Potus Geeks Summer Reruns: Richard Nixon and Alger Hiss
[Originally posted on April 17, 2017.]
In John Aloysius Farrell's new biography of the 37th President of the United States, entitled Richard Nixon: The Life he tells the fascinating story of an incident that propelled the career of a young California Congressman, that being the exposure of a popular and prominent State Department official as a communist spy. Alger Hiss was a member of the State Department and was also part of the planning group that established the United Nations. He was a member of the delegation that attended the Yalta Conference in 1945. Three years later he was accused of being a Soviet spy by Congressman Richard Nixon, and two years later he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.
After returning home from the War where he served in the Navy, Richard Nixon was recruited to run for Congress against Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis in California's 12th Congressional District. Nixon portrayed Voorhis as soft on communism through a "guilt by association" strategy. He suggested that Voorhis' endorsement by groups linked to communists meant that Voorhis himself had radical views. Nixon won the election handily, receiving 65,586 votes to 49,994 for his opponent.
Nixon first gained national attention in 1948 when, as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), he took on the Alger Hiss spy case. In 1936, Alger Hiss began working in the State Department as an assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Sayre, the son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson. From 1939 to 1944 Hiss served as a special adviser on Far Eastern affairs and in 1944, Hiss was named Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, a policy-making entity devoted to planning for post-war international organizations. In February 1945, Hiss was part of the State Department delegation that attended the Yalta Conference, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, met to consolidate their alliance and to addressed the postwar division of Europe. He later served as acting temporary secretary-general of the San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization (the United Nations Charter Conference), which began on April 25, 1945. He subsequently became full Director of the State Department's Office of Special Political Affairs. In late 1946, Hiss left government service to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist Party member, appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). It was there that Chambers accused Hiss of being a member of the Communist Party. Chambers was a senior editor at Time magazine, and was a critic of the Yalta agreements. Chambers told the committee that he had known Hiss as a member of "an underground organization of the United States Communist Party" in the 1930s. Chambers said that the group was known as the "Ware Group," because it had been organized by agriculturalist Harold Ware, an American communist. Ware had died in 1935. According to Chambers, "the purpose of this group was the Communist infiltration of the American government. Infiltration and holding a communist political view was not technically illegal, but would have gotten anyone with such intent fired because of the fear of espionage. Feeding confidential information to the Russians was considered to be treason, which could be punishable by death.
Nixon had been studying the FBI's files for five months, and decided to champion the cause of exposing Hiss and other alleged secret Communists who had served in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. The nation was concerned about communist infiltration, especially after the US had developed atomic bomb technology, something that the Soviets did not yet have. In September 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a 26-year-old Ukrainian whose three-year tour as a cipher clerk stationed at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa was coming to an end, defected from the Soviet Union and remained in Canada. In exchange for political asylum Gouzenko offered to Canadian authorities evidence about a Soviet espionage network actively working to acquire information about nuclear weapons. He alleged that an unnamed assistant to U.S. Secretary of State Edwatd Stettinius was a Soviet agent. FBI Director Hoover believed that Gouzenko was referring to Alger Hiss. Hoover had put a wiretap on Hiss's home phone and had Hiss and his wife investigated and surveilled for the next two years.
Hiss loudly denied Chambers's accusations. According to Nixon biographer Farrell, he did so quite arrogantly, something that made Nixon all the more determined to net his prey. Hiss insisted on appearing before HUAC to clear himself. Testifying on August 5, 1948, he denied having ever been a Communist or having personally met Chambers. It looked as if HUAC had a weak case against Hiss, and the committee drew criticism from President Harry Truman and in the press. The Committee was reluctant to proceed with its investigation, but Nixon would not relent. Nixon layer described Hiss as, "insolent," "condescending," and "insulting in the extreme".
