Federal Courthouse, NY, 1938

This is a short podcast to acquaint you with the actors about to come on stage in the drama of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. They are the government Prosecutor Thomas Murphy, Hiss’s principal defense lawyer Lloyd Paul Stryker, Judge Samuel Kaufman, and the jury.   Additional Research   Murphy, a 6’ 4” muscular giant of a man with an enormous walrus mustache, tried to come across as the quiet, somewhat plodding, but totally competent and honest government attorney just doing his job.  He knew he could not match Hiss’s barrister Lloyd Paul Stryker, the greatest criminal defense lawyer in the country and a dramatic actor who could resemble a July 4 fireworks display if he wanted to.  Also, prosecutors’ excessive drama can create sympathy for defendants.  In later years, Murphy was briefly Police Commissioner of New York City (appointed by a reform Mayor) and for decades afterwards was a judge, appointed by President Truman, in the court where the Hiss trials occurred — the federal District Court for the Southern District of New York.  A lawyer/friend who practiced before him told me that Murphy was a very quiet, laid back, passive trial judge and that these traits reflected his inner total self-confidence and sense of his own competence.  My friend said that no matter which side of a case you were on you were always happy when you got Murphy as trial judge. He would let you put on your case as you wished and wouldn’t be interrupting your choreography to preen before the jury, comment on the evidence, or audition for higher office   Lloyd Paul Stryker was a magnificent performer, a real barn-burner.  He might be out of place in today’s cool culture.  To him, his client was all things good and the other side was pure evil.  It was that simple.  He tended to ‘swing for the bleachers,’ ignoring details and endlessly pounding away at one or two simple points in Shakespearean English.  He had a one man office, employing very young lawyers for a few years and then letting them go (with the benefit of having worked for a grand master).  Among the books he wrote (in his spare time!) are laudatory biographies of our first impeached President, Andrew Johnson, and the famous 18th-19th century liberal British barrister Thomas Erskine, and two legal treatises — all available on Amazon.  By the time of this trial, he was approaching old age.  He had made a lot of money but I think he had spent most of it.   Little is known about the judge at the first trial, Samuel Kaufman.  He must have been good to become a judge in the prestigious Southern District, but he left no mark and was thought by some to be a hack from the Manhattan Democratic Party’s ‘machine’ in Tammany Hall, which was still quite powerful in the 1940s.  He was so small physically that, when he leaned back all the way in his swivel chair up on the bench, he sometimes disappeared from view.   About the jury, the important thing is that, judging from their occupations, none of them had been to graduate school and perhaps none of them had been to college.  They were the kind of people who can’t afford to live in Manhattan any more.  This trial took them into an unfamiliar world, of conceptual policy making and political ideology.   Questions:  Do you think Murphy and Stryker were well suited for the roles in which fate cast them?  If you were one of them, how would you use the other’s character traits to your advantage?  If you were Murphy or Stryker, how would you take the jury into the foreign (to them) world of the State Department and espionage for the Soviet Union in a way that made your side look good and the other side look bad?  How would you make your man, Hiss or Chambers, seem to someone on the jury as just an honest ordinary person like me?  

 

