Apr 19

Additional Notes on Donald Hiss

Hiss Case Evidence, Hiss Case Figures, Uncategorized No Comments »

A few days ago, I posted that I had written an article for the  Web site on Donald Hiss, reporting that the FBI had essentially exonerated him. Here’s the thing about researching this case (and probably about historical research in general). You always find something new to add to the picture. Donald Hiss’s story is a perfect example. Tonight, I was doing some research on my own book when I found two bits of information from Donald that help exonerate  his brother. A few weeks ago, I found a third. I suppose I should add them to the original story, and I will, but I thought I’d share them here first.

Two of them come via John Lowenthal, who interviewed Donald and his wife for his 1980 documentary, “The Trials of Alger Hiss.” If I recall correctly, that interview ended up on the cutting room floor, but the transcript is sitting here in my office, and I opened it tonight to check something. That’s when I came across these two fascinating comments by  Donald that I hadn’t seen reported before. (Of course, it’s very possible that they had been, but that I’ve simply forgotten.)

In 1948, Whittaker Chambers also claimed that Donald Hiss had been a friend of his. To support that allegation (Donald Hiss said he had never met Chambers), he offered a few nuggets of information about Donald – the kinds of insidey tidbits that only friends would know. Chambers had a habit of doing this, and usually this was when he would put his foot in his mouth. For example, he claimed to have visited the home of his alleged first underground contact, Max Bedacht, and nearly got run over by his eight kids. It turned out Bedacht only had two kids, and they were grown. The story that he had eight originated with a piece of doggeral that a fellow party member had jokingly written about Bedacht – a fact that Chambers would have been aware of had he actually known Bedacht.

Anyway, Chambers made similar errors about Donald Hiss. One, which has been reported before, concerned his statement that Donald was married to the daughter of a  State Department official named  Cotton. This was completely false. Hiss’s wife Catherine was friendly with Cotton’s family. Her last name was Jones. That Chambers also referred to Cotton as  “a Mr. Cotton in the State Department,” also revealed his lack of  real knowledge, as Cotton was one of the best known members of the Hoover administration.

But there was another indication that Chambers was lying about his relationship with Donald Hiss (and thus, by extension, Alger). Alger Hiss had sued Chambers for libel in 1948. Later that fall, depositions were taken in the suit, and in those depositions Chambers voluntarily served up another detail about Donald Hiss’s wife, describing in detail her “lovely, long, golden hair” in the 1930s. The problem was that her hair was jet black at the time.

Here’s the second. After Chambers’ first appearance before HUAC in which he claimed that Alger and Donald had been secret members of the Communist Party, Hiss responded by telling the committee that he had no idea who Chambers was (It turned out that Chambers was using a pseudonym at the time, and he acknowledged that Hiss never knew him under his real name). The conservative members of the committee said Hiss was lying when he said he didn’t recognize Chambers from recent photographs of him. Years later, historian Allen Weinstein in his book “Perjury,” also said Hiss was lying. But Donald Hiss told Lowenthal a revealing story. After that first public appearance by Chambers on August 3, 1948, Alger Hiss drove down to Washington from Vermont to testify in response. The night before his appearance he stayed with Donald. Here’s what Donald told Lowenthal:

“He was to see his lawyer from Baltimore, Mr. [William] Marbury, the next morning, before he was to testify. And he had brought with him some photographs. He was going over them with me, saying, ‘Look at this photograph. Have you ever seen that face?'”

“And I said, ‘No.’

“And we went through all of them, and he mentioned one, that there was something vaguely familiar about that one. I said, ‘Well, tell Bill. But I don’t see anything that I can recognize.'”

Why would they have had such a conversation if Hiss had recognized Chambers? And if you don’t believe that they did have that conversation or that Alger was lying while saying he didn’t recognize Chambers from the photographs, then here’s the third item, the one I turned up a few weeks ago. It’s a letter to Alger from Donald written in 1963, a private note between brothers in which Donald mentions a new book by H. Montgomery Hyde (“The Quiet Canadian”) that discusses the possibility of forgery by typewriter.

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So the question is, why would Donald have sent that note if he knew that Chambers’ allegations regarding the both of them were accurate?

