Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

  By what I have written I do not mean at all to say that the Justice Department stood as a malign unit against the truth or me. I am convinced that that was not so. I observed and met men in that Department who were sincerely interested in reaching the truth and in fighting for it. Thomas F. Murphy, the Government’s prosecutor in the Hiss trials, is there to prove it, and he stood for others of like mind, for example, John F. X. McGohey, then United States Attorney, now a judge of the United States District Court, and James M. McInerney, now chief of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. Almost from the first moment I saw him, I never doubted that Raymond P. Whearty, a special assistant to the Attorney General, was interested in the truth, and the truth alone. I remember the sad words later spoken by Tom Donegan, a special assistant to the Attorney General with the Grand Jury that indicted Alger Hiss: “If you had only given me documentary proof in the first place.” And there is no question that Alex Campbell, then an assistant Attorney General, with no initial bias in my favor, became sincerely convinced, on the basis of the evidence and testimony, that I was telling the truth. Nevertheless, I was consistently warned and saw no reason to doubt that there remained throughout the Government immensely powerful forces that were determined to save Alger Hiss and destroy me by any means.

  I seemed absolutely alone. I was still a senior editor of Time, and there is usually a reluctance to move hastily against anyone connected with the press. But I did not suppose that that would weigh long or importantly. Otherwise, I was a defenseless man. The Committee was still frantically seeking to discover whether I was telling the truth, though slowly Alger Hiss was convincing it that I was. But the Committee could do little for me. I assumed that the F.B.I., which is merely the investigative arm of the Justice Department, would be used as a matter of routine against me, and that it could do little or nothing about that regardless of what its officials or its agents might themselves believe. This feeling was strengthened by the fact that during a period from the end of July until some time in November, I had no communication with the F.B.I. and saw only one of its agents who came to ask me something so irrelevant and inconsequential that I no longer remember what it was or who he was. Until then I had been seeing the F.B.I. frequently. I faced this situation with that inertia of spirit which I have mentioned earlier. It was well that I did so. For if I had sought to face it actively, even if I had admitted to my waking mind the array of power against me, I must have become desperate.

  But something else tormented me. Under the cry of: “Who’s a liar?” the nation was beginning to see the Hiss-Chambers Case as a personal duel between two men. This had the advantage of simplifying and dramatizing the Case. But it reduced it to the level of a baseball game and blurred the great issues involved. There were moments when I wondered with despair whether it would ever be possible to make those issues clear to a nation that insisted on seeing in terms of a sporting event a struggle that touched its very survival. Time, a very short time, was to prove that I was wrong.

  XIV

  In the same nine days between the second interrogation of Chambers and Alger Hiss, one brief piece of testimony was taken by the Committee, which in its consequences proved curiously important. On August 13th, Donald Hiss, Alger Hiss’s younger brother, testified at a public hearing.

  Donald Hiss categorically denied my testimony about him. In a statement, which he read to the Committee, he repeated another, which he had already given to the press. Among other things, he said: ”... I flatly deny every statement made by Mr. Chambers with respect to me. I am not, and never have been, a member of the Communist Party or of any formal or informal organizations affiliated with, or fronting in any manner whatsoever for, the Communist Party. In fact, the only organizations and clubs to which I have belonged are the local Y.M.C.A., the Miles River Yacht Club of Maryland, the old Washington Racquet Club, the Harvard Law School Association, the American Society of International Law, and college fraternities and athletic clubs.

  “I have no recollection of ever having met any person by the name of D. Whittaker Chambers, nor do I recognize his photograph which I have seen in the public press. I am not and never have been in sympathy with the principles of the Communist Party. Any interested person could easily have discovered these facts by inquiry of the distinguished, respected and unquestionably loyal Americans with whom I have been intimately associated.”

  Other categoric denials followed. “As I understand your statement,” said Richard Nixon, “you have made an unqualified statement that you have never known a man by the name of Carl who resembled that man.” Donald Hiss: “I have never known that man by the name of Chambers, Carl, or any other name, sir.” Later on he was to add; “If I am lying, I should go to jail, and if Mr. Chambers is lying, he should go to jail.” Mr. Mundt: “There is no question about that.”

  Donald Hiss’s forthrightness had a powerful impact on the public. But almost at once, that forthrightness was to prove a handicap to Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss had said flatly under oath that he had never known me under any name. Hence it followed that, though, from 1935 to 1938, the Hiss brothers had lived not far from one another in Washington, and saw each other frequently, Donald Hiss had never known a man by the name of George Crosley, and was unable to bear out his brother’s testimony in any way at any time upon that interesting character, who, it must be inferred, had never even been mentioned between them.

  For it was as George Crosley that Alger Hiss, in his first big change of tactic, would cautiously, very cautiously, begin to recognize me three days later.

  XV

  On August 16th, the Committee met with Alger Hiss in executive session in the Old House Building in Washington, D.C. Under questioning, he independently verified most of the testimony I had given about details of his life and household. Samples (which I take at random, out of the order of the transcript):

  NIXON: Do you have any children, Mr. Hiss?

