Alger Hiss

The Framing of Alger Hiss

This article first appeared in Probe in the January-February 1996 issue, devoted to Oliver Stone's Nixon, and the important points from Nixon's life, including Watergate, the relationship with Hughes, and this case - the one that launched his career - the framing of Alger Hiss. Sidebars referenced herein are not reproduced here, but you can always order the back issue to get the full story. Since Probe is the newsletter of

Informers in his camp, key evidence suppressed by the opposition, tampering with witnesses, fabricated expert opinions-no, it's not the Garrison case. All of the above led to one of the great injustices of modern time-the false perjury conviction and subsequent imprisonment of an innocent man: Alger Hiss.

The case could not be more important, for it launched the career that turned into a Presidency for Richard Milhous Nixon. Properly examined, the case reveals that Hiss was framed for a crime he didn't commit, with the full knowledge and complicity of Hoover's FBI. As with the JFK case, latter day FOIA requests have revealed a truth at variance with the conventional wisdom.

Background

Alger Hiss was a high-level state department employee. Hiss was convicted of perjury on the basis of two pieces of evidence. One was the testimony of Whittaker Chambers. The other was a set of typewritten documents based on State Department files alleged to have been typed on Hiss' Woodstock typewriter, and passed from there to Chambers. If Chambers was lying and the typewriter proved not to have belonged to Hiss, there was no basis for a conviction, and the post-war Red Scare might have died an earlier death.

The Hiss case has an important link to Garrison's case. One of Garrison's key witnesses was Elizabeth McCarthy Bailey, a document expert on handwriting, typewritten documents, and other related subjects. Ridiculed in James Kirkwood's utterly and admittedly biased book, American Grotesque, the woman had in fact a long and distinguished history in her field. (See the sidebar on page 6.) Charles Appel, the opposing document witness, has an equally important case in his background, the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, in which a carpenter named Bruno Hauptmann was put to death for a crime many writers have concluded he didn't commit. (See sidebar on page 7.) If it could be shown that McCarthy was on the correct side when she defended Hiss, and that Appel was on the wrong side accusing Hauptmann, that should tell us something about their positions vis a vis the Clay Shaw trial and whether the key evidence of the signature "Clay Bertrand" was in fact signed by Clay Shaw. No short article could possibly summarize these two cases. The interested researcher can read the record and the summaries thereof and make up their own mind. The Los Angeles Central Library, for example, carries the entire Hiss trial on microfilm.

Alger Hiss' ordeal included two trials and several layers of appeals, none of which vindicated him in a court of law. Yet the facts of the case speak for themselves, and--no surprise to Probe readers--do not support the official version.

The Charges

The original charge against Alger Hiss was made during the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in 1948. Coincidentally-or not-this was the year that Allen Dulles, McGeorge Bundy (later to become President Kennedy's National Security Advisor), and J. Lee Rankin (the man who became chief counsel to the Warren Commission, after Allen Dulles rejected Warren Olney for the position) were together involved in the Thomas Dewey presidential run. That year also marked a heated conflict between the newly formed CIA and the State Department in a fight that degenerated into what the press deemed "open name calling." In the fall of 1948, Truman appointed Allen Dulles to head a small team to study the fledgling CIA and produce recommendations. Not surprisingly, Dulles' report called for increased responsibilities for the CIA, including more covert operations to combat the ever increasing Communist threat. The publicity garnered by the Hiss case provided an appropriate backdrop to his themes.

