A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case

Meet Alger Hiss: Johns Hopkins, Harvard Law, Supreme Court clerk, left Wall Street to join a New Deal farming agency, counsel to a Senate Committee at age 30, aide to president Roosevelt at Yalta, Secretary General of the UN's founding conference, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . . . and the most highly placed traitor in American history? Further Research: Episode 1: About Hiss's life before the HUAC hearings, see his own autobiography, Recollections of a Life (Seaver Books 1988) at 1-148; the definitive book on the Case, Perjury:  The Hiss-Chambers Case by Allen Weinstein (Hoover Inst. Press 2013) at 81-92, 107-10, 152-69, 211-46, 281-83, 369-96; AlgerHiss's Looking-Glass Wars:  The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy, by G. Edward White (Oxford University Press 2004) at 3-39; Alger Hiss: The True Story, by John Chabot Smith at 1-151; and, especially concerning Hiss's years at The State Department, Christina Shelton, Alger Hiss:  Why He Chose Treason (Threshold Editions 2012) at 11-137.

Picture: Library of Congress   Meet Whittaker Chambers: brilliant, melodramatic, painfully sincere, perpetually discontented and idealistic, and physically hard to forget; writer of controversial poems, plays, short stories, and communist journalism; and, as spymaster for Soviet Military Intelligence, traitor to the United States.     Further Research Episode 2: About Chambers' early and communist years, here are some references:  1) Chambers' autobiography Witness, the first 450 pages.  The book is still in print and, like most books about this case, can be found on Amazon and eBay.  One reviewer said that Chambers' description of his middle class family's wreckage was heart-breaking.  One might compare it to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night.  Chambers' description of his life in the Communist movement (above ground and underground and his attempt to escape) has been compared to Dante's Inferno. 2) Professor Weinstein's Perjury (referenced above) at 92-106, 110-42, 148-64, and 325-33. 3) Friendship and Fratricide: An Analysis of Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss, by Meyer M. Zeligs, M.D.  This is a psychobiography of Hiss and Chambers, painting Chambers in a lugubrious light.  See pages 27-132, 201-74.  I have no expertise in psychiatry or related fields, but to me this book seems a relic of 1950s/60s psychiatry, when Freud was compared to Aristotle and Copernicus.  The eminent liberal intellectual Lionel Trilling (an admirer of Chambers), wrote that "no other work does as much as this one to bring into question the viability of the infant discipline of psycho-history."  I include it here, not only because it may have some value today, but mostly because it shows that the real facts of Chambers' life can be used, by skillful hands and a determined mind, to make him seem lunatic.  

Whittaker Chambers tries to have a peaceful life, working a farm and becoming a high-paid and powerful editor at Time Magazine.  But his past in the Soviet underground won't go away.  Stalin's pact with Hitler impels him to inform the government about the underground.  Worse, from time to time government investigators ask him for more and more information.  Chambers tries to expose the conspiracy without ruining his own career or the friends who shared his treason.  How long can he continue threading the needle?   If you were Chambers, how would you walk the tightrope, trying to alert the government about the Soviet underground without exposing your own role in its crimes and incriminating your best friend in those years, with whom you committed those crimes? If Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers both witnessed an event and gave different accounts of it, which one would you be more inclined to believe?  Hiss, the public man, has the resume to die for and all The Top People vouching for him.  Chambers, the creature of the underground, has been a professional liar for years and loves to tell melodramatic tales.  But is there something too good to be true about Hiss?  Do you wonder who is the real man behind the resume?  And while no one would say that Chambers is the embodiment of moderation, he is painfully honest in many ways and he does not hide all his past sins.  Even if your first inclination would be to believe Hiss, what would make you change to put more faith in Chambers? Further Research: Episode 3:  Professor Weinstein's book and Chambers' memoir, referenced above, contain much about what Chambers called "the tranquil years."   Re Chambers' emergence from the Communist underground, interesting memoirs are "The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren" by Mark Van Doren at 218-19 (Harcourt Brace & Co, 1958), "Navigating the Rapids 1918-1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle" edited by Beatrice B. Berle & Travis B. Jacobs at 249-50 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1973), and "Eyewitness to History: Memoirs and Reflections of a Foreign Correspondent for Half a Century" by Isaac Don Levine at 179-200 (Hawthorn Books 1973).  Levine was the journalist who accompanied Chambers to see Berle the day World War II began. The best books about Chambers' career at Time are "Harry & Teddy: The Turbulent Friendship of Press Lord Henry Luce and His Favorite Reporter, Theodore H. White" by Thomas Griffith (Random House 1995) and "One Man's America: A Journalist's Search for the Heart of His Country" by Henry Grunwald (Doubleday 1997).  Look in each book's index for references to Whittaker Chambers. Concerning the disillusionment with Communism by intellectuals who had been bedazzled by it, see "The God That Failed," edited by Richard Crossman (Columbia Univ. Press 2001, first published in London in 1950), "Up From Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History" by John P. Diggins (Harper & Row 1975), and "A Better World: The Great Schism: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals" by William L. O'Neill (Simon & Schuster 1982) 259-368 passim.  Chambers' admirer in Columbia and later a great Comparative Literature Professor there, Lionel Trilling, wrote a novel about leftist disillusionment with radical leftism.  Originally published just before the Hiss-Chambers scandal broke, it was reissued in 1975 (around the time of President Nixon's disgrace).  "The Middle of the Journey" by Lionel Trilling (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1975).     A major character in the novel, Gifford Maxim, is based on Chambers and the 1975 reissue contains an introduction by Trilling that describes his long relationship with Chambers.  