The Committee voted to make Nixon chair of a subcommittee that would seek to determine who was lying, Hiss or Chambers. Hiss was shown a photograph of Chambers and said that Chambers' face "might look familiar". He asked to see Chambers in person. Given this opportunity, Hiss admitted that he had indeed known Chambers, but under the name "George Crosley". Hiss said that in the mid-1930s he had sublet his apartment to this "Crosley" and had given him an old car. Chambers denied ever having used the alias Crosley. Hiss was given the opportunity to directly quesion his accuser when both men both appeared before a HUAC subcommittee on August 17, 1948. They had the following exchange:
HISS. Did you ever go under the name of George Crosley?
CHAMBERS. Not to my knowledge.
HISS. Did you ever sublet an apartment on Twenty-ninth Street from me?
CHAMBERS. No; I did not.
HISS. You did not?
CHAMBERS. No.
HISS. Did you ever spend any time with your wife and child in an apartment on Twenty-ninth Street in Washington when I was not there because I and my family were living on P Street?
CHAMBERS. I most certainly did.
HISS. You did or did not?
CHAMBERS. I did.
HISS. Would you tell me how you reconcile your negative answers with this affirmative answer?
CHAMBERS. Very easily, Alger. I was a Communist and you were a Communist.
Chambers's statements before the committee were privileged against defamation suits. Hiss challenged Chambers to repeat them without benefit of such protection. When, on the national radio program Meet the Press, Chambers publicly called Hiss a communist, Hiss instituted a libel lawsuit against him. On November 17, 1948, to support his allegations he produced physical evidence consisting of sixty-five pages of re-typed State Department documents, the last of which was was dated April 1, 1938. He also had four notes in Hiss's handwriting summarizing the contents of State Department cables. Chambers claimed Hiss had given them to him in 1938 and that Hiss's wife Priscilla had retyped them on the Hisses' Woodstock typewriter for Chambers to pass along to the Soviets. One of the handwritten notes copied the contents of a telegram, received January 28, 1938, concerning the November and December 1937 arrest and disappearance in Moscow of a Latvian-born man and his wife, an American citizen. Hiss denied writing the note, but handwriting experts confirmed it was Hiss's handwriting.
By introducing these documents, Chambers admitted he had previously lied, opening both Hiss and himself to perjury charges. On December 2, Chambers led HUAC investigators to a pumpkin patch on his Maryland farm. Stored in a hollowed-out pumpkin in which he had hidden them the previous day, Chambers produced five rolls of 35 mm film that he said came from Hiss in 1938, as well. Some of the film contained images of State Department documents that were classified at the time.
Hiss was charged with two counts of perjury. He was not charged with espionage because the statute of limitations had run out. Chambers was never charged with a crime. Hiss went to trial twice. The first trial, which began on May 31, 1949, ended in a hung jury on July 7. Hiss called a number of prominent character witnesses at his first trial including future Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter, and Stanley Reed, and former Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis. President Truman famously called the trial "a red herring."
The second trial, presided over by Judge Henry W. Goddard, lasted from November 17, 1949, to January 21, 1950. This time Hede Massing, an Austrian-born confessed Soviet spy, who was not permitted to testify at the first trial, provided corroboration of Chambers' story. At the second trial the jury found Hiss guilty. Hiss continued to assert his innocence. On January 25, 1950, Hiss was sentenced to five years' imprisonment on each of the two counts, to run concurrently.
Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson told the media, "I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss." Acheson quoted Jesus from the Bible: "I was a Stranger and ye took me in; Naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me." Acheson's remarks enraged Nixon, who accused Acheson of blasphemy.
Hiss's conviction was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (the decision is reported at 185 F.2d 822), and the Supreme Court of the United States denied a writ of certiorari (reported at 340 U.S. 948). Publicity surrounding the case further enhanced Nixon's political. Just four years after first being elected as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nixon was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1950. Then, just two years after that in 1952, he became Vice President of the United States.
