Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

  It seemed to me in prospect that I could not go through another public hearing. Another public hearing, especially another confrontation with Hiss in front of hundreds of strange people, was more than I could endure. In two weeks I had been through three hearings. Another great circus under eager, avid eyes, under batteries of news cameras and the hard stares of a prevailingly hostile press was too much.

  I asked Nixon why there had to be a public hearing at all now that Hiss had admitted that he knew me. But if another hearing had to be held, why must it be public, why could it not be held in executive session?

  Patiently, he put me off with reasons that did not seem to me to make sense. When I became insistent, he said reluctantly, “It is for your own sake that the Committee is holding a public hearing. The Department of Justice is all set to move in on you in order to save Hiss. They are planning to indict you at once. The only way to head them off is to let the public judge for itself which one of you is telling the truth. That is your only chance. That is why the hearing must be public.” 40

  “If there is anything else that you have not told us about Hiss,” he added, “now is the time to tell us. Think hard about it. If there is anything else, for your own sake, tell us now.”

  I liked and trusted Nixon. Clearly, my choice lay between procuring my own safety and the agony of the others. I sensed, too, that if things continued as they were going, in the end I must involve the others. I could not do it yet. I shook my head.

  I left Nixon, feeling, in addition to all else that I felt, like a very small creature, skirting the shadows of encircling powers that would not hesitate to crush me as impersonally as a steam roller crushes a bug.

  XXIII

  To understand the atmosphere in which the August 25th hearing took place, it must be remembered that, since August 1, 1948, Elizabeth Bentley’s revelations had been shocking the country. They had been closely followed by my allegations, most of which had been lost to sight in the hubbub over my charge that Alger Hiss had once been a Communist, though all the charges were connected. The din in the startled nation was deafening. It was to be stepped up as the Hiss partisans stepped up their campaign of vilification of me, which was a little slow in getting under way, presumably because they had not yet concerted a plan of attack. Before August 25th, the great cry on all sides was: Which one is lying? But the whispers were growing louder that Chambers was a psychiatric case.

  In the midst of this uproar, the men and women named by Miss Bentley, most of them Government officials or former Government officials, passed in a three-week parade before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Most of them denied Miss Bentley’s allegations or refused to testify under their constitutional privilege. A number of those whom I had named also appeared. On August 11th, Henry H. Collins, Jr., the former treasurer of the Ware Group, went before the Committee. He is now the executive director of the American-Russian Institute (cited as subversive by the Attorney General). Prior to assuming that post he had served for some fifteen years in the Federal Government.

  MR. COLLINS: My Federal employment started late in 1933 with the National Recovery Administration. In 1935 I went with the Soil Conservation Service; in 1938, I think, I went with the Department of Labor in the Wage and Hour Division. From there, I was loaned to the House Committee on the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens, and later to the Senate Committee on Small Business, and subsequently to the Kilgore committee, a subcommittee of the Military Affairs Committee on War Mobilization. From there, I received a commission and went into the School of Military Government at Charlottesville and was shortly sent overseas and spent 2 years in the European theater, in England, France and Germany.

  He was currently, he said, a major in the Reserves.

  MR. STRIPLING: Are you a member of the Communist Party?

  MR. COLLINS: I decline to answer that question on the grounds that my answer might tend to incriminate me.

  He was shown a newsphoto of Whittaker Chambers.

  MR. COLLINS: I cannot recognize that man. (Collins later suffered an eleventh-hour recollection of having had George Crosley in for cocktails, but, though he was available, the Hiss defense never saw fit to call him to testify.)

  MR. STRIPLING: You cannot recognize this man? Did you ever know anybody by the name of Whittaker Chambers?

  MR. COLLINS: I never knew a man by the name of Whittaker Chambers.

  MR. STRIPLING: Do you know an individual known to you as Carl in 1935?

  MR. COLLINS: I refuse to answer that question on the grounds of possible self-incrimination....

  MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Collins, did you ever live at St. Matthews Court in Washington?

  MR. COLLINS: I did.

  MR. STRIPLING: Did you ever meet John Abt at this apartment?

  MR. COLLINS: I decline to answer that question on the grounds of possible self-incrimination.

  MR. STRIPLING: Did you ever meet Alger Hiss at that apartment?

  MR. COLLINS: I decline to answer that question for the same reason....

  MR. STRIPLING: Did you ever meet in the apartment of Alger Hiss on P Street in Georgetown in 1935?

  MR. COLLINS: I decline to answer that question on the grounds of possible self-incrimination....

  MR. HÉBERT: Mr. Collins, were you ever investigated by the FBI for loyalty?

  MR. COLLINS: I do not know, sir. I was called down and interviewed by them about 6 years ago, I think.

  MR. HÉBERT: You know what that interview was. What was it?

  MR. COLLINS Well, it is in the record.

  MR. HÉBERT: I am not asking for the record. I am asking you.

  MR. COLLINS: Sir, I do not think I understand the question.

  MR. HÉBERT: What was the interview about that you had with the FBI 6 years ago?

  MR. COLLINS: Well, it was on the question of some section of the law that required them to interview Government employees at that time.