Photo: Craig Whitehead on Unsplash The backdrop of this case is American Communism — infatuation with it and disillusionment with it.  Communism predicted a violent upheaval that would produce a better life.  In actual practice, it produced only drab, poverty-stricken dictatorships that killed and starved millions.  Around 1935, the American Communist Party stopped acting revolutionary and posed as "liberals in a hurry."  It got a few hundred Americans to join the Communist underground and work secretly for the Soviet Union.  The issue is whether Hiss was one of those people.   Further Research Episode 4:  Podcast 4:  The great book of Communism is Das Kapital, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.  I've always found it impenetrably dense and boring; to follow it you have to know a lot about 19th century factories.  The best short (and readable) works expounding Communist theory and action plans are two by Marx, The Communist Manifesto and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.  Among the many works from the Soviet Union describing Communism, the best short ones, in my opinion, are Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?" and Stalin's "The Foundations of Leninism."   The best books about the reality and results of Communism are the short "Communism: A History," by Richard Pipes and the long "The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression," by Stephane Courtois and others. Two excellent descriptions of what it felt like to live in the 1930s and lose faith in laissez-faire Capitalism, and perhaps briefly to fall for Communism, are (1) Alistair Cooke's book about the Case, "A Generation on Trial: U.S.A. v. Alger Hiss" (Knopf 1950 and 1952), the first Chapter, titled "Remembrance of Things Past: The 1930s," and (2) Murray Kempton's essays about the radicals of the 1930s, "Part of Our Time: Some Ruins & Monuments of the Thirties" (Simon & Schuster 1955 and The Modern Library 1998), the first chapter, titled "A Prelude." All these books are available on Amazon. Questions:  What do you think was the appeal of Soviet Communism in the 1930s?  What did Communism have that fascism, socialism, and The New Deal lacked? If you came to believe in Communism, what would make you lose your confidence in it?  The obvious lack of democracy in the Soviet Union, the American Party's slavish adherence to every 180 degree change in the Party line from Moscow, the purge trials of 1936-38, and Stalin hopping into bed with Hitler in their 1939 Non-Aggression Pact?  Does Communism sound like a secular religion — with its all-encompassing philosophy, sacred texts, worshipped founders, and martyrs? Might part of Communism's appeal in the 1930s, compared to conventional religion, be that (1) it claimed to be rational, even scientific, (2) it promised paradise here on earth in just a few years (you don't have to wait for heaven), (3) you don't have to work for it (it's on the inevitable 'timetable of history'), and (4) it frees the individual from any sense of personal sin? If you devoted your life to Communism and the Party and became disillusioned, what would you do?  Decide you had a bad picker when it came to politics and move on to baseball or real estate?  Remain a Marxist but not a Party member — hope another group will form and be "real Communists"?  Become a Socialist, or 'get real' and join the Republicans or the Democrats?  Or, like Chambers and a few others, make anti-Communism the mainspring of the rest of your life?  

Above, Elizabeth Bentley, who gave evidence at the first HUAC hearing. Pic: Library of Congress In 1948, Whittaker Chambers is Time Magazine's Senior Editor.  He is forced against his will to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee about his past in the Communist underground.  He names seven names, but the Committee zeroes in on one of them — Alger Hiss.  With this begins the doom of both men, major climate change in American politics, and the career of a future President. Further Research: Episode 5:  The best book about the colorful House Un-American Activities Committee is Walter Goodman's "The Committee:  The extraordinary career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1968).  Goodman was a liberal, mildly mocking of HUAC, but even he had to admit that 1948 was HUAC's "Vintage Year."  Pages 247-67 concern the Hiss-Chambers hearings.   Chambers' account of his testimony is at pages 535-50 of the 1980 Regnery Gateway edition of "Witness."  Other accounts are in Alistair Cooke (1952) at 55-59 and Weinstein (2013) at 13-18.    A lacerating review of Alistair Cooke's book (the 1950 edition) was written by the great British feminist and essayist Rebecca West, was published in the University of Chicago Law Review in 1952, and is available at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=uclrev.  I commend Mr. Cooke's book especially for the narration of the trials, which I believe he covered for The Manchester Guardian.  His verbal sketches of the courtroom scenes — the judges, lawyers, and witnesses — are almost worthy of Henry James.  Unfortunately, however, Mr. Cooke retained so much of his English detachment that he fell for Hiss's pose as an honorable gentleman; and Cooke simply does not get the red-hot Chambers.  Cooke's courtroom descriptions are wonderful, but my opinion is that Ms. West's criticisms are correct.  By the 1952 edition of his book, which covers Hiss's claims of "forgery by typewriter" (Podcast #25), Cooke seems to have concluded that Hiss was guilty. Richard Nixon, though he was almost silent during Chambers' first testimony, recorded his impressions of Chambers in the first chapter of his 1962 book "Six Crises" ("Never . . . was a more sensational investigation started by a less impressive witness.").  The transcript of most of HUAC's 1948 Communist hearings was published in 2020 by Alpha Editions.  "Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government, Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, Second Session, Public Law 601 (Section 121, Subsection Q(2))."  Chambers' first testimony is at 563-84.  I find these transcripts fascinating because you see HUAC's members first believe Chambers, then Hiss, and then slowly conclude that Hiss  is, as Representative Hebert said, the greatest actor that America has ever produced. Questions:  Imagine you are Whittaker Chambers.   You are forced in 1948 to testify about your underground  Communist past.  Do you talk about the chat group only, or the spy ring, too?  The first was silly, the second was a crime.  Do you name names, including the brilliant man who was your only friend in those years? About naming the names of your co-conspirators, you had less than 24 hours notice before your testimony.  There was no time to reach out and call them.  Maybe they reformed shortly after you did and are leading upstanding lives like you are. Before Congressional committees, there are no rules of evidence.  Any question may be asked and any answer may be given.  What questions can you anticipate?  If you testify only about the chat group and you are asked point blank about spying, what answer will you give?  Reveal the crime of spying, or commit perjury?  How do you say something, something to alert the government and the public to the truth, without ruining your life and your friends' lives? Based just on this first testimony, do you find Chambers generally believable?  Totally believable?  Do you fear that, while telling the truth most of the time, he may succumb to the temptation to brighten pastel shades into primary colors to make his story more dramatic?  What is his motive to tell the truth?  What is his motive to lie?  Does he seem a reluctant witness?  Do you have a feeling that, once he got the subpoena, he thought to himself, "OK, let 'er rip.  There's gonna be a big scene and I want to be the star"?  Do the questions and comments of the HUAC members and staffers, especially Chief Investigator Stripling, give you confidence in HUAC as a finder of fact?  What is your impression of the Acting Chairman, Karl Mundt, and of Hiss's chief defender, the racist, anti-Semite, Democrat, and ardent New Dealer from Mississippi, "Lightnin' John" Rankin?   

