The Alger Hiss Trials(英)

not come into existence until September of 1938?"

　　Rarely has a defense team ever assembled so impressive a batch of character witnesses as appeared on behalf of Alger Hiss. The list included two

U. S. Supreme Court justices, a former Solicitor General, and both former (John W. Davis) and future (Adlai Stevenson) Democratic presidential nominees. Justice Felix Frankfurter described Hiss's reputation as "excellent." Justice Stanley Reed said of Hiss's reputation, "I have never heard it questioned until these matters came up."

　　On June 23, Alger Hiss took the stand. He admitted writing the four handwritten notes produced by Chambers, but denied any connection with the microfilm found in Chambers's pumpkin or any role in the typing of the sixty-five State Department documents. He also insisted——as he had told the grand jury in December——that he had not met Chambers on any occasion after January 1, 1937. As for the Woodstock typewriter, Hiss's "best recollection" was that he gave it to the Catlatts "in the fall of 1937." On cross-examination, Murphy focused on bringing out numerous inconsistencies between Hiss's trial testimony and his earlier statements.

　　The testimony of Priscilla Hiss did more harm than good to the defense case. She admitted typing the four "Hiss standards" used for comparison purposes by the FBI with the Baltimore documents. After Priscilla denied that she was a member of the Socialist Party in 1932, Murphy pulled out a voter-roll page that showed her Socialist registration. She struggled to explain her statement to the grand jury that the typewriter "may" have been given to the Catlatt's as late as 1943.

　　Stryker spared nothing in his attack on Whittaker Chambers in his summation to the jury. He called Chambers "an enemy of the Republic, a blasphemer of Christ, a disbeliever in God, with no respect for matrimony or motherhood." Hiss, on the other hand, was "an honest……and falsely accused gentleman." He closed by expressing confidence that for his client, Alger Hiss, "this long nightmare is drawing to a close."

　　Murphy told the jurors that their duty was clear. The evidence left "only one inference" that could be drawn: "that the defendant, that smart, intelligent, American-born man gave [the secret State Department document] to Chambers." He ended his summation by asking the jurors to "come back and put the lie in that man's face."

　　On July 6, 1949, the case went to the jury. Late the next afternoon, the jury sent a note saying it "is unable to agree at a verdict." Judge Kaufman urged the jury to make one final effort to reach a conclusion, but within hours the jury again reported itself hopelessly deadlocked. Judge Kaufman reluctantly declared a mistrial. Quizzed about the deliberations, jurors revealed that the final vote stood eight for conviction, four for acquittal. The four jurors in the minority believed that someone other that Alger or Priscilla Hiss typed the documents on Woodstock N230099.

　　The Second Perjury Trial

　　The months between the end of the first Hiss trial and the start of the second had been eventful. The Soviet Union had exploded an atomic bomb. The Red Army of Mao Tse-tung had succeeded in driving the forces of Chiang Kai-shek to the island of Formosa. The NATO treaty had been approved. And, perhaps most ominously for Alger Hiss, polls showed public attitudes shifting towards harsher treatment of U. S. Communists.

　　The second trial began with a somewhat changed cast. Murphy was back as prosecutor, but Claude Cross now led the Hiss defense. Kaufman, criticized for his pro-defense rulings in the first trial, had been replaced on the bench Henry W. Goddard.

　　The prosecution produced one major new witness, who Kaufman had barred from testifying in the first trial. Hede Massing, a former Soviet agent, testified that he met Alger Hiss at a Communist cell meeting in a private home in 1935. Massing said she recalled arguing with Hiss over whether Noel Field, a State Department spy, should work with her group or with his.