  HISS: I have two children.

  NIXON: You have two children.36 Could you give us their ages?

  HISS: One will be 22—he is my stepson—will be 22 September 19 next. His name is Timothy Hobson....

  NIXON: Did you testify before what your wife’s name was?

  HISS: Her name was Priscilla Fansler, her maiden name. Her first marriage was to a Mr. Hobson, H-o-b-s-o-n.

  NIXON: Where did she come from? What town?

  HISS: She was born in Evanston, Ill., but spent most of her early life outside of Philadelphia.

  NIXON: In Paoli?

  HISS: Frazer.

  NIXON: Is that near Paoli?

  HISS: It is on the main line not far from there....

  NIXON: Frazer and Paoli are a few miles apart?

  HISS: Yes.

  NIXON: Did she live there on a farm?

  HISS: Her father was in the insurance business, and he acquired a small place—I suppose it could be called a farm....

  NIXON: What were the nicknames you and your wife had?

  HISS: My wife, I have always called her “Prossy.”

  NIXON: What does she call you?

  HISS: Well, at one time, she called me quite frequently “Hill,” H-i-1-1.

  NIXON: What other name?

  HISS: “Hilly,” with a “y.”

  NIXON: What other name did you call her?

  HISS: She called me “Hill” or “Hilly.” I called her “Pross” or “Prossy” almost exclusively....

  NIXON: Did you ever call her Dilly?

  HISS: No, never.

  NIXON: What did you call your son?

  HISS: “Timmy.”

  NIXON: Where did you spend your vacations during that period?

  HISS: ... My son went to a camp over on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.... When he was at camp, we spent two summers, I think, during this period in Chestertown, Md.

  NIXON: On the Eastern Shore?

  HISS: On the Eastern Shore of Maryland....

  NIXON: Did you have pets?

  HISS: We had a brown cock
er spaniel....

  NIXON: What did you do with the dog when you went on your vacations; do you recall?

  HISS: I think we took Jenny over on the Eastern Shore. She did spend some time in the kennels when we were away....

  NIXON: That is where you would have left the dog, boarded the dog?

  HISS: Yes; at that time I think we left her there.

  NIXON: What hobby, if any, do you have, Mr. Hiss?

  HISS: Tennis and amateur ornithology.

  NIXON: Is your wife interested in ornithology?

  HISS: .... My wife is interested in ornithology, as I am, through my interest....

  NIXON: ... As a boy, Mr. Hiss, did you have any particular business that you engaged in?

  HISS: Yes.

  NIXON: What was your business?

  HISS: I had two businesses. One of which I was most proud was the delivery of spring water in Baltimore....

  NIXON: You had the spring water on your own place?

  HISS: We had to go out to the park.

  NIXON: The park?

  HISS: Druid Hill Park is a park in Baltimore where there were good springs, and some of us had water routes and we carried water and delivered it to customers.

  HÉBERT: As a ehild?

  HISS: Twelve or so.

  STRIPLING: Is Druid Hill right in the middle of Baltimore?

  HISS: It was at the edge of town then and from our house it was 10 or 15 blocks. I have always been very proud of that....

  Hiss, of course, continued to deny the charge of Communism and related charges. Nor did he verify every one of the intimate details that I had testified to. In some instances, his memory was better than mine as in the case of the name Dilly, which I presently realized he had not called his wife. On the other hand, I was right in testifying that the members of the Ware Group commonly referred to the Hisses as Hilly and Dilly.

  But the clinching point of this part of the testimony came when Richard Nixon questioned Hiss about his interest in ornithology. At that point, Congressman McDowell quietly asked: “Did you ever see a prothonotary warbler?”

  HISS: I have right here on the Potomac. Do you know that place? ...

  NIXON: Have you ever seen one?

  HISS: Did you see it in the same place?

  MC DOWELL: I saw one in Arlington.

  HISS: They come back and nest in those swamps. Beautiful yellow head, a gorgeous bird....

  Hastily, Nixon asked another question to cover the silence that crept over his colleagues.

  XVI

  There were even more startling developments at the August 16th hearing. I mean to report them, and the developments in the two subsequent hearings, in some detail, using the record, which is official, editing its text only insofar as is necessary to throw into relief the high points of testimony as I see them. For the 1378 pages of the Committee’s hearings on the Bentley and Hiss-Chambers cases are not only fascinating reading. They are literal. It is all there, irrevocably, as it happened. Had the transcript of the hearings (popular demand has made it practically a collector’s item) been available on a mass scale to millions of Americans, it has seemed to me since I first read it that there could have been little room for doubt among honest men, as there was little doubt in the minds of the Committee, that I was telling the truth as far as I had disclosed it up to that point, and that Alger Hiss was not.

