Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

  The immediate transaction he had in mind involved Harry Dexter White, the monetary expert of the Treasury Department. White, a fellow traveler, was a great friend of one of Harold Ware’s contacts, whom I shall call Wilton Rugg. Rugg had assured Ware that White was willing to turn over to him certain official Treasury documents which could then be photographed. Ware introduced me to Rugg. Rugg made his arrangements with White, who gave him documents. Rugg gave them to me in Washington. I photographed them.

  I am no longer sure whether I photographed them at Alger Hiss’s house on P Street or at the Washington apartment of a Communist writer and member of the John Reed Club in New York, whom Harold Ware had brought to Washington to assist him when I was claimed by Bill. I am more and more inclined to believe that the White photography was done at the writer’s apartment and that certain later photographic work was done at Hiss’s P Street house.

  I was supposed to return White’s documents to Rugg the next day. The appointment was on a street corner. I waited for an hour before Rugg appeared. Thereafter, I refused to have any further connection with Rugg, since I held that any Communist who would endanger a man like Harry White by coming an hour late to an appointment was unfit for underground work.

  From Peters’ viewpoint, the transaction was not a success. Bill took the films to examine them at his leisure and presently announced that he was not interested in them, and did not wish me to continue with such work.

  XIII

  I live in Westminster, Md., today because of an incident which at that time seemed of no importance. In conversation with the Hisses, my wife or I had said something about the effect of the Baltimore heat on my daughter, and had spoken of renting a small place outside the city. One Sunday Alger appeared with a newspaper advertisement of two small properties at Westminster. On one there was a small house. They were unusually cheap—$500 for the house and fifteen acres of land.

  Alger proposed that he and I drive to Westminster, of which at that time I had never heard, look at the little house, and, if it were at all livable, buy it. Then my family could spend the summer there, the Hisses could visit us, and both families could be together without the precautions that hampered us in Baltimore or Washington. There was never any question of underground work at Westminster. The place was simply to be an inexpensive summer residence.

  Alger and I went to look at the house. It was one of those little country-built houses common in Maryland, constructed against the slope of a hill so that one side is three floors high, with the basement counting as a room. The house was neither beautiful nor ugly. It had never been painted, but it was weathered a rich gray. A great wistaria of the sweet native Maryland variety grew rankly over the front porch and coiled through the rotted shingles of the roof. Two tall cedars stood, sentinel-like, beside the small weathered barn which was in front of the house on the road. On one side of the house, was a small, uncared-for orchard of apples and sour cherries. Under one window grew a big apricot. At the back of the land was a grove of persimmons. The land looked out across a shallow valley. A wind blew continuously through the rank grass that had not been cut for years.

  Alger left a small deposit on the property in his name. Later, he decided against buying the place. Priscilla had been to see it, and, used to the beautiful open valleys of Pennsylvania, she asked me: “Do you really like that nasty, narrow valley?”

  I really did. “What a dump!” I once overheard someone say about that little house. The dump charmed me. In the way of shelter and seclusion, it was about all that I asked of life. It was neglected, but it was tight. The little rooms were cozy. On three sides, the land was surrounded by woods from which, on the day when I was first there, tanagers were calling—birds that carol like robins, but more ringingly. I stood beside the cedars and, for the first time since my boyhood, I listened consciously to the wind drift through their branches. For two years, I could not get out of my mind the memory of the land, the wind and the cedar trees.

  Then, in the spring of 1936 or 1937, when the thawing roads were still all but impassable, without saying anything to anyone, not even to my wife, I drove one day to Westminster. That most beautiful countryside had drawn me back. I did not want the real-estate agent to suppose that I knew anything about the old house, so I asked him to show me his list. He took a route through the rutted back roads that brought us at last to the house that Alger and I had looked at. Even in the bare spring, always the test in the country, the old ruin had much charm for me. I had scarcely any good reason or right to buy it. I did not know how I was going to pay for it. But it was one of those occasions when a man feels: this I am meant to do. I left a deposit. No doubt, I could have borrowed enough to meet further payments, but by a curious turn of circumstance, I did not have to. Before I returned to Westminster, the owner and her next of kin died in quick succession. It became impossible to clear the title. I had been at Time magazine two years, and we had been living in the little house some time, before it became necessary for me to pay the purchase price.

  I have another memory, too, connected with the old property. The day that Alger and I inspected it, we also looked at the other piece that had been advertised with it. It was a much bigger, adjoining tract. It had once been a farmstead, but the house had burned and the old barn was collapsing. Past the fallen timbers of the barn, a tiny stream ran the length of the land. The place had been abandoned so long that the wild life had taken over and seemed completely undisturbed as we clambered through the bushes and the bracken.

  There were birds of all kinds, and Alger stood by the brook in front of the barn, identifying them. In a burst of gleaming black, white and chestnut, a ground robin flashed out of a shrub, and, standing on a fence post directly in front of us, sang. “Do you know what he says?” Alger asked me. I had not heard the old country translation of his song. The bird sang again. “Listen,” Alger said, “he says: ‘Sweet bird, sing!’” It did not seem silly to him, for he was completely caught up in the bird’s song. I have no more vivid recollection of Alger Hiss.

