Podcast
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Hosted by John W. Berresford · EN
The Hiss-Chambers case gripped the nation in 1948 and still provokes controversy. Take a deep factual dive into the story of two brilliant, fascinating men, sensational Congressional hearings, spy documents hidden in a dumbwaiter shaft and a pumpkin, the trial of the century, and the launch of Richard Nixon's career.
10episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Chapter 38: Why do people still care about this case?
Sep 20, 202300:04:41Tap to summarizeThis is my final Podcast, and the shortest one — just my last thoughts after decades of study. The Hiss-Chambers Case will live on because it is important post-WWII American history, and also a great yarn, a feast for trial lawyers, and an example of the endless fight between totalitarianism and freedom, between shiny lies and messy reality. I hope it fascinated and educated you as much as it has me. Thank you for your interest in my words.
Transcribe →Chapter 37: What did not come out in court?
Sep 13, 202300:30:57Tap to summarizeWhittaker Chambers This Podcast, the second to last, is the longest one. The Hiss-Chambers Case did not die. Many new facts were discovered, the majority of them harmful to Hiss, starting in the 1970s. The Freedom of Information Act led the US government (after a lawsuit) to produce about 40,000 pages of paper, mostly from the FBI. Hiss made the files of his defense counsel available to researchers. One wonders if he knew what was in there, some of it was so damaging to him. Most damaging in these and other files is powerful evidence that Hiss and his wife knew that the office typewriter they had had in the late 1930s was a Woodstock and that they had given it to The Catlett Kids, but they both denied such knowledge to the FBI, the Grand Jury (under oath), and even to their own 'A List' attorneys, William Marbury and Edward McLean. Other sources of information that opened late were the papers of Alger Hiss's brother Donald; a recollection of a fellow convict who spoke with Hiss in prison; the observations of a psychologist who testified for Hiss at the second trial (not Dr. Binger); the memoir of a document expert whom Chester Lane hired to help Hiss's Forgery by Typewriter argument; and even the memories of a female Bucks County, Pennsylvania, novelist who bumped into Chambers and The Ware Group during a brief residence in Washington in 1934. Finally, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, several security agencies of former Communist dictatorships have briefly opened their files, all of them damaging to Hiss. No wonder this second to last Podcast is the longest one. FURTHER RESEARCH The FOIA Documents are best summarized in Weinstein at 300-14 ("The Woodstock Cover-Up" — a coverup by the Hisses, not the FBI), 399-435 ("Rumors and Whispers: The Pursuit of Evidence"), 625-30 ("The Motion for a New Trial"), 632-34 ("The 'Faked' or 'Substituted' Woodstock: Hover and the FBI"), and 641-45 ("The Double Agent: Horace Schmahl, Mystery Man"). Other post-trials evidence is recounted in Gary Wills' "Lead Time: A Journalist's Education" at 61-62 (Doubleday 1983); Elinor Langer, "Josephine Herbst" at 151-58, 268-76 (Northeastern Univ. Press 1984); and Donald B. Doud," Witness to Forgery: Memoir of a Forensic Document Examiner" at 34-66 (Orchard Knoll Publishers 2009). The best summaries of the documents from 'behind the Iron Curtain' are the chapter titled "Alger Hiss:Case Closed" in John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, & Alexander Vassiliev, "Spies: The Rise & Fall of the KGB in America" at 1-31 (Yale University Press 2009); and Eduard Mark, "In Re Alger Hiss: A Final Verdict from the Archives of the KGB," 1 Journal of Cold War Studies at 26 (2009). Hiss's briefs and some supporting documents in his last run at the courts (in the 1970s, claiming prosecutorial misconduct) are reproduced in Edith Tiger (Ed.), "In Re Alger Hiss" (two volumes) (Farrar Straus Giroux 1979) (Chambers' handwritten account of his homosexual activities, which he gave to the FBI, is in Volume I at 258-66.). For my skeptical reaction to some of Hiss's claims, see pages 221-28 of my paper "How Alger Hiss Was Framed: The Latest Theory," available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868165. Questions: Is there now reasonable doubt that Hiss was guilty of the offenses charged, and of a good deal more? Or am I missing something? Certainly, if Hiss is in fact innocent, he is one of the most wronged persons in our history! If The Prosecution in Hiss trials did not play fair, should any tears be shed for Hiss if he was still up to his neck in spying for the Soviet Union and setting the stage for Joe McCarthy? What motive would a female Bucks County novelist have to lie and place Chambers and Hiss together in The Ware Group in Washington in the mid-30s? Isn't she as unlikely to be taking orders from J. Edgar Hoover as Chambers' best friend Professor Meyer Schapiro, a Jewish socialist art history professor at Columbia? In light of the fact that all the typewriter experts Hiss's counsel hired reached the same conclusion as the FBI expert Feehan, is it likely that Hiss knew he was lying all the years he was claiming Forgery by Typewriter? Or might he have forgotten and convinced himself that he was actually innocent? Have you never known anyone who had such favorable delusions about his or her bad conduct long ago? Consider all the people who have to be lying, all the experts who have to be wrong, and all the documents that have to be forged and planted in dozens of different places in different continents over several decades if Hiss is innocent. How likely is that?
