Chapter 12: Setting Up the Public Confrontation
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Release Date: 03/22/2023
Chapter 38: Why do people still care about this case?
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
This 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.
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Chapter 37: What did not come out in court?
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Whittaker 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...
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Chapter 36: Hiss and Chambers After the Trials
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
As 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...
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Chapter 35: Forgery by Typewriter
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Several 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...
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Chapter 34: The Impact of the Guilty Verdict on America
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Alger 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...
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Chapter 33: The Summations, and the Verdict
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Prosecutor 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...
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Chapter 32: The Second Trial - The Surprise Witness
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Edith 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...
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Chapter 31: The Second Trial - Chambers' Mental Condition
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Psychiatrist 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...
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Chapter 30: The Second Trial - Introduction
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Hede 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,...
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Chapter 29: The Summations and The Verdict
A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case
Pic: 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...
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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?