And so, the next morning, after taking the train from Washington to New York, Pat and I boarded the Panama for what we thought was going to be a pleasant week of cruising through the Canal Zone and back. At dinner the first night out, we remarked to the others that one of the reasons we had taken this cruise was that at sea we could be sure of no interruptions by telephone calls or by mail.
We had not reckoned with radiograms.
The first full day at sea, Friday, December 3, I received a wire that Bert Andrews had sent late Thursday night. It read: “Information here is that Hiss-Chambers case has produced new bombshell. Stop. Indications are that Chambers has offered new evidence. Stop. All concerned silent. Stop. However, Justice Department partially confirms by saying ‘It is too hot for comment.’ Stop.”
That evening Pat and I were having dinner at the Captain’s table with Congressman Mike Kirwan of Ohio, Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Congressman Sterling Cole, Republican of New York, who now heads the International Atomic Energy Agency; and their wives. The purser brought me another wire. This one was from Stripling. “Second bombshell obtained by subpoena 1 A.M. Friday. Case clinched. Information amazing. Heat is on from press and other places. Immediate action appears necessary. Can you possibly get back?”
I knew that Stripling would not have sent such a cable unless the evidence was really of great importance. I read the cable aloud at the table and Pat threw up her hands and said, “Here we go again!”
The following morning, Sunday, I received the clincher—a long cablegram from Andrews. It read, in part: “Documents incredibly hot. Stop. Link to Hiss seems certain. Stop. Link to others inevitable. Stop. Results should restore faith in need for Committee if not in some members. Stop. New York Jury meets Wednesday. Stop. Could you arrive Tuesday and get day’s jump on Grand Jury. Stop. If not, holding hearing early Wednesday. Stop. My liberal friends don’t love me no more. Stop. Nor you. Stop. But facts are facts and these facts are dynamite. Stop. Hiss’s writing identified on three documents. Stop. Not proof he gave them to Chambers but highly significant. Stop. Stripling says can prove who gave them to Chambers. Stop. Love to Pat. Stop. (Signed) Vacation-Wrecker Andrews.”
I radioed Stripling to make arrangements, if possible, to get me off the ship. By that time we were in the Caribbean near Cuba and the Captain said that if a Coast Guard amphibian PBY would come get me, he could pilot the ship to a stretch of water calm enough for a landing.
In Washington, Stripling took the problem to the naval attaché assigned to Congress. He in turn took the matter up directly with Defense Secretary Forrestal, who issued a personal order to the Coast Guard station in Miami to meet the ship and fly me to the mainland. On Sunday morning the ship dropped anchor on the lee side of an island. A Coast Guard PBY landed on the water nearby. Members of the ship’s crew lowered me to the water in a lifeboat and rowed over to the PBY. I climbed aboard and was on my way to Miami.
Reporters and photographers were on hand to meet me. They asked what comment I had on the “pumpkin papers”?
I didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about and asked, “What is this, a joke?”
They explained that when he was served with our subpoena, Chambers had led the Committee investigators to his pumpkin patch at midnight, taken the top off one of the pumpkins, and produced five rolls of microfilm containing photographs of secret State Department documents.
I simply could not believe my ears. On the seven-hour flight from Miami to Washington, I began to have the same misgivings about Chambers I had had when he first told us his fantastic story. Now, I wondered if we really might have a crazy man on our hands.
Stripling met my plane and took me directly to the Committee office. I soon learned that Chambers was crazy—like a fox. Here is what had happened.
Shortly after I had seen Chambers in November he had gone to Baltimore to give testimony in the pretrial deposition being taken by Hiss’s attorneys. Hiss’s chief counsel, William Marbury, a Washington attorney of outstanding reputation, had asked Chambers if he had any letters, documents, or any other communications from Alger Hiss which would prove their alleged relationship. It was obvious to Chambers, as he later told me, that Marbury did not have the slightest expectation that Chambers would produce anything. Hiss, a lawyer himself, had made the fatal mistake no client should ever make—he had not told his own lawyer the full truth about the facts at issue.
In answer to the question, Chambers had said that he would check his files to see if he had any such evidence. When he returned to his home in Westminster, he went through a long period of soul-searching. He knew he had documentary proof, but he didn’t know if he should use it.
Not long before, Chambers had been called before the New York Grand Jury investigating Communist activities and had been asked if he had any information involving Soviet espionage. He had weighed the implications of that question and had answered, “No.” This answer was untrue. In his book, Witness, Chambers explained that while he wanted to expose Communist underground activities in the United States, he did not want to destroy Hiss and others who had been his friends and associates with his evidence of espionage. He had hoped that, once he testified, they too would admit their former activities and join him in exposing Communist subversion.
But at the pretrial proceedings, Hiss’s attorneys had been raking over every aspect of his life in an attempt to discredit and destroy him. Under the circumstances, Chambers wondered if he should not counterattack in kind. One day his wife, Esther, was cross-examined so unmercifully by Hiss’s attorneys that she broke into tears. This incident made his decision for him. If this was to be, in effect, total war, he would use the ultimate weapons available to him.