Transcribe →Chapter 36: Hiss and Chambers After the Trials
Sep 6, 202300:19:48Tap to summarizeAs Chambers wrote to his friend Bill Buckley, most of us think the story of Oedipus ends when he learns he married his own mother and puts his eyes out. In fact, however, Oedipus lived for years afterwards. After the trials, Chambers lived for 10 years and Hiss for 45. Neither escaped The Case, nor did their wives and children. (Add this, by the way, to all the reasons that committing treason is a bad idea.). Each man wrote a book. Chambers' became a best-seller, a major American autobiography, and a sacred text of the post-WWII right. Hiss's book sank like a stone, as did another he wrote in the mid-1980s. Chambers tried to stay out of the public eye. Hiss tried to stay in it, but failed to establish either his innocence or the dimensions of the shape-shifting conspiracy that had framed him. This Podcast recounts the tragic post-court life of each of our protagonists. FURTHER RESEARCH Episode 36: Chambers' autobiography is "Witness," most recently published by Regnery Gateway in 2014. He was working on a huge, never finished book (working title "The Third Rome") when he died. Associated essays of his were published by Random House in 1964 under the title "Cold Friday" — the name of a field on his farm. His articles for The National Review (amounting to less than 85 pages) were published by that magazine in "The Whittaker Chambers Reader: His Complete National Review Writings 1957-59" in 2014; these and his earlier short pieces appear in "Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Essays," edited by Terry Teachout and published by Transaction in 1996. Two books of Chambers' correspondence have been printed: "Odyssey of a Friend: Letters to William F. Buckley, Jr., 1954-1961" (Regnery Gateway 1987); and "Notes from the Underground: The Whittaker Chambers-Ralph de Toledano Letters 1949-60," published in 1997 by Regnery Gateway. Mr. de Toledano covered the trials for Newsweek Magazine and became a prominent conservative writer. If you're interested in what Chambers did and thought in his last years, the best of the foregoing works is (in my opinion) the Chambers-Buckley correspondence. Hiss's memoir, "In the Court of Public Opinion" (Knopf 1957), draws heavily on his Petition for a New Trial on Grounds of Newly Discovered Evidence. His late-in-life autobiography, "Recollections of a Life," was published by Seaver in 1988. It is as dry as his first book. Hiss's son, Anthony, maybe best known as The New Yorker's railroad correspondent under the pseudonym E.M. Frimbo, wrote about himself and his father in "Laughing Last" (Houghton Mifflin 1977) when things were looking up for his dad. After the verdict of history had turned the other way, the young Hiss produced "The View from Alger's Window: A Son's Memoir" (Houghton Mifflin 1999). It concentrates on the correspondence he shared with his imprisoned father. The New York Times reviewer described the latter book as "deeply troubling," "a painful story of the family as a factory of denial.""Family Ties," by Ann Douglas, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/27/reviews/990627.27dougl.html. That The Times would publish such a review indicates how much, even among northeastern liberals, the verdict had solidified against Hiss and for Chambers. More about the two protagonists' post-trial lives can be found in Professor Weinstein's book "Perjury" at pages 550-72 (chapter titled "Alger and Whittaker: The Vigil and the Death Watch"); and at pages 444-514 of the Sam Tanenhaus biography "Whittaker Chambers." Questions: Which protagonist suffered more after the trials — the imprisoned Hiss or the ostracized Chambers? Do you have a hunch that one or both of them overcame gloom and died with a somewhat satisfied, "something ventured, something gained" feeling? Of the wives and children, only one (Hiss's son) capitalized on The Case. If you had been one of the others, would you have been tempted to follow Tony's path? If Hiss was guilty, why didn't he avoid the limelight like Chambers did? And, when his son got interested in The Case, why didn't Hiss say to him "Son, this has taken over my life, but it doesn't have to mess up yours. I've got some years to live and powerful friends on my side; you just get on with your own existence and leave this to us." Why would he let his son take up a cause that Hiss knew was a lie and would likely someday be exposed as such, making his son look pitiful?
