Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

  MR. HISS: That is correct.

  MR. NIXON: Never been a member of the Communist Party?

  MR. HISS: Never been a member of the Communist Party.

  MR. NIXON: Or of any underground organization connected with the Communist Party?

  MR. HISS: Not any underground organization connected with the Communist Party.

  Always uppermost in Hiss’s mind is the necessity of learning how much of the whole story I have told the Committee. Therefore, he maneuvers to find out, choosing the boldest tactic as the best (“I would request that I hear Mr. Chambers’ story of his alleged knowledge of me.”). At the same time, he seems to give his demand force by implying that the Committee in questioning him is providing me with information about Hiss’s life, which I can then produce as testimony. Cautiously, he prepares to identify me (“I have been cudgeling my brains, particularly on the train coming down.... ”), though he is still uncertain whether he must take the step.

  MR. HISS: I have been angered and hurt by one thing in the course of this committee testimony, and that was by the attitude which I think Mr. Mundt took when I was testifying publicly and which, it seems to me, you have been taking today, that you have a conflict of testimony between two witnesses—I restrained myself with some difficulty from commenting on this at the public hearing, and I would like to say it on this occasion, which isn’t a public hearing.

  MR. NIXON: Say anything you like.

  MR. HISS: It seems there is no impropriety in saying it. You today and the acting chairman publicly have taken the attitude when you have two witnesses, one of whom is a confessed former Communist, the other is me, that you simply have two witnesses saying contradictory things as between whom you find it most difficult to decide on credibility.

  Mr. Nixon, I do not know what Mr. Whittaker Chambers testified to your committee last Saturday. It is necessarily my opinion of him from what he has already said that I do know that he is not capable of telling the truth or does not desire to, and I honestly have the feeling that details of my personal life which I give honestly can be used to my disadvantage by Chambers then ex post facto knowing those facts.

  I would request that I hear Mr. Chambers’ story of his alleged knowledge of me. I have seen newspaper accounts, Mr. Nixon, that you spent the week end—whether correct or not, I do not know—at Mr. Chambers’ farm in New Jersey.

  MR. NIXON: That is quite incorrect.

  MR. HISS: It is incorrect.

  MR. NIXON: Yes, sir. I can say, as you did a moment ago, that I have never spent the night with Mr. Chambers.

  MR. HISS: Now, I have been cudgeling my brains, particularly on the train coming down this morning, and I had 3 or 4 hours on the train between New York and Washington, as to who could have various details about my family. Many people could.

  Mr. Nixon, I do not wish to make it easier for anyone who, for whatever motive I cannot understand, is apparently endeavoring to destroy me, to make that man’s endeavors any easier. I think in common fairness to my own self-protection and that of my family and my family’s good name and my own, I should not be asked to give details which somehow he may hear and then may be able to use as if he knew them before. I would like him to say all he knows about me now. What I have done is public record, where I have lived is public record. Let him tell you all he knows, let that be made public, and then let my record be checked against those facts instead of my being asked, Mr. Nixon, to tell you personal facts about myself which, if they come to his ears, could sound very persuasive to other people that he had known me at some prior time....

  Once more Hiss is shown a photograph of me. Once more he hesitates to make the identification. Instead, he asserts that the identification is not the point at issue.

  MR. STRIPLING: Here is a larger picture. Let the record show this larger picture taken by the Associated Press photo on August 3, 1948, of Mr. Mundt and Mr. Whittaker Chambers, and, as the record previously stated, Mr. Chambers is much heavier now than he was in 1937 or 1938. Does this picture refresh your memory in any way, Mr. Hiss?

  MR. HISS: It looks like the very same man I had seen in the other pictures, and I see Mr. Mundt and him in the same picture. The face is definitely not an unfamiliar face. Whether I am imagining it, whether it is because he looks like a lot of other people, I don’t know, but I have never known anyone who had the relationship with me that this man has testified to and that, I think, is the important thing here, gentlemen. This man may have known me, he may have been in my house. I have had literally hundreds of people in my house in the course of the time I lived in Washington.

  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 has 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....

  THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Hiss, would you be able to recall a person if that person positively had been in your house three or four times, we will say, in the last 10 years?

  MR. HISS: I would say that if he had spent the night—

  MR. STRIPLING: Ten years?

  MR. NIXON: Fifteen years.

  THE CHAIRMAN: All right.

  MR. HISS: I would say if he had spent the night—how many times did you say?

  MR. STRIPLING: He spent a week there.

  MR. HISS: A whole week at a time continuously? ,

  MR. STRIPLING: Yes.

  MR. HISS: And I was there at the same time?

  MR. STRIPLING: Yes.

  MR. HISS: Mr. Chairman, I could not fail to recall such a man if he were now in my presence.

  THE CHAIRMAN: Wait a minute. You are positive then that if Mr. X spent a week in your house in the past 15 years you would recognize him today, assuming that Mr. X looks today something like what he looked then?

  MR. HISS: Exactly, if he hadn’t had a face lifting.