Pic: Library of Congress   Alger Hiss is going on trial for perjury.  This Podcast is a survey, at 23,000 feet, of the possible arguments for The Prosecution and for The Hiss Defense.  Of each side’s possible arguments, which are strong and which are weak?  This may be of special interest to real trial lawyers, or to the inner Perry Mason who lurks within each of us.   If you were The Prosecution, what would you emphasize to the jury? What are Chambers’ strengths as a witness? What are his weaknesses? You also have all the documents Chambers produced, of course.  Do you have anything else — any other witnesses you would call?  When you cross-examine Hiss, is there anything you would like him to admit to?   Suppose you were The Hiss Defense and you decided to mount a fighting defense (not resting on the presumption of innocence that is the right of every criminal defendant).  Would you concentrate on attacking Chambers (who is a target-rich environment)?  Or would you emphasize building up Hiss’ sterling past acts and glowing character references?  Can you give Chambers a plausible motive for lying about Hiss?  Can you explain Chambers’ possession of documents by Hiss and his wife, obviously prepared for espionage in 1938, that Chambers produced in 1948?  The Grand Jury didn’t buy Hiss’s Exculpatory Theory #1.  What is your Exculpatory Theory #2?      Further Research:   This Podcast is about the arguments for The Prosecution, and the arguments for The Hiss Defense, in the upcoming trial of Alger Hiss for perjury.     Suppose you were The Prosecution.  Two crucial points to bear in mind: first, you must prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that Hiss lied when he denied passing government documents to Chambers in 1937 and 1938.  The jury must be left with no doubt, based in reason, that Hiss did that.  Also, something called The Federal Perjury Rule says that the testimony of one witness — Chambers, obviously — is not enough.  The Prosecution must have two witnesses, or one witness plus independent corroboration.  Assuming Chambers is your only witness, what is your independent corroboration?  How do you make Chambers credible, overcoming his strangeness, his being a confessed traitor, his possibly disreputable ratting out of his best friend, and his past denials under oath that any spying took place?  Is there some way you can make Hiss look worse than Chambers?  How would you prove that the handwritten documents were in Hiss’s handwriting and that the typed documents were typed on the Hiss home typewriter?   There is almost no record of what The Prosecution was thinking about these matters. Much about the FBI’s factual investigations, of which there are extensive (and sometimes hilarious) records, is described in a much later Podcast, #37, about what did not come out at the trials.   Suppose you were The Hiss Defense? You need do absolutely nothing — The Prosecution has the burden of proof and Hiss is innocent until proven guilty.  But suppose you want to mount a fighting defense. How can you weaken The Prosecution’s Case?  Other than Chambers’ weaknesses that were just described, would you dredge up his past strange behavior and try to make him seem insane, or mentally ill, or at least not believable BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT?  Would you introduce evidence that Chambers was a homosexual?  (Remember this is 1948, not today.). How do you explain Chambers’ possession in 1948 of documents, obviously prepared for spying, in Hiss’s handwriting and typed on the Hiss home typewriter?  Hiss’s Exculpatory Theory #1 didn’t work before The Grand Jury.  What’s your Theory #2?  Might Chambers be concealing a real Soviet spy in the State Department, someone who had access to the papers in Alger’s office? Would you, like The Prosecution, search for the Hiss home typewriter?   The limited history of the internal strategic deliberations of The Hiss Defense is in Marbury’s above-cited 1981 law review article beginning at page 85, in Smith’s book at 272-90, and in Weinstein’s book at 399-424.  It’s fascinating reading for any lawyer who has ever planned or carried out strategy in a complicated high-profile case in which both sides have great strengths and great weaknesses.  One fact that makes the thinking of Hiss’s counsel relatively available is that they were in different cities.  In the 1940s, long distance telephone calls were expensive and conference calls were a minor nightmare to arrange.  So, many opinions that would normally be spoken over coffee were, in Hiss’s case, committed to paper.

