The significant thing in my memory is my recollection that I was in position to assure Crosley of several months’ occupancy of the apartment which I had been living in on Twenty-eighth Street.
MR. NIXON: I think we can cut through it with these short questions: You did not lease the apartment to Crosley until you had moved into the other house; is that correct?
MR. HISS: That is my best recollection.
MR. NIXON: Your lease on the other house according to the records began on May 1. You will agree with that?
MR. HISS: That is what the records seem to show. I have not seen the records myself.
MR. NIXON: We have the letter which Mr. Stripling just handed you. If the records show that, you will agree that the records are correct on that point?
MR. HISS: I have no reason for questioning the records.
MR. NIXON: You suggested that we go to the records.
MR. HISS: I didn’t hear you.
MR. NIXON: You suggested that we go to the records.
MR. HISS: I have, indeed.
MR. NIXON: That is what we have done, and it shows that lease began on May 1.
MR. HISS: I have been trying to go to them, too, Mr. Nixon.
MR. NIXON: Certainly. The records also show that your lease on the apartment ran out on June 28. It is quite apparent, then, that the time Mr. Crosley could have stayed in this apartment was a period of approximately 8 to 9 weeks from May 1 and June 28.
MR. HISS: Mr. Nixon, I doubt if this is the occasion for any argumentation as to what the facts mean.
MR. NIXON: I am not arguing.
MR. HISS: But I think I heard Mr. Stripling read that the apartment, according to Randall Hagner—were they the agents?
MR. STRIPLING: Yes.
MR. HISS: According to their records was not leased to anyone during the month of July; so there could be a third month when, if Mr. Crosley had wanted to stay on in that apartment, he could presumably have done so by arrangements with Randall Hagner.
MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Chairman, this might clarify that point. According to the records of the Potomac Electric Co., the electricity was turned off at the Twenty-eighth Street apartment on June 29, 1935.
MR. NIXON: When was the gas turned off in that apartment?
MR. STRIPLING: It was turned off on June 26, 1935.
MR. NIXON: June 26. If Mr. Crosley did stay in that apartment another month up to August 1, he stayed there without gas or electricity.
For a few moments, the questioning shifted to another point: had Hiss been able to discover anyone else who had ever known Whittaker Chambers as George Crosley?
MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Hiss, George Crosley, who you testified you first met in 1934—do you know of anyone here in Washington who knew him as George Crosley?
MR. HISS: In answer to that question, Mr. Stripling, I have naturally among the very many other things that I have been trying to check in the few days since Monday of last week, I have been trying to run down the list of staff members of the Senate Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry. As far as I can find out, there is no one single official list anywhere now available. I have recalled certain of the members of the staff. I recalled three names offhand of people that Crosley might have met in addition to me around the committee. I mentioned Mr. Raushenbush, the chief investigator. He is away on vacation. I have seen in the press that the press reached him and he doesn’t have any recollection of Crosley. I want to talk personally to Mr. Raushenbush. I want to see if he can recall from my description of the circumstances under which I knew Crosley more than he has told the press. I recalled the name of Robert Wohlford.
MR. STRIPLING: You gave both of these names to the committee in New York?
MR. HISS: Yes; I did—who was also a member of the staff. I recalled my off-the-cuff recollection. He is now in New York, I understand. I have asked friends of mine to talk to Bob Wohlford. I remembered also the name of Miss Elsie Gullender, who was, as it were, the chief receptionist of the committee. She was Mr. Raushenbush’s secretary and acted as sort of an over-all chief of the secretarial staff ... I have been informed that Miss Elsie Gullender is now dead. I am not sure that is the fact. I want, if possible, to locate Miss Gullender.
MR. MUNDT: Mr. Hiss, is this a fair summary, then, of your position up to now? That as of today you have not found anybody other than your wife who ever knew this man over here under the name of George Crosley?
MR. HISS: I received a telephone call—rather, one of my counsel did—from someone, a woman, who said she had known George Crosley at this time, that she was fearful of getting her employer in Dutch or something by publicity. We were not able to trace the call. She may have been imagining. So far, the answer to your question is: I have not yet been able to find any witness other than my wife who remembers him as George Crosley.
MR. MUNDT: Let me ask this question. The possibility would seem very plausible to me that since Mr. Crosley, as you call him, lived in your home for awhile while he was getting his furniture transferred, that your brother Donald undoubtedly visited your home frequently. Have you ever conferred with Donald to see whether he knew this man as George Crosley?
MR. HISS: I have asked him and he has no recollection.
MR. MUNDT: He had no recollection?
MR. HISS: No....
MR. STRIPLING: Now, Mr. Chairman, the three names the witness has mentioned—Elsie Gullender, Robert Wohlford, Stephen Raushenbush—were the three that he gave the committee in New York, and we asked him if he could furnish us the names of three people to corroborate his statement that Whittaker Chambers was known to him as George Crosley in 1934 and ’35. The New York Herald Tribune carried a story which stated that they had communicated with Mr. Raushenbush and he had no recollection of it. As Mr. Hiss has stated, according to our investigation, Elsie Gullender died September 24, 1946. We have been endeavoring to locate Robert Wohlford. His office here at the Department of Justice had advised us that he was ill. We have sent numerous telegrams, all of which have been returned.