As for Hiss, he maintained his innocence for the rest of his life. In 1957, he published a book entitled In the Court of Public Opinion in which he attacked the prosecution's case against him, and maintained that the typewritten documents traced to his typewriter had been forged. In 1988 Hiss wrote an autobiography, Recollections of a Life, in which he maintained his innocence. He fought his perjury conviction until his death at age 92, from emphysema on November 15, 1996, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
In John Aloysius Farrell's new biography of the 37th President of the United States, entitled Richard Nixon: The Life he tells the fascinating story of an incident that propelled the career of a young California Congressman, that being the exposure of a popular and prominent State Department official as a communist spy. Alger Hiss was a member of the State Department and was also part of the planning group that established the United Nations. He was a member of the delegation that attended the Yalta Conference in 1945. Three years later he was accused of being a Soviet spy by Congressman Richard Nixon, and two years later he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950.
After returning home from the War where he served in the Navy, Richard Nixon was recruited to run for Congress against Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis in California's 12th Congressional District. Nixon portrayed Voorhis as soft on communism through a "guilt by association" strategy. He suggested that Voorhis' endorsement by groups linked to communists meant that Voorhis himself had radical views. Nixon won the election handily, receiving 65,586 votes to 49,994 for his opponent.
Nixon first gained national attention in 1948 when, as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), he took on the Alger Hiss spy case. In 1936, Alger Hiss began working in the State Department as an assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Sayre, the son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson. From 1939 to 1944 Hiss served as a special adviser on Far Eastern affairs and in 1944, Hiss was named Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs, a policy-making entity devoted to planning for post-war international organizations. In February 1945, Hiss was part of the State Department delegation that attended the Yalta Conference, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, met to consolidate their alliance and to addressed the postwar division of Europe. He later served as acting temporary secretary-general of the San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization (the United Nations Charter Conference), which began on April 25, 1945. He subsequently became full Director of the State Department's Office of Special Political Affairs. In late 1946, Hiss left government service to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist Party member, appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). It was there that Chambers accused Hiss of being a member of the Communist Party. Chambers was a senior editor at Time magazine, and was a critic of the Yalta agreements. Chambers told the committee that he had known Hiss as a member of "an underground organization of the United States Communist Party" in the 1930s. Chambers said that the group was known as the "Ware Group," because it had been organized by agriculturalist Harold Ware, an American communist. Ware had died in 1935. According to Chambers, "the purpose of this group was the Communist infiltration of the American government. Infiltration and holding a communist political view was not technically illegal, but would have gotten anyone with such intent fired because of the fear of espionage. Feeding confidential information to the Russians was considered to be treason, which could be punishable by death.
Nixon had been studying the FBI's files for five months, and decided to champion the cause of exposing Hiss and other alleged secret Communists who had served in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. The nation was concerned about communist infiltration, especially after the US had developed atomic bomb technology, something that the Soviets did not yet have. In September 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a 26-year-old Ukrainian whose three-year tour as a cipher clerk stationed at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa was coming to an end, defected from the Soviet Union and remained in Canada. In exchange for political asylum Gouzenko offered to Canadian authorities evidence about a Soviet espionage network actively working to acquire information about nuclear weapons. He alleged that an unnamed assistant to U.S. Secretary of State Edwatd Stettinius was a Soviet agent. FBI Director Hoover believed that Gouzenko was referring to Alger Hiss. Hoover had put a wiretap on Hiss's home phone and had Hiss and his wife investigated and surveilled for the next two years.
Hiss loudly denied Chambers's accusations. According to Nixon biographer Farrell, he did so quite arrogantly, something that made Nixon all the more determined to net his prey. Hiss insisted on appearing before HUAC to clear himself. Testifying on August 5, 1948, he denied having ever been a Communist or having personally met Chambers. It looked as if HUAC had a weak case against Hiss, and the committee drew criticism from President Harry Truman and in the press. The Committee was reluctant to proceed with its investigation, but Nixon would not relent. Nixon layer described Hiss as, "insolent," "condescending," and "insulting in the extreme".
The Committee voted to make Nixon chair of a subcommittee that would seek to determine who was lying, Hiss or Chambers. Hiss was shown a photograph of Chambers and said that Chambers' face "might look familiar". He asked to see Chambers in person. Given this opportunity, Hiss admitted that he had indeed known Chambers, but under the name "George Crosley". Hiss said that in the mid-1930s he had sublet his apartment to this "Crosley" and had given him an old car. Chambers denied ever having used the alias Crosley. Hiss was given the opportunity to directly quesion his accuser when both men both appeared before a HUAC subcommittee on August 17, 1948. They had the following exchange:
HISS. Did you ever go under the name of George Crosley?