  To understand his drama of maneuver behind the skeletal question and answer, it is well to bear in mind Hiss’s plight at that moment. Even assuming that he had seen a transcript of my secret testimony to the sub-committee (and Senator Nixon is still emphatic that that had happened), Hiss could not have been sure, he must, indeed, have been sickeningly unsure, just how much more I had told the Committee—especially since the sub-committee had gone off the record, as the transcript shows, precisely in questioning me about what I had told Berle in 1939. In the transcript of his testimony, Hiss can be seen groping with extreme tact for that indispensable knowledge without which he might at any moment be trapped. At one point, he even ventures the suggestion that the Committee should make known to him whatever I had told it, or might tell it, while he covers this tactic by charging the Committee with turning over his secret testimony to me. At other times, he varies his careful probing with bursts of diversive indignation.

  The knowledge of what I had told the Committee was indispensable to Hiss because on it hinged the question: whether he must identify me at all, or whether he could continue the simpler, less entangling tactic of failing to recognize me. The record of the hearing shows, in his own words, that, on August 16th, Hiss came prepared to use either tactic, and that it was not until the middle of the session that the weight of questioning made him decide that non-recognition would no longer work. Then he switched to his second prepared tactic of recognizing me, qualifiedly, as George Crosley—a switch which, made by almost anyone else, must have been a violent jolt, but which Hiss managed with masterly smoothness and timing.

  Early in the hearing Hiss was again shown pictures of me.

  MR. NIXON: I am now showing you two pictures of Mr. Whittaker Chambers, also known as Carl, who testified that he knew you between the years 1934-37, and that he saw you in 1938.

  I ask you now, after looking at those pictures, if you can remember that person either as Whittaker Chambers or as Carl or as any other individual you have met.

  MR. HISS: May I recall to the committee the testimony I gave in the public session when I was shown another photograph of Mr. Whittaker Chambers, and I had prior to taking the stand tried to get as many newspapers that had photographs of Mr. Chambers as I could. I testified then that I could not swear that I had never seen the man whose picture was shown me. Actually the face has a certain familiarity. I think I also testified to that.

  It is not according to the photograph a very distinctive or unusual face. I would like very much to see the individual face to face. I had hoped that would happen before. I still hope it will happen today.

  I am not prepared to say that I have never seen the man whose pictures are now shown me. I said that when I was on the stand when a different picture was shown me. I cannot recall any person with distinctness and definiteness whose picture this is, but it is not completely unfamiliar.

  Whether I am imagining that or not I don’t know, but I certainly wouldn’t want to testify without seeing the man, hearing him talk, getting some much more tangible basis for judging the person and the personality.

  MR. NIXON: Would your answer be any different if this individual were described to you as one who had stayed overnight in your house on several occasions?

  MR. HISS: I think, Mr. Nixon, let me say this: In the course of my service in Government from 1933 to 1947 and the previous year 1929-30, and as a lawyer I have had a great many people who have visited in my house.

  I have tried to recall in the last week or so anyone who would know my house whom I wouldn’t know very well. There are many people that have come to my house on social occasions or on semibusiness occasions whom I probably wouldn’t recall at all.

  As far as staying overnight in my house is concerned—

  MR. NIXON: On several occasions.

  MR. HISS: On several occasions?

  MR. NIXON: On several occasions.

  MR. HISS: I can’t believe, Mr. Nixon, that anyone could have stayed in my house when I was there—

  MR. NIXON: When you were there.

  MR. HISS:—Overnight on several occasions without my being able to recall the individual; and if this is a picture of anyone, I would find it very difficult to believe that that individual could have stayed in my house when I was there on several occasions overnight and his face not be more familiar than it is.

  MR. NIXON: Yes.

  MR. HISS: I don’t want to suggest any innovations in your procedure, but I do want to say specifically that I do hope I will have an opportunity actually to see the individual.

  MR. NIXON: It is going to be arranged. I might say that before arran
ging the meeting, we want to be certain that there is no question of mistaken identity, as well as possible, and also that we had a clear conflict on certain pieces of testimony that had been given by both sides, and that we are getting now. MR. HISS: Yes, sir.

  MR. NIXON: I might say this, too: That Mr. Chambers, as you may be aware of newspaper accounts, appeared in executive session before us on Saturday.

  MR. HISS: Saturday a week ago, I think.

  MR. NIXON: Just 2 days after you appeared.

  MR. HISS: I saw newspaper accounts of that.

  MR. NIXON: At that time we went into the situation with him, showed him pictures of you, and he declared without question you were the man....

  Now, you have never paid any money to Peters?

  MR. HISS: No.

  MR. NIXON: Never paid any money to Carl?

  MR. HISS: Never paid any money to Carl.

  MR. NIXON: Never paid any money to Henry Collins that you can recall?

  MR. HISS: I can recall it even on a personal basis.

  MR. NIXON: Never paid dues to the Communist Party?

  MR. HISS: No.

  MR. NIXON: Your testimony now is that you are not a member of the Communist Party?