Now, because Mr. Hiss stated Mr. Crosley was a freelance writer for American magazine and other publications—
MR. HISS: May I interrupt? What I think Mr. Stripling has been stating in summary is exactly my recollection of my testimony. I did not testify as a fact that Mr. Crosley wrote for American magazine. I testified that my best recollection was that he had told me that American magazine was one of the magazines he hoped to sell his freelance articles about the Munitions Committee to.
MR. STRIPLING: Well, Mr. Chairman, we asked the Library of Congress, Director of Legislative Reference Service, to check their files for any articles by George Crosley.
The following letter was received from Ernest S. Griffith, Director, Legislative Reference Service, addressed to Mr. Benjamin Mandel, Director of Research: “Dear Mr. Mandel: In response to your request for any writings by George Crosley, the following sources have been examined with reference to George Crosley or Crossley. The results of the search are indicated.
“Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, January 29-June 1941—No reference. Public Catalogue—Two references, one to a book of poems written by G. Crosley in 1905, the other to a scientific pamphlet on ultra-violet light by G. E. Crosley, M.D., in 1936. Copyright Division—No additional references.
“Any further searching you may suggest, we shall be glad to undertake. Sincerely yours,
“Ernest S. Griffith,
Director, Legislative Reference Service.”
I also have a letter here, Mr. Chairman, from the American magazine that states that they have never published any articles by George Crosley.
At this point, a folded note was passed back to me from the press table. It contained a penciled question from James Reston, the learned Washington correspondent of the New York Times, and one of the two newsmen48 who, when John Foster Dulles asked them their opinion of Alger Hiss as a possible candidate for president of the Carnegie Endowment, both agreed that he would be a very goo
d choice. Reston’s note said, as nearly as I can recall it: “Are you the G. Crosley who wrote a book of poems in 1905?” Other than Bert Andrews’ visit, it was practically the press’s first communication with me since the Case began. I thought that it must be a wry joke. But a glance at Reston’s face assured me that it was not. I sent back the note with what seemed to me the obvious answer written on it: “I was born in 1901. In 1905, I was four.” Later, Reston was to accuse me of refusing to answer his question.
XXIX
While the questions and answers were droning on, guards, from time to time, cautiously opened the heavy door of the hearing room and admitted one or two people who somehow wedged themselves among the ranks of those who were standing around the sides and back of the packed hall. Each time the door opened, it disclosed a double line of others still doggedly waiting to get in.
In the hearing room, the spectators had at first been restless, puzzled by the long exchange about leases. But when the Committee snapped the renting and utilities evidence into the record, there was an answering snap of tension out front. From that moment, people began to sense that the questioning was not aimless. It was leading somewhere. Where it was leading they began to realize when Stripling suddenly shifted to the Ford roadster, which, nineteen days before, I had testified that Hiss, against the wishes of the underground, had turned over to the open Communist Party. Now the zeal that had then moved him rose up to confound him—first in the guise of one of the glaring discrepancies in his story, his claim that he had given George Crosley the Ford because Hiss then owned two cars. Now Hiss’s endless evasiveness, which had already surprised, then exasperated, the many who had come to see him demolish the Committee and his uncouth accuser with a few crisp sentences, led at last to dreadful laughter at his plight.
MR. STRIPLING: Now, Mr. Hiss, I should like to read now from your testimony before the committee on August 16, page 53: referring to Mr. Crosley.
“MR. STRIPLING: What kind of automobile did that fellow have?”
“MR. HISS: No kind of automobile. I sold him an automobile. I had an old Ford that I threw in with the apartment and had been trying to trade it in and get rid of it. I had an old, old Ford we had kept for sentimental reasons. We got it just before we were married in 1929.
“MR. STRIPLING: Was it a model A or model T?
“MR. HISS: Early A model with a trunk on the back, a slightly collegiate model.
“MR. STRIPLING: What color?
“MR. HISS: Dark blue. It wasn’t very fancy, but it had a sassy little trunk on the back.
“MR. NIXON: You sold that car?
“MR. HISS: I threw it in. He wanted a way to get around, and I said, ‘Fine; I want to get rid of it. I have another car, and we kept it for sentimental reasons, not worth a damn. I let him have it along with the rent.’”
MR. STRIPLING (continuing): Now, would you give the committee the arrangements of this lease again, Mr. Hiss.
MR. HISS: Of the lease of the apartment?
MR. STRIPLING: That is right. And the car, the manner in which you threw the car in.
MR. HISS: My best recollection is that at the time, or shortly after we first talked about Crosley’s subletting my apartment, he said that he wished to get a car because his family would be with him while he was in Washington. I think he asked if you could rent a car, and my best recollection is that I told him that I had an old car which I would let him have, a car which had practically no financial value. That is the best recollection I have on the car transaction after all these years.
MR. MUNDT: Was the reason that that car had no value to you the fact that you had another automobile at the time?
