The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972

by Manchester, William

  There was no end to the fun Liebling had with Miss Bentley that August. To him she was “the Nutmeg Mata Hari,” and after the New York World-Telegram stopped calling her a “Red Spy Queen” and began referring to her as “striking” and “a blonde” (she was neither) the New Yorker’s press critic gaily rechristened her “the Red blonde Spy Queen.” Then his comments became sharper. A joke was a joke, but this woman was damaging the reputations of decent men. The hearings, he wrote, “were reminiscent of a group of retarded children playing deteckative.” Liebling thought that “An editor who couldn’t smell an odor of burning synthetic rubber about Miss Bentley’s inside-policy data has an extremely insensitive nose for news.” To have suggested the suppression of testimony would have been entirely out of character for him, a violation of his most deeply held convictions; still, when South Dakota’s bumbling Karl Mundt said, “Evidence is clouding up, but it isn’t clear enough yet,” Liebling remarked, “I feel that the press has been slighting the low-comedy aspects of the hearings.”

  As the summer wore on, they became less amusing. In sworn testimony Miss Bentley and Whittaker Chambers accused thirty-seven former government employees of participation in Soviet espionage. Of these, seventeen refused under oath to say whether they were Communists or spies. The names of those who took the Fifth Amendment are faintly evocative today, like a scratchy old Paul Robeson recording of “The Peat-Bog Soldiers” or “The Four Insurgent Generals.” None of them had been known to the public before 1948, but all had been close to the seats of power and decision. Six others were not called to testify. Of those remaining, Harold Ware had died in 1935; Lee Pressman and John Abt admitted they were Communists but denied espionage; Laurence Duggan, a fourteen-year veteran of the State Department, either jumped or fell to his death from a sixteenth-floor Manhattan window after two witnesses had identified him as a Communist; former Assistant Secretary of State Harry Dexter White, against whom the evidence was formidable, died of a heart attack; and the other twelve swore that the charges against them were false. Two of these were then accused of perjury. The first, William Remington, was found guilty and later murdered in prison. The other was Alger Hiss.

  ***

  His biographical sketch in the 1948–1949 edition of Who’s Who in America read:

  HISS, Alger, lawyer, B. Baltimore, Md. Nov. 11, 1904; s. Charles Alger and Mary L. (Hughes) H.; A.B., Johns Hopkins, 1926; LL.B., Harvard, 1929; m. Priscilla Fansler Hobson, Dec. 11, 1929; children—Timothy Hobson (stepson), Anthony. Mem. bars of Mass., N.Y. and U.S. Supreme Court; sec. and law clerk to Supreme Court Justice, 1929–30; asst. to gen. counsel and asst. gen. counsel, Agrl. Adjustment Administrn., Washington, D.C. 1933–35; legal asst., special Senate com. investigating munitions industry, 1934–35; special atty. U.S. Dept. Justice, 1935–36… pres. Carnegie Endowment for Internat. Peace since Feb. 1, 1947; exec. sec. Dumbarton Oaks Conf., 1944; accompanied Pres. Roosevelt to Crimea Conf., Feb. 1945; sec. gen. United Nations Conf. on Internat. Organization, San Francisco, 1945; principal advisor, U.S. Del. to U.N. Gen. Assembly, Jan.-Feb. 1946. Mem. Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Delta Phi. Club: Metropolitan (Washington). Home: 3210 P Street N.W., Washington 7, D.C. Office: 522 Fifth Avenue, New York 18, N.Y.

  It would have been difficult to find a more attractive Rooseveltian figure. In the word of the man who became his prosecutor, he was “a prototype.” Lean, tanned, elegantly tailored, he was every inch the patrician-as-idealist—the public servant who was also a member of a law firm with the name Choate in it, the reform Democrat who was listed in the Washington Social Register. At Johns Hopkins he had been a debater, a track star, and the “best hand-shaker” in his class. His reputation was flawless: Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois was prepared to testify to that; so were two U.S. Supreme Court justices, a former solicitor general of the United States, John W. Davis (a former presidential candidate) and John Foster Dulles. Hiss’s presence was imposing. His well-modulated voice carried just the right trace of a Harvard accent. He smiled easily and broadly, like FDR at his most charming, and moved with a casual grace suggestive of Baltimore Cotillions or Gibson Island tennis matches, at both of which he was a familiar figure. Attending his own trials, he would seem less the defendant than a distinguished spectator. To call such a man a Communist was as unthinkable as calling him a liar.

