Six Crises (8 page)

But with his temper no longer under control, he did not fight as skillfully as he had before. When I asked him about the alleged rental agreement with Crosley, he said that he had not been paid “a single red cent in currency.” He had forgotten that just twenty-four hours earlier he had testified that Crosley had paid him $15 or $20 in cash. He still insisted that he had given the car to Crosley as part of the rental agreement—just thrown it in because he had no use for it—without requiring Crosley, a man he knew so slightly, to pay anything extra.

He recalled now that Crosley, with his wife and child, had spent two or three days with him and Mrs. Hiss in their P Street house before moving into the Twenty-eighth Street apartment, and that on one occasion Crosley had ridden from Washington to New York with him and Mrs. Hiss in their car. He had made some small loans to Crosley, amounting in all to $35 or $40, some even after Crosley had failed to pay the rent. On several occasions, Crosley had stayed overnight in the Hiss home because “he couldn't get a hotel reservation.”

The longer he testified, the more apparent it became that despite his original protestations, his acquaintance with Crosley was far from casual. On the basis of his own testimony, he had known him very well.

Stripling brought this point home most effectively. He said, “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's 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 Ford automobile and permitted him to use, or you leased him, your apartment, and . . . the only thing you have to check on is this denture. . . . 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?”

Forced into a corner, Hiss again made a damaging admission. “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 . . . was shown a photograph by you, Mr. Stripling [on August fifth], there was again some familiarity [in] features.”

Stripling reminded Hiss that in the public session on August 5, he had left the directly contrary impression with the members of the Committee and the press.

But Hiss still refused to take an oath that Chambers was Crosley. “He may have had his face lifted,” he protested.

Finally, he requested permission to ask Chambers some questions. I told him to proceed.

He asked: “Did you ever sublet an apartment on Twenty-ninth Street from me?”

Chambers replied: “No, I did not.”

“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?”
⁵

This time Chambers answered: “I most certainly did.”

Hiss then said: “Would you tell me how you reconcile your negative answers with this affirmative answer?”

Chambers replied quietly: “Very easily, Alger. I was a Communist and you were a Communist. . . . As I have testified before, I came to Washington as a Communist functionary, a functionary of the American Communist Party. I was connected with the underground group of which Mr. Hiss was a member. Mr. Hiss and I became friends.
To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Hiss himself suggested that I go there, and I accepted gratefully.”

Hiss finally gave up. “I don't need to ask Mr. Whittaker Chambers any more questions. I am now perfectly prepared to identify this man as George Crosley.”

Once again, Hiss, not thinking with his usual clarity, had made a misstep. Chambers, according to his own testimony, was a consummate liar, a man who could not be believed on anything. Yet Hiss was identifying him on the basis of one of Chambers' own statements.

McDowell then asked Chambers, “Is this the man, Alger Hiss, who was also a member of the Communist Party, at whose home you stayed?”

“Positive identification,” Chambers responded.

These words were hardly out of Chambers' mouth when Hiss arose from his chair and strode over to him, shaking his fist and exclaiming, “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 for libel. I challenge you to do it, and I hope you will do it damned quickly.”

Lou Russell, apparently thinking Hiss might strike Chambers, walked up to him and took him by the arm. Hiss recoiled as if he had been pricked with a hot needle and turned on Russell. His voice was shrill now. “I am not going to touch him. You are touching me.”

“Please sit down, Mr. Hiss,” Russell said.

Hiss shot back, “I will sit down when the Chairman asks me.”

McDowell called for order and the questioning resumed. Hiss continued to deny vehemently the rest of Chambers' testimony. He denied that he was a Communist, that he knew Crosley as a Communist, or that there was anything unusual in giving his car away to a magazine writer he hardly knew.

Stripling again raised the point of his insisting on seeing Chambers' teeth before he could identify him. Hiss replied, “I wouldn't have been able to identify him for certain today without his own assistance.”

“You are willing to waive the dentures?”

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

The hearing came to an end with the feeling that a great hurdle had been surmounted: the two men had confronted one another and their pasts were linked. The inextricable chain of events that would
ultimately send Alger Hiss to prison had been set in motion and Hiss must have sensed this. McDowell adjourned the hearing, saying, “That is all. Thank you very much.”

“I don't reciprocate,” Hiss snapped in response.

•  •  •

I should have been elated. The case was broken. The Committee would be vindicated and I personally would receive credit for the part I had played. We had succeeded in preventing injustice being done to a truthful man and were now on the way to bringing an untruthful man to justice. Politically, we would now be able to give the lie to Truman's contemptuous dismissal of our hearings as a “red herring.”

However, I experienced a sense of letdown which is difficult to describe or even to understand. I had carried great responsibility in the two weeks since August 3, and the battle had been a hard one. Now I began to feel the fatigue of which I had not been aware while the crisis was at its peak. There was also a sense of shock and sadness that a man like Hiss could have fallen so low. I imagined myself in his place and wondered how he would feel when his family and friends learned the true story of his involvement with Chambers and the Communist conspiracy. It is not a pleasant picture to see a whole brilliant career destroyed before your eyes. I realized that Hiss stood before us completely unmasked—our hearing had saved one life, but had ruined another.

But this case involved far more than the personal fortunes of Hiss, Chambers, myself, or the members of our Committee. It involved the security of the whole nation and the cause of free men everywhere. When I thought of the lengths to which Hiss had been willing to go to destroy Chambers and the Committee as well, I knew that he was fighting his battle without regard to its effect on him or anybody else, individually or personally.