MR. HISS: My best recollection is that at some time, Mr. Mundt, I had both a Plymouth and this old Ford. Whether that overlap occurred prior to my letting Crosley use the Ford, I cannot recall with positiveness. I do have a very definite, although general, recollection that I had both a Ford and a Plymouth for a period of time, with the Ford of no use, deteriorating, being left outdoors.
MR. STRIPLING: Now, Mr. Chairman, I should like to read from—
MR. HÉBERT: Mr. Stripling, may I interrupt there to sort of pursue this a little further, with regard to what Mr. Mundt has asked Mr. Hiss? Mr. Hiss, you would remember if you had two automobiles at one time; would you not?
MR. HISS: I say I do remember that I did have two automobiles at one time. That made quite an impression on me.
MR. HÉBERT: It made an impression on you that you owned two automobiles at one time?
MR. HISS: That is right. But, as to the particular time when I had the two automobiles, it was sometime during this general period. As to the particular time, without consulting the records, I am not able to testify with positiveness.
MR. HÉBERT: I want to get this clear. In other words, you would not have given up the mode of transporation if you did not have any transportation yourself.
MR. HISS: Unless I was not going to need automobile transportation for a period of time.
MR. HÉBERT: Then the logical assumption would be that you did have two automobiles at the same time that you gave this man Crosley your automobile.
MR. HISS: That is my best recollection. Whether it is accurate in detail I will know better when I get the records and can attempt to refresh my recollection, Mr. Hébert.
MR. STRIPLING: Now, Mr. Chairman, let me put the remainder of the testimony regarding the ownership of the automobile which is on page 56.
“MR. NIXON: You gave this Ford car to Crosley?
“MR. HISS: Threw it in along with the apartment and charged the rent and threw the car in at the same time.
“MR. NIXON: In other words, added a little to the rent to cover the car?
“MR. HISS: No; I think I charged him exactly what I was paying for the rent and threw the car in in addition. I don’t think I got any compensation.
“MR. STRIPLING: You just gave him the car?
“MR. HISS: I think the car just went right in with it. I don’t remember whether we had settled on the terms of the rent before the car question came up, or whether it came up and then on the basis of the car and the apartment I said, ‘Well, you ought to pay the full rent.’”
On page 58 the record continues, referring to the car:
“MR. STRIPLING: What kind of a bill of sale did you give Crosley?
“MR. HISS: I think I just turned over—in the District you get a certificate of title, I think it is. I think I simply turned it over to him.
“MR. STRIPLING: Handed it to him?
“MR. HISS: Yes.
“MR. STRIPLING: No evidence of any transfer. Did he record the title?
“MR. HISS: That I haven’t any idea. This is a car which has been sitting on the streets in snows for a year or two. I once got a parking fine because I forgot where it was parked. We were using the other car.”
MR. STRIPLING: (continuing): Now, Mr. Hiss, is that the testimony, according to your best recollection?
MR. HISS: That testimony was according to my best recollection at the time I gave it, and that is why I gave it. I have not yet been able to get the record, as my counsel has testified. We have not been able to ascertain from the Motor Vehicle Bureau people what their records show with respect to that car.
MR. STRIPLING: What did Mr. Crosley do with this car, do you know?
MR. HISS: I frankly do not recall. It is possible that he used it; it is even possible that he returned it to me after using it. I really would not be sure of the details. My impression and recollection was that I got rid of it by giving it to him, but if the records show that it bounced back to me from him, that would not surprise me either.
Stripling drew the pin, counted carefully and tossed his atomizing question: “Well, as a matter of fact, Mr. Hiss, you sold the car a year later, did you not?” At the pit of my own stomach, I felt a stir of that nausea inevitable when a man sees any creature mortally trapped by another. It was intensified by Hiss’s trapped answer.
MR. HISS: Not to my recollection. I have no definite recollection of it.
MR. STRIPLING: You do not recall selling the car?
MR. HISS: I have no definite recollection.
Stripling stalked the question from the other side: “Did you have a Plymouth during this period? Did you have another car?”
MR. HISS: My recollection is that I did have a Plymouth during part of the time that I had a Ford.
MR. STRIPLING: Now, Mr. Chairman, I have here an application for a certificate of title of the Motor Vehicles and Traffic Bureau of the District of Columbia, wherein it states that “Alger Hiss, 2905 P Street, NW, purchased or acquired the above-described car: Plymouth, new, model PJ; year 1935; body, sedan.” It gives the serial number, engine number and states: “How secured: Conditional sale; date, September 7, 1935, purchased from the Smoot Motor Co., Inc.”
Since the leases had already proved that I had been out of the 28th Street apartment at latest by the end of June, 1935, Hiss could not have given or sold me the Ford roadster as part of the apartment deal.
MR. NIXON: Mr. Hiss, your recollection is still that you gave the car to Crosley as part of the apartment deal; is that correct?
MR. HISS: My recollection is as definite as it can be after this lapse of time, Mr. Nixon, that as I was able to give him the use of the apartment, I also and simultaneously, I think, although it could possibly have been a little later, gave him the use of the model A 1929 old Ford. That is my best recollection.
Witness Page 79