Picture: Library of Congress   With this Podcast, we leave Washington and the political boxing ring and move to New York City and the courts.  There’s still drama and tension, but no more pumpkin patches on dark and frigid nights, no more rescues of Congressmen from the high seas.  The process is more deliberate and the consequences are greater.  Starting now, Hiss and Chambers are each looking at being the defendant in a criminal trial and going to prison — punishments that no newspaper or Congressional committee can inflict.   Both men and their wives testify to a Grand Jury.  Chambers has to explain his recent denial to this same Grand Jury that any espionage was committed.  See if you accept his explanation for the 180 degree change in his testimony.  Nixon refuses to turn over the Pumpkin Papers to the Grand Jury, and they threaten him with prison!  Nixon says, “Go ahead, make my day” and a compromise is agreed to.  An FBI expert testifies that the typed spy documents that Chambers had produced were typed on the same typewriter as some letters that the FBI had obtained and that were definitely typed on the Hisses’ family typewriter.  That means that the spy documents were typed on the Hiss family typewriter.  Hiss tries to explain how, if he wasn’t a spy, 65 pages of documents, obviously prepared for spying, got typed on his home typewriter; and how, if he got Chambers/Crosley out of his life by 1936, Chambers has all this paper from Hiss (and don’t forget the four handwritten notes) dated 1938.  See if you accept his explanation.  In the last hours of its life, the Grand Jury votes to indict Hiss for perjury.  Chambers and Mrs. Hiss are not indicted.  Alger Hiss loses another round, but he is far from defeated.       REFERENCES for further research and QUESTIONS   Episode 16:  The Grand Jury proceedings (and related hallway fights and shouting matches between Nixon, the FBI, the Justice Department, and Hiss) are discussed in Weinstein at 293-324, Hiss’s memoir at 190-98, and in Chambers’ ‘Witness’ at 723-27, 761-64, and 780-84.     The only comprehensive review of the Grand Jury transcript was written by me (pardon my immodesty) and is available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14743890802121878.   If you would like a copy, send me an e-mail at [email protected].   Grand Jury transcripts are kept secret for good reasons (explained briefly in the Podcast).  What got this Grand Jury transcript published was a precedent-setting lawsuit by the American Historical Association in which I played a small part.  AHA convinced the court that the historical significance of the event overcame the usual rule of secrecy.  In addition, all the principals were dead and many of their family members and friends supported publication.  The transcript is a (to me) fascinating glimpse into the thought processes of members of the Grand Jury and the government attorneys.  Chambers, for his earlier denial of any espionage, is roasted, fried, broiled, and fricasseed.  But, in the end, they accept his explanation.  Then, slowly, they refocus their anger on Hiss as the evidence against him accumulates and their patience with his clever wording wears out.  Hiss’s Exculpatory Theory #1 — that Chambers broke into the Hiss home and typed up the spy documents himself when no one was looking and then hid them and even denied their existence under oath for ten years — finally snaps the endurance of everyone else in the room.     Questions:Do you accept Chambers’ explanation for his recent perjury to the Grand Jury?  Do you accept Hiss’s Exculpatory Theory #1?(He had two more in his back pocket, which he used in later years.). What do you think Nixon was trying to accomplish by bringing the rolls of Pumpkin Paper film into the Grand Jury room and holding them up in the air, but refusing to hand them over?  Was he maybe hoping to get arrested and be on every front page again?  If you had been on the Grand Jury, would you have voted to indict Hiss?  Mrs. Hiss (the alleged typist)?  Chambers?  All of them?

Certainly, this Case was painful for Chambers — bringing him close to prison for perjury, ending the quiet and lucrative life he had enjoyed for years and costing him the only decent and decently paying job he had ever had. All the same, Chambers loved melodrama, and can you imagine any more satisfying melodrama than, on a dark and freezing night, leading two government investigators to a pumpkin vine behind your farmhouse and presenting them with five rolls of camera film containing proof of espionage and treason by the man who personifies the governing class of the country?

 

Further Research:

 

The dramatic, and sometimes almost comic, events of the first week of December 1948 are recounted in 191-207 and 287-93 of Weinstein’s “Perjury,” still the definitive history of this Case.

The memoirs of the major participants tell what happened, each somewhat differently from all the others: Bert Andrews’ “A Tragedy of History” at 174-91, Chambers’ “Witness” at 751-60, Nixon’s “Six Crises” at 46-56 and his “RN” at 67-69, and Stripling’s “The Red Plot Against America” at 141-51.

The most fascinating discrepancy in the accounts concerns the auto trip that Nixon, Stripling, Bert Andrews and the stenographer Rose Purdy took from Washington to Chambers’ Maryland farm on the afternoon of December 1 to find out ‘what the hell’ had caused Hiss’s lawsuit against Chambers to blow up. Chambers, at 751 of Witness, says that Stripling came to see him — strongly implying that Stripling made the tip alone. Nixon adds himself to the trip. (“Six Crises” at 47, “RN” at 67.) Bert Andrews adds himself as the third member of the trip (at 175). Stripling mentions only himself and Nixon (at 143-44). Why would Chambers want to give the impression that only Stripling came to see him? Why would Chambers want to leave Nixon out of the scene? I don’t see how that would help him or his side. I doubt he would have forgotten about all the others.  

