Six Crises (9 page)

From the day of the private confrontation on August 17 to the public confrontation on August 25, I put in longer hours and worked harder than I had at any time in my life. I tried to anticipate how Hiss might try to explain the mass of contradictions in his story and I sought to plug up each and every loophole with documentary proof.

As the day for the hearing approached I stepped up my activity until I was spending as much as eighteen to twenty hours a day at my office. I deliberately refused to take time off for relaxation or “a break,” because my experience had been that in preparing to meet a crisis, the more I worked the sharper and quicker my mental reactions became.

I began to notice, however, the inevitable symptoms of tension. I
was “mean” to live with at home and with my friends. I was quick-tempered with the members of my staff. I lost interest in eating and skipped meals without even being aware of it. Getting to sleep became more and more difficult.

I suppose some might say that I was “nervous,” but I knew these were simply the evidences of preparing for battle. There is, of course, a fine line to be observed. One must always be keyed up for battle but he must not be jittery. He is jittery only when he worries about the natural symptoms of stress. He is keyed up when he recognizes those symptoms for what they are—the physical evidences that the mind, emotions, and body are ready for action.

There is naturally a physical limitation on how long an individual can sustain activity of this intensity. Age has something to do with it. I found, for example, that at thirty-five my capacity for intense mental work was greater than at any time before or since. But even while the body can take such punishment for days, it cannot do so indefinitely. I recall the afternoon before the big hearing on the twenty-fifth. Bert Andrews stopped by my office. He exclaimed, “You look like hell. You need some sleep.” By that time my case had been prepared and, at Andrews' insistence and for the first time in my life, I took a sleeping pill before going to bed. I slept for twelve hours and woke up the next morning physically refreshed, ready for the most important test I had had up to that time.

•  •  •

The caucus room, where Hiss had appeared three weeks before, was again jammed. Klieg lights and television cameras were set up for the first major congressional hearing ever to be televised. It was unfortunate that, back in 1948, there were so few television sets in American homes. Had millions of Americans seen Hiss on the stand that day—as was the case, for example, when Estes Kefauver questioned Frank Costello in 1951—there would not have been the lingering doubts over the Hiss case which have continued for so many years.

The Committee pointed up through its questioning the scores of loopholes in the story about George Crosley. We produced source after source to show that George Crosley never existed except in Alger Hiss's mind. We spent three hours grilling him on his story about the car. He knew that we had found the records on the car and had prepared a line of defense. He changed his story. Now he said he had not “given” or “sold” the car to Crosley but had “given Crosley the use
of the car.” But he still insisted he had done so in connection with Crosley's rental of the apartment.

I asked him how he could have given Crosley the use of a car in 1935, before the lease on the apartment expired, when he himself did not acquire a new car until months later. I reminded him that he had testified that the reason he had given the car to Crosley was that he already had a new car and thus had no need of the old one. He tried to explain this inconsistency by saying that he might have given Crosley “the use of the car” only after he acquired his new one.

But why would he then even loan a car to a man who, as he himself had testified, had welshed on his rent, I persisted.

“These were housekeeping details which a busy government official with much more important things to consider couldn't possibly be expected to remember,” Hiss responded.

I agreed that it was difficult to remember events which occurred so many years before. But was not this the only car he had ever given away? He had to reply in the affirmative.

Finally we showed him a photostatic copy of the Transfer of Title with his notarized signature on the back. We asked him to identify his signature. He hedged and indicated he would not want to do so until he had an opportunity to see the original document.

“Could you be sure if you saw the original?” asked Congressman Mundt.

“I could be surer,” replied Hiss. He had played the delaying game too far. The hearing room broke into laughter. Even his friends sitting in the front row of the spectators' section shook their heads in disbelief.

But Hiss was far from finished. He knew that he had lost the battle as to the fictitious Crosley and on the issue of the car. So he proceeded to launch a desperate counterattack.

He declared the charges against him were more than personal—that they were being used “to discredit recent great achievements of this country in which I was privileged to participate.” In doing this, he was attempting to wrap the cloak of President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal around himself, implying that any attack on him was, in effect, an attack against the foreign policy which he had helped to make and against the Administrations in which he had served.

Then, he again reviewed his fifteen years of public service and listed the names of thirty-four prominent living persons who, he said, knew him, knew his work, and had never had any occasion to doubt
his loyalty. The list included two Senators, two Congressmen, three former Secretaries of State, three Under Secretaries of State, four federal judges, and three former Senators. It was long and impressive. This was, in the highest degree, “innocence by association.” Ed Hébert called him on this tactic, pointing out that if he could not say whether John Abt, Lee Pressman, Henry Collins, and others whom he had known and who had taken the Fifth Amendment were or were not Communists, then how could the persons he listed say whether or not he, Hiss, was a Communist?

Finally, Hiss repeated his challenge—this time publicly—to Chambers, “to make statements about me with respect to Communism in public that he has made under privilege to this Committee.”

Very deftly he coupled the challenge with an unmistakable innuendo that Chambers was mentally unbalanced. He asked the Committee to pose a series of questions to Chambers—such as where he had lived, where he had worked, what he had written, and finally, whether he had ever been treated for a mental illness? Hébert again hit back hard on this one. He declared the Committee had already asked Chambers these questions because of the rumors following his first day of testimony. The answer was that Chambers had never been treated for a mental illness, had never been in a mental institution, and furthermore, was not an alcoholic.