Richard M. Nixon, Library of Congress  Alger Hiss calmly and patiently denies Whittaker Chambers' two charges: that the two of them were in the Communist underground in 1934-37 and that they became close friends.  The Commie-hunters on the House Un-American Activities Committee are swept away by his poise and simplicity and tell him what a wonderful witness he is.  Only two listeners smell something fishy in Hiss' carefully phrased testimony: a staffer named Robert Stripling and a freshman Republican Representative named Richard Nixon.  The two form a team of rivals (each claiming credit for the tall thinking and smart talking) and change history.  All four men are now inextricably intertwined in a scandal that will rock the nation.   Further Research Episode 6:  Robert Stripling's book (largely ghostwritten by the popular writer Bob Considine) is "The Red Plot Against America" (Bell 1949); it describes Hiss's testimony and reactions to it at 110-16.  More accounts of Hiss's first testimony are; Nixon at 5-11; Smith at 161-83; Toledano at 151-54; and Weinstein at 21-28.  The full transcript of Hiss's testimony is in the Alpa Editions reprint of the HUAC hearings at 642-59. Alger Hiss's memoir of the Case, "In the Court of Public Opinion" (Knopf 1957) describes at 3-14 Hiss's reaction to Chambers' accusations and his first testimony in response.  This book is so dry (in it, Hiss never once describes having a feeling) that it has been called the only boring book ever written about this Case.  More interesting pro-Hiss reading is the John Chabot Smith book referenced above and a pro-Hiss book that focuses on Nixon's misstatements and craftiness (a territory almost as target-rich as Hiss's testimonies), "A Tissue of Lies:  Nixon vs. Hiss" (McGraw Hill 1979) by Morton and Michael Levitt.   Questions:  You're Alger Hiss, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a minor luminary of America's post-War foreign policy establishment.   Whittaker Chambers testifies to HUAC that the two of you were in a secret Communist chat group 10-15 years ago and that you two became best friends.  What do you do? Several options:  (1) Do nothing, because no one who matters to your life cares a fig for what goes on at HUAC; (2) appear before the Committee with both guns blazing, in the style of the Hollywood Communists (but remember they came to a sticky end); (3) admit, sheepishly, that back in the dark days of the Great Depression, when you were just out of grad school and had more youthful idealism than good judgment, you did something very foolish that, fortunately, did no harm in the long run and you stopped doing it years ago; and (4) calmly deny Chambers' charges like a gentleman who will not stoop to wrestle in the mud; tough it out, hope Chambers gets tangled up in melodrama, and that, with your sterling reputation and friends in high places, you can emerge in two weeks as fabulous as always and with the added sheen of having repulsed a despicable smear campaign.  Hiss chose #4. If you were Hiss, would your choice depend much on whether Chambers' charges were true?  What if they were true and you knew that you two had also been in a spy ring, a major league crime that Chambers could blackmail you with for the rest of your life if you admitted to the chat group and the friendship?  But since he was in the spy ring, too, you could blackmail him for the rest of his life. Extra Credit Question:  I assume that by now you have read parts of Hiss's testimony and its dissection by Nixon and Stripling.  As you read Hiss for the first time, did you notice any of the suspicion-raising bits that Nixon and Stripling saw?    

Members of the House Un-American Activities Committee visit the home of Chairman John Parnell Thomas; (l-r) Rep. Richard B. Vail, Rep. Thomas, Rep. John McDowell, Robert Stripling, chief counsel, and Rep. Richard M. Nixon] Picture: Library of Congress Were Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss good friends from 1934 through 1937?  Chambers says 'yes' and Hiss says 'no.'  In this podcast, HUAC staffer Bob Stripling and Representative Nixon get Chambers under oath, in secret, and fire questions at him about Hiss's daily life back in the day.  And Chambers pours forth details (or what he says are details) for two and a half hours.  Stripling and Nixon stop when they simply can't think of any more questions.  It's obvious that Chambers is telling the truth and that the polished Harvard man, New Deal wonder boy, and aid to two Presidents is lying.  By inference, Hiss was also, at least long ago, a secret Communist.  The young Congressman's gamble may just pay off, prove that the Democratic Party enabled treason in high places, and make him the most famous first term Representative in American history.   Further Research Episode 7:  The account of Chambers' secret interrogation is in HUAC at 662-72.   Can you think of a good reason that the interrogation lasted two and a half hours but the transcript is only 11 pages long?  I can think of two.  First, at 671 they go 'off the record,' evidently for two hours.  It's been known to happen — I made my share of mistakes in litigation, but never this one — that you go 'off the record' for some reason and, when that's done, you forget to tell the stenographer to start recording again.  Hours later someone notices that the stenographer is still doing a crossword puzzle.  In this case, it would have been too late to go back 'on the record' and re-ask what had been asked in the last 2 hours — Stripling and Nixon had been asking about whatever popped into their heads and they all wanted to get back to Washington for dinner with their families (this was Saturday, after all).  Second, some of the matters that arose were ones about which, especially among upper middle class WASPS, their was still enormous social stigma in 1948 — Mrs. Hiss' previous marriage that ended in divorce and the possibility that the son of that marriage was gay.  Chambers himself said on the record that he dreaded Mrs. Hiss's first husband learning what he had just disclosed, which was that Mrs. Hiss despised her ex (page 670). Other first hand accounts of Chambers' secret interrogation are Chambers (the 1980 edition of Witness) at 558-73, Nixon (Six Crises (1962 edition) at 15-18 and his post-Presidential memoir "RN:  The Memoirs of Richard Nixon" at 55-56), and Stripling at 117-19. I think it indicates a close friendship that the Hisses were willing to tell Chambers about Mrs. Hiss's previous divorce and the possibility that her son by that marriage was gay.   Stripling, who was 'a good judge of horseflesh,' said in later testimony and interviews that when Chambers said that Hiss's alleged car transfer to the Communist underground 'should be traceable,' he was suspicious.  I had learned, Stripling said, to be suspicious of what people told me should be traceable.  Did you plant the traces for me to find?  Stripling also noted that every time Chambers testified to HUAC, he was on the next train back to New York.  He never came back to the office and 'chewed the fat' or offered further juicy revelations.  From this and other impressions which I state in the podcast, Stripling was left with the hunch that Chambers was telling the truth, but not the whole truth. Questions:  If you wanted to know whether Chambers knew Hiss very well 10-15 years ago, what questions would you ask him?  Perhaps matters that could be checked in public records, such as residences (both where they lived and the layout of their apartments and houses), cars, dog licenses, charge accounts at stores.  Also, maybe the kind of private stuff you know about your best friends — family secrets, sleeping arrangements, favorite foods, hobbies, childhood memories, quirks of personality?  Anything else?      