  And that is why, twelve years later, in a room in the Federal Building in New York, with a dozen intent men watching every expression of my face to see if I was lying, and three congressmen shooting questions at me, I could testify: “Alger Hiss is a man of great simplicity, and great gentleness and sweetness of character.”

  XIV

  By April, 1935, I began to think we had been at St. Paul Street long enough; it was time to move. I toyed with the idea of taking my family to Washington. Alger Hiss was also on the move. He had rented a furnished house on P Street in Georgetown. He planned to move there at once. His lease on the 28th Street apartment still had two months to run. He proposed that, since he could leave most of his furniture in the apartment, we should go there to live until the lease expired. It was a voluntary, generous gesture, of a kind not unusual among Communists. There was no question of my renting or leasing the apartment, and, if I offered to pay rent for it, as I must certainly have done, Alger refused it.

  My wife and I gave what furniture we had to the woman who ran the St. Paul Street house for the W.C.T.U. We took no furniture to Washington. Then Alger and I packed a few personal belongings, chiefly the baby’s collapsible tub and dismantled crib, into the trunk and back of Alger’s Ford. He and I then drove them to Washington. My wife had already left with the baby by train. We probably spent the night at the P Street house. Then we moved into the 28th Street apartment.

  We lived there about two months. During that time I was often at the P Street house. I am not sure that Alger was ever at the 28th Street apartment, though Priscilla Hiss visited my wife there at least once and had lunch. I was not at home and I have no independent recollection of the visit. During the day, my wife and I sometimes took our daughter to the Washington zoo, which was a few blocks away. We always sat in front of the eagles’ cage so that Priscilla could find us, for she sometimes joined us there.

  Alger Hiss has testified that I lived at 28th Street under
the name of George Crosley. It is possible, though I have no recollection of it, and I believe that I have recalled all the other names I used in the underground without effort.

  At the P Street house I first met Timothy Hobson, Priscilla Hiss’s son by a former marriage. Timmie was then about eight or nine years old, a high-strung, rather pathetic little boy, who was strikingly like his mother in features and nervous temperament. Alger was extremely kind and considerate in his treatment of Timmie. No one could have been more so. But my wife and I sometimes commented on the lack of warmth in their relationship.

  Timmie knew me only as Carl. The fact that his eyes were always observing us together, and he was a quiet, watchful little boy, disturbed me. I was afraid that, if there should ever be any threat to the apparatus, Timmie would be a dangerous witness. I discussed it with Alger. He felt that Timmie was too young to constitute any danger. There was really nothing I could do about it, but Timmie always made me uneasy.

  Sooner or later in this book, I must unavoidably take note of the slanders which at one time or another, as best suited their purposes, the Hiss forces have spread about my relations with every member of the Hiss household. Perhaps this is as good a point as any, when I was becoming what I was to continue to be until I broke with the Communist Party, a constant visitor at the Hiss homes.

  Those slanders were part of an international whispering campaign, probably originated and spread by the Communist Party and made deafening by certain commentators and public figures. Its purpose was to confuse the public mind about the case by making Alger Hiss appear a martyr who would suffer any unjust punishment in silence rather than clear himself of my charges by revealing painful facts about members of his family. Alger Hiss is no martyr. So far as concerns me, there are no painful facts. No act or thought of mine toward Hiss or any member of his family or household was ever blemished by evil or even unkindness. Unqualifiedly, the slanders are lies.

  Let me add only this, without any pride at all. So long as it was humanly possible, I shielded Alger Hiss and the others—for motives which I hope presently to make clear—from the consequences of their past acts. In his failure publicly to deny those lies, Alger Hiss is shielding no one but himself. In lending them the force of his silence, he is adding to his offenses, an offense against the human spirit.

  XV

  In October, 1948, during my pre-trial examination by Alger Hiss’s lawyers, in the libel suit which he had filed against me in Baltimore, there was one significant moment. It was only a moment, but it should have warned some of Hiss’s counsel that there were certain areas of his conduct better left unexplored. All day, William L. Marbury, Hiss’s attorney, had been baiting me by snide innuendo and sneering skepticism. From the beginning, I took it quietly as something to be borne. So far I had not uttered a word about the espionage facts concerning Alger Hiss. But at last the knowledge that I sat there, covering up for him, while his lawyer viciously assailed me, became too much for me. There was one question too many as to how I could dare to suggest that Alger Hiss had ever been a Communist. Anger made me unable to answer. I paused—a long pause that does not show, of course, in the transcript.

  Instead of responding, I asked (quoting from memory): “Did your client never tell you that while he was with the munitions investigating committee, he was able to secure documents from the State Department?” Mr. Marbury graciously replied that he was asking the questions and I was answering them. By then, I had got hold of myself again, and the dangerous subject was dropped.

