side of the Yalta Conference.”

In New York City, Alger Hiss, who was in the middle of his second year as the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, had just returned from a month’s vacation in Vermont. As soon as he heard of Chambers’ charges, he sent a telegram to Chairman Mundt in which he stated, “I do not know Mr. Chambers and insofar as I am aware have never laid eyes on him.” He requested permission to “appear before your Committee to make these statements formally and under oath.” Hiss suggested Thursday, August 5th, and hoped that “that will be a convenient time from the Committee’s point of view for me to appear.” Mundt immediately wired back that it was.

On Thursday morning, Hiss had his chance. In the large Caucus Room in the Old House Office Building, he told the Committee that he had never heard of Whittaker Chambers until 1947 “when two representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had asked me if I knew him.... I said I did not know Chambers. So far as I know, I have never laid eyes on him, and I should like to have the opportunity to do so.” As far as Chambers’ accusations were concerned, they were all “complete fabrications.” The witness was willing to let his Government service speak for itself.

On Tuesday, Chambers had testified that, before he had broken with the underground, he had tried to persuade Alger Hiss to do the same. In a tearful scene at the Hiss home, his friend had “absolutely refused to break.” Hiss denied that any such incident had ever occurred and repeated his statement that, as far as he knew, the name Chambers “means absolutely nothing to me.” When he was shown a recent photograph of Chambers, the witness insisted that he “would much rather see the individual.... I would not want to take an oath that I had never seen that man. I would like to see him and then I think that I would be better able to tell whether I had ever seen him.” When Mundt told him that Chambers was not present in the hearing room, Hiss replied, somewhat sharply, that “I hoped he would be.”

Even though the acting chairman wondered publicly “what possible motive a man who edits _Time Magazine_ could have for mentioning Alger Hiss in the same breath as Nathan Witt, Lee Pressman, John Abt and Harold Ware, he thanked Mr. Hiss for his “very cooperative attitude” and “forthright statements.” Furthermore, he stated that he had been impressed by the fact that the witness was the first of all the people named by Elizabeth Bentley and the other apostates to come forward voluntarily and deny his guilt. Even Mississippi’s Rankin, who was not known for his kinship with intellectuals, congratulated Hiss for not taking advantage of the Fifth Amendment and for appearing without a lawyer “to tell him what to say.” All in all, it had not been a bad day for the gentleman from New York.

After Hiss had denied knowing Chambers, Stripling informed Mundt that “there is a very sharp contradiction here in the testimony. I certainly suggest Mr. Chambers be brought back before the Committee and clear this up.” The chairman agreed and appointed a sub-committee composed of California’s Nixon, Louisiana’s Hébert and Pennsylvania’s McDowell to question Chambers in executive session. Two days later, the sub-committee met in Room 101 of New York’s United States Courthouse. With Nixon taking the lead, Chambers was questioned closely about his claimed acquaintance with Alger Hiss and his family. The witness’ answers revealed such an intimate knowledge of the Hisses that it was apparent that he had either known them extremely well or done considerable homework.

First of all, Hiss had known him only as Carl, his party name. They had been the best of friends and he had spent a great deal of time at the various Hiss homes in Baltimore and Washington. The witness’ knowledge of what Hiss later referred to as “petty housekeeping details” was apparently inexhaustible. He knew that Mrs. Hiss called her husband “Hilly,” that the Hisses had a cocker spaniel, and that “they both had the same hobby--amateur ornithologists, bird observers.” In fact, he remembered that “once, they saw, to their great excitement, a prothonotary warbler.”

MR. McDOWELL: A very rare specimen?

MR. CHAMBERS: I never saw one. I am also fond of birds.

When he had first met the Hisses, they owned a Ford roadster which, he remembered, “was black and it was very dilapidated.” In 1936, they had purchased a new Plymouth, and J. Peters, the head of the underground organization, had helped them dispose of the Ford through a Communist service station in Washington. He described Hiss as a slender man, “about 5 feet 8 or 9,” who walked with “a slight mince;” Priscilla Hiss was “a short, highly nervous, little woman” who had “a habit of blushing red when she is excited or angry, fiery red.” Timmy Hobson, Mrs. Hiss’ son by a previous marriage, “was a puny little boy, also rather nervous.” The boy’s father was paying for his education but the Hisses were diverting “a large part of that money to the Communist Party.”

MR. NIXON: Hiss told you that?

MR. CHAMBERS: Yes, sir.

MR. NIXON: Did he name the Communist Party as the recipient?

MR. CHAMBERS: Certainly.

MR. NIXON: He might have said simply “the party.” Could it have been the Democratic Party or Socialist Party?

MR. CHAMBERS: No.

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.