Hiss Restates His Defense

...It is astonishing that a man in Hiss's position should not have suspected a single one of his many associates who later pleaded the Fifth Amendment...

...However, there are certain admitted facts which are all accounted for in Chambers's story...

...Unhappily, there is no explanation in the book of his failure to use the rug to corroborate his statements...

...He could have done so in the preparation of this book...

...In reading Hiss's book, they should be careful and thoughtful, because there are aspects of it that may well be misleading to the ignorant, careless or thoughtless reader...

...But those who learn of the case only through Hiss's book will not know that a very large part of powerful and articulate public opinion, including an important part of the press, supported his position throughout the proceedings, and that Chambers was widely attacked and criticized...

...Nathaniel Weyl's "story" that he belonged to a Communist "unit" of which Hiss was a member, Hede Massing's "appearance at the trial" (to testify that at a party at her house Hiss had accused her of trying to get Noel Field away from Hiss's underground organization and into hers), and Isaac Don Levine's activities all had "commercial value...

...It would seem at least possible that Hiss could have derived some support for his position by producing the rug...

...The date is of vital importance, because one of the counts on which Hiss was convicted was that he perjured himself in stating that he had not seen Chambers after January 1, 1937...

...When Chambers described accurately some aspects of the Hisses' life (much of this testimony was startlingly accurate, though a great deal of it is not set forth in this book), Hiss is certain that he was given the information by the FBI...

...Ignorance so all-encompassing could only be the result of a surprising aloofness from the everyday politics of Washington, an amazing indifference to the culture of his times...

...Hiss expresses surprise that "Chambers's desire to market his writings never led him'' to admit espionage before 1948...

...of such a large sum in cash, without depositing it in his checking account, seems so markedly at variance with the practice of ordinarily prudent people as to require further explanation, such as the details of the "purchases...

...For some reason which seems inexplicable, though one expert said that the maneuver was "plainly designed to confuse," Chambers then had the documents copied on his fabricated typewriter by two and possibly more different people and, to make the theory still more difficult, had these people use at least four different ribbons to type 64 pages (several of which contained only a few brief lines), and this wholly without reference to whether the ribbons were worn or not...

...The episode of the rug is another of those which, at least when taken cumulatively with the rest of the evidence against Hiss, make it difficult to accept his version...

...The book adds nothing to that explanation...

...who was able to accept many things about Hiss's story which seemed doubtful to others, says that the "explanation which Hiss gave for his withdrawal was unconvincing...

...These improbabilities are brought out carefully and in detail in Hiss's book...

...The picture which Hiss presents of his helplessness in the face of overwhelming evil forces may perhaps be somewhat balanced by a realization that two justices of the Supreme Court testified for him, that the President of the United States expressed his skepticism of the charges and the Secretary of State his continued personal loyalty, that Hiss was represented throughout by batteries of outstandingly able and distinguished counsel and that he was able to hire "experts in typewriters, documentary analysis, in the chemistry of paper and in metallurgy" to make "exhaustive tests," as well as investigators who "followed up leads in New York and other cities, including London...

...But where the documents come from some other office in the Department, he considers that fact alone absolute and final proof that he did not deliver them...

...Therefore, from some source, perhaps Amerasia, but at any rate not the dumbwaiter in his nephew's house as he testified, he secured certain State Department documents, or copies of documents, which were dated early in 1938...

...The villains are those who, through Hiss, would attack the achievements of the New Deal—particularly the House Un-American Activities Committee and the reactionary press...

...To those untrained in law, Hiss's strictures on the tactics of the prosecutor and the conduct of the judge may seem persuasive...

...From reading Hiss's book one might get the impression that the whole furor about Communists in Government (except, of course, with respect to Wadleigh and Pressman, who are necessary to the establishment of Hiss's innocence) was based on completely trumped-up charges...

...The "court of public opinion" consists, Hiss says, of those who in the future will give their attention to the case...

...Strange as this attitude may seem to those who knew Washington in the Thirties, some may find corroboration for it in the fact that at no place in the present book, which has so much to do with Communism, does Hiss express any distaste for Communists or Communist theory, or indicate that at any time since the Thirties he has come to recognize any danger from Communism or Communists...

...Having gone to all this trouble, Chambers, Hiss says, "slipped clumsily," for he included a page which had not been typed on either the Hiss typewriter or the typewriter which he had fabricated...

...Many pages which relate to that hearing are devoted to Hiss's explanation of his difficulties, which he says were due to faulty memory and inability to consult records...

...Hiss "had not taken such charges seriously when made against others" and "saw no reason why I or anyone else should pay attention to a similar fanciful charge that might now be made against me...

...But the comparison is an interesting exercise...

...It is difficult to piece this theory together because of its many implications and ramifications, but it runs somewhat as follows: Some time after September 27, 1948, when Hiss began his libel suit, and before November 17, 1948, when Chambers produced the typed documents, Chambers began to fear that he would lose the libel suit...

...There may be others whose minds are closed by prejudice against the New Deal or the United Nations or the Democratic party, or by prejudice created by false statements issued by the Committee, and still others in whom irrational fears were aroused by the circumstances of the case...