  I had reference to an episode that occurred while Alger was living at P Street. His position with the munitions investigation had become so strong that he himself proposed to me that he could use the authority of the Senate Committee to secure confidential documents from the State Department, which I could then photograph and turn over to the Communist Party.

  I discussed the problem with Peters. He was again excited by the possibility of selling material to Bill. I told Alger to go ahead. In the name of the Senate munitions investigating committee, he requested certain documents from the State Department. The State Department was reluctant, but in view of the popular excitement about the Committee’s investigation, no doubt thought it advisable to release a few documents. These Alger brought home. I photographed them in his P Street house.

  But, Alger told me, the State Department had become anxious. Officially or unofficially there was a ban against further releases of confidential documents.

  Peters fared poorly. Bill showed a complete lack of interest in the documents.

  XVI

  By the time that Alger Hiss’s lease on the 28th Street apartment was up, I had decided to move my family back to New York. Probably the question of the English apparatus had become urgent again. My old college friend, Meyer Schapiro, now a professor of Fine Arts at Columbia University, was going to the country for the summer and offered to rent me his house in Greenwich Village.

  Once more we loaded the Hiss Ford with our few personal belongings—all that we had ever taken to the 28th Street apartment —and the Hisses drove them to the Schapiro house in New York. My family and I went by train.

  The summer was very hot and Greenwich Village very noisy. At that point, Maxim Lieber decided to move to the country for the summer (he kept his New York apartment), and we decided to give up the Schapiro house and move in with Lieber. This served a practical purpose: we could use the David Breen name and establish a record that Lieber had spent a summer in the country with the future manager of his London office.

  We found a furnished cottage facing the Delaware River at Smithtown, on the Pennsylvania shore, a few miles below French-town, N.J. We lived there during the late summer and probably the early fall of 1935.

  At Smithtown, Priscilla Hiss visited us. My wife had given up her painting when our daughter was born so that she could devote her full time to the child. To Priscilla Hiss, who was stirred from time to time by a vestigial feminism, this seemed a penalization of talent by maternity. Very generously, she volunteered to come up to Smithtown and spend a week or ten days with us. She would keep an eye on the child and my wife would be free to go painting again. My daughter was used to Priscilla and fond of her. Everything went very nicely and my wife painted several pictures.

  Priscilla had driven up in the Hisses’ Ford roadster. For some reason, I drove the roadster back to Washington alone. There was a mist over the Delaware Valley. The windshield kept clouding and I had some difficulty in keeping it clear with the hand-operated windshield wipers. I did not realize as I struggled with them how important that recollection was to become years later. In my absence, Alger drove to Smithtown and took Priscilla back to Washington in the Plymouth car he had bought a short time before.

  It was from this visit to Smithtown that Alger Hiss knew the name David Breen and learned about my English plans so that the Hiss defense was able to demand the Breen passport at Hiss’s second trial. It is his knowledge of that visit that could have made Maxim Lieber an important witness in the Hiss case. Though he was available, and probably in New York during both Hiss trials, the Hiss defense never called him to the stand.22

  XVII

  The Plymouth, which, like the Ford roadster, was to roll importantly into the Hiss case, had been a floor model, and, because of that, Alger had got something taken off the purchase price when he bought the car two or three months after we left the 28th Street apartment. (The after is a matter of record.)

  In those days practically everybody parked his car on the street in Washington. The Ford roadster had stood out winter and summer in all weathers. Now and again, I would use it to drive around Washington. I always returned the key to Hiss. But with the purchase of the Plymouth, Alger decided to get rid of the roadster. It was in good mechanical condition, but somewhat beat up, and its cash value was small. Alger decided that he wanted to give the car to the open Communist Party for the use of some poor organizer in the South or West—a close approximation of his own words. Perhaps this was
a harkback to the days of Harold Ware and his agrarian undergrounds.

  I strongly opposed the idea. The transfer of the roadster must inevitably establish a documentary connection between the Soviet underground and the Communist Party. Alger was unusually persistent. I took the problem to J. Peters, who also strongly opposed the transfer of the car for the same reason. For once, Alger would not be dissuaded.

  Either Peters or I could, of course, have said a flat no. But in the underground as everywhere else, the use of flat noes is to be avoided. The enforced inaction in which Hiss was now living made him very restless. (Priscilla would presently attempt to satisfy her need for activity by planning to take a nursing course at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore—a project that she denied in the Hiss trials until the Government introduced one of her own letters to the Hospitalwhich established the fact.) Both Peters and I saw in the car episode a symptom of that restlessness.

  Peters presently worked out a solution. I think, moreover, that he was tempted by the car. He told me, as nearly as I could remember in 1948, that there was a used-car lot and filling station in the District of Columbia, or just across the District Line in Maryland, which was owned by a Communist. (An employe, and not the owner, it developed in 1948, was Peters’ contact.) Alger was to drive the Ford roadster there and leave it. The rest would be taken care of without trace or trouble. Either Peters met Alger and gave him the address of the car lot, or he gave me the address, which I passed on unread to Alger.