The Confrontation

As the congressional investigations of Communism went into their third week, one fact stood out in everyone's mind: someone was lying in his teeth. The someone was either handsome, 43-year-old Alger Hiss, until 1947 a top official in the State Department, or ex-Communist Courier Whittaker Chambers, now a senior editor of TIME. By week's end, it was clear that on one vital point it was not Whittaker Chambers who was lying.

Chambers had testified that, in the early 1930s, he had been a close friend or Alger Hiss in a Communist elite corps, charged with infiltrating high Government offices (TIME, Aug. 16). Hiss had unequivocally denied that he was ever a Communist or that he had ever known Chambers. But last week he admitted that he had indeed known Chambers--although under the name of George Crosley (a pseudonym Chambers could not remember ever having used). The background of his admission made the most fascinating story of the hearings to date.

Spring Water. It began when the House Un-American Activities Committee sat down with Chambers in closed session to hear the proof of his friendship with Hiss. Chambers' new testimony showed an amazing knowledge of Alger Hiss's private life. With meticulous precision, Chambers described the interior of three houses and one apartment occupied by Hiss. He remembered a car Hiss had once owned--an old jalopy with a hand-operated windshield wiper. He recalled that Mrs. Hiss,* like himself, was a Quaker. Once, said Chambers, Hiss had told him a boyhood story of using a child's wagon to peddle bottled spring water to the neighbors.

California's Representative Richard Nixon asked if Hiss had any hobbies that Chambers might remember.

Yes, said Chambers, Hiss was a birdwatcher.

Did he ever mention any special birds ?

Yes, a prothonotary warbler. He said he had seen one around Glen Echo (near the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal outside Washington).

Beautiful Bird. When Alger Hiss was ushered into another secret hearing last week, the committeemen led him carefully back over the same ground. He confirmed the arrangements of his apartment. He also remembered his old car, a 1929 model A Ford. To a question about his hobbies, he replied: tennis and ornithology.

At that point, Committee Investigator Robert Stripling turned to Pennsylvania's Representative John McDowe'l. The con= versation went somewhat as follows:

Stripling: Why Mac, you're an ornithologist, aren't you?

McDowell: Yes, I am. By the way, Mr. Hiss, did you ever see a prothonotary warbler?

Hiss: Yes, I have. It's a beautiful bird. I saw one down by the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.

Deep-Voiced Man. With that, the committeemen informed Hiss coldly that his testimony corroborated Chambers' in detail. How could he explain such point-by-point testimony from a man he said he had never met? Hiss produced a note pad from his pocket. On it, he said, he had written the name of the only man he had ever known who might possibly fit Chambers' description. The name was "George Crosley."

According to Hiss, "Crosley" was a free-lance writer who had come to him when he was an investigator for the Nye Committee (which investigated the munitions industry during 1934 and 1935). Crosley had asked for help and material in preparing a series of articles. The next summer, Hiss went on, he had sublet his apartment to Crosley, since he had already moved into a house on Georgetown's P Street. Because Crosley also needed a car, said Hiss, he made his old Ford a part of the deal.

The whole episode had ended unpleasantly a few months later, Hiss concluded. Crosley had never paid any rent and Hiss had broken off with him. Since then, he had never seen Crosley again and at no time did he know that Crosley was a Communist. He remembered him only as a deep-voiced man with bad teeth.

Poor Moods. Reading over the testimony that night, Nixon decided that Crosley and Whittaker Chambers must be the same man. Next morning a subcommittee decided on an immediate face-to-face meeting between Chambers and Alger Hiss. They hurriedly telephoned both to meet the subcommittee that afternoon in Manhattan's Commodore Hotel.

Accompanied by a committee investigator, Chambers was led to one room of Suite 1400 in the Commodore. Alger Hiss arrived in the suite's other room at 5:38. He was in a bitter mood. He had been forced to cancel a dinner date; he was furious because the discussion of a lie detector test (which Hiss later refused to take) had leaked out after the secret committee hearings; he was distressed because of the death of Harry White (see below). Said he: "I'm not sure I'm, in the best possible mood for testimony. But I do not for a moment want to miss the opportunity of seeing Mr. Chambers."