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Apr 08

The FBI Exonerates Donald Hiss

Hiss Case Evidence No Comments »

Files released under the Freedom of Information Act (and now available for downloading on the Bureau’s FOIA page) show that an investigation into Chambers’ charges that Alger Hiss’s younger brother had also been a member of Communist underground proved that Chambers’ charges were false. Of course, the FBI kept it a secret for a few decades. You can find our report here.

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Nov 09

A 1973 Film on the Hiss Case

Hiss Case Evidence, Hiss Case Figures, Uncategorized No Comments »

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A search on YouTube just happened to turn up this two-part film from 1973 when Watergate was making national headlines. The source is unknown, but the interviews with investigative reporter Fred J. Cook (The Unfinished Story of Alger Hiss) and reporter James G. Crowley of the Boston Globe are well done. Here’s the link.

Nov 02

Inside Nathaniel Weyl’s Brain

From the Defense Files, Hiss Case Evidence, Hiss Case Figures No Comments »

For years, Alger Hisss detractors have cited the testimony of Nathaniel Weyl as proof of his guilt. For those who arent familiar with Weyl, he worked in Department of Agriculture while Hiss was there, and he claimed in 1952 to have been the so-called Ware Group of secret communists and that Hiss had also been a member.
But there were lots of problems with Weyls testimony. For example, although he had many opportunities to do so, he never said anything about Hisss involvement until long after Hiss was convicted. Also, no one else, even those who had admitted being part of the group, remembered Weyls association with it. In fact, even Whittaker Chambers never mentioned him. There are other problems with his testimony, but still, historians such as Allen Weinstein, G. Edward White and John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, lean on his tenuous story.
The other day, I was sorting through some files when I came across this fascinating document. Its a two page memo by Elinor Ferry, a journalist and investigator who helped piece together Hisss motion for a new trial in the 1950s and then began  but never finished  a book on the case. In the course of her research, Ferry spoke to a Washington D.C.-based psychiatrist named Benjamin Weininger. Weininger, it seemed, had half the members of the Washington area Communist Party as patients, and one of them was Nathaniel Weyl. If these notes are correct, Weyls testimony was the result of a phony recovered memory ploy.
The notes also mentioned the story of Katherine Wills Perlo, another account cited by  Weinstein as proof of Chambers story. Perlo, who had once been married to Victor Perlo, wrote a letter to president in 1944, claiming that her husband was part of an underground group. Weinstein also relies on her letter to support Chambers, but Weininger also saw her and his own thoughts on her credibility.
I should mention that when I first saw this interview, I mentioned it to Bill Reuben, who didnt believe it for a second, saying that the Party forbade its members from undergoing psychotherapy, Maybe, but this account seems credible.
Here is the document, in Ferrys handwriting. The source is Harvard Law School Library.

For years, Alger Hiss’s detractors have cited the testimony of Nathaniel Weyl as proof of his guilt. For those who aren’t familiar with Weyl, he worked in Department of Agriculture while Hiss was there, and he claimed in 1952 to have been a member of the so-called Ware Group of secret communists and that Hiss had been as well.

But there were lots of problems with Weyl’s testimony. For example, although he had many opportunities to do so, he never said anything about Hiss’s alleged involvement until long after Hiss was convicted. Also, no one else, even those who had admitted being part of the group, remembered Weyl’s association with it. Even Whittaker Chambers, who claimed to be the group’s courier, never mentioned him. There are other problems with his testimony, but nonetheless, historians such as Allen Weinstein, G. Edward White and John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, continue to lean on his tenuous story.

The other day, I was sorting through some files when I came across this fascinating document. It’s a two-page memo by George Eddy (1907-1998), a former New Deal economist, who researched but never published a book on the Hiss case. In the course of his research, Eddy spoke to a Washington D.C.-based psychiatrist named Benjamin Weininger. At times it seemed that Weininger had half the members of the Washington area Communist Party as clients, and one of them was Nathaniel Weyl. If these notes are correct, there are even more reasons to suspect Weyl’s testimony.

The notes also mentioned the story of Katherine Wills Perlo, another account cited by  Weinstein as proof of Chambers story. Perlo, who had once been married to Victor Perlo, wrote a letter to FDR in 1944, claiming that her husband was part of an underground group. As it turns out, Weininger also saw her and also offered his insights into her credibility.

I should mention that when I first saw this interview, I mentioned it to Bill Reuben, who didn’t believe it for a second, saying that the Party forbade its members from undergoing psychotherapy, Maybe, but this account seems credible.

