Six Crises (7 page)

“No kind of automobile,” Hiss replied. “I sold him an automobile. I had an old Ford that I threw in with the apartment, that I had been trying to trade in and get rid of. A slightly collegiate model. It wasn't very fancy, but it had a sassy little trunk on the back.”

“You sold him that car?” I asked.

“I threw it in,” Hiss replied. “He wanted a way to get around and I said, ‘Fine. I want to get rid of it. I have another car. We kept it for sentimental reasons—not worth a damn.' I let him have it along with the rent.”

“You gave this car to Crosley?” I asked.

“I threw it in along with the apartment—charged the rent and threw the car in at the same time,” Hiss replied.

“In other words, added a little to the rent to cover the car?”

“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.”

From there I went on with the other questions which I had asked Chambers. In virtually every detail, Hiss's answers matched those of Chambers. He had a brown cocker spaniel which he boarded at a kennel near Rock Creek Park when he went on vacation to the eastern shore of Maryland. He used to fetch water from the Druid Hills spring as a boy of twelve to sell in Baltimore.

“What hobby, if any, do you have, Mr. Hiss?” I asked.

“Tennis and amateur ornithology,” he replied.

“Did you ever see a prothonotary warbler?” McDowell asked.

“I have, right here on the Potomac. Do you know that place?” Hiss replied. “ . . . They come back and nest in those swamps. Beautiful yellow head. A gorgeous bird.”

The lease on the apartment expired in September 1935, Hiss said. “And I think I saw him several times after that. I think he told me he moved from here to Baltimore.”

“Even though he didn't pay his rent, you saw him several times?” I asked.

“He was about to pay it and was going to sell his articles. He gave me a payment on it on account once. He brought a rug over which he said some wealthy patron gave him. I have still got the damned thing.”

“Did you ever give him anything?” I asked.

“Never anything but a couple of loans. Never got paid back,” Hiss replied.

“Have you ever heard of him since 1935?” I asked.

“No. Never thought of him again until this morning on the train,” Hiss answered.

Hiss said that to his knowledge Crosley was not a member of the Communist Party and that they had never discussed Communism. Crosley claimed to have written for
American Magazine
and for
Cosmopolitan,
but Hiss said he had never seen Crosley's name on any articles and that he personally had never seen anything Crosley had written. Apart from the rug, he had paid only $15 or $20 on the rent—which would have been $225 for the three-month summer period.

I told Hiss that Chambers had indicated his willingness to take a lie detector test with regard to this testimony and asked him if he would also be willing to do so. Hiss said that he would like to have an opportunity for further consultation as to the accuracy of such tests before he gave his answer.

Just before the end of the session, the Committee voted to hold a public hearing on Wednesday, August 25, in the caucus room of the Old House Office Building—at which time Chambers and Hiss would have the opportunity to confront one another. Hiss agreed to be present.

•  •  •

That evening Stripling and I spent several hours in my office comparing notes on our reactions to Hiss's testimony. We were convinced that Crosley and Chambers were the same man. Chambers did know Hiss. But the key question remained: which man was telling the truth as to the character of that relationship?

Hiss's story was plausible. But could an argument over his failure to pay a $200 rent bill cause Chambers—thirteen years later—to risk his
reputation, a $25,000-a-year job, and a prison term for perjury, in order to get revenge on Hiss? Where was the motivation?

And then there was the testimony about the car. Why would Hiss, who was not a wealthy man, give even an old car in those depression days to a “deadbeat” free-lance writer with whom he had only a casual acquaintance? I recalled, too, that Hiss had spoken with rather strange and uncharacteristic vehemence when we asked him about the car. “It wasn't worth a damn,” he had said. And he seemed to have a similar reaction when we spoke of Chambers giving him the rug. “I still have the damn thing,” he had exclaimed. Was there something about the car and the rug that especially worried him? Like Lady Macbeth, was he saying, in effect, “Out, damned spot!”
⁴

But we had not been able to find the records on the car, and Chambers had not even mentioned the rug. Stripling and I decided that every available member of our small Committee staff should concentrate between now and August 25 in trying to find out what had happened to that “slightly collegiate model Ford with the sassy little trunk on the back.”

Stripling left my office shortly before midnight, but I continued to appraise the testimony of both Hiss and Chambers. I knew that we had reached the critical breaking point in the case. Timing now became especially important.

If Hiss's story about Crosley were true, why had he not disclosed it to the Committee when he first appeared in public session? Why had he first tried so desperately to divert the Committee from questioning him on the facts Chambers had previously testified to? The longer I thought about the evidence, the more I became convinced that if Hiss had concocted the Crosley story, we would be playing into his hands by delaying the public confrontation until August 25, thus giving him nine more days to make his story fit the facts. With his great influence within the Administration and among some of his friends in the press, he might be able to develop an enormous weight of public opinion to back up his story and to obscure the true facts in the case. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that we should not delay the confrontation. Only the man who was not telling the truth would gain by having additional time to build up his case.

So, at two in the morning, I called Stripling on the phone. I told
him to summon both Chambers and Hiss before the Sub-committee in New York City that same afternoon. Desiring as much privacy as possible, we decided to have the meeting in a suite in the Commodore Hotel.

That afternoon, riding on the train from Washington to New York, we read in the papers that Harry Dexter White, who had denied Chambers' and Elizabeth Bentley's testimony that he had participated in Communist activities, had died of a heart attack. The Committee was subsequently to be accused of arranging the Hiss-Chambers confrontation on August 17 in order to divert attention from White's death. All I can say is that this accusation—like so many others against the Committee—while plausible, is completely untrue. I myself had made the decision on the confrontation well before I learned of White's death.