  Whittaker Chambers, who accused him of being both, was by his own admission a scoundrel and a blackguard. Before breaking with the party to join Time he had perjured himself a thousand times over. As a boy he had formed a suicide pact with his brother Dick; Dick had killed himself but Whittaker had backed out. Aged seventeen, he had set up housekeeping in a New Orleans flophouse with a prostitute named One-Eyed Annie. Later he brought another female tramp to live with him in his mother’s Long Island home—she let him do it, he said, “because she had lost one son and did not want to lose another.” He had been expelled from Columbia for writing a sacrilegious play. He had been a thief. Confronted with an oath he had taken upon going to work for the WPA, he readily conceded, in his phlegmatic way, that he had broken it in every particular. Now in 1948 he was a fat, rumpled, middle-aged, sad-looking man with a sickly complexion and heavily lidded eyes.

  Yet it was Chambers who saw one aspect of the issue between the two men most clearly: “No feature of the Hiss case is more obvious, or more troubling as history,” he wrote afterward, “than the jagged fissure, which it did not so much open as reveal, between the plain men and women of the nation, and those who affected to act, think and speak for them. It was not invariably, but in general, the ‘best people’ who were for Alger Hiss and who were prepared to go to almost any length to protect and defend him.” That was certainly part of it. The other part was that to partisans on both sides Alger Hiss quickly became a symbol. Liberal Democrats saw him as representative of the New Deal achievements now under attack. To conservative Republicans he stood for the hated eastern elite. The liberals made the first commitment in the case. Hiss’s innocence was so obvious to them that they staked everything on it and invited the opposition to do the same. Conservatives were slower on the field. In the beginning Chambers seemed an unlikely champion for them. But Congressman Richard M. Nixon showed them the way, and long before the true import of the Chambers-Hiss uproar was known—that is, before the charge of treason had been lodged—both sides had closed ranks and raised their banners. Thereafter the role of reason steadily diminished; the case incited blind, violent emotions in every quarter. It was the tragedy of the liberals that they were wrong. It was the triumph of Richard Nixon and his party that Chambers was not only right; he could prove it.

  He didn’t look right at first. Hiss played his part superbly. Others had taken refuge in the Fifth Amendment or in transparent evasions. Not he. On August 4, 1948, upon learning that Chambers had identified him as a Communist the day before in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he telegraphed the committee from New York demanding that he be given the right to deny the charge under oath. Next day he faced the committee, the very picture of righteous indignation. He answered every question and denied each of Chambers’s specifications. At the end Chairman Mundt thanked Hiss for his “very cooperative attitude” and “forthright statements.” John Rankin walked round to shake Hiss’s hand. Everyone was smiling except Nixon, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Hiss’s face. Before the month was out the young California congressman would appear to have had second sight. In fact he was blessed by an excellent source. The FBI had begun checking Hiss. An agent named Ed Hummer was phoning the results of each day’s investigation to a priest named John Cronin, and Father Cronin was relaying it to Nixon. Still, there was little to go on in that first week in August, and Nixon deserves full marks for persistence and perspicacity. He said he wanted to see Chambers and Hiss face to face.