The next morning I learned a fundamental rule of conduct in crises. The point of greatest danger is not in preparing to meet the crisis or fighting the battle; it occurs after the crisis of battle is over, regardless of whether it has resulted in victory or defeat. The individual is spent physically, emotionally, and mentally. He lets down. Then if he is confronted with another battle, even a minor skirmish, he is prone to drop his guard and to err in his judgment.

Alger Hiss brought his wife, Priscilla, to the same room in the Commodore Hotel the next day to corroborate his story about Crosley.
Thomas and McDowell had returned to Washington, and I was the only member of the Committee present. As I read the record now, thirteen years later, I realize the opportunity I missed in failing to question her as thoroughly as I had Hiss.

There were several reasons for that failure. I was tired. I thought that after our major break-through with Hiss the night before, Mrs. Hiss's testimony was not too important. I felt, in other words, that the battle was won, that I could afford to relax. Undoubtedly, I subconsciously reacted to the fact that she was a woman, and that the simple rules of courtesy applied.

She played her part with superb skill. When I asked her to take the oath to tell the truth, she inquired demurely if she could “affirm” rather than “swear.” Subtly, she was reminding me of our common Quaker background. When I asked her about Crosley, she said, “I don't think I can really be said to have been acquainted with him at all.” She remembered hardly anything about Crosley or his wife. “It all seems very long ago and vague.”

Offering her vague impression of Crosley, she said, “I think the polite word for it is probably I think he was a sponger. I don't know whether you have ever had guests, unwelcome guests, guests that weren't guests, you know.”

She succeeded completely in convincing me that she was nervous and frightened, and I did not press her further. I should have remembered that Chambers had described her as, if anything, a more fanatical Communist than Hiss. I could have made a devastating record had I also remembered that even a woman who happens to be a Quaker and then turns to Communism must be a Communist first and a Quaker second. But I dropped the ball and was responsible for not exploiting what could have been a second break-through in the case.
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I was never to make that same error again. In the years ahead I would never forget that where the battle against Communism is concerned, victories are never final so long as the Communists are still able to fight. There is never a time when it is safe to relax or let down. When you have won one battle is the time you should step up your effort to win another—until final victory is achieved.

When I arrived back in Washington the afternoon of the eighteenth, the attitude in the Capital with regard to the Hiss-Chambers controversy
had changed perceptibly. Hiss's admission that he had known Chambers, even under another name, had restored some confidence in the Committee and in Chambers, and it had shaken those who had been completely taken in by Hiss's attempt to create the impression that he was being accused by a man he didn't even know.

But we were still not out of the woods. When we had taken the train to New York on the afternoon of the seventeenth we had been way behind. Now we were about even. But we still had to prove not simply that Hiss knew Chambers but to determine the truth of Chambers' charges that Hiss was a Communist. And on this specific issue, all we had was Hiss's word against Chambers'. In the week between August 18 and the public confrontation on August 25, we drove our staff at an even harder pace in an effort to find corroborative evidence that would prove either Chambers' or Hiss's version of their relationship.

We first tried to find witnesses who might be able to corroborate Hiss's version of the relationship. We tracked down everyone who might possibly have known or seen George Crosley—including the editors of the magazines for which he was supposed to have written; former Senator Gerald Nye; members of his old Committee staff; and three individuals who Hiss had told us on August 17 at the Commodore might have known Crosley at the same time he did. In every case, the answer was the same: they had never heard of a George Crosley. In the entire history of the case, both before the Committee on Un-American Activities and in Hiss's two trials for perjury, no one could be found who could remember George Crosley—except Priscilla Hiss.

We subpoenaed John Abt and Lee Pressman, whom Chambers had charged were also members of the same Communist group. Both men—like Henry Collins before them—refused to answer questions on grounds of self-incrimination.

The critical piece of evidence in the case, however, was Hiss's 1929 Ford roadster. Here our staff seemed to have reached a dead end. They searched the records of the Department of Motor Vehicles for all automobile transfers in the District for the year 1935 and came up with a blank. Finally I suggested that they might be checking the wrong year and that they extend their search to include both 1934 and 1936. On August 23, two days before the public confrontation, they hit pay dirt. We had found what we were looking for.

One of our investigators found a Motor Vehicle transfer certificate
dated July 23, 1936. It covered a title transfer of a 1929 Ford automobile, signed by Alger Hiss as owner and notarized by a Marvin Smith. The car had been transferred, not to George Crosley or to Whittaker Chambers, but to one William Rosen. We also found a Certificate of Title dated September 7, 1935, assigning a new Plymouth sedan to Alger Hiss.

Now we put the pieces of the puzzle together. We subpoenaed Marvin Smith, the notary, and he swore that Alger Hiss had personally appeared before him and signed the Certificate of Title in his presence. We learned that William Rosen, to whom the car had been transferred that same day, had a long record of membership in the Communist Party. When we called him later to testify before the Committee, he refused to answer questions about his membership in the Communist Party and as to whether he had ever owned a 1929 Ford automobile—although he answered readily enough about his ownership of other automobiles.

We also found that the lease on Hiss's apartment, in which Chambers and his wife had stayed, had expired on August 1, 1935. Hiss's story had gaping holes in it. If he had “given” or “sold” the car to Crosley as he had testified, why did Crosley's name not appear on the Transfer of Title? The theory that Crosley might have taken the car from Hiss and delivered it to Rosen wouldn't stand up either: Hiss had stated emphatically that he had given away the car as “part of the rental transaction.” Would he, a year after the supposed rental agreement had expired, still have given Crosley a car—and after they had parted “with strong words” because of Crosley's welshing on the rent?