...Having now succeeded in his plan of "forgery by typewriter," Chambers stole the typewriter from the Lockey house and substituted the fabricated typewriter for it...

...He believes that his indictment was forced upon the grand jury by the Committee and the prosecutors, and that the grand jury, the juries and the judges who tried him were subject to great pressure from the Committee and the press, which together created "a climate of opinion" harmful to his position...

...Chambers as a man he had known as Crosley and admittedly known well enough to provide for him a partly furnished apartment at cost with all utilities free to say nothing of an automobile, old certainly, but still useful...

...Chambers himself was apparently motivated at first by the same political purposes as the Committee, but he soon became its creature, subject to its bullying, responsive to its ever-increasing demands...

...The existence in Government "of an underground group formed to influence policy was bound to be discredited soon by thoughtful people...

...Chambers, who was certainly a Communist espionage agent, testified that Hiss typed out for him and delivered to him for transmission to the Soviet Union certain documents which were copies of State Department documents...

...Those who believe that Hiss was innocent will probably not be turned against him by this book...

...Hiss denies this...

...After comparing Hiss's analysis of the famous confrontation scene with the official record, many will still think that, as Judge Chase said, Hiss "had been less than frank in his belated recognition of Mr...

...A final example of Hiss's failure satisfactorily to resolve in his favor the doubts aroused by the evidence against him is to be found in the matter of the $400 which Chambers claimed Hiss lent him for the purchase of a car...

...in some cases, from his office, he refers to them as "bogus documents" and says that Chambers tried "to palm [them] off as genuine...

...Wad-leigh later admitted getting his...

...Hiss admitted receiving a rug from Chambers but claimed that it was part payment of a debt and that he received it some time before June 1936...

...For this, he had to have documentary evidence...

...The members of the Committee had "a political stake" in not dispelling Chambers's "fantasy...

...When Chambers and his wife agree in their testimony, it is proof that they have made up the story beforehand...

...or got it from Who's Who or from somebody who knew the Hisses well...

...In fact, Hiss's attempt to prove, not that the documents were "bogus," which they clearly were not, but that he didn't deliver them to Chambers contains a curious inconsistency...

...former counsel, NRA, U. S. Department of Justice Alger Hiss's book adds nothing whatever to our knowledge or understanding of his famous case...

...which he admitted he still had...

...But the experience of many of us in the Government at that time was that that knowledge was constantly available without inquiry...

...Chambers produced a receipt for the purchase of four rugs, one of which he says he sent to Hiss, the others going to Harry Dexter White, George Silverman and Julian Wadleigh...

...But a reading of a fuller text of the hearing, as, for example, that which is found in Chambers's book Witness, presents such a picture of Hiss's dodging and weaving, of his extreme caution and disingenuousness, as to suggest the need for a broader explanation...

...Throughout the book, there is applied to Chamber's testimony a radically different standard from that which Hiss applies to his own...

...The only reference to the matter is Hiss's charge that Prosecutor Murphy was unfair to him when he told the jury that Hiss should have brought the rug to the trial...

...Those who took this position may still hope that they were wrong, but they will find in Hiss's book no new fact, no new insight, no new dimension which will furnish any sustenance for such a hope...

...When it develops that Chambers cannot locate Alger Hiss's house exactly, that is proof that Chambers never came there...

...In some way he found out that the typewriter which the Hisses had given away to a servant in 1937 or 1938 was now in the possession of one Lockey, who had acquired it in 1945...

...As to those documents which admittedly come from his office, he seeks to show that practically anybody, including office boys or even Chambers, could have wandered in and helped themselves to whatever documents were on his desk...

...Chambers bought a car, paying $486.75 in cash...

...The Committee contributed to the hysteria which it had aroused by announcing "that the purposes of the Communist party were espionage and treason...

...Apparently Hiss has no great hope of changing the views of those who have already given their attention to the case...

...The dealer who sold the four rugs was available, as was the Columbia professor who selected them...

...He thought of the typewriter which he had seen in the Hisses' house when he had stayed there for two nights in April 1935...

...In reaching a determination of guilt or innocence, a legal tribunal usually has to consider the credibility of the witnesses...

...It contains no facts which we did not already know, no insights which have not already been suggested, no dimensions which others have not already explored...

...The standard applied to Chambers works in a curious way—bv a kind of double twist, so to speak...

...He then acquired documents which had been typed on the Hisses' typewriter...

...Hiss was surrogate for Yalta, for the alleged deficiencies of the United Nations, for the loss of China...

...When Chambers says accurately that Hiss moved to a place not far from where Hiss's brother Donald lived, Hiss suggests that Chambers got Donald's address from the telephone book...

...Although the microfilmed documents which Chambers produced were admittedly extracted from the State Department without authority, and Hiss claims only that they were not abstracted by him, or...

...Vet when Hiss recalls his own address as Twenty-ninth Street, this is mere lapse of memory, and does not prove that he never lived on Twentv-eiglilh Street, which is the number he can-nut correctly recall I and where, of course, no one denies that he did live...

...There is space for only a few examples, but they will, I think, show the vital need for reading the book with the closest attention, if one is to reach a just conclusion as to the merits of the case...