If you go to YouTube and search for “Pumpkin Papers,” you will find a group of film clips, starting with Nixon’s and Stripling’s press conference and including excerpts from the prior HUAC hearings and later films taken on the courthouse steps during Hiss’s trials. You can find other newsreels (which were shown in movie theaters and were the only form of moving image news before TV) about this case by searching on YouTube for “Alger Hiss” or “Whittaker Chambers.” The same search requests, made on CSPAN’s web page, will yield more newsreels, lengthy films of the August 25 hearing, as well as many interviews and much commentary on this Case. I suspect that this Case, and Chambers in particular, were favorites of Brian Lamb. 

Questions: Who do you think is the most likely leaker of Chambers’ first bombshell to the Washington Post? Personally, I have no idea; no evidence, no rumors, not even a theory.

Do you feel sorry for Pat (“Here we go again!”) Nixon?

Do you sympathize with Nixon’s rage at Chambers for not telling him, during the HUAC hearings, that he had proof that Hiss was not only a Communist, but a spy? Can you think of one or more reasons Chambers held back that fact (if it’s a fact)? Chambers gave several reasons, which he gave to the Grand Jury. For them, you will have to listen to the next Podcast.

 

In this Podcast, Chambers appears on Meet The Press and repeats his accusations. Hiss sues him for libel, after assembling a Dream Team of eminent lawyers to vindicate his reputation.(Chambers was superbly represented, too.)In a pre-trial interview called a deposition, Hiss’s lawyer William Marbury asks Chambers to produce any written documents he has from Alger or Priscilla Hiss. Chambers, ever the man of mystery, travels to Brooklyn to retrieve a large manila envelope from the top shelf of a linen closet behind a bathtub in an apartment once inhabited by a local lawyer who was Mrs. Chambers’ nephew.(Chambers gave it to the lawyer when he deserted the Communist underground and told him to hide it and make its contents public if he ever disappeared. The lawyer chose the odd hiding place.)When Chambers’ deposition resumes, he produces contents from the envelope. Mr. Marbury has perhaps the worst surprise of his life and this Case becomes ten times more sensational than it had been. As one Baltimore lawyer is reputed to have said, Bill Marbury went on a fishing expedition and he brought up the whole damn sea bottom.

This is the Podcast of the public hearing at which Chambers and Hiss sat a few feet apart and testified against each other for six hours.  It was one of the big stories of 1948.  A history of HUAC says it was the most dramatic and crowded event of the Committee’s public history.  One newspaper blared that it was “C Day” — C for Confrontation.  People wanting spectator seats were lined up out the building and around the block — and the Old House Office Building is a big building on a long block.  Nixon played the role of patient, plodding prosecutor, with an occasional assist from Stripling.  The other HUAC members chimed in with their reactions, like the chorus in an ancient Greek drama.  Hiss had become extravagantly cautious.  He bobbed, weaved, and ultimately exasperated even his friends in the audience.  Chambers occasionally reveled in the melodrama, warming his friends’ hearts and convincing his enemies that he was mentally ill.  Most telling, however, was evidence from disinterested third parties indicating that Chambers’ story was the truthful one and that Hiss’s was mostly lies.  See what you think of the two men and their stories.

Further Research:

Episode 13:  The August 25 HUAC hearing occupies 131 pages (beginning at 1075) of the Alpha Edition transcript of HUAC hearings cited in the discussion of Episode 5 above.  Hiss’s first memoir covers the hearing at pages 100-49; it is as defensive and meticulous Hiss was at the hearing.  Chambers’ covers the hearing at pages 625-95 of Witness.  At 693, he sympathizes with Hiss:  “the spectacle of that man, hopelessly baited by questions, although in a trap of his own contriving, . . . tormented me as much, or more, than anything I felt about myself.”  For Nixon’s recollections, see Six Crises at 41-44 and RN at 63-66.