  MR. HÉBERT: What section of the law?

  MR. COLLINS: I do not know, sir.

  MR. HÉBERT: What questions did they ask you?

  MR. COLLINS: Well, I cannot remember. It was a long time ago, sir.

  MR. HÉBERT: Did they ask you about your connection with certain organizations in Government—I mean outside of Government but certain organizations in the country?

  MR. COLLINS: Yes, that is the kind of questions that they asked.

  MR. HÉBERT: Did they ask you about any communistic activity?

  MR. COLLINS: I do not remember, sir.

  MR. HÉBERT: You made the statement that you did not want to answer questions because they may tend to incriminate you. You did not want to answer questions of the chairman relative to your organizations. Is that your same attitude relative to individuals?

  MR. COLLINS: Yes.

  MR. HÉBERT: Why then did you readily say you never knew a man named Whittaker Chambers?

  MR. COLLINS: Because that was a name that was used in the accusations in the newspapers. I never knew a man named Whittaker Chambers, so I thought I was entitled to say so.

  MR. HÉBERT: Well, it is in the record that you knew a man named Carl. Why do you not answer that question?

  THE CHAIRMAN: Are you consulting with counsel now for advice?

  MR. COLLINS: Not now, sir.

  THE CHAIRMAN: But you just were?

  MR. COLLINS: Yes.

  THE CHAIRMAN: I want the record to show that he consulted with counsel.

  MR. HÉBERT: Why won’t you say whether you know Carl or not? That is in the record.

  MR. COLLINS: For the same reason, sir, that I refuse to answer any questions about knowing any individuals at this time in connection with these accusations.

  MR. HÉBERT: But you just said you did not know Whittaker Chambers. You are blowing hot and cold. Which way do you want to blow, hot or cold? We have had a lot of talking out of both sides of the mouth on this, so we may as well give you a chance to do it. It is a great acrobatic feat. How do you justify, then, sayin
g you do not know Whittaker Chambers? You did answer that question.

  MR. COLLINS: I just go back to my previous statements, sir, in connection with that.

  MR. HÉBERT: ... Now, why do you refuse to say whether you know Alger Hiss, or not? He has made no accusations against you?

  MR. COLLINS: I refuse to answer that question, sir, on the grounds that my answer might tend to incriminate me.

  XXIV

  On August 20th, a trio of witnesses collectively more interesting than Collins appeared before the Committee. They were Lee Pressman, who had been a member of the Ware Group, Nathan Witt and John Abt, each of whom, in succession, had been its head. Witt and Abt were now law partners in New York City. Each was accompanied at his hearing by an attorney, Mr. Harold Cammer, a partner in the law firm of Nathan, Witt and Cammer.

  Like Hiss, all three witnesses were Harvard men, and if the aura about them was a little less rarefied, the trio, nevertheless, had an impressive official record. Each had held highly important jobs in the Government or in close touch with it. Lee Pressman, after having been general counsel of the Works Progress Administration, had become general counsel of the C.I.O., a title that by no means defines his power. John Abt, after having been assistant general counsel of the Works Progress Administration, had become a special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States in the Department of Justice. Nathan Witt had been the secretary of the powerful National Labor Relations Board. Thus, in the persons of Pressman and Witt, there subsisted between the C.I.O. and the N.L.R.B. an intimate tie of fellowship. It is scarcely necessary to stress the critical importance to the C.I.O. of the decisions of the N.L.R.B. or the bearing of those matters upon national politics.

  In addition to the usual refusal to answer questions on grounds of self-incrimination, this three-man interlocking directorate had worked out some new objections. As prefaced to John Abt’s testimony by Mr. Cammer, they were substantially the same for all three. Robert Stripling had asked Abt: “Are you a member of the Communist Party?”

  MR. CAMMER: ... I object to the question on the ground, first, that Mr. Abt’s associations, views, opinions, affiliations, and the like are outside the scope of any inquiry under the first amendment to the Constitution.

  The second objection is that this investigation, or the subject matter of this investigation, as stated by Mr. Nixon, is outside the scope of any congressional inquiry, and is an intrusion upon the judicial function which is invested exclusively in the judiciary by Article III of the Constitution.

  The third objection, or the third basis of objection, is that this committee, and the subcommittee conducting this hearing under the aegis of this committee, is unlawfully constituted by reason of the membership thereon of one John Rankin who holds an alleged seat in Congress unlawfully, and in violation of the provisions of the fourteenth amendment, so that this committee may not interrogate for that reason.

  MR. STRIPLING (to John Abt): Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

  MR. ABT: On the grounds of objection stated to the previous question by my counsel, and in the exercise of my constitutional privilege against self-incrimination under the fifth amendment, I decline to answer that question.

  MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Abt, do you know an individual by the name of Whittaker Chambers?

  MR. ABT: On the ground of objection, Mr. Stripling, stated at the outset of this hearing by my counsel and in the exercise of my privilege under the fifth amendment against self-incrimination, I decline to answer that question....

  MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Abt, are you acquainted with Alger Hiss?

