Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

  It is true that, at that time, Miss Bentley’s charges against White. and not mine, were serious. I had testified (as she had also) that White was not a Communist. But his death completed my sense of the human disaster. As the crowded car sped toward the Union Station, I thought: “White is luckier than the rest of us. He at least is well out of it.”

  The Committee swept me through the station, out to the platforms and onto a Pullman. By then, I had learned that we were going to New York. I still did not know why. Most of that long train ride I sat alone in an almost empty car, smoking my pipe, watching the farms flash by and the hundreds of people about whom I felt that wonder, known to all men in trouble, that so many other lives should be so routine and uncomplicated.

  At Pennsylvania Station in New York, the sub-committee members (Nixon and McDowell), Stripling and their staff waited until the train had emptied. Then they slipped off. They did not want the press to discover prematurely that they were in New York. Appell whisked me, separately, up a back staircase. We loitered around the streets before taking a taxi that let us out of the ramp entrance of the Hotel Commodore in midtown Manhattan. I remembered that I had been there only once before. It had been to meet Lincoln Steffens who had wanted me to write a biography of his great friend, William Filene, the Boston department-store owner. Most of the time Steffens had spent describing to me the street fighting during the Bolshevik revolution. But after I had left him, he opened the door and called to me halfway down such a red-carpeted corridor as Appell and I were now treading, “Keep a warm spot in your heart, Whittaker.” I wondered at the time, and I wondered again now, what obscure presentiment had moved him to call after me.

  Appell opened the door to Room 1400 and closed it behind us. We were in the big twin-bedded bedroom of a suite (the subcommittee I soon became aware was in session in the next room). Sitting alone in the somewhat silken surroundings was the man who had first served me with the Committee’s subpoena. He was a Mr. Bermingham, who, I had been told, had once acted as a professional bodyguard—a solemn man in late middle age whose eyes sadly looked as if they had seen everything.

  Through a side door, Congressman McDowell entered. He was a man of instinctive sympathy who did his best to put me at ease without, however, explaining the reason for my odd adventure. He sat telling me how the depression had found him a poor young man and he had decided to challenge the economic crisis by starting a newspaper on a shoestring.

  I thought I heard the hall door to the next room open and close. The side door to our room opened just enough to admit a head which, in a low voice, summoned away McDowell. Bermingham was left alone with me. It was oppressively hot. The window was open. Once or twice I leaned out to see if I could catch a breeze. Each time I started to do so, I caught Mr. Bermingham’s sad eyes measure my intention with a slow stare.

  Then a Committee investigator opened the hall door to our room. He beckoned me to follow him. We walked into the next room. It was crowded. The sub-committee was in session with Congressman McDowell in the chair. As I entered they sat facing me. Robert Stripling was standing beside Congressman Nixon. Other staff members were standing around the left side of the room.

  A man was sitting with his back to me. Someone motioned me to a couch on the right-hand side of the room. The man with his back to me was Alger Hiss, whom I was seeing for the first time since I had left him at his door in Georgetown just before Christmas of 1938.

  When I entered the room, Alger Hiss did not turn to look at me. When I sat down, he did not glance at me.

  XVIII

  Any confrontation is a horror. My feeling for Hiss had remained unchanged through the years. I felt about Hiss and myself as of people whom chance has led to live in different continents, but who had only to be brought together again for their friendship, like an interrupted conversation, to be taken up where it was dropped.

  But years have a disembodying effect. Until we faced each other in the hotel room, I had been testifying about Hiss as a memory and a name. Now I saw again the man himself. In the circumstances it was shocking.

  Until then, I had wondered how he could be so arrogant or so stupid as to suppose that he could deceive the nation into believing that he had never known me. (I did not know that Hiss had already tentatively identified me, with infinite qualification, as George Crosley.