Campaigning for the US Senate, 1950. Pic - Library of Congress In this 8th podcast, we explore the thinking of Richard Nixon.  Put yourself in his position.  You're 35, elected to the House in a Republican wave year from a district that is usually safely Democratic.  Your plum Committee assignment was Education and Labor.  But, on HUAC, this throbbing blob of a Case has come rolling in the door.  You and Bob Stripling saw possibilities that no one else saw and now The Case is all yours.  You have satisfied yourself that Hiss is lying and Chambers is telling the truth.  Now, for you, the issue is how far do you take this.  Do you risk everything (your whole career) for it?  How to prevent The Establishment from rallying around its fair haired boy Alger?  How to convince them that Hiss is lying and they should give you free rein?  How to satisfy yourself that Chambers will not crack under the pressure of public scrutiny and Democrat attacks, that he'll convince typical Americans, that there's nothing fishy in his past, that his love of melodrama will not carry him away into fantastication?  If anything goes wrong, in six months you'll be back in Whittier doing slip and fall cases.  In this podcast, you'll hear about the inner turmoil and external events that made up the mind of the future President.  Further Research: Episode 8:  Speculating about the thinking of Richard Nixon has been an indoor sport for people who knew him and the American intelligentsia for decades.  In his own writings about this moment in the Case, he is unusually candid about how uncertain and anxious he was.  See Six Crises at 19-23; see also Weinstein at 36-37.  Nixon sent his brother Ed and his Mother to chat with the Chamberses.  Ed Nixon & Karen Olson, "The Nixons: A Family Portrait" (2009) at 137-38.  Nixon also consulted a reporter for the leading liberal Republican newspaper, The New York Herald Tribune.  This Reporter, Bert Andrews, had been very critical of HUAC and other security agencies for being sloppy in recent investigations.  Nixon used him as a sounding board and devil's advocate in this Case and Andrews became a fascinated eyewitness to these and later crucial moments.  Andrews' posthumous memoir, "A Tragedy of History:  A Journalist's Confidential Role in the Hiss-Chambers Case,"  by Bert and Peter Andrews (1962) at 72-77 describes Andrews' first chats with Nixon and Chambers.  Andrews says that Chambers, when he needed time to shape his answers to questions, paused for 30-40 seconds and looked like he had gone into a trance.  Nixon, by the way, did not include Stripling in his deliberations at this phase. Questions:  You're Richard Nixon.  How do you decide whether to risk your whole career by supporting Chambers all the way?  How do you verify or discredit all the (alleged) facts about the Hisses' life in 1934-37 that Chambers divulged in his secret testimony?  Use HUAC's staff, obviously.  How else?  How do you get to know Chambers and form an opinion about his honesty (and perhaps sanity)?  Remember, he doesn't have to talk to you if he doesn't want to.  How can you investigate his past and see if there's anything fishy there?  How do you deter the natural pro-Hiss inclination of the Republican Establishment, which is itself invested in Hiss?  (Hiss's mentor at the Carnegie Endowment is John Foster Dulles, chief foreign policy advisor to Republican Presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey.)  Assuming you decide to 'bet the farm' on Chambers, how do you get the news media involved so that this Case becomes Nixon's Triumph and not HUACs?  How do you separate yourself in the public mind from HUAC and launch a spectacular career of your own without earning the undying hatred of those you leave behind — Bob Stripling and the other members of HUAC?      

Alger Hiss, like Chambers, gives secret testimony to Nixon's HUAC Subcommittee.  He is outraged that they are thinking of trusting Chambers, whom Hiss labels a Communist and a traitor (Hiss pre-channeling Senator McCarthy).  When confronted with Chambers' detailed knowledge of his domestic life 10-15 years ago, Hiss drops his claim that he never knew Chambers.  Oh, now it's all coming back to me, . . .  There was a man whom I knew back then, a self-styled freelance journalist who went by the name George Crosley.  He was disheveled, had shockingly bad teeth, and seemed sometimes to live in a fantasy world of dramatic escapades.  He became our subtenant, living under the same roof with us for a while, and stiffed us for the rent.  Maybe Chambers and Crosley are the same man.  Does this new story, which Hiss stuck to till the day he died, sound believable to you?  Or is he just coming up with a more complicated lie to defeat Chambers and the truth? Further Research Episode 9:  Hiss's secret testimony starts at HUAC at 935; the George Crosley recollection starts at 948-49, gets into depth at 955, and continues off and on until 970.  (Congressional hearings frequently hop from one topic to another as individual Representatives arrive, chime in, think of new lines of questioning, and leave the room to attend to other business.)  Hiss's recollections of his secret testimony, and of Crosley in general, are in his memoir "In the Court of Public Opinion" at 15-32 and in his late-in-life autobiography, "Recollections of a Life" (1988) at 207-08.  Chambers' analysis of Hiss's secret testimony is at "Witness" at 580-81 and 593.  See also Weinstein's Perjury at 39-44.  Nixon's recollections are in "Six Crises" at 23-29 and "RN" at 58-60.  There is a wonderful essay on this Case by the professor and literary critic Leslie Fiedler, "Hiss, Chambers, and the Age of Innocence," in his book "An End to Innocence" (1952).  In it, at 9, Fiedler describes Hiss here as "uncertainly feeling his way into the situation, cautiously finding out at each point how much he will have to admit to escape entrapment." Questions:   How does Hiss's new "George Crosley" story sound to you?  Obviously a fabrication, or plausible but we need to learn more, or has 'the ring of truth'; to it?  How would you learn more?  Ask members of the Nye Committee staff if they remembered a man named George Crosley (evidently poor and with memorably bad teeth) hanging around the Committee's offices?  Ask the Hisses' household servants and social friends if they remembered a shabby looking man with bad teeth named George Crosley socializing with the Hisses back then?  Did Hiss ever mention to a deadbeat pest he'd finally gotten out of his life?  Look for magazine articles published by "George Crosley" in the mid-1930s?  Find pictures of Chambers in those years, show them to all the above-mentioned people, and ask them if the remember this man?    

In Podcast 10, Nixon's HUAC Subcommittee reacts skeptically to Hiss's new George Crosley story.  Hiss, like Captain Renault in Casablanca, is shocked, shocked that the Representatives would even think of taking the word of the Communist and traitor Chambers over that of a distinguished personage such as himself.  Representative Hebert suggests that Hiss return to his first, helpful and respectful attitude.  But Hiss blows him off — not a smart move with the only member of the Subcommittee who is of Hiss's Party.  Hiss then corroborates 90% of what Chambers had told the Subcommittee about his personal life 10-15 years earlier, including the prothonotary warbler and the hand operated windshield wipers on the old Ford.  Nixon, now almost certain that Hiss is lying, orders Stripling to arrange a face-to-face meeting of the two men in secret the next day, to the complete surprise of both of them.  Nixon wants to catch Hiss off guard and deny him more time to make his George Crosley tale fit the facts. Further Research Episode 10:  See references to Episode 9  Questions:  If you believe, as I do, that Hiss is guilty, what is he to do at this stage?  Do what he did — stick with the "innocent as the day is long" story (with the George Crosley variation) although it is obviously not convincing his current audience?  Do you think, as one of his acquaintances did, that if he were innocent he would have gotten angry before this?  If he had openly 'lawyered up' at this stage and refused to answer any more questions, would it have saved him any of the later traumas he endured?  Or was he stuck with his original "innocent as the day is long" attitude?  Before President Clinton admitted lying about Ms. Lewinsky, has any public figure denied everything indignantly, then changed his story by admitting wrongdoing, and 'gotten away with it'?  It didn't work for Governor Cuomo.  What do you think of Representative Hebert telling Hiss ever so politely that HUAC is simply behaving as any competent investigator would?  What did Hebert want Hiss to do?  How stupid was Hiss to offend Hebert, the only member of his Party on the Subcommittee?  How much of Hiss's conduct at this stage is explained by his (in my opinion) arrogant belief that his IQ was so much higher than any of his interrogator's that he could bluff his way around them?  