  The rest of the committee decided to hear Chambers again; they thought Hiss might be the victim of mistaken identity. It was during this second session, which was closed to the pub
lic (and to Hiss), that the accuser began to reveal his encyclopedic knowledge of Hiss, Hiss’s wife, and the Hiss household. The couple called one another “Hilly” and “Pross,” he remembered. They had been devoted to their cocker spaniel. Their Volta Place house had been furnished with Hitchcock chairs stenciled in gilt, a gold mirror with an eagle on top, walls papered halfway with a mulberry pattern and the lower half paneled. Chambers knew much more about them than that, but for the moment he said just enough to establish his bona fides—little details about children, servants, food, books, furniture, and hobbies. One of Hiss’s hobbies was bird-watching. Chambers told of how excited Hiss had become upon seeing a prothonotary warbler on the Potomac. By chance one of the congressmen, John McDowell, was himself an amateur ornithologist, and when Hiss was recalled before the committee McDowell asked him whether he had ever seen a prothonotary warbler. Hiss’s eyes lit up. He replied brightly, “I have, right here on the Potomac. Do you know that place?” A moment later he said, “They come back and nest in those swamps. Beautiful head, a gorgeous bird.” It had been a small feat. It impressed the committee more than he knew.

  Clearly Chambers’s knowledge of the Hisses was the sort that comes from only the closest friendship. Nixon therefore got his confrontation, on August 25, in suite 400 of the Commodore Hotel in New York. It was a critical point in the case. Hiss, rattled by Nixon’s questioning and Chambers’s evident knowledge of him, identified his accuser as one George Crosley, a free-lance writer and deadbeat he had met in the 1930s. Now Nixon began to close in. Hiss was asked to produce three people who would also testify that they knew Chambers as Crosley. Visibly upset, he replied, “I will if it is possible. Why is that a question to ask me? I will see what is possible. This occurred in 1935. The only people that I can think of who would have known him as George Crosley with certainty would have been the people who were associated with me in the Nye [munitions investigation] committee.” After another sharp Nixon-Hiss exchange this colloquy followed, between the two principals, Congressmen Nixon and McDowell, and Louis Russell, a committee investigator:

  MR. MCDOWELL: Then your identification of George Crosley is complete?

  MR. HISS: Yes, as far as I am concerned, on his own testimony.

  MR. MCDOWELL: Mr. Chambers, is this the man, Alger Hiss, who was also a member of the Communist Party at whose home you stayed?

  MR. NIXON: According to your testimony.

  MR. MCDOWELL: YOU make identification positive?

  MR. CHAMBERS: Positive identification.

  (At this point Mr. Hiss arose and walked in the direction of Mr. Chambers.)

  MR. HISS: 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. I am not going to touch him (addressing Mr. Russell). You are touching me.

  MR. RUSSELL: Please sit down, Mr. Hiss.

  MR. HISS: I will sit down when the chairman asks me, Mr. Russell, when the chairman asks me to sit down—

  MR. RUSSELL: I want no disturbance.

  MR. HISS: I don’t—

  MR. MCDOWELL: Sit down, please.

  MR. HISS: You know who started this.

  MR. MCDOWELL: We will suspend testimony here for a minute or two, until I return.

  But it was too late. Hiss had blundered. Until this moment his gamble had made sense. He was right, 1935 had been a long time ago. It was his word against Chambers’s, and given the differences between their reputations there could be small doubt about the outcome. Having been a Communist wasn’t a crime anyhow, and the statute of limitations had expired on the felony of stealing government secrets. The committee had just about given up hope of making any case out of the Bentley-Chambers testimony. By daring Chambers to shed the privilege of congressional immunity, however, and by promising to sue for libel, Hiss had created a new situation. Now Chambers would be forced to produce his evidence. The whole wretched business would be moved into a court of law, which would determine which of them was lying. The loser would be found guilty of perjury and imprisoned.