The door opened and Chambers walked in. "Mr. Hiss," said Nixon, "the man standing here is Whittaker Chambers. I ask you now if you have ever known that man before?"

Hiss stood confronting Chambers, his face angry and set. He asked Chambers to talk. Chambers began: "My name is Whittaker Chambers . . ." While Chambers went on, finally reading from an old copy of Newsweek, Hiss walked slowly over to him, examined him from every side, asked him to open his mouth wider. Hiss looked hard at Chambers' teeth. He asked: "Are you George Crosley?" Chambers quietly replied: "Not to my knowledge." He remarked that Chambers' voice seemed less resonant than Crosley's, that his teeth were less stained. But when Chambers explained that he had been fitted out with a new dental plate, Hiss tentatively confirmed his earlier identification of him as Crosley.

Not a Red Cent. Then Hiss added a few details of his experience with Crosley. When Crosley, his wife and baby were ready to move into the Hiss apartment, their furniture had not yet arrived. As a result, said Hiss, he invited the Crosleys to spend "two, or three or four consecutive nights" in his Georgetown house.

In spite of his hospitality, Hiss insisted, Crosley had never paid a nickel for either apartment or the old Ford car. On the contrary, he had touched Hiss for $35 to $40 in loans. Said Hiss: "I never got back a red cent in currency. But he brought me a rug as part payment. I still have it."

If he had known Crosley that well, the committeemen wondered, why had it been so difficult to make an identification? Snapped Hiss: "If this man had said he was George Crosley I would have had no difficulty in identification. He denied it right here." Then he asked permission to fire a few more questions at Chambers.

Again Chambers said he could not remember ever having used the name George Crosley. He denied that he had ever sublet an apartment from Hiss. But he did agree promptly that he had lived in the Hiss apartment. At this apparent contradiction Hiss exploded: "Would you tell me how you reconcile your negative answers with this affirmative answer?" "Very easily, Alger," Chambers answered quietly. "I was a Communist and you were a Communist."

Chambers continued: "As I have testified before, I came to Washington as a . . . functionary of the American Communist Party. I was connected with the underground group of which Mr. Hiss was a member. Mr. Hiss and I became friends. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Hiss himself suggested that I go [to his apartment] and I accepted gratefully. I brought no furniture, I might add."

At that point Hiss abruptly broke in. "I don't need to ask Mr. Whittaker Chambers any more questions. I am now perfectly prepared to identify this man as George Crosley ... on the basis of his own statement that he was in my apartment at the time when I saw he was there. If he had lost both eyes and taken his nose off I would be sure."

Then he turned angrily on the committeemen: "I would like to say that to come here and discover that the ass under the lion's skin is Crosley--I don't know why your committee didn't pursue this careful method of interrogation at an earlier date before all of this publicity."

Later that night, Alger Hiss called a press conference in his Manhattan apartment at 22 East 8th Street. He insisted that his brief acquaintance with Crosley-Chambers did not in the least affect his complete denial of any dealings with Chambers as a fellow Communist. He was not and never had been a Communist, Hiss repeated. Said he: "I do not believe in Communism. I believe it is a menace to the United States." Thus it appeared that either Alger Hiss never was a Communist or, if he once was, still is.

Greater Responsibility. Up until the confrontation at the Commodore there had been nothing to choose between the accusations of Whittaker Chambers and the indignant denials of Alger Hiss. Now, on one pivotal question, Chambers had turned out to be dead right and Hiss to be dead wrong.

On top of that, there seemed to be no record of any free-lance writer who used the name of George Crosley. Committee investigators, thumbing through old Washington files, could find no evidence that a lease had ever been made out to him. There was no title in his name for the Hiss car. Hiss himself admitted that he had never seen any of Crosley's articles (although Chambers had been writing regularly under his own name for the New Masses, where his picture appeared in 1931).

Morally, if not legally, it was up to Alger Hiss to prove that there ever was such a person as George Crosley. This week the committee would have Chambers and Hiss confront each other in public. But the committee had a greater responsibility than merely permitting the public to compare two stories. By all the means at its command, it had to find out--and tell the people--which story was true.

-Alger Hiss is Mrs. Hiss's second husband. As Priscilla Hobson, she was a TIME copy chief in 1927 and 1928.

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