  But when I saw him in person, that feeling, too, fell away, and I was swept by a sense of pity for all trapped men of which the pathos of this man was the center. For the man I saw before me was a trapped man. Under the calculated malice of his behavior toward me, which I could not fail to resent, under his impudence and bravado to the congressmen, he was a trapped man—and I am a killer only by extreme necessity. Throughout the session, my mind was in a posture of supplication, silently imploring strength for him to disclose the truth that I had already testified to about him so that I might not be compelled to testify to worse about him and the others. In short, I felt what any humane man must feel when, pursuing an end that he is convinced is right, he finds himself the reluctant instrument of another man’s disaster, even though that disaster is being invited by the man who suffers it.

  That feeling did not change at all my determination to lay bare the Communist conspiracy short of espionage and the fact that Hiss had been a Communist. It merely complicated almost past endurance the effort to do so.

  XIX

  Hiss quickly made it clear that he was numbed by no such feelings. He had been summoned to the confrontation with no more forewarning than I had had. Though I did not then know what had passed between him and the Committee members before I entered the room, he had arrived in conspicuously bad humor. He had brought with him a Mr. Charles Dollard, whom Hiss introduced as “not a lawyer,” a friend—“he is of the Carnegie Corporation.” I have never heard Mr. Dollard characterized more fully. He hovers at the edge of the ensuing scene like the “first attendant, friend to the Duke” in a Shakespeare play. Most of the time he lurked in one corner of the room—I do not recall that he sat down—with a curiously fixed smile on his face, which Hiss’s loftier jibes turned incandescent with amusement. Now and again, Hiss tossed him an aside about telephoning the Harvard Club.

  I am not alone in supposing that this by-play was intended to convey the sense that these two beings were native to another atmosphere, were merely condescending, a little impatiently, to the summons of the earthlings in the room.

  Congressman Nixon stated the purpose of the hearing.

  MR. NIXON: ... It is quite apparent at this state (stage?) in the testimony, as you indicated yesterday,37 that the case is dependent upon the question of identity. We have attempted to establish the identity through photographs of Mr. Chambers and that has been inadequate for the purpose. Today, we thought that since you had in your testimony raised the possibility of a third party who might be involved in this case in some way, and had described him at some length to the committee, that it would be well to, at the earliest possible time, determine whether the third party is different from the two parties or the same one, and so consequently we have asked Mr. Chambers to be in New York at the same time so that you can have the opportunity to see him and make up your mind on that point.

  MR. HISS: May I interrupt at this point, because I take it this will take more than 10 or 15 minutes. Would it be possible for one of the members of the committee to call the Harvard Club and leave word that I won’t be there for a 6 o’clock appointment?

  MR. MC DOWELL: I would suggest it won’t take much more time than that, but you certainly may.... There is a telephone, I believe, in the room here. Any time you want to call, you may. MR. DOLLARD: I can make the call.

  MR. HISS: May I also make a statement before you begin?

  MR. MCDOWELL: Certainly.

  MR. HISS: 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 f
or testimony. I do not for a moment want to miss the opportunity of seeing Mr. Chambers. I merely wanted the record to show that.

  There followed a haggle between Hiss and the Committee as to whether the congressmen had leaked news of the executive session to the press. When that had abated, I was brought in. A hearing began that was different in form and kind from any other in the Case. Other bearings had been diffuse and sprawling. The hearing in the Commodore Hotel room had a single point of unity—the question of Hiss’s identification of me. The August 25th hearing was to be more important. It first dramatized Hiss’s equivocation to the nation. But the August 17th hearing was the climax of one phase of the Case. In it the characters and roles of the two witnesses were epitomized, and in it was foreshadowed the future of the conflict.

  Not its least horrifying aspect was that it was great theater, too; not only because of its inherent drama, but in part because, I am convinced, Alger Hiss was acting from start to finish, never more so than when he pretended to be about to attack me physically. His performance was all but flawless, but what made it shocking, even in its moments of unintended comedy, was the fact that the terrible spur of Hiss’s acting was fear.