  Eight days later there was another Hiss-Chambers confrontation in Washington, for the public, under lights. Here Hiss’s assurance had plainly ebbed. He had brought his lawyer, and he prefaced his answers with such circumlocutions as, “To the best of my recollection.” Even when asked whether he came to the hearing in response to a subpoena he replied, “To the extent that my coming here quite voluntarily after having received the subpoena is in response to it—I would accept that statement.” Chambers had told the congressmen that Hiss had given him a 1929 Model A Ford, to be used as the Communist party saw fit. This was something that could be checked in motor vehicle records. Hiss responded weakly; it had been an old car, just deteriorating on the street, of “practically no financial value,” so he had let Crosley have it. Or thought he had: “I gave Crosley, to the best of my recollection,” he began, whereupon Nixon broke in to say, “Well, now, just a minute on that point, I don’t want to interrupt you on that ‘to the best of my recollection,’ but you certainly can testify ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ as to whether you gave Crosley a car. How many cars have you given away in your life, Mr. Hiss?” The laughter was unfriendly, and when Hiss clung to the periphrasis, insisting that it was only his “best recollection” that he had given Crosley the car, “as I was able to give him the use of my apartment,” the laughter gave way to a heavy silence. Every member of the committee had the same thought: you do not turn your home and your automobile over to someone known to you only as a deadbeat. The three names Hiss had given them were useless. One man had died, a second couldn’t be found, and the third had no memory of anyone named Crosley.

  Two nights later Chambers appeared on Meet the Press, then a radio program, to accept Hiss’s challenge. Hiss “was a Communist and may be one now,” he said. The country waited for Hiss to take him to court. And waited. And waited. Finally, on September 27, Hiss sued for defamation in Baltimore. Before anything else could happen the national election intervened. This would have been a good time for Hiss to quit, and as things turned out, it was his last chance to do so. The Republicans were stunned by Truman’s victory. They had lost control of the House of Representatives and with it control of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In addition, two Republicans on the committee had been defeated for reelection. But events were about to move far beyond the scope of congressmen. On Wednesday, November 17, Chambers was scheduled to appear at a pretrial hearing in Baltimore as a defendant. Then he would have to show Hiss’s lawyers his proof, if he had any, of an earlier association with the plaintiff. Thus cornered, he proceeded to establish beyond any reasonable doubt a fact that stunned the country: ten years earlier Alger Hiss, his wife Priscilla, and Whittaker Chambers had been members of a Soviet espionage apparatus passing state secrets to the Russians.

  Between May or June of 1937 and April 1938, when Chambers broke with the party, Alger Hiss had given him every classified document, cable, report, and dispatch he could lay his hands on. They had been transmitted in three forms. Some had been originals which Chambers had microfilmed and then returned to Hiss. Hiss had summarized others in his own handwriting. Priscilla Hiss had copied the rest at home on her Woodstock typewriter; her husband had then slipped them back into State Department files. He hadn’t been the only one doing this. Henry Julian Wadleigh, director of State’s trade agreements section and another descendant of fine old American stock, had been another Chambers source. Wadleigh now admitted it. The statute of limitations protected him. But Hiss had denied it. He had gone too far. He had perjured himself, and now he was trapped.

  ***

  Before dropping out of sight in 1938 Chambers had put three strips of microfilm and 84 papers—43 documents copied on Priscilla’s typewriter and 41 memoranda in Alger’s hand—in a large brown paper envelope. He had taken the envelope to Nat
han Levine, a Brooklyn attorney and his wife’s nephew, and had asked him to put it in a safe place. Now, ten years later, on November 14, 1948, he came to Levine and asked him for it. Covered with grime, it lay in a dumbwaiter shaft; Levine had to stand on his bathtub to fetch it. Chambers dusted it off in the kitchen and took the typewritten copies and longhand memoranda to the pretrial hearing in Baltimore. Their appearance there must have been shattering for Hiss, but he kept his head; he directed his attorneys to put the documents before the Justice Department at once. It was a clever move. If the Truman administration announced that the material was secret, Chambers just might be prevented from talking about it. There was another danger for Chambers: producing the documents had revealed him as a receiver of classified material. Nixon’s staff was at its wits’ end, afraid the wrong man might be arrested. But Hiss wasn’t the only clever one. Chambers hadn’t brought everything to the pretrial hearing. He had hidden the microfilm in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm. On the night of December 2, when House investigators asked him if he had anything else, he led them there. The House Committee on Un-American Activities ordered that a twenty-four-hour watch be mounted over the pumpkin’s contents, and two days later the newspapers had the story.