CHAMBERS. Not to my knowledge.
HISS. Did you ever sublet an apartment on Twenty-ninth Street from me?
CHAMBERS. No; I did not.
HISS. You did not?
CHAMBERS. No.
HISS. Did you ever spend any time with your wife and child in an apartment on Twenty-ninth Street in Washington when I was not there because I and my family were living on P Street?
CHAMBERS. I most certainly did.
HISS. You did or did not?
CHAMBERS. I did.
HISS. Would you tell me how you reconcile your negative answers with this affirmative answer?
CHAMBERS. Very easily, Alger. I was a Communist and you were a Communist.
Chambers's statements before the committee were privileged against defamation suits. Hiss challenged Chambers to repeat them without benefit of such protection. When, on the national radio program Meet the Press, Chambers publicly called Hiss a communist, Hiss instituted a libel lawsuit against him. On November 17, 1948, to support his allegations he produced physical evidence consisting of sixty-five pages of re-typed State Department documents, the last of which was was dated April 1, 1938. He also had four notes in Hiss's handwriting summarizing the contents of State Department cables. Chambers claimed Hiss had given them to him in 1938 and that Hiss's wife Priscilla had retyped them on the Hisses' Woodstock typewriter for Chambers to pass along to the Soviets. One of the handwritten notes copied the contents of a telegram, received January 28, 1938, concerning the November and December 1937 arrest and disappearance in Moscow of a Latvian-born man and his wife, an American citizen. Hiss denied writing the note, but handwriting experts confirmed it was Hiss's handwriting.
By introducing these documents, Chambers admitted he had previously lied, opening both Hiss and himself to perjury charges. On December 2, Chambers led HUAC investigators to a pumpkin patch on his Maryland farm. Stored in a hollowed-out pumpkin in which he had hidden them the previous day, Chambers produced five rolls of 35 mm film that he said came from Hiss in 1938, as well. Some of the film contained images of State Department documents that were classified at the time.
Hiss was charged with two counts of perjury. He was not charged with espionage because the statute of limitations had run out. Chambers was never charged with a crime. Hiss went to trial twice. The first trial, which began on May 31, 1949, ended in a hung jury on July 7. Hiss called a number of prominent character witnesses at his first trial including future Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, Supreme Court Justices Felix Frankfurter, and Stanley Reed, and former Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis. President Truman famously called the trial "a red herring."
The second trial, presided over by Judge Henry W. Goddard, lasted from November 17, 1949, to January 21, 1950. This time Hede Massing, an Austrian-born confessed Soviet spy, who was not permitted to testify at the first trial, provided corroboration of Chambers' story. At the second trial the jury found Hiss guilty. Hiss continued to assert his innocence. On January 25, 1950, Hiss was sentenced to five years' imprisonment on each of the two counts, to run concurrently.
Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson told the media, "I do not intend to turn my back on Alger Hiss." Acheson quoted Jesus from the Bible: "I was a Stranger and ye took me in; Naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me." Acheson's remarks enraged Nixon, who accused Acheson of blasphemy.
Hiss's conviction was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (the decision is reported at 185 F.2d 822), and the Supreme Court of the United States denied a writ of certiorari (reported at 340 U.S. 948). Publicity surrounding the case further enhanced Nixon's political. Just four years after first being elected as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nixon was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1950. Then, just two years after that in 1952, he became Vice President of the United States.
As for Hiss, he maintained his innocence for the rest of his life. In 1957, he published a book entitled In the Court of Public Opinion in which he attacked the prosecution's case against him, and maintained that the typewritten documents traced to his typewriter had been forged. In 1988 Hiss wrote an autobiography, Recollections of a Life, in which he maintained his innocence. He fought his perjury conviction until his death at age 92, from emphysema on November 15, 1996, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.