  THE CHAIRMAN: No doubt in your mind?

  MR. HISS: I have no doubt whatsoever.

  THE CHAIRMAN: Now, here is a man who says he spent a week in your house in the last 15 years. Do you recognize him?

  MR. HISS: I do not recognize him from that picture.

  MR. NIXON: Did that man spend a week in your house in the last 15 years?

  MR. HISS: I cannot say that man did, but I would like to see him.

  THE CHAIRMAN: You say you cannot believe, but I would like to have a little more definite answer if you could make it more definite. Would you say he did or did not spend a week in your house?

  MR. HISS: Mr. Chairman, I hope you will not think I am being unreasonable when I say I am not prepared to testify on the basis of a photograph. On the train coming down this morning I searched my recollection of any possible person that this man could be confused with or could have got information from about me.

  THE CHAIRMAN: Then you are not prepared to testify on this subject from a photograph?

  MR. HISS: I am not prepared to testify on the basis of a photograph. I would want to hear the man’s voice....

  By now, the Committee’s questions have convinced Hiss that he must go further in recognizing me. But he is still extremely cautious because, in the course of further questioning, he hopes to elicit further information about my testimony. He renews his charge more pointedly that the Committee is conniving with me.

  MR. HISS: I have written a name on this pad in front of me of a person whom I knew in 1933 and 1934 who not only spent some time in my house but sublet my apartment. That man certainly spent more than a week, not while I was in the same apartment. I do not recognize the photographs as possibly being this man. If I hadn’t seen the morning’s papers with an account of statements that he knew the inside of my house, I don’t think I would even have thought of this name. I want to see Chambers face to face and see if he can be this individual. I do not want and I don’t think I ought to be asked to testify now that man’s name and everything I can remember about him. I have written the name on this piece
of paper. I have given the name to two friends of mine before I came to this hearing. I can only repeat, and perhaps I am being overanxious about the possibility of unauthorized disclosure of testimony, that I don’t think in my present frame of mind that it is fair to my position, my own protection, that I be asked to put down here of record 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.

  MR. NIXON: This man who spent the time in 1933 and 1934 is still a man with whom you are acquainted?

  MR. HISS: He is not.

  MR. NIXON: And where were you living at that time?

  MR. HISS: He was not named Carl and not Whittaker Chambers.

  MR. NIXON: Where were you living at that time?

  MR. HISS: I have again written down here to the best of my recollection because I have not checked down with leases—this is something I did on the train coming down and the leases are in my house in New York—where I believed I lived from June of 1933 until September 1943.

  Again, Mr. Nixon, if I give the details of where I was, it is going to be very easy if this information gets out for someone to say then ex post facto, “I saw Hiss in such and such a house.” Actually, all he has to do is look it up in the telephone directory and find where it is.

  THE CHAIRMAN: The chairman wants to say this: Questions will be asked and the committee will expect to get very detailed answers to the questions. Let’s not ramble all around the lot here. You go ahead and ask questions and I want the witness to answer.

  MR. NIXON: Your testimony is that this man you knew in 1933 and 1934 was in one of the houses you lived in?

  MR. HISS: I sublet my apartment to the man whose name I have written down.

  MR. NIXON: But you were not there at the same time?

  MR. HISS: I didn’t spend a week in the same apartment with him. He did spend a day or two in my house when he moved in.

  MR. NIXON: This was the apartment you lived in between 1933 and 1934?

  MR. HISS: It is exactly that apartment—1934 and 1935.

  MR. NIXON: Between 1934 and 1935?

  MR. HISS: That is right.

  MR. NIXON: When you sublet your apartment? There was no other apartment and you can’t testify as to what apartment that was?

  MR. HISS: I can testify to the best of my recollection. If this committee feels, in spite of what I have said—

  THE CHAIRMAN: Never mind feelings. You let Mr. Nixon ask the questions and you go ahead and answer it.

  MR. HISS: I want to be sure Mr. Nixon definitely wants me to answer responsively in spite of my plea that I don’t think he should ask me. But if he does—Mr. Nixon also asked me some questions in the public hearing that I didn’t want to answer, and I took the same position that if Mr. Nixon insisted on an answer after he knew my position, I will answer. I will give every fact of where I lived.

  MR. STRIPLING: Let the record show, Mr. Hiss, you brought up this ex post facto business. Your testimony comes as ex post facto testimony to the testimony of Mr. Chambers. He is already on record, and I am not inferring that you might know what he testified to, but certainly the United States attorney’s office has several copies.

  MR. HISS: I do not and made no attempt to find out.

  MR. NIXON: Not only does the United States attorney’s office have copies of Mr. Chambers’ testimony before us on the subject—and you can confirm that by calling Mr. Morris Fay of that office, because he has two copies; he requested and received, and he will receive this testimony today. He will receive this testimony today, because I will tell you that he asked for it just 30 minutes before you walked into this room, and he will get it just as soon as we have completed this case.