Transcribe →Chapter 35: Forgery by Typewriter
Aug 30, 202300:23:23Tap to summarizeSeveral people have told me that, of my 38 episodes, this is their favorite. See if you agree. It is all about the question Hiss could never answer: how, if Hiss is innocent, did the 64 Typed Spy Documents get typed on his home typewriter. You may recall that Hiss first told The Grand Jury that Chambers broke into his house in 1938 and typed them on it himself when no one was looking. That didn't work. Second, Hiss told the jury at the second trial that Hiss gave the Typewriter to the Catlett Kids in late 1937; they put it in the back room where they had their non-stop dance party; then Chambers found it there and typed up The Typed Spy Documents himself on it as the conga line snaked past. That didn't convince, either. Third — and this is the subject of this Podcast — in a Motion for a New Trial on Grounds of Newly Discovered Evidence, Hiss' new lawyer speculated that Chambers in 1948 had made a fake typewriter, which typed just like The Hiss Home Typewriter, and had typed up The Spy Documents on it; then Chambers found where the real Hiss Typewriter was (in the nightwatchman's home, you remember), stole it and planted his fake there, and waited for someone to find the fake and for everyone to assume it was the real Hiss Home Typewriter. Quite a frame-up, if true. But did that really happen? Is it even plausible? Podcast #35 explores this theory, which Hiss stuck to till his dying day (with numerous variations as each old one failed). FURTHER RESEARCH The best dissection of The Forgery by Typewriter Theory is Chapter 2 (titled "Chambers") in "Ex-Communist Witnesses:Four Studies in Fact Finding" by Professor Herbert L. Packer of Stanford University Law School (Stanford University Press 1962) at 21-51. Others are Cornell/Georgetown/Minnesota Law School Professor Irving Younger's article "Was Alger Hiss Guilty?" in Commentary Magazine's August 1975 issue, available at https://www.commentary.org/articles/irving-younger/was-alger-hiss-guilty-2/; and the Appendix to professor Weinstein's book, titled "'Forgery by Typewriter': The Pursuit of Conspiracy, 1948-97," at pages 624-30, 632-34, 645-47. The version of Alistair Cooke's book ("A Generation on Trial:U.S.A. v. Alger Hiss") that was published in 1952 has a few new pages at the end, 347-54, describing Hiss's Motion for a New Trial and the Court hearing about it. Judge Goddard presided, and Cooke notes (at 348) that the audience included "leisured and unidentified old ladies who appeared at all Hiss hearings with the ritual fatalism of the annual pilgrims to Valentino's grave." Cooke writes (at 348) that "several excellent lawyers were dumbfounded by the claims that the defense now put forward." After describing Judge Goddard's dismissal of those claims, Cooke ends his book with the following words. "Four years had passed since the names of Hiss and Chambers shook the nation. Now there was another Presidential campaign, and the Democrats were in full fling at their convention in Chicago. Judge Goddard's word, perhaps the last, about Hiss was lucky to earn a few lines at the bottom of the inside pages of newspapers. In most it earned none. Hiss had passed into shame and into history." Here is my list of the people who, Hiss defenders have speculated over the decades, masterminded or participated in the framing of Hiss (in most cases involving forgery by typewriter): Whittaker and Esther Chambers, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Ambassador William C. Bullitt, Jr., Richard and Pat Nixon, the Democratic financier and Presidential advisor Bernard Baruch, President Truman's Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, the Dulles Brothers, supporters of the Chinese anti-communist dictator Chaing Kai-Shek, a Nazi sympathizer who owned a typewriter store in New York City, the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps, and a private detective named Horace Schmahl. If you are interested in the broader question of why people believe highly implausible stories, I recommend Michael Shermer's book "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time" (St. Martin's Griffin 2002); and a delightful article by the Brandeis University Professor Jacob Cohen, "Will We Never Be Free of the Kennedy Assassination?," published in the December 2013 issue of Commentary Magazine and available at https://www.commentary.org/articles/jacob-cohen/will-we-never-be-free-of-the-kennedy-assassination/. Questions: Here are two questions I have asked myself for years but never answered satisfactorily. Can you help me? (1) In his Motion for a New Trial, Hiss claimed that Chambers did the forgery all by himself, or with the help of Communist friends. This seems plainly ridiculous. Chambers had neither the time, the tools, nor the talents to forge a typewriter and, by 1948, no Communist friends to help him. My question: why was it only years later that Hiss claimed that Hoover and the FBI had committed the forgery? The FBI was obviously the only organization in the US that even arguably had the necessary time, tools, and talents. What prevented Hiss from aiming, from the start, at such an obvious target? (2). Hiss publicized his Forgery by Typewriter theories for decades, and his supporters have carried the torch in the decades after his death. They are articulate people, they have occasionally had generous funding, and they know lots people in the nation's media who would love another story of an innocent gentleman framed as a Commie the early Cold War years. But if you Google "Famous Conspiracy Theories" or "Top 25 Conspiracy Theories of All Time," you will not find Hiss's Forgery by Typewriter Theory. Why? Why has Hiss's conspiracy theory not achieved the popularity of the theories about the assassinations of JFK and RFK, or of the alleged landings at Roswell and the alleged non-landings on the Moon? Is his theory too implausible or too complicated for a large audience, and/or is Hiss too cold a fish to be sympathetic?