 Pic: Library of Congress In Podcast 11, Nixon and Stripling pull off another tactical masterstroke.  They bring Hiss and Chambers together, to the surprise of both of them, in a hotel room in New York City.  Despite the locale, it's a formal hearing of Nixon's HUAC Subcommittee and there is a transcript (not to mention half a dozen memoirs).  Nixon asks Hiss, once and for all, if Chambers is the man he knew as George Crosley 10-15 years before.  What happened next has been called "bizarre and even incredible" and "a bit like a Henry James story, . . . full of subtleties and ambiguities."  Hiss and Stripling were both there and, although they agreed on very little, each in his memoir used the exact same phrase to describe what happened — "something out of a dream." Further Research: Episode 11:  The descriptions of the scene in Suite 1400 of the Commodore Hotel in New York City in the principals' memoirs are Chambers at 599-615 (at 603 "I felt what any humane man must feel when, pursuing an end he is convinced is right, finds himself the instrument of another man's disaster"), Hiss at 81-99 (at 99, "I resented the Committee's callous and ruthless procedures.  . . .  [T]he Committee and I were now at war."), Nixon (Six Crises at 31-37, (RN at 61-63 (at 61), "I do not think that I have ever seen one man look at another with more hatred in his eyes than did Alger Hiss when he looked at Whittaker Chambers."), Stripling at 126-32 (at 128, when Chambers entered the hotel sitting room where Hiss was, "Hiss did not turn around, did not change his expression.  I suppose I expected him to leap up, wheel around, and demand why this man — whom he had testified he did not know — had made these astounding charges against him.").   See also Weinstein at 45-49 and  Alistair Cooke (at 73-84) describing (at 74) the scene as one that "began circumspectly enough and ended in a naked and desperate scramble for reputation." Hiss brought along a friend, Mr. Charles Dollard, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.  Chambers writes (Witness at 603) that Dollard "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 . . . with a curiously fixed smile on his face, which Hiss's loftier jibes turned incandescent with amusement.  . . .  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."   Dollard later told Hiss's attorneys that "Alger behaved very badly."  (Weinstein at 49 (footnote).) Questions:  Do you think, as I do, that when Hiss asked to speak with Chambers' dentist, he was just trying to abort the hearing, to close down the scene because he had no idea what to do — 'get me the hell out of here,' 'beam me up, Scottie!'  Do you sympathize with Chambers, who wrote that "I felt somewhat like a broken-mouthed sheep whose jaws have been pried open and are being inspected by wary buyers at an auction"?  (Chambers at 606.)       

Republican members of the House un-American  Activities Committee (HUAC). (Library of Congress)  Sandwiched between the drama of the Commodore Hotel (last week's Podcast) and the equally sensational televised confrontation of Hiss and Chambers (next week's), this Podcast #12 is a backgrounder on the political climate of 1948, the setting which was shaken to its foundations by this scandal.  There were four views of the world.  Old-style conservatives wanted to return to isolationism and viewed domestic Communists as minor nuisances.  Ultra-left intellectuals saw The Century of the Common Man dawning and thought, incredibly in retrospect, that the Soviet Union under Stalin was some kind of human progress.  American capitalists thought that capitalism, tempered by some kind of safety net and led by the USA, was the wonderful and unopposed future of the human race.  The capitalists, like the isolationists, dismissed domestic Communists as a minor problem.  Fourth and last, fearful conservatives (including ex-Communists like Chambers) saw domestic subversion — traitors in our midst — as an unsolved crisis for the country; and they saw Communism on the march as a disaster-in-the-making for the whole world. This Case vindicated this last group, educated the old isolationists and the triumphant capitalists, and disgraced the ultra-left intellectuals. Further Research:  Episode 12:  Two works are cited by name in this Podcast.  Harold Laski's book — 'Faith, Reason, and Civilization:  An essay in historical analysis' — was published by Viking in 1944.  Vintage copies are available on Amazon (thank you, Mr. Bezos).  Henry Luce's famous essay, 'The American Century,' is available on the Internet at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mlassite/discussions261/luce.pdf (not secure).   Also on the Internet, the essay is debated to this day.  For more on the political climate of 1948, I recommend reading roughly the pages cited above in the above-cited works of Alistair Cooke, Leslie Fiedler, Walter Goodman, and  Murray Kempton.  Most books about the politics of this era, sad to say, fall into two extreme camps.  One says there were secret Commies everywhere (FDR and Truman may have been in on it).  The other says there were no Commies; but if there were, they never did any harm; but if they did harm, their hearts were in the right place; and if their hearts were black, they were all victims of political persecution.  The single best broad view of the political climate of 1948 is James F. Nagle's '1948:  The Crossroads Year,' most recently published in 2007 by BookSurge. Questions:  Was there factual evidence supporting each of the four groups identified in this Podcast?  Which group, in your opinion, got the most right and the least wrong?  Which one got the least right and the most wrong?  Does the fluid climate of 1948 remind you of America's decade-long 'holiday from history' after the fall of Communism and before 9/11?  Do you remember "The End of History"?  Had you heard of Usama Bin Laden before 9/11?    

This is the Podcast of the public hearing at which Chambers and Hiss sat a few feet apart and testified against each other for six hours.  It was one of the big stories of 1948.  A history of HUAC says it was the most dramatic and crowded event of the Committee's public history.  One newspaper blared that it was "C Day" — C for Confrontation.  People wanting spectator seats were lined up out the building and around the block — and the Old House Office Building is a big building on a long block.  Nixon played the role of patient, plodding prosecutor, with an occasional assist from Stripling.  The other HUAC members chimed in with their reactions, like the chorus in an ancient Greek drama.  Hiss had become extravagantly cautious.  He bobbed, weaved, and ultimately exasperated even his friends in the audience.  Chambers occasionally reveled in the melodrama, warming his friends' hearts and convincing his enemies that he was mentally ill.  Most telling, however, was evidence from disinterested third parties indicating that Chambers' story was the truthful one and that Hiss's was mostly lies.  See what you think of the two men and their stories. Further Research: Episode 13:  The August 25 HUAC hearing occupies 131 pages (beginning at 1075) of the Alpha Edition transcript of HUAC hearings cited in the discussion of Episode 5 above.  Hiss's first memoir covers the hearing at pages 100-49; it is as defensive and meticulous Hiss was at the hearing.  Chambers' covers the hearing at pages 625-95 of Witness.  At 693, he sympathizes with Hiss:  "the spectacle of that man, hopelessly baited by questions, although in a trap of his own contriving, . . . tormented me as much, or more, than anything I felt about myself."  For Nixon's recollections, see Six Crises at 41-44 and RN at 63-66. Dispassionate observers said that Chambers' testimony was notably more direct and plausible than Hiss's (Walter Goodman at 258); that Hiss's "caution, . . . in the opinion even of his friends, hurt his case" (Bert Andrews at 148, quoting James Reston of the New York Times); and that Hiss had been "swarmed with well-wishers" after his first HUAC testimony" but "stood alone" after the August 25 hearing (Nagle at 126, quoting Chambers with approval).  Professor Weinstein's book covers the hearing at 55-62, saying at 61 that Hiss's manner was nervous and emotional while Cambers' was relaxed and calm. Questions:  If you were, like Hiss, questioned by a hostile tribunal about your conduct 10-15 years ago, and you feared that mis-dating an event by one month might land you in the hell of a perjury trial, would you be willing to appear like a crook or an idiot by beginning every answer with the words "To the best of my recollection"?  That's the choice (between two bad choices) that Hiss made.  Do Chambers' dramatic words about the appeal of Communism and 'a tragedy of history' impress you as heartfelt and profound, or as over the top melodrama that makes you doubt his contact with reality?  If you were a journalist reporting on this hearing, would you 'stick to the facts' or add the audience's laughter and your own impressions?  If you were an ambitious first-term member of the lower House, could you have imagined a better introduction to the American people?    