•  •  •

At 5:35
P.M.
on August 17, John McDowell opened the meeting of our Sub-committee by swearing in Alger Hiss as our first witness.

Room 1400 of the Commodore was an average-size hotel sitting room. Only one feature of it was in keeping with the high drama of the Hiss-Chambers case: the pictures on the wall were Audubon prints.

McDowell and I sat on separate chairs, our backs to the window, with a lamp table to serve as the presiding officer's rostrum. Parnell Thomas arrived later. We had Hiss sit in a chair about eight or ten feet from the table, facing us. We reserved a place for Chambers on the couch, which was against the wall directly on Hiss's right. The only others present were four members of the Committee staff and the official reporter recording the proceedings. Hiss entered the room accompanied by Charles Dollard of the Carnegie Corporation staff.

I opened the questioning by informing Hiss that, since he had raised the possibility of a third party who might be involved in the case—I was referring, of course, to “George Crosley”—the Committee had concluded that Hiss and Chambers should confront each other at the earliest possible time. I told him he would have the opportunity to see Chambers at this hearing.

From the beginning, Hiss dropped all previous pretensions of injured innocence. He was on the defensive—edgy, delaying, belligerent, fighting every inch of the way. When he found that the Committee hearing might take longer than fifteen minutes, he complained that he had a six o'clock appointment at the Harvard Club and asked that a
call be made explaining his delay. Dollard offered to make the call for him so that we could proceed.

Then Hiss commented, “I would like the record to show that on my way downtown from my uptown office, I learned from the press of the death of Harry White, which came as a great shock to me, and I am not sure that I feel in the best possible mood for testimony. I do not for a moment want to miss the opportunity of seeing Mr. Chambers. I merely wanted the record to show that.”

He then complained that parts of his testimony of the day before had been leaked to the press and implied that the Committee was responsible.

Finally, after about ten minutes of sparring on these collateral issues, I said to one of the staff members: “Mr. Russell, will you bring Mr. Chambers in?”

Russell went to the adjoining bedroom where Chambers was waiting. Minutes seemed to pass as we sat there in silence waiting for him to return. Actually, after only a few seconds, Russell opened the door and re-entered the room with Chambers.

They came through a door at the far end of the room, in back of Hiss, and then had to walk several steps to reach the davenport on his right. But during this period, Hiss did not once turn around to look at his accuser—the man he had said he was so anxious to see “in the flesh.” He just sat in his chair staring straight ahead, looking out the window.

After Chambers reached the davenport, I asked both him and Hiss to stand. I then said, “Mr. Hiss, the man standing here is Mr. Whittaker Chambers. I ask you now if you have ever known that man before.”

“May I ask him to speak?” said Hiss. “Will you ask him to say something?”

I asked Chambers to state his name and business.

Chambers responded: “My name is Whittaker Chambers.”

Hiss walked toward Chambers until he was not more than a foot away and looked down into his mouth. He said, “Would you mind opening your mouth wider?”

Chambers repeated: “My name is Whittaker Chambers.”

Hiss, speaking more loudly, demanded again: “I said, would you open your mouth? You know what I am referring to, Mr. Nixon. Will you go on talking?”

Chambers continued: “I am Senior Editor of
Time
magazine.”

Hiss then turned to me. “May I ask whether his voice, when he testified before, was comparable to this?”

“His voice?” I asked.

“Or did he talk a little more in a lower key?” Hiss continued.

McDowell commented, “I would say it is about the same now as we have heard.”

Hiss was not yet satisfied. “Would you ask him to talk a little more?”

I handed the
Time
editor a copy of
Newsweek
which was on the table and asked him to read from it.

Hiss said: “I think he is George Crosley, but I would like to hear him talk a little longer. Are you George Crosley?” he asked Chambers.

A quizzical smile came to Chambers' lips as he answered: “Not to my knowledge. You are Alger Hiss, I believe.”

Hiss straightened up as if he had been slapped in the face. “I certainly am,” he said defiantly.

Chambers answered quietly and with a smile, “That was my recollection,” and continued to read from the copy of
Newsweek—
“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 interrupted: “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. I believe I am not prepared without further checking to take an absolute oath that he must be George Crosley.”

I asked Chambers if he had had any work done on his teeth since 1934. He replied that he had had some extractions and some bridge-work in the front of his mouth.

Hiss then said, “Could you ask him the name of the dentist that performed these things?”

I could hardly keep a straight face, but I decided to play the game out.

“What is the name?” I asked Chambers.

He replied, “Dr. Hitchcock, Westminster, Maryland.”

Hiss then said: “That testimony of Mr. Chambers, if it can be believed, would tend to substantiate my feeling that he represented [himself] to me in 1934 or 1935 or thereabouts 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.”

I thought the comedy had gone far enough and said, “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?”

Hiss realized he had overplayed the hand. After a long moment of silence, he changed the subject. “I would like a few more questions asked. . . . I feel very strongly that he is Crosley, but he looks very different in girth and in other appearances—hair, forehead, and so on, particularly the jowls.”

Any of our last lingering doubts that Hiss had known Chambers were erased by this incredible, and in some ways almost pitiful, performance. All his poise was gone now. He knew that his daring maneuver of trying to deny that he had ever known Chambers had ended in disaster—but he was not finished. With a look of cold hatred in his eyes, he fought like a caged animal as we tried to get him to make a positive identification for the record.