Here is the document, in Eddy’s handwriting. The source is Harvard Law School Library.

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Aug 10

Finally After 70 Years — The Actual Berle Notes

Hiss Case Evidence 1 Comment »

Until now, Adolf A. Berle’s original notes from his historic September 2, 1939 meeting with Whittaker Chambers and Isaac Don Levine have never been seen by scholars or historians, but thanks to Lewis Hartshorn, who is completing a book on the case, and Bob Clark of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, they are now being posted online after Harshorn and Clark turned them up at the library.

A typewritten transcript of the notes — but not Berle’s original handwritten pages — was introduced at Hiss’s trials. With it came some controversy, mostly surrounding the question of  whether Chambers (who in the meeting was talking about his alleged underground life for the first time to a public official) and Levine told Berle, who was then the Assistant Secretary of State, that the people they alleged were associated with the Communist underground, were also engaged in espionage. In 1948, Levine told HUAC that Chambers did say they were spies, and the heading on the typewritten notes, “Underground Espionage Agent,” has led many people to believe him. Indeed, the notes with the heading “Underground Espionage Agent,” have been reprinted widely. The Web site of John Earl Haynes (the co-author with Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev of the recent book Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America which  says that Hiss was in fact guilty of espionage) offers a version of the typescript with the heading set off , the implication being that he agrees with those who say that Chambers was labeling Hiss and the others as Soviet spies. Even Ann Coulter has weighed in, writing in her book Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism that Chambers did inform Berle about espionage rings in Washington, but that when Berle tried to speak with President Roosevelt about it, he was told to go “f…. himself.” Chambers said Berle was told to go jump in a lake, but, according to  Berle, neither was true.

Chambers also contradicted Levine’s claim about espionage, writing in Witness, “At no time in our conversation can I remember anyone’s mentioning the ugly word espionage.” He went on to say, however, that the implication was there, and he fanned the controversy when he wrote,  “For when four years after that memorable conversation, his notes were finally taken out of a secret file and turned over to the F.B.I., it was found that Adolf Berle himself had headed them: Underground Espionage Agent.”

In his own interviews with the FBI and the defense, in his HUAC testimony and his private comments recorded in his diary, Berle insisted that Chambers never charged the people he named with espionage. This is borne out by an entry in Berle’s diary from 1952, after the Saturday Evening Post began serializing Witness: “At no time does he record what he said to me, and thus gives the impression that he told me everything he told many years later in the Hiss case. The fact, of course, was that he did not state anything he told me as personal knowledge — but as something he had heard about while in the Communist Party in New York. He did not even remotely indicate that he personally had been engaged in the operation. He did not charge individuals with espionage — they were merely ‘sympathizers’ who would be hauled out later when the great day came. He would not take his story to the FBI. He would not even stand to it himself — he would not himself verify or stick to the story.

“Further, under some cross-examination, he qualified everything to the point of substantial withdrawal. He also told of having fled the Party, and having been in fear of his life, spending a long time in flight and fearing armed attack, and so on. I thought I was dealing with a man who thought he was telling the truth but was probably afflicted with a neurosis.”

But if Chambers didn’t mention espionage, why did the notes have that heading? The answer as we can finally see is they really didn’t. Looking at the actual notes, it appears that Berle was referring not to Chambers but to the first item on his list: a description of a New York City dentist named Philip Rosenbliett, who Chambers identified as one of the leaders of the underground. If that is the correct interpretation (and there’s no reason to think otherwise, since both Chambers and Berle essentially agreed on this point), it knocks out one of the accusations that have been continually leveled against Hiss: that Chambers’ 1948 allegations about espionage were more credible because he had actually leveled those charges nine years before.

Here is the first page of Berle’s notes. You can also download all six pages of the notes here.

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Mar 20

A Curious Omission

From the FOIA, Hiss Case Evidence No Comments »

This week’s mail brought a new batch of FBI documents. These are sometimes called “see references,” documents that contain cross references to people whose files we have requested. Although they are often not complete documents, they still can be fascinating and illuminating. The document I want to talk about here is both, in part because it again demonstrates the selectivity of those historians who have tried to build cases for Alger Hiss’s guilt.

The cross reference document in question is dated October 20, 1949. It reports on an interview the FBI had with journalist Joseph Freeman, a former member of the Communist Party who knew Whittaker Chambers personally during the period. (For more on Freeman, check out his memoir, “An American Testament.”)