  Now, quite obviously, I think that you can see that we are not attempting at this time to have you testify to facts with which we are going to brief Mr. Chambers. What we are trying to do is test the credibility of Mr. Chambers, and you are the man who can do it, and you can help us out by answering these questions and, frankly, I must insist.

  MR. HISS: If you insist, I will, of course, answer....

  Congressman Hébert, a blunt man, could stand the shifts and thrusts no longer. He burst forth, and in his outburst can be heard the rumbling of the nation itself, a little entangled in its own language, a little foiled, but with a rough grip of reality, a bludgeoning instinct for truth. It is the sincere outburst of a man who knows that he is being tricked, but does not quite know how the trick works. This indignation, Hiss can only answer with high impertinence (“You have made your position clear”).

  MR. HÉBERT: Mr. Hiss, let me say this to you now—and this is removed of all technicalities, it is just a man-to-man impression of the whole situation. I think it is pertinent. I don’t surrender my place on this committee to any individual who has an open mind, particularly regarding you and Mr. Chambers. I am not interested in who is lying except to the extent that it will only give us an insight to further the case and that we are about to find out whether espionage was in effect in this country to the detriment of the security of this country.

  I do not take the stand and never have taken the stand in this committee that anything is involved other than to get to the facts. I have tried just as hard in the public hearings to impeach those witnesses who are assumed to be so-called committee witnesses as I have tried to impeach the other witnesses. I think the record will speak for that.

  We did not know anything Mr. Chambers was going to say. I did not hear your name mentioned until it was mentioned in open hearing.

  MR. HISS: I didn’t know that.

  MR. HÉBERT: As I say, I am not trying to be cagey or anything, but trying to put it on the line as certainly one member of this committee who has an open mind and up to this point don’t know which one of the two is lying, but I will tell you right now and I will tell you exactly what I told Mr. Chambers so that will be a matter of record, too: Either you or Mr. Chambers is lying.

  MR. HISS: That is certainly true.

  MR. HÉBERT: 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 cooperative. Now, you have hedged. You may be standing on what you consider your right and I am not objecting to that. I am not pressing you to identify a picture when you should be faced with the man. That is your right.

  Now, as to this inquiry which you make much over, and not without cause, perhaps, we met Mr. Chambers 48 hours after you testified in open session. Mr. Chambers did not know or have any inclination of any indication as to the questions that we were going to ask him, and we probed him, as Mr. Stripling says, for hours and the committee, the three of us—Mr. Nixon, Mr. McDowell, Mr. Stripling, and myself—and we literally ran out of questions. There wasn’t a thing that came to our minds that we didn’t ask him about, these little details, to probe his own testimony or rather to test his own credibility.

  There couldn’t have been a possible inkling as to what we were going to say about minor details, and he could not have possibly by the farthest stretch of the imagination prepared himself to answer because he didn’t know where the questions were coming from and neither did we because we questioned him progressively; so how he could have prepared himself to answer these details which we now, and Mr. Nixon has indicated, we are now checking and for the sake of corroboration—for my own part I can well appreciate the position you are in, but if I were in your position, I would do everything I humanly could to prove that Chambers is a liar instead of me.

  MR. HISS: I intend to.

  MR. HÉBERT: And that is all we are trying to do here. Further than that, I recognize the fact that this is not an inquisitorial body to the extent of determining where the crime lies. We are not setting forth to determine ourselves as to which one of you two has perjured yourself. That is the duty of the United States attorney for the D
istrict of Columbia. He is confronted with the fact that perjury has been committed before this congressional committee, which is a crime. It is up to the United States district attorney and the Department of Justice to prosecute that crime and that is all we are trying to do.

  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 the most fantastic story of unfounded—what motive would Chambers have or what motive—one of you has to have a motive. You say you are in a bad position, but don’t you think that Chambers himself destroys himself if he is proven a liar? What motive would he have to pitch a $25,000 position as the respected senior editor of Time magazine out the window?

  MR. HISS: Apparently for Chambers to be a confessed former Communist and traitor to his country did not seem to him to be a blot on his record. He got his present job after he had told various agencies exactly that. I am sorry but I cannot but feel to such an extent that it is difficult for me to control myself 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.

  MR. HÉBERT: I am trying to tell you that I absolutely have an open mind and am trying to give you as fair a hearing as I could possibly give Mr. Chambers or yourself. The fact that Mr. Chambers is a self-confessed traitor—and I admit he is—the fact that he is a self-confessed former member of the Communist Party—which I admit he is—has no bearing at all on whether the facts that he told—or, rather, the alleged facts that he told—

  MR. HISS: Has no bearing on his credibility?

  MR. HÉBERT: No; because, Mr. Hiss, I recognize the fact that maybe my background is a little different from yours, but I do know police methods and I know crime a great deal, and you show me a good police force and I will show you the stool pigeon who turned them in. Show me a police force with a poor record, and I will show you a police force without a stool pigeon. We have to have people like Chambers or Miss Bentley 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 has 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?