Dispassionate observers said that Chambers’ testimony was notably more direct and plausible than Hiss’s (Walter Goodman at 258); that Hiss’s “caution, . . . in the opinion even of his friends, hurt his case” (Bert Andrews at 148, quoting James Reston of the New York Times); and that Hiss had been “swarmed with well-wishers” after his first HUAC testimony” but “stood alone” after the August 25 hearing (Nagle at 126, quoting Chambers with approval).  Professor Weinstein’s book covers the hearing at 55-62, saying at 61 that Hiss’s manner was nervous and emotional while Cambers’ was relaxed and calm.

Questions:  If you were, like Hiss, questioned by a hostile tribunal about your conduct 10-15 years ago, and you feared that mis-dating an event by one month might land you in the hell of a perjury trial, would you be willing to appear like a crook or an idiot by beginning every answer with the words “To the best of my recollection”?  That’s the choice (between two bad choices) that Hiss made.  Do Chambers’ dramatic words about the appeal of Communism and ‘a tragedy of history’ impress you as heartfelt and profound, or as over the top melodrama that makes you doubt his contact with reality?  If you were a journalist reporting on this hearing, would you ‘stick to the facts’ or add the audience’s laughter and your own impressions?  If you were an ambitious first-term member of the lower House, could you have imagined a better introduction to the American people?

 

 

Republican members of the House un-American 

Activities Committee (HUAC). (Library of Congress) 

Sandwiched between the drama of the Commodore Hotel (last week’s Podcast) and the equally sensational televised confrontation of Hiss and Chambers (next week’s), this Podcast #12 is a backgrounder on the political climate of 1948, the setting which was shaken to its foundations by this scandal.  There were four views of the world.  Old-style conservatives wanted to return to isolationism and viewed domestic Communists as minor nuisances.  Ultra-left intellectuals saw The Century of the Common Man dawning and thought, incredibly in retrospect, that the Soviet Union under Stalin was some kind of human progress.  American capitalists thought that capitalism, tempered by some kind of safety net and led by the USA, was the wonderful and unopposed future of the human race.  The capitalists, like the isolationists, dismissed domestic Communists as a minor problem.  Fourth and last, fearful conservatives (including ex-Communists like Chambers) saw domestic subversion — traitors in our midst — as an unsolved crisis for the country; and they saw Communism on the march as a disaster-in-the-making for the whole world. This Case vindicated this last group, educated the old isolationists and the triumphant capitalists, and disgraced the ultra-left intellectuals.

Further Research: 

Episode 12:  Two works are cited by name in this Podcast.  Harold Laski’s book — ‘Faith, Reason, and Civilization:  An essay in historical analysis’ — was published by Viking in 1944.  Vintage copies are available on Amazon (thank you, Mr. Bezos).  Henry Luce’s famous essay, ‘The American Century,’ is available on the Internet at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mlassite/discussions261/luce.pdf (not secure).   Also on the Internet, the essay is debated to this day. 

For more on the political climate of 1948, I recommend reading roughly the pages cited above in the above-cited works of Alistair Cooke, Leslie Fiedler, Walter Goodman, and  Murray Kempton.  Most books about the politics of this era, sad to say, fall into two extreme camps.  One says there were secret Commies everywhere (FDR and Truman may have been in on it).  The other says there were no Commies; but if there were, they never did any harm; but if they did harm, their hearts were in the right place; and if their hearts were black, they were all victims of political persecution.  The single best broad view of the political climate of 1948 is James F. Nagle’s '1948:  The Crossroads Year,’ most recently published in 2007 by BookSurge.