　　Julian Wadleigh, a bit player in the first trial, became the target of a heav

y cross-examination by the Cross in the second trial. Cross suggested that it was Wadleigh (a confessed espionage agent) and not Hiss, who supplied the typewritten documents to Chambers——after perhaps having stolen them from a State Department office. There were, however, major problems with this suggestion. First, the defense theory required Wadleigh to also have stolen——on four separate occasions——Hiss's handwritten notes. Second, the theory meant that Wadleigh, after having stolen the documents from the State Department, would have had to successfully return them to their proper place……

　　The defense case in the second trial placed heavy reliance on the testimony of its expert psychiatrist, Dr. Carl A. Binger. On direct-examination, Dr. Binger (based on his reading of Chambers's writings and his observation of his trial testimony) called Chambers a "psychopathic personality" and "a pathological liar." However, in one of the most famous and devastating cross-examinations in courtroom history, Murphy destroyed Binger's credibility. One commentator said admiringly, "Mr. Murphy just wanted plain answers to plain questions——about the most alarming assignment anyone would wish on a psychiatrist." Murphy, through his questions, suggested that the label "psychopathic personality" was useless and empty catch-all of a lot of symptoms. Noting, for example, that Binger had concluded that the tendency of Chambers to look up at the ceiling from the witness chair was a symptom of a psychopathic personality, Murphy asked what should be made of the fact that Murphy's assistant prosecutor had counted Binger eyeing the ceiling fifty times in less than an hour of his own testimony. Murphy asked about another alleged symptom of Chambers's psychopathic personality: his "untidiness" and lack of concern about his appearance. Murphy wondered whether other famous persons well-known for untidiness or haphazard dress, such as Albert Einstein, Bing Crosby, and Thomas Edison, were, therefore, psychopaths? Murphy countered Binger's argument that the equivocations of Chambers during his testimony was a sign of a psychopathic personality by quizzing the doctor about what conclusion one should draw from 158 equivocations by Alger Hiss in his 550 pages of testimony. Murphy also attacked Binger's conclusion that hiding microfilm in a pumpkin was indicative of a psychopathic personality. Murphy asked whether that meant other famous hidings, including "the mother of Moses hiding the little child in the bulrushes," was symptomatic of a serious personality disorder?

　　With more witnesses and more latitude allowed for questioning, the second trial took three weeks longer than the first. In his summation, Cross conceded that the stolen documents had been typed on the Woodstock once owned by Hiss, but told jurors that "it is not the question of what typewriter was used, but who the typist was." Cross suggested that somehow Chambers or a confederate might have gotten hands on the typewriter after it left the possession of the Hiss's and typed the documents in an effort to frame Alger. Murphy, in closing for the prosecution, stressed the mountain of "immutable" evidence suggesting a close relationship once existed between Chambers and Hiss. Murphy told jurors that the Chambers-Hiss friendship and the typed and handwritten documents proved Hiss a "traitor" who "was in love with their philosophy, not ours."

　　The jury returned its verdict on the afternoon of January 20, 1950: "We find the defendant guilty on the first count and guilty on the second." Alger Hiss, who had "high hopes" for an acquittal, sat quietly with his wife as Judge Goddard thanked the jury for their "just verdict." Five days later, the judge imposed the maximum sentence of five years. Before he did so, Hiss made a brief statement in which he expressed confidence "that in the future the full facts of how Whittaker Chambers was able to carry out forgery by typewriter will be dis

closed."

　　Trial Aftermath

　　On December 7, 1950, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Hiss's conviction. Three months later, by a vote of four to two, the Supreme Court declined to review the case. (Justices Black and Douglas voted to grant cert. Justices Frankfurter, Reed, and Clark all voted to disqualify themselves, based on connections either to Hiss or the case.) Days after the Supreme Court's decision, Hiss began his five-year sentence for perjury at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. He served forty-four months before being released for good behavior.

　　The Hiss case set in a motion a chain of events that would forever change American politics. Joseph McCarthy, a little known senator form Wisconsin, seized on the Hiss conviction to charge that the Department of State was "thoroughly infested" with Communists. Soon he would begin divisive hearings——the controversial "witch-hunt." (Chambers disassociated himself with McCathy's crusade, saying "For the Right to tie itself in any way to Senator McCarthy is suicide. He is a raven of disaster.") Richard Nixon's sudden fame from his role in the Hiss-Chambers attention led the 1952 Republican nominee for President, General Dwight Eisenhower, to select him as his running mate. Most significantly, Chambers fanned the anti-Communist embers that within a decade evolved into a grassroots conservative movement in the Republican Party that, in 1964, produced the nomination of Barry Goldwater and, in 1980, the election of Ronald Reagan. It is often forgotten what Lionell Trilling observed about political thought in America before the Hiss case: "in the Uni

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