Transcribe →Chapter 34: The Impact of the Guilty Verdict on America
Aug 23, 202300:27:13Tap to summarizeAlger Hiss is taken to prison Alger Hiss's conviction — technically for perjury, but effectively for treason — was a major event. It was a disaster for The Establishment, especially liberal Democrats, and vindication for Republicans and populist Democrats. The 18 month labyrinth of HUAC hearings, depositions in Hiss's libel suit, grand jury proceedings, and two criminal trials were the long, long overture to the so-called McCarthy Era. Senator McCarthy, in fact, gave his famous "I have a list . . ." speech just weeks after Hiss's conviction. This Podcast gives an overview of the many and complex reactions to the guilty verdict. Everyone, it seems, accepted the factual correctness of the verdict. But many liberals could not help making up excuses for Hiss, or damning Chambers for being fat and melodramatic. And many conservatives and populists could not help painting all liberals and Harvard graduates with the black pitch of Hiss's treason. Most interesting and encouraging to me, a significant number of liberals and Democrats were sufficiently mature and morally alive to engage in genuine introspection and self-criticism, to admit they had 'blown it big time' when it came to Soviet traitors in our midst, and to resolve to fashion a liberal anti-communism that was just as vigorous as what Republican conservatives had been offering for decades. FURTHER RESEARCH The McCarthy Era, although sparked by this Case, is an oceanic subject beyond the scope of these Podcasts. If you want to read about it, among the best conservative books are George H. Nash's "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945" (Basic Books 1976), esp. 84-130; and Richard Gid Powers' "Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism" (Free Press 1995), esp. 191-272.See also Professor Harvey Klehr's essay "Setting the Record Straight on Joe McCarthy," https://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/setting-record-joe-mccarthy-straight-harvey-klehr/. Among the far more numerous, totally anti-McCarthy books are David Caute's "The Great Fear:The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower" (Touchstone 1979), esp. 56-62; Fred J. Cook's "The Nightmare Decade:The Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy" (Random House 1971); Victor Navasky's "Naming Names" (Viking 1980) (especially the early pages); I.F. Stone's "The Truman Era: 1945-52" (Little Brown 1953) (Stone was himself a secret agent of the Soviet Union); and James A Weschler's "The Age of Suspicion" (Random House 1953). I must note that it was a stroke of genius for the minimizers of Communist treason to name the era after anti-Communism's most irresponsible big name. This is as if racists had succeeded in labeling the civil rights movement The Al Sharpton Movement. Concerning the impact of the Hiss verdict in particular, Dean Acheson, in his autobiography "Present at the Creation: My Years at the State Department" (Norton 1987), titles his pertinent chapter (at 354) "The Attack of the Primitives Begins." Alistair Cooke (at 340) also saw nothing good coming from Hiss's conviction. A more mature view, at page 267 of Walter Goodman's "The Committee:The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 1968), is that the Hiss-Chambers Case "whip[ped] up a storm which did not last long but left ruins in its wake." Other more realistic analyses of the Case's impact on America are in Weinstein at 529-47 (chapter titled "Cold War Iconography I: Alger Hiss as Myth and Symbol"); the best single essay on this Case in my opinion, Leslie Fiedler's "Hiss, Chambers, and the Age of Innocence" at 3-24 of his "An End to Innocence: Essays on Culture and Politics" (Beacon Press 1955) and Diana Trilling's essay "A Memorandum on the Hiss Case," first published in The Partisan Review of May-June 1950 and re-published at 27-48 of Patrick J. Swan's anthology of essays on this Case, "Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Schism in the American Soul" (ISI Books 2003). The latter two essays I highly recommend. Questions: If you had been adult when Hiss was convicted, what would have been your reaction to his conviction? 'Justice at long last,' 'a miscarriage of justice,' 'guilty but a fair trial was impossible,' 'technically guilty but with an excuse,' or something else? Would your reaction have been purely emotional/political/tribal, or would you have cited one or more facts to support your reaction? Would you have been totally certain that your reaction was the right one, or would you have harbored some doubts?
