I replied that the questions I had asked him and Chambers had regard to facts that “could be corroborated by third parties” and that under no circumstances would the Committee use his testimony so that Chambers would be able to “build a web” around him.
Then he attacked on another front. He said: “The issue is not whether this man knew me and I don’t remember him. The issue is whether he had a particular conversation that he said he had with me, and which I have denied, and whether I am a member of the Communist Party or ever was, which he has said and which I have denied.”
But it was Hiss himself who in the public session had deliberately raised the issue of whether Chambers knew him. He had taken a calculated risk in raising that issue, and now he had to pay the price for his bold gamble.
I pressed him on this critical point. “When Mr. Chambers appeared,” I said, “he was instructed that every answer he gave to every question would be material and that answers to a material question would subject him to perjury. Membership in the Communist Party is one thing, because that is a matter which might be and probably would be concealed. But items concerning his alleged relationship with you can be confirmed by third parties, and that is the purpose of these questions.”
Hiss obviously recognized that he had come to the end of the road of detours. “I have written a name on this pad in front of me of a person I knew in 1933 and 1934 who not only spent some time in my home but sublet my apartment,” he said. “I do not recognize the photographs as possibly being this man. I have given the name to two friends of mine before I came to this hearing. I don’t think in my present frame of mind that it is fair to my position that I be asked to put down here a record of personal facts about myself which, if they came to the ears of someone who had for no reason I can understand a desire to injure me, would assist him in that endeavor.”
For fifteen minutes he sparred with me and with Stripling. He kept insisting that if he answered our questions—questions to which Chambers had already replied, on the record and under oath, in great detail—Chambers would somehow learn what his answers had been and use this information against him.
At this point, Ed Hébert burst out with what to Hiss must have felt like a blockbuster. Hébert, a Democrat from Louisiana, was respected by both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress because, while he always fought hard for his party’s positions, he had made it known on several issues in the past that he was no rubber stamp for Democratic administrations. He had been a member of the Sub-committee which had questioned Chambers in New York on August 7. After that hearing, he had made it clear that he still had great doubts about Chambers’ credibility.
But now he had had enough. He said: “Mr. Hiss, let me say this to you now—and this is removed from all technicalities, it’s just a man-to-man impression of the whole situation. . . . I will tell you exactly what I told Mr. Chambers so that it will be a matter of record, too: either you or Mr. Chambers is lying . . . and whichever one of you is lying is the greatest actor that America has ever produced. Now, I have not come to the conclusion yet which one of you is lying and I am trying to find the facts. Up to a few moments ago you have been very open, very co-operative. Now, you have hedged.
“We met Mr. Chambers forty-eight hours after you testified in open session. Mr. Chambers did not know or have any indication as to the questions that we were going to ask him and we probed him for hours . . . and we literally ran out of questions. There wasn’t a thing that came to our minds that we didn’t ask him about, those little details to probe his own testimony or rather to test his own credibility.
“Now if we can get the help from you and, as I say, if I were in your position, I certainly would give all the help I could, because it is a most fantastic story. What motive would Chambers have? You say you are in a bad position, but don’t you think that Chambers destroys himself if he is proven a liar? What motive would he have to pitch a $25,000 position as a respected Senior Editor of Time magazine out the window?”
Hiss was shaken to his toes by this blast. Up to this time he had, not without considerable support from the press and from President Truman himself, tried to imply that the entire hearing was a “Republican plot” to smear the New Deal. Now for the first time, a Democrat had begun to question his story. Hiss reacted by counterattacking Hébert as hard as he could.
“It is difficult for me to control myself,” he exclaimed. “That you can sit there, Mr. Hébert, and say to me casually that you have heard that man and you have heard me and you just have no basis for judging which one is telling the truth. I don’t think a judge determines the credibility of witnesses on that basis.”
But Hébert, not to be cowed, fired back: “I absolutely have an open mind and am trying to give you as fair a hearing as I could possibly give Chambers or yourself. The fact that Mr. Chambers is a self-confessed traitor . . . and a self-confessed former member of the Communist Party—has no bearing at all on the alleged facts that he has told . . .”
“Has no bearing on his credibility?” interrupted Hiss.
“No, because, Mr. Hiss, I recognize the fact that maybe my background is a little different from yours,” replied Hébert, who had been a New Orleans newspaper editor for many years. “But I do know police methods, and you show me a good police force and I will show you the stool pigeon who turned them in. We have to have people like Chambers to come in and tell us. I am not giving Mr. Chambers any great credit for his previous life. I am trying to find out if he is reformed. Some of the greatest saints in history were pretty bad before they were saints. Are you going to take away their sainthood because of their previous lives? Are you not going to believe them after they have reformed? I don’t care who gives the facts to me, whether a confessed liar, thief, or murderer—if it is facts. That is all I’m interested in.”
Hiss had a bear by the tail. He tried to change the subject. “I would like to raise a separate point,” he said. The real issue, he again insisted, was not whether Chambers knew him or he knew Chambers; it was whether he and Chambers had had the one particular conversation to which Chambers had testified.
I answered by saying, “If Chambers’ credibility on the question of whether he knew you or not is destroyed, obviously you can see that this statement that he had a conversation with you and that you were a member of the Communist Party, which was made on the basis of this knowledge, would also be destroyed. And that is exactly the basis upon which this questioning is being conducted. If we prove that he is a perjurer on the basis of his testimony now, the necessity of going into the rest of the matter will be obviated.”
After a few more questions, I asked Chairman J. Parnell Thomas to declare a recess so that Hiss could phone his wife, Priscilla, and make arrangements for her to appear before the Committee.
Five minutes later, when Hiss returned to the Committee room, he was ready to talk. He said: “The name of the man I brought in—and he may have no relation to this whole nightmare—is a man named George Crosley. I met him when I was working for the Nye Committee. He was a writer. He hoped to sell articles to magazines about the munitions industry.”
This man Crosley, he went on, had sublet his apartment on Twenty-eighth Street and had moved in with his wife and “one little baby.” “My recollection is that he spent several nights in my house because his furniture van was delayed. The apartment wasn’t very expensive and I think I let him have it at exact cost.”
“His wife and he and little baby did spend several nights in the house with you?”
“This man Crosley, yes,” Hiss replied.
“Can you describe his wife?” I asked.
“Yes, he answered. “She was a rather strikingly dark person. Very strikingly dark.”
I was the only one in the room to whom that answer was significant. I had seen Esther Chambers and I knew that she was indeed strikingly dark.
Hiss insisted, however, that he could not say that Crosley and Chambers were one and the same person. He described Crosley as a
“dead-beat” who stayed in the apartment during the summer months of 1935 and never paid any rent.
“What kind of automobile did that fellow have?” Stripling asked.
“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 w
as 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.
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