After five hours, Hiss left the stand. Chambers followed him and again repeated his charges, denying that he had ever subleased his apartment or borrowed his car, and that he had ever been known as George Crosley. We asked Chambers the questions which Hiss had suggested in his statement. Chambers answered each one forthrightly and completely. In short, he said that Hiss's story was a complete fabrication.

For me, one of the most eloquent statements made in the history of the Committee on Un-American Activities was spoken by Chambers toward the end of that long seven-hour session when I questioned him about his motive for testifying against Hiss. The official transcript reads:

Mr. Nixon.
You were very fond of Mr. Hiss?

Mr. Chambers.
Indeed I was; perhaps my closest friend.

Mr. Nixon.
Mr. Hiss was your closest friend?

Mr. Chambers.
Mr. Hiss 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 I can have?

Mr. Nixon.
Yes, do you, I mean, is there any grudge you have against Mr. Hiss over anything 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.

There was a long silence. Then we went ahead with the questions, proceeding to play out our parts in this “tragedy of history.”

•  •  •

The confrontation was over. The tide of public opinion which had run so high in favor of Hiss just three weeks before had now turned against him. Critics who had condemned the Committee for putting Chambers on the stand now congratulated us for our perseverance in digging out the truth. But while there could be no doubt as to the outcome of the contest, many battles would have to be fought and won before complete victory for the cause of justice and truth would be achieved.

There was now no turning back in the struggle for Chambers, either. Hiss had challenged him to make his charges beyond the halls of congressional privilege. Chambers could not side-step the challenge.

Two days after the public hearing he accepted an invitation from Larry Spivak to appear on “Meet the Press.” Ed Folliard, who had covered the hearings for the Washington
Post,
posed the expected key question: “Are you willing to repeat your charge that Alger Hiss was a Communist?”

“Alger Hiss was a Communist and may still be one,” said Chambers. Those ten words set in motion a chain of circumstances which led to revelations that neither Chambers nor Hiss desired nor expected.

It was ironic that Folliard's question was the one which served to detonate these explosive developments. The Washington
Post,
which was typical of a large segment of the national press and of public opinion, had always taken a dim view of the Committee on Un-American
Activities and had launched an all-out assault on its procedures after Hiss first testified.

It kept up a drumfire of comment and criticism throughout the weeks during which the case developed. Its editorials called on the Committee to drop its investigation and leave it to those with the proper “constitutional duty.” It questioned the sense of believing “turncoats” rather than men of “unsullied reputation.” It even termed the confrontation “inconclusive.”

But a few weeks after Chambers had accused Hiss on “Meet the Press” and there had still been no response from Hiss, even the
Post
changed its tune: “Mr. Hiss had created a situation in which he is obliged to put up or shut up. Mr. Hiss has left himself no alternative.” Hiss was learning what many people in politics had learned before him: those he thought were his best friends turned out to be the heaviest cross he had to bear.

Three weeks passed and then, at the end of September, Hiss filed a $50,000 libel suit—later increased to $75,000—against Chambers in the U. S. District Court in Baltimore. He charged that Chambers had damaged his reputation by publicly accusing him of having been a Communist. Chambers cross-filed the classic defense for libel: truth. You cannot libel anyone if you state only the truth about him, no matter how damaging.

With this, I felt that the Committee's work had come to an end. The issue was now in the courts, and any further investigation by us might interfere with judicial proceedings.

For the next six weeks, through October and into early November, I turned to other assignments. Nineteen forty-eight was an election year. I had no personal problems in that respect. My re-election to a second term had been assured when I won both the Democratic and Republican nominations in the June primaries, under California's cross-filing system. But I had accepted a number of invitations to speak in various parts of the country for the Dewey-Warren ticket and for other Republican candidates for the House and Senate.

Domestic Communism was not a significant issue in that campaign. Probably because of the uncertain status of the Hiss-Chambers case, Dewey felt it was not proper to give too much prominence to the issue of Communist infiltration in government during the Truman Administration. I found great interest in my audiences when I discussed the Bentley charges and our investigation of the Hiss case. But what I
said, of course, received no more than local attention in the areas in which I spoke.

The result on Election Day, 1948, was an unpleasant surprise for me and all Republicans. It really jolted Whittaker Chambers. A few days after the election I stopped to see him and his wife in Westminster on my way to York County, Pennsylvania, for a visit with my parents. He was in a mood of deep depression. He was not concerned with the election results from a partisan standpoint—he had never mentioned his partisan affiliation with me in our many discussions. What worried him was that the whole investigation of Communist infiltration in the United States and particularly in our government might be allowed to die. President Truman had indicated during the campaign that he would push for abolition of the Committee on Un-American Activities if he were re-elected. Chambers feared that the investigations by the Committee and by the New York Grand Jury would be dropped and that, even if the Committee were to survive, its powers would be greatly weakened with the shift in the Eighty-first Congress from Republican to Democratic control.

Chambers did not seem to be concerned that he might lose his $25,000-a-year job with
Time
or that he might lose everything he owned if Hiss won a judgment against him in the libel suit which was still pending. He only mentioned in passing that he was to go to Baltimore in a day or two for the purpose of answering questions by Hiss's attorneys in a deposition hearing.