Transcribe →Chapter 33: The Summations, and the Verdict
Aug 16, 202300:16:53Tap to summarizeProsecutor Thomas F. Murphy In this Podcast, we hear the closing speeches, and the verdict of the second jury. In a mirror image of the first trial, this time it was Hiss's lawyer Claude Cross who was quiet, even plodding, and it was Prosecutor Murphy (like Hiss's barrister Stryker at the first trial) who delivered the barn-burner. Then — after a year and a half of HUAC hearings, Hiss's libel suit, the Grand Jury proceeding, and two trials — finally comes the jury's verdict. Further Research:- Alistair Cooke (at 335) described Mrs. Hiss after the guilty verdict was uttered as "a flushed and now ageless little gnome." Hiss wrote that the jury's verdict stunned him. ("Recollections of a Life" at 157.). I read elsewhere that he and his defense team had planned a victory press conference to be followed by a victory lunch. I have read in an unpublished biography of Hiss that, as he and his wife walked and then drove away from the courthouse, a few people yelled "Traitor!" but no one blocked his path or attempted physical harm. At sentencing several days later, Claud Cross was the only speaker who showed emotion. The verdict must have been crushing for him. He must have known that, despite his excellent reputation as a trier of complex corporate cases in the Boston area, fifty and a hundred years hence the only thing anyone would remember about Claud Cross was that he lost the Hiss Case. Stryker got a hung jury, but Cross lost. It must have added to his gloom that he went to his grave (in 1974) believing Hiss innocent. Alistair Cooke (at 339-40) had strong feelings at the sentencing: "It is a moment when all the great swirling moral abstractions are blacked out in a crisis of the flesh. The principles we try to live by . . . . dissolve into a formal ceremony . . . The defendant stands alone, the lawyers look through a glaze at their papers, the judge says: 'to run concurrently.'. . . . People who had craved the confirmation of Hiss' guilt sighed and looked palely miserable. Mr. Murphy . . . had been suddenly overcome with a rheumy blur of speech that could have come from the onset of a cold but most likely did not." Cooke recalled being at the sentencing in 1939 of Jimmy Hines, a monumentally corrupt and gangster-affiliated politician who had been unsuccessfully defended by Lloyd Paul Stryker. "[I]n that moment neither the crime nor the personality condemned is clear. You do not respond as you might expect to the case resolved or the victim labeled, or the fox run to ground. The defendant becomes a symbol of the alternative fates possible to all our characters.. . . . The man about to be sentenced is suddenly at the center of the human situation; and because he is totally disarmed he takes on the helpless dignity of the lowest common denominator." Cooke, sad to say, never expressed the slightest sympathy for Chambers. As I wrote earlier, maybe Chambers was too much the 'Red Hot American,' unlike anything the very British Cooke had ever experienced. Questions: Do you agree with the second jury's verdict? If you had been the judge, would you have sentenced Hiss to more or less time in prison? If you were Hiss speaking to the judge just before sentencing, would you have been tempted to confess, said that you had been a naive and ignorant intellectual in the depths of The Great Depression, and hoped for a lighter sentence?
Transcribe →Chapter 32: The Second Trial - The Surprise Witness
Aug 9, 202300:05:10Tap to summarizeEdith Murray This is a short podcast, describing a last-minute rebuttal witness for The Prosecution. Into court came a black woman named Edith Murray. Alistair Cooke (at 299) found her "lively." She testified that, at times in 1935 and 1936, she had been the household servant (cleaning and cooking) for Whittaker and Esther Chambers. She knew them as the Cantwells and was told that Mr. Cantwell was home so seldom because he was a traveling salesman. The Cantwells, Mrs. Murray testified, had no social life except for one young white married couple from Washington whose female half she knew as "Miss Priscilla." Guess who Mrs. Murray pointed at when she was asked if the young couple was in the courtroom. Some problems with her came out on cross-examination. But her testimony, if believed, showed the kind of close relationship between the families that the Chamberses alleged and the Hisses denied. Most damaging to Hiss, Mrs. Murray