Eager to make a name for himself, and having already successfully clawed his way to victory in his first run for public office by accusing his opponent (Jerry Voorhis) of being a communist, Richard Nixon seized this opportunity. Whittaker Chambers, a Senior Editor at Time magazine, stated that Alger Hiss, a State Department employee as well as President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (an appointment initially proposed by John Foster Dulles-who later testified against Hiss at his trial), had been a member of the communist party some 20 years earlier. Chambers had actually been promulgating this rumor as far back as 1942, mentioning Hiss' name to the FBI. The FBI had gone to Alger Hiss in 1947 asking him if he knew a Whittaker Chambers. He responded that he didn't. So when Chambers and his accusations surfaced again, in a public forum, Hiss was determined to find out who his accuser was. Alger Hiss decided to publicly respond to the charges, and his response drew instant reaction. Alger Hiss' fate-sealing telegram to the Committee said:

My attention has been called by representatives of the press to statements made about me before your committee this morning by one Whittaker Chambers. I do not know Mister Chambers and, so far as I am aware, have never laid eyes on him. There is no basis for the statements about me made to your committee. I would appreciate it if you would make this telegram a part of your committee's records and I would further appreciate the opportunity of appearing before your committee to make these statements formally and under oath.

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Nixon told U.S. News & World Report that "Hiss' testimony was just too slick," and that Hiss had committed a "fatal flaw." Nixon was sure that Hiss did know Chambers. And so Hiss did. But under the name of George Crosley-and ten years, a mustache and fifty pounds earlier. Hiss was only shown a picture of Chambers and asked from the picture to identify the man. Hiss said he could not be sure whether he knew the man unless he could see him in the flesh, saying, "The face is definitely not an unfamiliar face. Whether I am imagining it, whether it is because he looks like a lot of other people, I don't know, but I have never known anyone who had the relationship with me that this man has testified to and that, I think, is the important thing here."

At the committee hearings the day after Chambers first accused Hiss of being a communist, Hiss made such a good showing that, according to Nixon's own account, "the Hiss-Chambers investigation was almost dropped." In a case of unfortunate timing, President Truman publicly charged that the Committee's attempts to flush out communist spies were a "red herring." This put the committee strongly on the defensive. Press people suggested to Nixon that the Committee's life was in jeopardy if it couldn't prove Chambers' story was correct. The controversy over the Committee's activities was already politically polarizing, and in an election year, the stakes were higher than usual. The committee decided to press the case. They fought back.

Nixon suggested that rather than proving Hiss was a Communist, which would be tough, if not impossible, he could at least prove that either Hiss or Chambers was lying. Nixon knew what he had to do.

On August 7th, a Saturday, Nixon and several others from the Committee drove out to interview Chambers at his home. Nixon would write later that he grilled Chambers for over three hours. Curiously, the transcript of that conversation is only 12 pages long, and contains a gap near the end marked "off the record." Remember, at the time Nixon was with Chambers, Hiss had already given up many personal details of his background, which could easily have been passed on to Chambers.

The next day, Nixon took Chambers' statement to Allen and John Foster Dulles for a strategy session. Nixon reported that they seemed surprised with the depth of Chambers' knowledge of Hiss, and agreed that Chambers must be telling the truth.

Hiss found out that Nixon had been to see Chambers over the weekend, and called him on it. However, Nixon, being a lawyer, found a loophole in the way the statement was phrased and led Hiss to believe the report was mistaken. Hiss said that the press had reported that Nixon visited Chambers over the weekend. Nixon said that was not true, that he had not spent the night with Chambers, which was correct. He had spent a large portion of both days, not the night, and Hiss did not challenge Nixon's response.

Nixon and the committee were still denying Hiss' request to meet Chambers face to face. Hiss decided he would just go over to the Time offices and find Chambers on his own. But unfortunately, he talked this over with a man he thought he could trust, John Foster Dulles, who talked him out of the visit. Hiss followed Dulles' advice, not realizing that Dulles had already switched sides and was now working with Nixon against him.

At Nixon's meeting with Chambers, one of the things that came out was that Chambers told Nixon Hiss wouldn't have known him under the name Chambers. He told Nixon Hiss would have known him under the name "Carl," which was not true. Hiss had actually known him as George Crosley, a fact it took a year and a half for Chambers to grudgingly half-admit, saying Hiss "may" have known him under that name. But neither Nixon nor anyone on the Committee saw fit to inform Hiss that the man they were asking him to identify was not known to him under the name "Chambers."