  Congressman Nixon opened the sad play as soon as I was brought into the room.

  MR. NIXON: Mr. Chambers, will you please stand. And will you please stand, Mr. Hiss? Mr. Hiss, the man standing here is Mr. Whittaker Chambers. I ask you now if you have ever known that man before.

  MR. HISS: May I ask him to speak? Will you ask him to say something?

  MR. NIXON: Yes. Mr. Chambers, will you tell us your name and your business?

  MR. CHAMBERS: My name is Whittaker Chambers.

  At that point, says the official transcript, Mr. Hiss walked in the direction of Mr. Chambers. To grasp the full preposterousness of what followed, it is necessary to bear in mind that here are two men each of whom knows the other perfectly well, though one pretends not to. Hiss, rising from his chair and walking across the room, sets his face in an expression of grim exploration, searchingly peers at Chambers’ mouth and listens absorbedly.

  MR. HISS (to Chambers): Would you mind opening your mouth wider?

  After my first wince of surprise, I grasped that Hiss was acting. I decided to let him act up to the hilt.

  MR. CHAMBERS: My name is Whittaker Chambers.

  MR. HISS: I said, would you open your mouth? (aside to Richard Nixon) You know what I am referring to, Mr. Nixon. (To me) Will you go on talking?

  MR. CHAMBERS: I am (a) senior editor of Time magazine.

  MR. HISS: May I ask whether his voice, when he testified before, was comparable to this?

  “His voice?” echoed Nixon, who had been expecting teeth.

  MR. HISS: Or did he talk a little more in a lower key?

  “I would say,” said Congressman McDowell who could not quite edit out an overtone of irony, “I would say it is about the same now as we have heard.”

  MR. HISS: Would you ask him to talk a little more?

  By then, I felt somewhat like a broken-mouthed sheep whose jaws have been pried open and are being inspected by wary buyers at an auction. Everyone in the room was watching fascinated.

  MR. NIXON: Read something, Mr. Chambers. I will let you read from—

  MR. HISS: I think he is George Crosley, but I would like to hear him talk a little longer.

  MR. MC DOWELL: Mr. Chambers, if you would be more comfortable, you may sit down.

  MR. HISS: Are you George Crosley?

  MR. CHAMBERS: Not to my knowledge. You are Alger Hiss, I believe?

  MR. HISS: I certainly am.

  MR. CHAMBERS: That was my recollection.

  Congressman Nixon had passed me a copy of Newsweek, which belonged to him, and indicated a passage for me to read.

  MR. CHAMBERS: (reading) Since June—

  MR. NIXON: Just one moment. Since some repartee goes on between these two people, I think Mr. Chambers should be sworn.

  MR. HISS: That is a good idea.

  I was duly sworn.

  MR. NIXON: Mr. Hiss, may I say something? I suggested that he be sworn, and when I say something like that, I want no interruptions from you.

  MR. HISS: Mr. Nixon, in view of what happened yesterday, I think there is no occasion for you to use that tone of voice in speaking to me, and I hope the record will show what I have just said.

  MR. NIXON: The record shows everything being said here today.

  MR. CHAMBERS (reading from Newsweek magazine): Tobin for Labor. Since June, Harry S. Truman had been peddling the labor secretaryship left vacant by Lewis B. Schwellenbach’s death in hope of gaining the maximum political advantage from the appointment. (During the first Hiss trial, Lloyd Paul Stryker was to make much of this passage as evidence that I was playing Republican politics in making charges against Hiss. At the time, I was aware of something quite different. I noticed sharply for the first time, because the occasion was public, that I had difficulty in reading; some of the letters blurred. My once excellent eyesight had been worn down by years of reading copy. That failing vision was to be a factor in saving my life a few months later.)

  MR. HISS: May I interrupt?

  MR. MC DOWELL: Yes.