In this Podcast, Chambers appears on Meet The Press and repeats his accusations. Hiss sues him for libel, after assembling a Dream Team of eminent lawyers to vindicate his reputation.(Chambers was superbly represented, too.)In a pre-trial interview called a deposition, Hiss's lawyer William Marbury asks Chambers to produce any written documents he has from Alger or Priscilla Hiss. Chambers, ever the man of mystery, travels to Brooklyn to retrieve a large manila envelope from the top shelf of a linen closet behind a bathtub in an apartment once inhabited by a local lawyer who was Mrs. Chambers' nephew.(Chambers gave it to the lawyer when he deserted the Communist underground and told him to hide it and make its contents public if he ever disappeared. The lawyer chose the odd hiding place.)When Chambers' deposition resumes, he produces contents from the envelope. Mr. Marbury has perhaps the worst surprise of his life and this Case becomes ten times more sensational than it had been. As one Baltimore lawyer is reputed to have said, Bill Marbury went on a fishing expedition and he brought up the whole damn sea bottom.

Certainly, this Case was painful for Chambers — bringing him close to prison for perjury, ending the quiet and lucrative life he had enjoyed for years and costing him the only decent and decently paying job he had ever had. All the same, Chambers loved melodrama, and can you imagine any more satisfying melodrama than, on a dark and freezing night, leading two government investigators to a pumpkin vine behind your farmhouse and presenting them with five rolls of camera film containing proof of espionage and treason by the man who personifies the governing class of the country?   Further Research:   The dramatic, and sometimes almost comic, events of the first week of December 1948 are recounted in 191-207 and 287-93 of Weinstein's "Perjury," still the definitive history of this Case. The memoirs of the major participants tell what happened, each somewhat differently from all the others: Bert Andrews' "A Tragedy of History" at 174-91, Chambers' "Witness" at 751-60, Nixon's "Six Crises" at 46-56 and his "RN" at 67-69, and Stripling's "The Red Plot Against America" at 141-51. The most fascinating discrepancy in the accounts concerns the auto trip that Nixon, Stripling, Bert Andrews and the stenographer Rose Purdy took from Washington to Chambers' Maryland farm on the afternoon of December 1 to find out 'what the hell' had caused Hiss's lawsuit against Chambers to blow up. Chambers, at 751 of Witness, says that Stripling came to see him — strongly implying that Stripling made the tip alone. Nixon adds himself to the trip. ("Six Crises" at 47, "RN" at 67.) Bert Andrews adds himself as the third member of the trip (at 175). Stripling mentions only himself and Nixon (at 143-44). Why would Chambers want to give the impression that only Stripling came to see him? Why would Chambers want to leave Nixon out of the scene? I don't see how that would help him or his side. I doubt he would have forgotten about all the others.   If you go to YouTube and search for "Pumpkin Papers," you will find a group of film clips, starting with Nixon's and Stripling's press conference and including excerpts from the prior HUAC hearings and later films taken on the courthouse steps during Hiss's trials. You can find other newsreels (which were shown in movie theaters and were the only form of moving image news before TV) about this case by searching on YouTube for "Alger Hiss" or "Whittaker Chambers." The same search requests, made on CSPAN's web page, will yield more newsreels, lengthy films of the August 25 hearing, as well as many interviews and much commentary on this Case. I suspect that this Case, and Chambers in particular, were favorites of Brian Lamb.  Questions: Who do you think is the most likely leaker of Chambers' first bombshell to the Washington Post? Personally, I have no idea; no evidence, no rumors, not even a theory. Do you feel sorry for Pat ("Here we go again!") Nixon? Do you sympathize with Nixon's rage at Chambers for not telling him, during the HUAC hearings, that he had proof that Hiss was not only a Communist, but a spy? Can you think of one or more reasons Chambers held back that fact (if it's a fact)? Chambers gave several reasons, which he gave to the Grand Jury. For them, you will have to listen to the next Podcast.  

Picture: Library of Congress   With this Podcast, we leave Washington and the political boxing ring and move to New York City and the courts.  There's still drama and tension, but no more pumpkin patches on dark and frigid nights, no more rescues of Congressmen from the high seas.  The process is more deliberate and the consequences are greater.  Starting now, Hiss and Chambers are each looking at being the defendant in a criminal trial and going to prison — punishments that no newspaper or Congressional committee can inflict.   Both men and their wives testify to a Grand Jury.  Chambers has to explain his recent denial to this same Grand Jury that any espionage was committed.  See if you accept his explanation for the 180 degree change in his testimony.  Nixon refuses to turn over the Pumpkin Papers to the Grand Jury, and they threaten him with prison!  Nixon says, "Go ahead, make my day" and a compromise is agreed to.  An FBI expert testifies that the typed spy documents that Chambers had produced were typed on the same typewriter as some letters that the FBI had obtained and that were definitely typed on the Hisses' family typewriter.  That means that the spy documents were typed on the Hiss family typewriter.  Hiss tries to explain how, if he wasn't a spy, 65 pages of documents, obviously prepared for spying, got typed on his home typewriter; and how, if he got Chambers/Crosley out of his life by 1936, Chambers has all this paper from Hiss (and don't forget the four handwritten notes) dated 1938.  See if you accept his explanation.  In the last hours of its life, the Grand Jury votes to indict Hiss for perjury.  Chambers and Mrs. Hiss are not indicted.  Alger Hiss loses another round, but he is far from defeated.       REFERENCES for further research and QUESTIONS   Episode 16:  The Grand Jury proceedings (and related hallway fights and shouting matches between Nixon, the FBI, the Justice Department, and Hiss) are discussed in Weinstein at 293-324, Hiss's memoir at 190-98, and in Chambers' 'Witness' at 723-27, 761-64, and 780-84.     The only comprehensive review of the Grand Jury transcript was written by me (pardon my immodesty) and is available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14743890802121878.   If you would like a copy, send me an e-mail at john_berresford@comcast.net.   Grand Jury transcripts are kept secret for good reasons (explained briefly in the Podcast).  What got this Grand Jury transcript published was a precedent-setting lawsuit by the American Historical Association in which I played a small part.  AHA convinced the court that the historical significance of the event overcame the usual rule of secrecy.  In addition, all the principals were dead and many of their family members and friends supported publication.  The transcript is a (to me) fascinating glimpse into the thought processes of members of the Grand Jury and the government attorneys.  Chambers, for his earlier denial of any espionage, is roasted, fried, broiled, and fricasseed.  But, in the end, they accept his explanation.  Then, slowly, they refocus their anger on Hiss as the evidence against him accumulates and their patience with his clever wording wears out.  Hiss's Exculpatory Theory #1 — that Chambers broke into the Hiss home and typed up the spy documents himself when no one was looking and then hid them and even denied their existence under oath for ten years — finally snaps the endurance of everyone else in the room.     Questions:Do you accept Chambers' explanation for his recent perjury to the Grand Jury?  Do you accept Hiss's Exculpatory Theory #1?(He had two more in his back pocket, which he used in later years.). What do you think Nixon was trying to accomplish by bringing the rolls of Pumpkin Paper film into the Grand Jury room and holding them up in the air, but refusing to hand them over?  Was he maybe hoping to get arrested and be on every front page again?  If you had been on the Grand Jury, would you have voted to indict Hiss?  Mrs. Hiss (the alleged typist)?  Chambers?  All of them?        