  MR. ABT: On the grounds of objection stated by my counsel on [under] the first amendment to the constitution, and by virtue of the prior objections that the subject matter of this inquiry is a matter of judicial rather than congressional investigation—

  MR. CAMMER: Article III of the Constitution.

  MR. ABT: Under Article III of the Constitution, and on the ground of the unlawful and improper composition of this committee under the fourteenth amendment, and in the exercise of my privilege against self-incrimination under the fifth amendment, I decline to answer that question.

  On the same grounds, John Abt declined to answer whether he had ever known George Crosley, Carl, Donald Hiss, J. Peters, Earl Browder, Gerhardt Eisler and a number of other people. He waived his objections to say that he had made a trip to the Soviet Union in 1945, that the year before he had contributed articles to Soviet Russia Today, and that he was, in fact, married to its editor, Jessica Smith. Asked if she were not formerly the wife of Harold Ware, Abt once more pled self-incrimination and his other objections.

  Lee Pressman came next. It may be borne in mind that three years later, Pressman was to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities that he had been a member of the Communist Party and of the Ware Group, and that so had John Abt and Nathan Witt. Scarcely had his counsel stated the usual objections, when Pressman began his testimony by asking a curious question.

  MR. PRESSMAN: Has there been any charge made by any witness that has appeared before this committee that I have participated in any espionage activity, either while a member—or rather an employee of the Federal Government or thereafter?

  The Committee assured him that there had been no such charge. Pressman was asked the routine questions, among others those about Hiss and Chambers. He, too, pled routine self-incrimination. Nathan Witt declined to say, on the grounds of self-incrimination, whether he had ever worked in the same office with Alger Hiss at the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Curiously, the Committee did not ask him whether he had been a member of the Communist Party. Perhaps by then its members were worn down by beating their collective head into the elastic folds of self-incrimination. Perhaps the oversight reflected a weariness summed up by the Committee’s chairman when Henry Collins declined to say whether or not he was a member of the American Legion on the grounds that any answer he might give might tend to incriminate nim.

  THE CHAIRMAN: That would incriminate you? It is a hopeless situation.

  XXV

  The Committee’s immediate purpose in holding the August 25th hearing was to bring the nation abreast of the developments in the Hiss-Chambers deadlock. Its secondary purpose was to let those developments inform public opinion so that it might act as a block against any attempt to indict me in order to save Alger Hiss. Its method in the hearing was to lead Hiss back over his testimony of the last three weeks and to confront him whenever possible, with documentary evidence bearing on it. The effect of this evidence was to show that his story included misrepresentations and discrepancies so glaring as to call into question all his testimony.

  The Committee, therefore, centered its interrogation on Hiss’s testimony about his 1929 Ford roadster, which he claimed, at one time, to have sold, and, at another time, to have given to me, and which I had testified that he had turned over to the Communist Party. The Committee also went in careful detail into Hiss’s purchase of a Plymouth sedan (which he had testified that he owned at the same time as the Ford), and explored again circumstances of my occupation of Hiss’s 28th Street apartment and other relevant matters. For hours, the hearing dealt with dull details of leases, gas and electric records, transfers of title, verification of signatures.

  At first, this made the August 25th confrontation seem one of the dullest of hearings. In the end, it made it one of the most effective. The impact was all the more powerful because it was delayed. As Hiss dodged and evaded those factual questions, qualifying almost every important answer with a wary “to the best of my recollection,” the traditional legal phrase whereby a witness bypasses the hook of perjury, the spectators were first incredulous and then shocked. Slowly, there dawned upon them what the Committee’s investigation had already demonstrated to it: the weight of available evidence confirmed my story about my relationship with Alger Hiss, and destroyed his story.

  One point documents placed beyond dispute. Hiss had not given or sold m
e his 1929 Ford roadster. He had transferred it, almost a year after he claimed to have given it to me, to one William Rosen. And William Rosen would refuse, on every subsequent occasion, to say whether or not he was a Communist or whether he had ever owned a 1929 Ford roadster, on the ground that his answers might incriminate him.

  Another development made the August 25th hearing fateful. Alger Hiss succeeded in reading into the record ten questions, each of which called for a searching probe of some part of my past. The night before the hearing Hiss had released them to the press, in the form of an open letter to the Committee. It was his strategy on August 25th to try to seize the initiative in the hearing by asking the Committee publicly to put those questions to me. In that he failed at first, but later on he succeeded.

  The questions went into my family life, my pseudonyms and addresses, possible crimes, etc. They were of the kind against which every ex-Communist, as Hiss well knew, is almost completely defenseless, because every Communist has, in the name of Communism, committed some of the sins and crimes involved. The only possible answer is the unmitigated truth; and there is always a strong probability that, faced with such a public exposure, most men will retreat, make peace at any price or kill themselves. Those alternatives were among the first purposes of Hiss’s questions. They had other purposes: 1) to suggest by their very phrasing that Chambers was a character so unsavory that he could not conceivably bear witness against anyone; 2) to deflect the brunt of the investigation and the public stare from Hiss to Chambers.

  This was the great swinging maneuver of the Hiss Case. Under the smoke screen of the questions, Hiss, at the very moment when he had been almost completely discredited, could retire once more into the all but impregnable citadel of his public record.