Questions:  Was there factual evidence supporting each of the four groups identified in this Podcast?  Which group, in your opinion, got the most right and the least wrong?  Which one got the least right and the most wrong?  Does the fluid climate of 1948 remind you of America’s decade-long ‘holiday from history’ after the fall of Communism and before 9/11?  Do you remember “The End of History”?  Had you heard of Usama Bin Laden before 9/11?

 

 

 Pic: Library of Congress

In Podcast 11, Nixon and Stripling pull off another tactical masterstroke.  They bring Hiss and Chambers together, to the surprise of both of them, in a hotel room in New York City.  Despite the locale, it’s a formal hearing of Nixon’s HUAC Subcommittee and there is a transcript (not to mention half a dozen memoirs).  Nixon asks Hiss, once and for all, if Chambers is the man he knew as George Crosley 10-15 years before.  What happened next has been called “bizarre and even incredible” and “a bit like a Henry James story, . . . full of subtleties and ambiguities.”  Hiss and Stripling were both there and, although they agreed on very little, each in his memoir used the exact same phrase to describe what happened — “something out of a dream.”

Further Research:

Episode 11:  The descriptions of the scene in Suite 1400 of the Commodore Hotel in New York City in the principals’ memoirs are Chambers at 599-615 (at 603 “I felt what any humane man must feel when, pursuing an end he is convinced is right, finds himself the instrument of another man’s disaster”), Hiss at 81-99 (at 99, “I resented the Committee’s callous and ruthless procedures.  . . .  [T]he Committee and I were now at war.”), Nixon (Six Crises at 31-37, (RN at 61-63 (at 61), “I do not think that I have ever seen one man look at another with more hatred in his eyes than did Alger Hiss when he looked at Whittaker Chambers.”), Stripling at 126-32 (at 128, when Chambers entered the hotel sitting room where Hiss was, “Hiss did not turn around, did not change his expression.  I suppose I expected him to leap up, wheel around, and demand why this man — whom he had testified he did not know — had made these astounding charges against him.”).   See also Weinstein at 45-49 and  Alistair Cooke (at 73-84) describing (at 74) the scene as one that “began circumspectly enough and ended in a naked and desperate scramble for reputation.”

Hiss brought along a friend, Mr. Charles Dollard, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.  Chambers writes (Witness at 603) that Dollard “hovers at the edge of the ensuing scene like the ‘first attendant, friend to the Duke’ in a Shakespeare play.  Most of the time he  lurked in one corner of the room . . . with a curiously fixed smile on his face, which Hiss’s loftier jibes turned incandescent with amusement.  . . .  I am not alone in supposing that this by-play was intended to convey the sense that these two beings were native to another atmosphere, were merely condescending, a little impatiently, to the summons of the earthlings in the room.”   Dollard later told Hiss’s attorneys that “Alger behaved very badly.”  (Weinstein at 49 (footnote).)

Questions:  Do you think, as I do, that when Hiss asked to speak with Chambers’ dentist, he was just trying to abort the hearing, to close down the scene because he had no idea what to do — ‘get me the hell out of here,’ ‘beam me up, Scottie!’  Do you sympathize with Chambers, who wrote that “I felt somewhat like a broken-mouthed sheep whose jaws have been pried open and are being inspected by wary buyers at an auction”?  (Chambers at 606.)

 

  

In Podcast 10, Nixon’s HUAC Subcommittee reacts skeptically to Hiss’s new George Crosley story.  Hiss, like Captain Renault in Casablanca, is shocked, shocked that the Representatives would even think of taking the word of the Communist and traitor Chambers over that of a distinguished personage such as himself.  Representative Hebert suggests that Hiss return to his first, helpful and respectful attitude.  But Hiss blows him off — not a smart move with the only member of the Subcommittee who is of Hiss’s Party.  Hiss then corroborates 90% of what Chambers had told the Subcommittee about his personal life 10-15 years earlier, including the prothonotary warbler and the hand operated windshield wipers on the old Ford.  Nixon, now almost certain that Hiss is lying, orders Stripling to arrange a face-to-face meeting of the two men in secret the next day, to the complete surprise of both of them.  Nixon wants to catch Hiss off guard and deny him more time to make his George Crosley tale fit the facts.