Hiss was called into executive session again, pressed for more personal details, and berated for suggesting that a Senior Editor of the respected Time magazine would risk his $25,000 a year job (remember, 1948) for a lie. Of course, from what we know of Henry Luce's relationship with the Dulles brothers, hidden agendas were never out of the question when it came to Time employees. And unbeknownst to Hiss at the time, Chambers had already lied under oath in the past, in order to obtain a phony birth certificate and a passport.

Add to this mix the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley. She testified that several people were part of a Communist spy ring. Not one of the people she ever mentioned was ever convicted of anything in this regard. But soon, Nixon was trying to link Chambers' ever growing circle of communist infiltrators in the government with Bentley's "spy ring." At last, Nixon found one person named by Bentley who had at one time shared an office with Chambers. To him, that was a "definite provable link" between the two. The stakes were now even higher. One can hardly imagine Richard Nixon, having gone this far, would admit he had pursued all this in error.

The Great Pumpkin Caper

The Justice Department's investigation of the Hiss-Chambers affair is about to die for lack of evidence it was disclosed today. Unless something new turned up soon, officials said, there would be little use going to a grand jury with the information obtained so far. (United Press dispatch, 12/1/48, Washington D.C.)

Documents secured by subpoena last night from Whittaker Chambers indicate that a final conclusion is imminent in the long-discussed Hiss-Chambers espionage case . . . There is now in the possession of the Committee, under twenty-four hour guard, microfilmed copies of documents of tremendous importance . . . (Statement issued by the House Committee on Un-American Activities 12/3/48.)

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Late on the night of December 2, 1948, Whittaker Chambers led two HUAC investigators into the pumpkin patch on his farm in Maryland, reached into a hollow pumpkin, and scooped out three rolls of undeveloped microfilm and two rolls of developed film. These films, known inaccurately as the "Pumpkin Papers," brought the Hiss case back to the front pages and into the grand jury room. Hiss was indicted. But what were these films? Nixon told the press, before viewing any of the documents, that the evidence they contained was "shocking."

What was shocking was the effect these films had on the Hiss case. Although, independent of Chambers' testimony, absolutely no linkage or relevance to Hiss was ever established, the press led many to believe there was some connection. Support for the continuing investigation grew. The film was alleged to have been made in 1937. According to the Rochester headquarters office of Eastman Kodak, at least some of the film could not have been made until 1947, and this statement was reported in the New York Herald Tribune in the city edition on December 11, 1948. The story was killed in all subsequent editions, and Rochester's spokesman testified under oath that "this film," a reference to a specific roll, was made in 1937. To the world, that meant all the reels were from 1937, although that was never said under oath.

At any rate, since this evidence could only stir interest but not convict Hiss, more evidence had to be found. Enter the typewriter.

Woodstock #230,099

Two weeks after the initial accusation, when Hiss was finally allowed to face Chambers, he recognized Chambers as the man he had known as George Crosley. But at that point, Chambers was still denying he had ever used that alias. Hiss challenged Chambers to make his same accusations outside the protection of the HUAC hearings. Chambers did on Meet the Press, and Hiss sued for libel. One can only imagine how the Luce empire felt about one of their editors being sued for libel. Shortly thereafter, Chambers countered by entering into evidence the infamous "Baltimore Documents."

The serial number of the infamous Woodstock typewriter on which Hiss was alleged to have summarized and retyped these sensitive State Department documents was #230,099. This typewriter was entered into evidence as the only corroborating "witness" besides Whittaker Chambers to Hiss' alleged guilt.

The typewriter had to have been in Hiss' possession by July 8, 1938, for a key allegation to be true. But the manufacturing records from Woodstock showed that it was statistically beyond reason to suggest that that serial number was produced until later in the year. In addition, by the time that serial number was used, a different typeface was in use. Yet Hiss's had the new serial number but the older type face. And from the start, Hiss said his Woodstock typewriter had been given away in December of 1937, so there was no possible way for him or his wife to have typed such on that typewriter.