...Whenever the spirit of anti-New Dealism seemed for a moment to be lagging, the Committee became desperate and lashed Chambers into making new and more startling charges...

...The hero of the piece is the New Deal, for the supposed sins of which Hiss was made to suffer...

...Of course, even if Hiss's story is more or less probable than Chambers's, that would not prove Hiss's innocence or guilt...

...But there is another type of approach to one of the issues, perhaps the principal issue in the case, and some readers may wish to test their reasoning powers on that issue...

...For such a Machiavellian plotter as Hiss would have us believe Chambers is, he seems to be an astonishing bungler...

...Terrified by the possibility of a judgment against him, he realized that his only escape was to accuse Hiss of espionage...

...But Chambers's resignation from Time, as a result of his 1948 admission, involved a "generous settlement...

...Let us consider the suggestions which Hiss makes in his book to account for one of these, the fact that the documents in question appear to have been typed on an old Woodstock typewriter which was owned by the Hisses during most, if not quite all, of the period when Chambers claims intimacy with the Hisses...

...In a book which gives so meager a picture of the personality of its author, it is perhaps worth noting that this theory of the economic motivation of Hiss's enemies occurs frequently...

...Yet there is a third group, which Hiss does not mention, those who had no such prejudices and no such fears, but who, having given their attention to the case, sadly and reluctantly concluded that the evidence established Hiss's guilt...

...Chambers's story was that he presented a rug to Hiss early in 1937 as a gift from the Soviet Union in appreciation of Hiss's services...

...The best that the law and its logic can do with factual evidence is to come to a determination on probabilities...

...Even more may be dissatisfied with Hiss's explanation of the gift of the Ford car...

...Neither Lockey nor Hiss, of course, was aware of the substitution when the typewriter was found there by Hiss's investigators in April 1949...

...But when all is said and done, and in spite of the disappointing weaknesses of Hiss's book, it remains possible that Hiss was wrongly convicted...

...The testimony at the hearing at which Hiss was questioned about this is not set forth in Hiss's book in sufficient detail to provide the basis for a careful judgment as to his candor...

...Therefore he acquired another typewriter of the same make and model and almost, though not quite, as old...

...The book suggests that Chambers made up the story of the loan after being shown Hiss's bank records by the FBL But Hiss merely repeats the already familiar explanation that he withdrew the money to make "purchases" for a new house, the lease for which he was to sign "some days later" (actually in December), and into which the Hisses moved about six weeks later (December 29...

...When they do not agree, it is proof that they are lying...

...With these as a guide, he had new type faces made, and attached to his typewriter (presumably for the purpose of duplicating the peculiarities found in the typing done by the Hisses, though at no point does Hiss claim that his experts, who say they can detect the new type, state that they found any correspondence between the new type and the peculiarities in the Hisses' typing...

...And the reader of Hiss's book may want to decide whether he believes Hiss or believes Chambers in respect to the various issues on which their testimony clashed...

...Then, enmeshed in his perjuries, he was driven by fear of indictment to even greater efforts...

...The Court of Appeals, however, found nothing exceptionable in them, and it must be said that, at least to a lawyer, the complaints against Judge Goddard ("appointed by President Harding") seem pretty unimpressive...

...There are many other instances where the book does not give a sufficiently clear or complete description of the circumstances to enable the "court of public opinion" to make a balanced judgment, but perhaps enough has been said to establish the point that the "attention" that future court gives to the case should be very careful and discriminating indeed...

...His final desperate acts were "an effort to escape the consequences of his initial charges," since the sum of $75,000 which Hiss was demanding in the libel action was "fantastic" compared with Chambers's ability to pay...

...Even a voluntary confession can only make the fact of the commission of the crime very probable and, indeed, many such confessions have proved to be false...

...Hiss emphasizes at least twice in his book that there was "no occasion" in the Thirties to find out whether a man was or was not a Communist...

...Hiss has many complaints to make about the character of the legal proceeding which led to his conviction...

...Whether at the trial or elsewhere, Hiss could have shown them the rug he had, and asked them whether it was one of the four rugs...

...And the press "gave wide prominence to another case [Judith Coplon] that emphasized and still further heightened the official and public obsession with Communism and espionage...

...It is established that Hiss withdrew $400 from his savings account on November 19, 1937 and that on November 23 Mrs...

...When Chambers faltered or was inaccurate, it is proof that he was lying, although when Hiss did the same it was a perfectly understandable lapse of memory about events which took place many vears ago...

...Even Lord Jowitt...

...The withdrawal, so far in advance of moving...

...Hiss suggests several theories which would account for this, but he settles finally on one in which he repeatedly expresses his complete belief, and which he maintains he could have proved if he had been granted a new trial (although his lawyer was somewhat more limited in his claims for it...

...Obviously Chambers could not buy or steal the typewriter, since if this were found out it would wreck all his plans...

...Having got the documents, he had to connect them with Hiss by some closer link than merely that several of them came or could have come originally from Hiss's office...

...The attack on him began as an incident of the election of 1948...

...There are certain improbabilities in Chambers's story, however minor they may seem to some...