Committee members, particularly an ambitious freshman congressman from California named Richard Nixon, knew what was at stake. HUAC was a controversial body under fire for its heavy-handed tactics.
On August 5 he appeared before the committee and read from a prepared statement. Hiss also denied knowing Whittaker Chambers. Chambers, he is not particularly unusual looking. He looks like a lot of people. I might even mistake him for the chairman of this committee. It appeared that Hiss had cleared his name. He argued that even if the committee could not prove Hiss was a Communist, it should investigate whether he ever knew Chambers.
Nixon persuaded the other members to appoint him head of a subcommittee to investigate further. He described the homes the Hisses occupied and the old Ford roadster and Plymouth they had owned.
Hiss, Chambers said, insisted on donating the Ford for the use of the Communist Party despite the security risk. He said the Hisses did not drink, but they did; he described Hiss as shorter than he actually was; he wrongly maintained that Hiss was deaf in one ear. However, he also provided information that indicated he knew them rather well. On August 16 the committee summoned Hiss to appear in a secret session.
He then described a man he had known in the s and to whom he had briefly sublet his apartment. When asked about the Ford, Hiss claimed he had given it to Crosley. Hiss also said Crosley had once given him an oriental rug in lieu of payment of rent.
Nixon now wanted Chambers and Hiss to meet face to face. A meeting had been set up for August 25, but instead Nixon arranged to surprise Hiss with Chambers eight days ahead of schedule. Hiss issued a challenge to his accuser. Whittaker Chambers to make those same statements out of the presence of this committee without their being privileged for suit for libel. I challenge you to do it, and I hope you will do it damned quickly. The next confrontation was public, held on August 25 in a congressional hearing room in Washington.
Hidden in a hollowed-out pumpkin was what later became known as the "pumpkin papers"—several prints of State Department documents from the s.
The pumpkin papers were introduced against Hiss in a perjury trial, at which he was accused of lying about having passed State Department papers to Chambers. Hiss was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison, though he vehemently denied the charges for the duration of his life.
In , shortly after Hiss's death, a collection of Venona decrypts was declassified. One of the messages, dated March 30, , refers to an American with the code name Ales. According to the message, Ales was a Soviet agent working in the State Department, who accompanied President Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference and then flew to Moscow, both of which Hiss did.
The message goes on to indicate that Ales met with Andrei Vyshinsky, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and was commended for his aid to the Soviets. Hiss told a very different story, claiming unflinching loyalty and denying even membership in the Communist Party. One man was lying, one was telling the truth Alger Hiss Trials No criminal case had a more far-reaching effects on modern American politics than the Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers spy case.
One member of the Committee, however, wanted to press on with the investigation. He thought Chambers' charges rang true and found Hiss "condescending" and "insulting in the extreme. With some reluctance, the Committee voted to make Nixon chair of a subcommittee that would seek to determine who was lying, Hiss or Chambers, at least on the question of whether they knew each other.
HUAC soon became the most talked-about committee in Congress. Nixon asked many questions designed to determine whether he knew the things about Hiss that he should "if he knew him On the question of whether Hiss had any hobbies, Chambers gave an answer that would soon haunt Hiss:.
Yes, he did. They both [Alger and Priscilla Hiss] had the same hobby--amateur ornithologists, bird observers. They used to get up early in the morning and go to Glen Echo, out the canal, to observe birds. I recall once they saw, to their great excitement, a prothonotary warbler. Hiss faced more hostile questioning from the Committee in executive session on August Stripling pointedly observed that either Chambers has "made a study of your life in great detail or he knows you.
Hiss answered, "I do not recognize him from that picture I want to hear the man's voice. Crosley's most memorable feature, according to Hiss, was "very bad teeth. A turning point in the investigation came when Richard Nixon asked, "What hobby, if any do you have, Mr.
Do you know that place? It seemed to Stripling and others very unlikely that Chambers could have known about such a detail through a general study of Hiss's life.
It had to be firsthand knowledge. Nixon asked both Chambers and Hiss to stand. Then he said to Hiss, "I ask you now if you have ever known that man before? You are Alger Hiss, I believe. Finally, after a series of questions that mostly backfired, Hiss announced, "I am now perfectly prepared to identify this man as George Crosley.
Thank you very much. On August 25 , for the first time in history, television cameras were present for a congressional hearing. The Committee was well armed, and confronted Hiss with a host of questions about an alleged lease of Hiss's apartment to Chambers and a simultaneous transfer to Chambers of Hiss's old Ford.
Congressman Hebert, reflecting the Committee's skepticism of Hiss's answers, wondered aloud about a person of Hiss's "intellect The Pumpkin Papers. On October 8, Hiss filed a slander suit against Chambers, based on his accusation on Meet the Press that Hiss "was a Communist and may be now. The investigation included exploration of whether Chambers had ever been treated for mental illness or entered into homosexual relationships.
In fact, Chambers had engaged in a number of homosexual affairs in the mids, but defense attorneys were unable to ferret out this piece of information which might have been useful in establishing a motive for Chambers's alleged lies.
In the middle of a deposition of Chambers in preparation for the slander suit, Hiss's attorney, William Marbury, requested that Chambers produce "any correspondence, either typewritten or in handwriting from any member of the Hiss family. The envelope contained four notes handwritten by Alger Hiss, sixty-five typewritten documents copies of State Department documents, all dated between January and April, and five strips of 35 mm film. The documents, if genuine, were strong evidence not only that Hiss knew Chambers long after mid , when Hiss claimed to have last seen "Crosley," but also that Hiss engaged in espionage.
Chambers turned over the documents to his lawyers, keeping the film. When Marbury resumed his deposition of Chambers, Hiss's bewildered attorney found himself presented with a packet of documents that not only blew his client's slander suit out of the water, but placed Hiss in serious danger of a criminal indictment.
Chambers explained his delay in producing the incriminating documents as an effort to spare an old friend more trouble than necessary. He said he produced the drs also stunned HUAC members and investigators. Chambers explained his delay in producing the incriminating documents as an effort to spare an old friend from more trouble than necessary.
The investigation accompanying Hiss's slander suit, however, convinced Chambers that "Hiss was determined to destroy me--and my wife if possible," making disclosure seem the better course. Chambers also may have recognized that if he lost in the slander case, he might well have faced a Justice Department prosecution.
There was still one more big shoe to drop. Chambers placed the film two strips developed and three undeveloped taken from the Baltimore home into a hollowed-out pumpkin, then placed the pumpkin back in a pumpkin patch on his Maryland farm.
On the evening of December 2, , Chambers accompanied two HUAC investigators to his farm, then led him to the patch holding the hollowed-out pumpkin. The film would prove later to include photographs of State and Navy Department documents. Over the ensuing months of the Hiss-Chambers controversy, the press--enjoying the alliteration--would generally refer to the entire set of documents and photographs taken from Baltimore as " the pumpkin papers.
The Pumpkin Papers changed everything. The question of whether Hiss knew Chambers better than he admitted, or even whether he was a Communist, now seemed relatively inconsequential. Fortunately for Hiss, the statute of limitations for espionage was five years, and the incriminating evidence all concerned documents passed over a decade earlier. The statute of limitations was not an issue, however, on the question of whether Alger Hiss committed perjury.
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