Pic: Library of Congress   Alger Hiss is going on trial for perjury.  This Podcast is a survey, at 23,000 feet, of the possible arguments for The Prosecution and for The Hiss Defense.  Of each side's possible arguments, which are strong and which are weak?  This may be of special interest to real trial lawyers, or to the inner Perry Mason who lurks within each of us.   If you were The Prosecution, what would you emphasize to the jury? What are Chambers' strengths as a witness? What are his weaknesses? You also have all the documents Chambers produced, of course.  Do you have anything else — any other witnesses you would call?  When you cross-examine Hiss, is there anything you would like him to admit to?   Suppose you were The Hiss Defense and you decided to mount a fighting defense (not resting on the presumption of innocence that is the right of every criminal defendant).  Would you concentrate on attacking Chambers (who is a target-rich environment)?  Or would you emphasize building up Hiss' sterling past acts and glowing character references?  Can you give Chambers a plausible motive for lying about Hiss?  Can you explain Chambers' possession of documents by Hiss and his wife, obviously prepared for espionage in 1938, that Chambers produced in 1948?  The Grand Jury didn't buy Hiss's Exculpatory Theory #1.  What is your Exculpatory Theory #2?      Further Research:   This Podcast is about the arguments for The Prosecution, and the arguments for The Hiss Defense, in the upcoming trial of Alger Hiss for perjury.     Suppose you were The Prosecution.  Two crucial points to bear in mind: first, you must prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that Hiss lied when he denied passing government documents to Chambers in 1937 and 1938.  The jury must be left with no doubt, based in reason, that Hiss did that.  Also, something called The Federal Perjury Rule says that the testimony of one witness — Chambers, obviously — is not enough.  The Prosecution must have two witnesses, or one witness plus independent corroboration.  Assuming Chambers is your only witness, what is your independent corroboration?  How do you make Chambers credible, overcoming his strangeness, his being a confessed traitor, his possibly disreputable ratting out of his best friend, and his past denials under oath that any spying took place?  Is there some way you can make Hiss look worse than Chambers?  How would you prove that the handwritten documents were in Hiss's handwriting and that the typed documents were typed on the Hiss home typewriter?   There is almost no record of what The Prosecution was thinking about these matters. Much about the FBI's factual investigations, of which there are extensive (and sometimes hilarious) records, is described in a much later Podcast, #37, about what did not come out at the trials.   Suppose you were The Hiss Defense? You need do absolutely nothing — The Prosecution has the burden of proof and Hiss is innocent until proven guilty.  But suppose you want to mount a fighting defense. How can you weaken The Prosecution's Case?  Other than Chambers' weaknesses that were just described, would you dredge up his past strange behavior and try to make him seem insane, or mentally ill, or at least not believable BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT?  Would you introduce evidence that Chambers was a homosexual?  (Remember this is 1948, not today.). How do you explain Chambers' possession in 1948 of documents, obviously prepared for spying, in Hiss's handwriting and typed on the Hiss home typewriter?  Hiss's Exculpatory Theory #1 didn't work before The Grand Jury.  What's your Theory #2?  Might Chambers be concealing a real Soviet spy in the State Department, someone who had access to the papers in Alger's office? Would you, like The Prosecution, search for the Hiss home typewriter?   The limited history of the internal strategic deliberations of The Hiss Defense is in Marbury's above-cited 1981 law review article beginning at page 85, in Smith's book at 272-90, and in Weinstein's book at 399-424.  It's fascinating reading for any lawyer who has ever planned or carried out strategy in a complicated high-profile case in which both sides have great strengths and great weaknesses.  One fact that makes the thinking of Hiss's counsel relatively available is that they were in different cities.  In the 1940s, long distance telephone calls were expensive and conference calls were a minor nightmare to arrange.  So, many opinions that would normally be spoken over coffee were, in Hiss's case, committed to paper.