remembered Miss Priscilla staying overnight in the Chamberses' apartment (in a seedy part of Baltimore) taking care of their baby when both Whittaker and Esther Chambers had to be elsewhere. How many people would you do that for? Also, this overnighter occurred in 1936, long after the Hisses swore they had got the deadbeat Chamberses/Crosleys out of their lives. Thus, the major testimonies at the second trial end on a bad note for Hiss. FURTHER RESEARCH: Remarkably, the pro-Hiss book by John Chabot Smith does not mention Mrs. Murray. Hiss, in his book "In the Court of Public Opinion," (at 313-17, 325-26, 328, 334, 344, 366, 385-87, 396-97) mentions her at length, alleging unfair surprise, heavy-handed coaching by the FBI, and evidence against her that he didn't have time to gather and present to the second jury. Weinstein describes Mrs. Murray's testimony at 504. Alistair Cooke writes that, when Mrs. Murray, on the witness stand, recalled both Hisses visiting the Chamberses in the latter's Baltimore apartment, she chuckled at the contrast between the two couples, presumably because the elegant Hisses were slumming. "And of course I could see the difference of the two couples, and right away I take notice . . . And when I see him I seen the difference in the two of them, and naturally I noticed."(Cooke at 299, Second Trial at 4415.) Chambers (at 358-59, 393-94) describes a long and very friendly relationship between his family and Mrs. Murray. Interesting to me is Chambers' unease (at 357-58) at an underground Communist family hiring a household servant. But almost every white family in Baltimore had one in those days, Chambers writes, and we decided that Mrs. Murray's cleaning and cooking made her a worker as dignified and worthy as any man on a factory assembly line. The Chamberses paid her more than most whites paid their black help and, after she made dinner for the family in the evenings, Mrs. Murray sat at the table with them and had dinner with them as one of the family. To Chambers (at 358), the Communist requirement that blacks be treated as equals shows "the impact of Communism wherever it coincides with humanity and compassion, especially when the outside world denies them." All human beings who work, even black servants, have human dignity. "Thus, by insisting on acting as Communists must, we found ourselves unwittingly acting as Christians should. I submit that this cuts to the heart of one aspect of the Communist appeal." Equally interesting is the story of how the FBI found Mrs. Murray 12 years after she stopped working for the Chamberses. The Chamberses remembered her working for them, but recalled only her first name. Searches for "Edith" at all the Baltimore employment agencies for servants and in the Chamberses' old neighborhood proved fruitless. Then Mrs. Chambers found in the attic a miniature portrait that she had painted of Mrs. Murray. The FBI made many photocopies of it and FBI agents fanned out into Baltimore's black ghetto and asked people if they knew about the person in the miniature. Eventually, someone recognized Mrs. Murray and the FBI found her alive and well. She was delighted to be brought back in touch with The Cantwells because they had treated her so well and she liked the idea of working for them again. (Chambers at 359; Cooke at 300; Weinstein at 161-62; FBI FOIA Documents, https://archive.org/details/foia_Hiss_Alger-Whittaker_Chambers-NYC-53/page/n251/mode/2up?view=theater circa page 250.) This is one of several instances in this Case where the marvelous work of the FBI agents in the field contrasts to the ham-handed activities of J. Edgar Hoover (described in Podcast #37). Questions: Do you believe Mrs. Murray? If she is making it all up, her just-quoted recollections and those of the Chamberses, Mrs. Chambers' miniature painting, and all the FBI FOIA documents (first made public in the 1970s) must have been fabricated in the 1940s. How likely is that? Assuming that Mrs. Murray is telling the truth, could the nice young white lady from Washington she remembered as "Miss Priscilla" be anyone other than Priscilla Hiss? On the whole, do you think the three witnesses who testified at the second trial but not the first helped The Prosecution or The Defense? If you had been one of the four members of the first jury who voted Not Guilty because you just didn't believe Chambers, would the three new witnesses at the second trial have given The Prosecution enough new support to change your vote?