A Woodstock typewriter was produced. It looked so much like the one he had owned that Hiss didn't challenge its authenticity at first. But the FBI knew this was not Hiss' typewriter. In fact, as later FOIA's revealed, not only did J. Edgar Hoover know this typewriter could not have belonged to Hiss, he ordered a second investigation to attempt to find the link the first investigation never did. The second team only served to buttress the findings of the first team-the typewriter couldn't have belonged to Hiss at the time in question. Hiss' first trial lawyer sensed it, but couldn't prove it. He told Hiss, "Alger, something's wrong with that typewriter. Murphy's [the prosecutor] afraid of it. We should worry about it, because it's being used so much against us. He dances around it as though it were a hot stove. He never touches it." Interestingly, prosecutor Thomas Murphy never asked his document expert to testify about anything directly relating to the typewriter itself, only the document samples provided him. Hiss' defense attorney Chester Lane picked up the scent.

Chester Lane realized if Hiss did not own the typewriter, yet the samples reasonably matched, then the typewriter might have been 'forged' or altered to represent the necessary type characteristics to make the case against Hiss. Lane went to a typewriter engineer named Tytell and asked if such was possible. Tytell stated that not only could he do it, he could do it in such a way that one would not be able to tell the documents apart. To assure this would be the case, Lane needed a documents expert. Many did not want to have anything to do with the Hiss case. Others, Lane reported, were "frankly intimating that they did not wish to contribute to the success of any experiment which they feared would have adverse effects on the profession of document examination. One well known expert placed his refusal on the grounds that in order to demonstrate the success of the experiment he would have to deceive a brother expert, which he would consider an unethical course of action."

An associate of Lane's suggested Chester consult with a highly respected document examiner in the area, Miss Elizabeth McCarthy. Her work consisted of comparing materials typed on two machines, and making recommendations as to how one could be altered to more nearly match the output of the other. She included her own affidavit in Lane's motion, challenging any authority to tell the finished samples apart. She kept a key as to which was typed on which, but not one court ever took her up on this challenge.

Hiss said in his memoirs that he thought Lane had discovered something new in typewriter alteration, but later found out that military intelligence had made successful use of this technique to forge directives and cables during WWII. One of the sites where this was done was at Camp X, near Lake Ontario, in Hoover's words "chosen in part because it could be reached easily by FBI agents." In 1960, Hoover referred to the FBI's capability to forge typewritten documents as the "technique of altering a typewriter." Hiss also found in a Newsweek article dated July 24, 1961 a description of his typewriter with the serial number #200,194! Had the FBI found the actual typewriter after all?

The Hiss case is a national tragedy. For all the data he and the experts on his side had in their favor, not once did he get a fair and impartial hearing. One of the investigators hired by his lawyers turned out to be an informant to the FBI and Chambers team on every aspect of the developing defense. Prosecutor Murphy used this information at the trial. Hiss' lawyers had asked the FBI for all of Chambers statements made to them. More than 184 pages were withheld, pages which contained information at variance with Chambers' testimony. Two witnesses were persuaded by the prosecution's team to testify falsely. And Murphy had a document expert testify that the documents in question came from Hiss' typewriter, even though he knew that the FBI had twice been unable to verify this in their own labs.

It is instructive that the woman who risked the wrath of her peers by aiding an experiment designed to help an unpopular defendant in a case designed to prove the fallibility of her own profession would be Garrison's choice for a document expert at the Clay Shaw trial.

Was the whole Hiss case a campaign ploy designed to raise Nixon on the political scene and to aid the election of Dulles-backed Thomas Dewey? Was a cover-up then installed to ensure the ploy would never be exposed? We may never fully understand the various motives and machinations. But one thing is certain. In the judgment of history, Garrison had good taste in experts.