The next Sunday, November 14, Chambers went to Brooklyn to reclaim a package he had left with his wife’s nephew, Nathan Levine, after his break with the Communist Party in 1938. Because he feared assassination, he had told his nephew to hide the package and to make its contents public only if he, Chambers, met with a violent death. Now, ten years later, he and Levine went together to the hiding place—an unused dumb-waiter in the Brooklyn apartment of Levine’s mother. There they found Chambers’ large sealed envelope, covered now with ten years’ accumulation of dust and cobwebs. Inside the envelope were sixty-five typed pages of copies and summaries of confidential State Department documents, three memoranda in Hiss’s handwriting, two strips of developed microfilm, three cylinders of undeveloped microfilm, and an eight-page memo of confidential Treasury Department information in the handwriting of Harry Dexter White. These documents had been stolen not only from the State Department but also from the Communist Party. Rather than turning over this final haul to his Communist superiors, Chambers had kept them for “life insurance.”
Three days later, Hiss’s attorneys again made their demand for documentary evidence, and Chambers handed over the sixty-five pages of typewritten State Department papers—many of which were later identified as having been typed on Hiss’s Woodstock machine—the memos in Hiss’s own handwriting, and the old envelope which had contained the documents. This was Chambers’ first “bombshell.” The second was the microfilm—the so-called “pumpkin papers.”
The story of the “pumpkin papers” was typical of how a seemingly fantastic incident in the life of Whittaker Chambers could have a simple explanation. The rolls of microfilm had not been kept in a pumpkin for ten years, as many people have been led to believe. They remained hidden in the unused dumb-waiter until Chambers recovered them and then kept them in his house. Only on the last day did he change the hiding place. Fearing that they might be found in his house by Hiss’s investigators, whom he had seen near his farm, he stashed the rolls of microfilm away in a hollowed-out pumpkin and replaced the pumpkin in its original place in the patch. It was a fine hiding place—but it was used only for one day, not ten years!
• • •
When Stripling and I arrived at the Committee office,
it was already past ten in the evening. And we stayed there until dawn, studying the photostats of typewritten and handwritten documents which Chambers had turned over to the Justice Department at the deposition hearing on November 17, and the hundreds of pages of photostats of State Department documents developed from the five rolls of microfilm.
Both Stripling and I had heard literally thousands of words of testimony before the Committee on Un-American Activities charging that Communist agents were guilty of espionage against the United States Government. But for the first time we had before us absolute proof of those charges. It was no longer a case of one man’s word against another. Here was physical evidence that no words could deny.
Our major problem, on which we made a critical decision that night, was what role the Committee should now play in the case.
The Justice Department had finally begun to move on Chambers’ charges as a result of the production of the “pumpkin papers.” Chambers had been subpoenaed to appear before the Grand Jury in New York later that day—Monday, December 6. Should we turn over the microfilm to the Justice Department and leave the responsibility for further investigation completely in its hands? We decided not to do this. On the basis of the record to date, we simply did not have confidence that the Justice Department would resist the political pressures being brought to bear in behalf of Hiss and against Chambers. Several reasons led us to this conclusion.
In the two-week period between November 17—when Chambers turned over the typewritten and handwritten documents to Justice Department officials in Baltimore—and December 1, no one from the Department had appeared to follow up this disclosure or even to question Chambers.
And then a story had been leaked to the press that the Justice Department was “going to drop the Hiss-Chambers investigation for lack of evidence”—two weeks after the Justice Department had received documentary evidence pointing to Hiss’s guilt.
Under the circumstances, we felt our lack of confidence was well justified.
We also faced an acute problem of time. The term of the blue-ribbon Grand Jury in New York was to expire in just nine days, on December 14. If it failed to return an indictment against Hiss, it would probably be months before the case could be presented to a new grand jury. By that time, the political pressures which Hiss would be able to summon to his aid would build up immensely.
And, as a result of the November elections, the Chairmanship of the Committee on Un-American Activities would change in January from the Republicans to the Democrats. Some Democrats, like Ed Hébert, might be just as vigilant in pursuing the investigation as the Republicans had been. But in view of Truman’s campaign promise to seek the outright abolition of the Committee, we thought it was more likely that the Chairmanship would go to someone less independent of Administration pressures than Hébert. Consequently, we decided to hold public hearings beginning Monday, December 6. But even more important, we decided that under no circumstances would we turn over the microfilm which we had in our possession to the Justice Department until we had been given absolute assurance that the case would be vigorously prosecuted.
The week of December 6, the Committee’s schedule was even heavier than it had been during the critical period before the decisive Hiss-Chambers confrontation on August 17. It became a tug of war between the Committee and the Hiss apologists.
“After all,” their argument went, “even if these papers did come from the State Department, they didn’t contain information which was too important and the security of the United States was not, therefore, endangered by their removal from the Department.” We quickly and effectively laid that one to rest—and by the State Department’s own witnesses. We requested permission to make all the documents public. This permission was refused on the ground that publication of some of the documents would be injurious to the national security, even though ten years had passed since they were taken from government files.