Transcribe →Chapter 31: The Second Trial - Chambers' Mental Condition
Aug 2, 202300:24:20Tap to summarizePsychiatrist Dr. Carl Binger This Podcast presents the testimony of an eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Binger. He opined that Whittaker Chambers suffered from a mental illness, called "Psychopathic Personality," which causes its sufferers to make false accusations that they sincerely believe to be true. Dr. Carl Binger was supposed to be, to use a baseball metaphor, The Clean-Up Hitter of The Hiss Defense. The Defense had loaded the bases with Hiss and his wife (we barely knew Chambers/Crosley), the character witnesses (Alger is a fine upstanding man), and the Catletts (we had The Typewriter when The Spy Documents were typed). Binger was supposed to bring all those runners and himself across home plate by answering a question so obvious that Hiss was asked it at his first HUAC appearance: why is Chambers lying? Chambers had no rational motive to lie, but . . . . maybe an irrational one. Chambers' greatest fan would admit that his life was a target-rich environment of off-the-beaten-path behaviors. Prosecutor Murphy fought to the bitter end to keep Binger's opinion from reaching the jury's ears. But he had a good Plan B. His cross-examination of Dr. Binger has been called the most destructive cross-examination of a psychiatrist in history. The conventional opinion of scholars is that when Murphy was through with Binger, there was nothing left, not even mincemeat. To many, Binger's testimony seemed a failed attempt to smear an honest man who was merely strange. See if you agree. FURTHER RESEARCH About Binger's testimony, see Cooke at 304-13; Smith at 386-93, saying (at 391) that "Murphy cut the poor psychiatrist into ribbons" and (at 393) that "the psychiatric evidence turned out to be a boomerang"; and Weinstein at 510-16. One interesting aspect of this Case is the peek it gives into the morals and standards of this country's Establishment in the late 1940s. Psychiatry had ceased to be new and frightening and had become, among many of the finest minds, almost a religion displacing Judaism and Christianity. Forward-looking thinkers ranked Freud with Aristotle, Copernicus, and Einstein as one of the giant pioneers of human thought. (Today, most see him as a great, brave pioneer but dismiss his all theories and techniques.). Alistair Cooke was so worshipful of psychiatry that he could not fathom Prosecutor Murphy questioning Dr. Binger's opinion. Cooke seems to have thought Murphy outrageous when he demanded that the exalted expert make sense to the jury. More broadly, at the time of the Hiss trials, the range of proper behaviors was much narrower than it is today. Men worked and women stayed home to run the house and raise the kids; a web of laws and customs held blacks in inferior positions; swarthy-complected immigrants from Southern Europe, such as Italians, were barely considered to be white people; left-handed people were considered handicapped; people rarely married outside their religious denominations; homosexuality was a mental illness; proper citizens wouldn't dream of going outdoors not in a coat and tie; and you could tell much more about people's economic and social status by their clothing than you can today. Any deviation from these norms might prompt wrinkled noses, raised eyebrows, and even suspicions of mental illness. The latter was unfathomable and would bar you from decent society forever. The Hiss Defense tried to use such limits on propriety and decency to make Chambers unbelievable and despicable. The Defense failed because of Chambers' articulateness and his cool under fire, and because of the cross-examination of Dr. Binger. And as Alistair Cooke wrote (at 312), the magician Binger could pull strange and frightening objects from his top hat, but he could not make the documents disappear. Questions: As you hear Dr. Binger's direct testimony, do you think to yourself "My God, he's got Chambers to a T. Thank God we have modern psychiatry to explain rare mental illnesses like Chambers'"? Or do Binger's words strike you as modern witchcraft concealed behind two Harvard degrees? Psychiatry has changed hugely since 1949. If you have any knowledge of it, what would a mainstream psychiatrist (if there is such a thing any more) say of Chambers today? One said to me, "Probably neurotic, but not psychotic by any means." Concerning procedure, do you agree with Prosecutor Murphy that merely allowing the jury to hear the 65-minute long question listing all of Chambers' strange acts was itself unfair to Chambers and The Prosecution, and that the judges should have ruled on the admissibility of psychiatric testimony before?
Transcribe →Chapter 30: The Second Trial - Introduction
Jul 26, 202300:13:25Tap to summarizeHede Hassing, a key witness in the 2nd trial The second trial: new Judge (an elderly Republican), a new jury (seven women!), a new lawyer for Hiss (Boston's distinguished, quiet Claude Cross), a new strategy by each side, and a lot more witnesses. The next three Podcasts bring you three witnesses who did not testify at the first trial, but did at the second. One journalist wrote that the minor characters in this Case contained the raw material for a shelf of unwritten novels. You've already met Julian Wadleigh. Now meet Hede Massing, a Viennese actress, thrice married and twice divorced, and secret Communist operative (like her first two husbands) in four countries. She testifies that she saw Alger Hiss (and even had a memorable chat with him) in Washington's Soviet underground in the mid-1930s. The FBI document expert Feehan gave expert corroboration for Chamber's accusations. If you believe Massing, she gives Chambers eyewitness corroboration. But she may have been weakened by Claude Cross's cross-examination, which left her "visibly flustered."