  MR. HISS: The voice sounds a little less resonant than the voice that I recall of the man I knew as George Crosley. The teeth look to me as though either they had been improved upon or that there has been considerable dental work done since I knew George Crosley, which was some years ago. I believe I am not prepared without further checking to take an absolute oath that he must be George Crosley.

  That wholly unexpected conclusion, coming a few minutes after Hiss had volunteered: “I think he is George Crosley,” caused a moment’s silence. Congressman Nixon broke it.

  MR. NIXON: May I ask Mr. Chambers a question?

  MR. HISS: I would like to ask Mr. Chambers, if I may.

  MR. NIXON: I will ask the questions at this time. Mr. Chambers, have you had any dental work since 1934 of a substantial nature?

  MR. CHAMBERS: Yes, I have.

  MR. NIXON: What type of dental work?

  MR. CHAMBERS: I have had some extractions and a plate....

  MR. HISS: Could you ask him the name of the dentist that performed these things? Is that appropriate?

  MR. NIXON: Yes. What is the name?

  MR. CHAMBERS: Dr. Hitchcock, Westminster, Maryland.

  MR. HISS: That testimony of Mr. Chambers, if it can be believed, would tend to substantiate my feeling that he represented himself to me in 1934 or 1935 or thereabout as George Crosley, a free-lance writer of articles for magazines. I would like to find out from Dr. Hitchcock if what he has just said is true because I am relying partly, one of my main recollections of Crosley was the poor condition of his teeth.

  MR. NIXON: Can you describe the condition of your teeth in 1934?

  MR. CHAMBERS: Yes. They were in very bad shape.

  MR. NIXON: The front teeth were?

  MR. CHAMBERS: Yes. I think so.

  MR. HISS: Mr. Chairman.

  MR. NIXON: Excuse me. Before we leave the teeth, Mr. Hiss, do you feel that you would have to have the dentist tell you just what he did to the teeth before you could tell anything about this man?

  MR. HISS: I would like a few more questions asked. I didn’t intend to say anything about this, because I feel very strongly that he is Crosley, but he looks very different in girth and in other appearances—hair, forehead, and so on, particularly the jowls.

  Congressman Nixon then led Hiss through a recapitulation of his relations with George Crosley. Hiss testified again that he had met Crosley when that impecunious writer was covering the munitions investigation. He had, in fact, known Crosley five or six months before Crosley said one day that he was looking for an apartment in Washington for the summer. “I asked him,” said Hiss, “if he would like to sublet my apartment during that period of time, that it was not too cool, but that it was up on a hill and had a very decent location as Washington goes, that I would
let him have it for what it cost me. In the course of the negotiation,” said Hiss, “he referred to the fact that he also wanted an automobile. I said, ‘You come to just the right place, I would be very glad to throw a car in because I have been trying to get rid of an old car which we have kept solely for sentimental reasons which we couldn’t get anything on for a trade-in sale....’ We had had it sitting on the city streets because we had a new one.” (At the August 25th hearing, that discrepancy would plague Hiss badly.)

  Crosley, said Hiss, had never paid any part of the rent, which amounted to about $225 (Hiss was not sure whether his lease on the 28th Street apartment had run until October). Crosley had also borrowed $20 or $40 from Hiss. But he once brought Hiss a rug as “part payment” (incidentally, the value of the Bykov rug, even in 1937, the date when Hiss really received it, was at least $225; and the unpaid rent, it finally developed, could not have been more than $150). “My recollection is Mr. Crosley said some wealthy patron had bestowed it upon him as a gift.”

  Hiss also testified that he had possibly put Crosley up overnight after he left the 28th Street apartment. He had probably driven Crosley to New York; Mrs. Hiss may have been along (“I rather think she was”).

  All this was fairly close to what had actually happened and showed that there was nothing seriously wrong with Hiss’s memory. He had simply re-worked the facts. He had transformed Carl, the Communist, into Crosley, the dead beat. If the story had not been shot through with provable discrepancies, it might have succeeded. For very few people knew anything about Communists, but practically everybody knew about dead beats.