On the matter of the importance of the documents, John Peurifoy, the Assistant Secretary of State charged with security affairs, and Under-Secretary Sumner Welles testified that a foreign agent having in his possession even one of these documents would thus have been able to break the secret State Department code used at that time for the transmittal of messages. This meant that the Soviet agents who obtained these documents might have broken the State Department code and thereby could decipher all confidential communications transmitted in that code between the United States and other foreign governments during the critical period immediately preceding the Hitler-Stalin pact.
I later discussed the case with William C. Bullitt, who had been American Ambassador to both France and the Soviet Union during this period. Several of the secret messages appearing on the microfilm had been sent by him. He pointed out another reason why such documents would have been of tremendous value to the Soviet Government. “An Ambassador’s reports to his government can only be as reliable as the sources from which he obtains information. These messages disclose the names of my best sources—representatives of other governments who were providing information to me on a confidential basis. Once their activities become known to others, the source immediately dries up.”
Because of our hearings in this period and an aroused public opinion, attempts to dismiss the stolen documents as “not too important” failed to get off the ground. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which up to this point had editorially strongly supported Hiss, now said: “Whatever else President Truman may say in the future about the spy investigation, he cannot again call it a ‘red herring.’ It is no longer a ‘red herring’ after the release of more than two hundred documents which are out of their places in the confidential files of the State Department.”
• • •
But the key witness in the case was still Chambers. And Chambers was testifying in New York before the Grand Jury. The Justice Department would not allow him to come to Washington to appear before the Committee. Consequently, we decided to go to New York that day (Monday) and to question him that night after he had completed his appearance before the Grand Jury.
But that morning, before taking the train to New York, a telephone call came in for Stripling. It was from Keith Lewis of the Eastman Kodak Company. We had asked Eastman to check the microfilm which Chambers had turned over to us and to determine when it had been manufactured. Rumors had been circulated that Chambers might have put the documents on film not ten years ago but only after the Committee hearings of the past summer, in order to manufacture evidence to prove his charges. A look of complete dismay came over Stripling’s face as he took the call. I heard him say, “You mean this film couldn’t have been manufactured before 1945?” Stripling hung up and turned to me. “Well, we’ve had it. Eastman did not manufacture the type of film Chambers turned over to us until 1945.”
The news jolted us into almost complete shock. We sat looking at each other without saying a word. This meant that Chambers was, after all, a liar. All the work, the long hours we had put into the investigation had been useless. We had been taken in by a diabolically clever maniac who had finally made a fatal mistake.
I buzzed my secretary in the outer office and asked her to get Chambers on the phone in New York.
Before he had a chance to say anything, I asked him: “Am I correct in understanding that these papers were put on microfilm in 1938?”
He answered, “Yes”—obviously mystified by the question.
“We have just had a report from the Eastman Kodak Company that film of the type you turned over to us was not made by the company until after 1945,” I retorted. “What is your answer to that?”
There was a long silence at the other end of the wire. For a moment, I thought he must have hung up.
Finally he answered in a voice full of despair and resignation: “I can’t understand it. God must be against me.”
Then I took out on him all of the fury and frustration that had built up within me. “You’d better have a better answer than that,” I said. “The Sub-committ
ee’s coming to New York tonight and we want to see you at the Commodore Hotel at 9:00 and you’d better be there!”
I slammed the receiver down without giving him a chance to reply.
“What’ll we do now?” Stripling asked.
“There’s only one thing we can do,” I answered. “I want you to have the staff call the reporters who cover the Committee and ask them to come to my office in thirty minutes for a statement I will make at that time.”
I have made some decisions in my life more difficult than this one, but none could approach it in terms of personal embarrassment and chagrin. But there was no other choice. I reminded Stripling that it was the Committee’s responsibility not to prove Hiss guilty but to find out who was telling the truth.
Stripling made several calls to the press from my office while his secretary was making the others. In the meantime, I tried to collect my thoughts and put down some notes for the statement I had to make. This would be the biggest crow-eating performance in the history of Capitol Hill, but I was ready to go through with it.
Five minutes before the time scheduled for the press conference, after some of the reporters had already arrived in the reception room of my office, the buzzer sounded on the intercom. I answered and my secretary said, “The man from Eastman Kodak is on the phone and wants to talk to Stripling again.” He picked up the phone and I saw the expression on his face change to one of sheer joy. He shouted into the receiver, “You mean you were wrong? You did manufacture that film through 1938 but then discontinued it during the war?”
I had no need to hear the answer. Stripling put the receiver down, let out a Texas rebel yell, grabbed me by the arms, and danced me around the room.
“Chambers’ story has stood up again,” he exulted. “Every time we check into something which sounds questionable, he comes through.”
After the rest of the reporters had arrived, I asked them to come into my office and informed them that we had checked with the Eastman Kodak Company and had found that they had manufactured that type of film during the period Chambers claimed to have used it. I am sure they wondered why I had called them to make such a routine announcement; but I explained that the Committee was checking every aspect of Chambers’ story and that they would be informed when we found holes in it as well as when it was corroborated.
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