(Alistair Cooke wrote at 292.) FURTHER RESEARCH: Massing's autobiography, "This Deception," published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in New York in 1951, is available on Amazon and eBay. She describes her encounter with Hiss at pages 173-75. Massing led a life of adventure, and paid the price. Much of her secret life was incredibly boring, establishing new identities in place after place and then waiting weeks or months for a real assignment. Her earlier testimony to The Grand Jury also makes clear the painful psychological struggles facing ex-Communist spies in the West. There is the obvious guilt about having betrayed your country to serve another country that turned out to be worse than you dreamed possible. There is also damage done to others. Massing told The Grand Jury how she recruited a State Department economist to spy for the Soviet Union. In 1948, the economist had just skipped over to the other side of The Iron Curtain and spent the rest of his life there. Massing, in front of The Grand Jury, suddenly broke down crying and asked for a glass of water and a recess. Later, she explained that she felt personally responsible for the economist's ruined life. (I think she was being too hard on herself. What he did was his responsibility.) She also begged the U.S. Attorney's Office to keep her identity and testimony secret, for two reasons. First, she and her husband had found jobs but had not disclosed their past crimes, and she was terrified that they would be exposed and become unemployable. Second — and this is something several former Soviet operatives corroborated — she said that when you have lived for years under false names, sleeping by day and working by night, moving from country to country and city to city at the KGB's whim, "it takes all your gumption and guts to try to live an average life as I am trying to do." (Grand Jury Transcript at 3697-98.). Being a secret agent, in reality, is not like the James Bond movies. Questions: Judge Kaufman excluded Massing's testimony at the first trial. Judge Goddard allowed it at the second. Was one Judge clearly right and the other clearly wrong? Do you think Massing helped The Prosecution on the whole, or was she too damaged on cross-examination? Does the sudden flight of the State Department economist lend credibility to her story? As you hear more about how the second trial differed from the first, ask yourself what caused the different verdict at the latter. There are many possible explanations. The Cold War had gotten substantially colder by the second trial. Hiss chose a new lawyer, whom few would say was the equal of Lloyd Paul Stryker. Prosecutor Murphy was trying the case for a second time and did much better than at the first. There were the three new witnesses (and more testimony allowed by the repeat witnesses). The Judge was a Republican appointee. There were more women on the second jury. Take your pick.
Transcribe →Chapter 29: The Summations and The Verdict
Jul 19, 202300:18:17Tap to summarizePic: Hiss Defense Attorney Lloyd Paul Stryker At last we hear the two great trial lawyers, Lloyd Paul Stryker for The Hiss Defense and Thomas Murphy for The Prosecution, sum up the evidence and loose their rhetorical flourishes. Stryker, remember, was going for a hung jury, just trying to get one or two jurors to hold out for a Not Guilty verdict no matter what the others thought. Murphy had to convince all twelve. Stryker's speech was a masterpiece of rhetoric, which Murphy in his speech dismissed as 'cornball stuff' and 'old, old.' Murphy stuck to what he called the undisputed facts. Ask yourself who won the final war of words before the jury got the Case. Then . . . . hear the jury's conclusion! ** CHECK OUT John W. Berresford's conversation on the case with Brian Lamb of CSPAN, in this week's podcast episode of "Booknotes" here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/booknotes/id1560876048 FURTHER RESEARCH: Stryker and Murphy had a three day weekend (over July 4, 1949) to prepare their closing speeches to the jury. Stryker's speech began late one morning and ended one hour into the next morning. He shouted until his voice was hoarse and his eyes were red. He gestured grandly and, for the first time, moved around a lot, sometimes withdrawing from the jury and sometimes leaning on the front of the jury box. (Cooke at 245-55; Smith at 396-97.). When at last he finished, exhausted and old, "[w]ithout any swagger or semblance of poise, [he] pattered back to his chair.(Cooke at 255.) Murphy moved his 230-pound frame around the well of the courtroom, too, but he mostly stayed calm and leisurely. (Prosecutors generally do not like to appear emotional, which could play into defense claims of a witchcraft trial.). His voice showed only "a rumbling contempt" for Hiss "and his face was never redder than his fine protective tan. (Cooke at 259.). Again and again he emphasized the facts, pointed at The Spy Documents in Hiss's handwriting and typed on The Hiss Home Typewriter, and told the jury "Those are the facts." (Cooke at 257-59.). As you will hear in the Podcast, he raised his voice at the end, talking briefly about the dates of the typed documents. It was a great flourish. He closed by reminding the jury's members that they need not follow any opinion the foreman might express. Murphy had heard second hand that the foreman (the General Motors manager) was pro-Hiss. (Cooke at 261-65.) Questions: Did either speech change your mind? Did one strengthen your pre-existing convictions? What were the strong points of each one? Did either advocate fail to address a weakness in his case that you felt needed addressing? Did the jury's conclusion surprise you? In 1949, long, passionate, flowery speeches were still common. They were one form of popular entertainment, and Lloyd Paul Stryker was Michelangelo. The allegedly 'cool' medium of television was just starting. Given our calm modern attitudes, would there be a place for Lloyd Paul Stryker in today's courtrooms? I think there would. He was that good, in my opinion.
Transcribe →