Federal Courthouse, NY, 1938 This is a short podcast to acquaint you with the actors about to come on stage in the drama of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. They are the government Prosecutor Thomas Murphy, Hiss's principal defense lawyer Lloyd Paul Stryker, Judge Samuel Kaufman, and the jury.   Additional Research   Murphy, a 6' 4" muscular giant of a man with an enormous walrus mustache, tried to come across as the quiet, somewhat plodding, but totally competent and honest government attorney just doing his job.  He knew he could not match Hiss's barrister Lloyd Paul Stryker, the greatest criminal defense lawyer in the country and a dramatic actor who could resemble a July 4 fireworks display if he wanted to.  Also, prosecutors' excessive drama can create sympathy for defendants.  In later years, Murphy was briefly Police Commissioner of New York City (appointed by a reform Mayor) and for decades afterwards was a judge, appointed by President Truman, in the court where the Hiss trials occurred — the federal District Court for the Southern District of New York.  A lawyer/friend who practiced before him told me that Murphy was a very quiet, laid back, passive trial judge and that these traits reflected his inner total self-confidence and sense of his own competence.  My friend said that no matter which side of a case you were on you were always happy when you got Murphy as trial judge. He would let you put on your case as you wished and wouldn't be interrupting your choreography to preen before the jury, comment on the evidence, or audition for higher office   Lloyd Paul Stryker was a magnificent performer, a real barn-burner.  He might be out of place in today's cool culture.  To him, his client was all things good and the other side was pure evil.  It was that simple.  He tended to 'swing for the bleachers,' ignoring details and endlessly pounding away at one or two simple points in Shakespearean English.  He had a one man office, employing very young lawyers for a few years and then letting them go (with the benefit of having worked for a grand master).  Among the books he wrote (in his spare time!) are laudatory biographies of our first impeached President, Andrew Johnson, and the famous 18th-19th century liberal British barrister Thomas Erskine, and two legal treatises — all available on Amazon.  By the time of this trial, he was approaching old age.  He had made a lot of money but I think he had spent most of it.   Little is known about the judge at the first trial, Samuel Kaufman.  He must have been good to become a judge in the prestigious Southern District, but he left no mark and was thought by some to be a hack from the Manhattan Democratic Party's 'machine' in Tammany Hall, which was still quite powerful in the 1940s.  He was so small physically that, when he leaned back all the way in his swivel chair up on the bench, he sometimes disappeared from view.   About the jury, the important thing is that, judging from their occupations, none of them had been to graduate school and perhaps none of them had been to college.  They were the kind of people who can't afford to live in Manhattan any more.  This trial took them into an unfamiliar world, of conceptual policy making and political ideology.   Questions:  Do you think Murphy and Stryker were well suited for the roles in which fate cast them?  If you were one of them, how would you use the other's character traits to your advantage?  If you were Murphy or Stryker, how would you take the jury into the foreign (to them) world of the State Department and espionage for the Soviet Union in a way that made your side look good and the other side look bad?  How would you make your man, Hiss or Chambers, seem to someone on the jury as just an honest ordinary person like me?    

Pic: Prosecutor Thomas Murphy   In this Podcast, I deliver, in my best courtroom voice, short versions of Prosecutor Murphy's down-to-earth opening statement for the government and Lloyd Paul Stryker's incandescent overture for the Hiss defense.  See which one you think is more impressive — Murphy's calm, rational promise of convincing evidence or Stryker's dazzling contrast of Saint Alger and the "moral leper" Chambers.     FURTHER RESEARCH:   Episode 19:  Strangely, neither Hiss nor Chambers in his memoir spends many words on the opening statements of the two great trial lawyers, Murphy and Stryker.  Indeed, Hiss's description of the trials is all about the evidence, with nothing about appearances, gestures, or his personal reactions.  See Hiss at 213.Chambers, equally remarkably, covers both trials in only four pages at the back of his 799-page autobiography.  Witness at 789-92.He does refer to Stryker as 'spinning and flailing like a dervish" (791).     More detailed accounts of the opening statements are in Weinstein at 437-41, Smith at 299-303, and Cooke at 109-18.  Cooke's description (at 107-08) of Hiss's physical appearance in court on the first day is positively rhapsodic:  "He had what anyone must envy who has come to know that youth is a bloom that sags and vanishes . . . .  He had one of those bodies that without being at all imposing or foppish seem to illustrate the finesse of the human mechanism.. . .  [H]e was of that species which exists in the teeth of the American democratic theory and is yet another proof of the superiority of matter over mind:an American gentleman . . ."  As I wrote about a previous Podcast, Cooke just didn't get Chambers at all.  Given his inclinations, it must have been a long ands painful journey for Cooke to conclude, as he did, that Hiss was guilty.  See Nick Clarke, "Alistair Cooke:A Biography" (Arcade Publishing 1999) at 288.   Questions:  If you were on the jury, which opening statement would leave the better impression on you?  Certainly, Stryker was the superior orator.  Would you want to side with his client, Saint Alger?  Would you feel pity or hatred for Stryker's Chambers:  the professional liar, mentally ill malcontent, and flouter of every standard of civilized humanity?  After the smoke and music of Stryker's performance had dissipated, however, would you be left wondering about the evidence?  That's what Murphy talked about in his opening statement:  Chambers' testimony that Hiss passed him confidential State Department papers in 1937 and 1938 and the 100 or so such papers he would introduce into evidence.  Stryker didn't say a word about the documents in Hiss's handwriting and typed on the Hiss family typewriter, which were created and in Chambers' possession long after Hiss said he had kicked Chambers out of his life.    

Lloyd Paul Stryker, Hiss's Defense Atty (Digital Commons) Whittaker Chambers, and then his wife Esther, testify in court.  Both their direct testimonies were rocky due to Stryker's objections and Judge Kaufman's rulings.  Their cross-examinations by Stryker were brutal. Chambers sat there and passively took blow after blow, but Mrs. Chambers shouted back at Stryker as forcefully as he had shouted at her.  But each got to say what needed to be said — that Hiss passed Chambers State Department documents in 1937 and 1938 and that the two families were friends.  At the second trial, both Chamberses were more relaxed and forthcoming because they had been through it all before (isn't everything easier the second time?) and because the judge at the second trial gave all the witnesses more leeway.  Everyone agreed their testimonies at the second trial were more effective.     FURTHER RESEARCH:    Episode 20:  Lengthy accounts of the Chamberses' direct and cross examinations are in Weinstein at 440-56 (first trial) and 499-501 (second) and Cooke at 121-48 (Mr. C, first trial), 151-61 (Mrs. C, first trial), 287-91 (Mr. C, second trial) and 295-96 (Mrs. C, second trial).  Mrs. Chambers, who has not appeared much in these Podcasts until now, is described by Weinstein (at 451) as "small, slim-boned, plain faced" and by Cooke (at 151) as "a small severe figure . . . , a very dark, thin-lipped woman in spectacles who sat nervously back in the witness chair."  Chambers, in his memoir "Witness," describes (at 232) Stryker's cross-examination of her as "brutal bullying."   Chambers also describes meeting his future wife at a textile workers' strike at Passaic, New Jersey, in 1930.  He describes her as brave, forthright and militant, with "dark brown eyes . . . of a candor and purity such as I had never seen in any other woman in the Communist movement."  He was surprised to learn that she was a pacifist.  (Witness at 231-32.  See also Weinstein at 118-19.)   Questions:  Do you think that Stryker went too far with his brutal cross-examination of Mrs. Chambers?  In 1948, women were "The Fair Sex" and men were supposed to be gentlemen.  But what choice did he have after she had corroborated most of her husband's testimony?   The trials were the first time that anyone heard Mrs. Chambers tell her story.  She professed ignorance of her husband's spying.  But most significantly, she described an extensive social relationship with Mrs. Hiss — lots of get-togethers typical for young married wives and mothers in the mid-1930s, at specific locations in Washington (Mount Vernon, Haynes Point, and Georgetown) and Baltimore (various squares and parks and Hutzler's Department Store).  Any pro-Hiss juror must have wondered — was Mrs. Chambers just as insane as her husband, or was she lying in perfect harmony with her husband's lunacy?  Did not her details lend credibility to her story, and by inference to her husband's?