Further Research Episode 10:  See references to Episode 9 

Questions:  If you believe, as I do, that Hiss is guilty, what is he to do at this stage?  Do what he did — stick with the “innocent as the day is long” story (with the George Crosley variation) although it is obviously not convincing his current audience?  Do you think, as one of his acquaintances did, that if he were innocent he would have gotten angry before this?  If he had openly ‘lawyered up’ at this stage and refused to answer any more questions, would it have saved him any of the later traumas he endured?  Or was he stuck with his original “innocent as the day is long” attitude?  Before President Clinton admitted lying about Ms. Lewinsky, has any public figure denied everything indignantly, then changed his story by admitting wrongdoing, and ’gotten away with it’?  It didn’t work for Governor Cuomo.  What do you think of Representative Hebert telling Hiss ever so politely that HUAC is simply behaving as any competent investigator would?  What did Hebert want Hiss to do?  How stupid was Hiss to offend Hebert, the only member of his Party on the Subcommittee?  How much of Hiss’s conduct at this stage is explained by his (in my opinion) arrogant belief that his IQ was so much higher than any of his interrogator’s that he could bluff his way around them?

 

Alger Hiss, like Chambers, gives secret testimony to Nixon’s HUAC Subcommittee.  He is outraged that they are thinking of trusting Chambers, whom Hiss labels a Communist and a traitor (Hiss pre-channeling Senator McCarthy).  When confronted with Chambers’ detailed knowledge of his domestic life 10-15 years ago, Hiss drops his claim that he never knew Chambers.  Oh, now it’s all coming back to me, . . .  There was a man whom I knew back then, a self-styled freelance journalist who went by the name George Crosley.  He was disheveled, had shockingly bad teeth, and seemed sometimes to live in a fantasy world of dramatic escapades.  He became our subtenant, living under the same roof with us for a while, and stiffed us for the rent.  Maybe Chambers and Crosley are the same man.  Does this new story, which Hiss stuck to till the day he died, sound believable to you?  Or is he just coming up with a more complicated lie to defeat Chambers and the truth?

Further Research Episode 9:  Hiss’s secret testimony starts at HUAC at 935; the George Crosley recollection starts at 948-49, gets into depth at 955, and continues off and on until 970.  (Congressional hearings frequently hop from one topic to another as individual Representatives arrive, chime in, think of new lines of questioning, and leave the room to attend to other business.)  Hiss’s recollections of his secret testimony, and of Crosley in general, are in his memoir “In the Court of Public Opinion” at 15-32 and in his late-in-life autobiography, “Recollections of a Life” (1988) at 207-08.  Chambers’ analysis of Hiss’s secret testimony is at “Witness” at 580-81 and 593.  See also Weinstein’s Perjury at 39-44.  Nixon’s recollections are in “Six Crises” at 23-29 and “RN” at 58-60.  There is a wonderful essay on this Case by the professor and literary critic Leslie Fiedler, “Hiss, Chambers, and the Age of Innocence,” in his book “An End to Innocence” (1952).  In it, at 9, Fiedler describes Hiss here as “uncertainly feeling his way into the situation, cautiously finding out at each point how much he will have to admit to escape entrapment.”

Questions:   How does Hiss’s new “George Crosley” story sound to you?  Obviously a fabrication, or plausible but we need to learn more, or has ‘the ring of truth’; to it?  How would you learn more?  Ask members of the Nye Committee staff if they remembered a man named George Crosley (evidently poor and with memorably bad teeth) hanging around the Committee’s offices?  Ask the Hisses’ household servants and social friends if they remembered a shabby looking man with bad teeth named George Crosley socializing with the Hisses back then?  Did Hiss ever mention to a deadbeat pest he’d finally gotten out of his life?  Look for magazine articles published by “George Crosley” in the mid-1930s?  Find pictures of Chambers in those years, show them to all the above-mentioned people, and ask them if the remember this man?