To begin with, there’s this fascinating tidbit about how Freeman nearly got into a fight with an inebriated Chambers. Here’s the paragraph:

“[Chambers proposed] to Joseph Freeman that they become friends. Freeman stated he readily agreed to this proposition and offered to shake hands with Chambers but he declined this approach. Chambers stated that it was his habit that when he made friends that he and the other party slash their wrists and mingle their blood as a token of friendship. Freeman said he naturally refused such a move and after an extended discussion the proposal was again made that Freeman and Chambers become friends. Freeman recalled that he again offered his hand to Chambers and this time Chambers clasped Freeman’s fingers with his left hand and at the same time attempted to slash his wrists as previously described. Freeman said that a brief melee followed which was terminated through the intercession of the bartender and several other guests at the saloon they were visiting.”

Sam Tanenhaus has a reference to this interview in his biography of Whittaker Chambers, but curiously only mentions another aspect of it: Chambers’ later refusal to give Freeman a job at Time magazine. The story is more than gossip, however, since Chambers swore during his appearance before the HUAC on August 7, “I was strictly forbidden by the Communist Party to taste liquor at any time.” (Chambers made this statement to support his inaccurate allegation that the Hisses were teetotalers.)

Oddly, the interview also contains the kind of statement that would have gotten Allen Weinstein very excited: Freeman told the FBI that shortly after being made editor of The New Masses, Chambers disappeared, and the rumor was that he was working for OGPU. Weinstein doesn’t report it, however, although he does say in “Perjury” that Freeman was one of those who mentioned Chambers’ apparent instability,

But here’s the statement by Freeman that should have at least been mentioned by Tanenhaus:

“Mr. Freeman stated he had never heard any comments during his affiliation with the Communist Party or since his break in 1939 which would indicate to him that Hiss was ever a member of the Communist Party or even a sympathizer…

“Freeman said that during his period in the Communist Party, he reported numerous affairs and conferences for the “New Masses”, including a detailed report on the hearings before the Nye Committee on Munitions. Freeman was unable to recall Hiss’ affiliation with this group. He pointed out that whenever he was covering meetings of such a nature as the Nye Committee, he was constantly on the alert for ‘available’ sources of information of individuals who were known to be sympathetic with the Communist Party. Freeman said that he positively could not recall Alger Hiss ever being identified to him by any of his Washington contacts as a person who could be approached for information.”

For those who unfamiliar with the facts of the case. Chambers said he was introduced to Hiss during the period when Hiss moved from the Agriculture Department to the Nye Committee because of Hiss’s association with the Communist Party at that time. The Nye Committee’s investigation into profiteering by the munitions industry during World War I was headline news across the country, and Freeman is correct in saying that the Communist Party also followed the story of capitalist malfeasance very closely — as it would have been expected to. Thus, Freeman is offering important insight into one of the key aspects of Chambers’ allegations against Hiss.

Now, one may or may not choose to believe Freeman, but clearly his comments were pertinent both to Tanenhaus’s portrait of Chambers and to his thesis that Hiss was guilty, but you won’t find either one in his book.

Here’s a look at the document:

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Mar 13

Somewhere, Bill Reuben is smiling

From the FOIA, Hiss Case Evidence 1 Comment »

Several years ago, I did a series of taped interviews with Bill Reuben going over Allen Weinstein’s “Perjury” allegation by allegation. It makes for fascinating reading, and I hope to post the entire interview one day.

Anyway, toward the end of the interview, Bill leaned over and spoke into the microphone and said, “I’ve always wanted to get something on the record before I died, and it’s this: The only two people connected to the Hiss case with any real typing ability and who could have typed the Baltimore Documents were Pat Nixon and Esther Chambers.”

I thought of that today when I opened the latest packet of information from the FBI. This one contained the FBI’s file on Pat Nixon. As I leafed through the file, I came across this file and burst out laughing. Take a look:

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Feb 19

The State Department’s Open-Door Policy

From the Defense Files, Hiss Case Evidence No Comments »

I mentioned the other day that I had seen a remarkable letter from someone who offered a startling account of how poor the State Department’s security system really was in the 1930s. I have since found the letter. I would normally post a jpeg of it, but the difficulty in deciphering the handwriting is too distracting. The letter was written to Tony Hiss in the early 1990s by David Gray. Here’s what he had to say:

“… I can’t remember the author. In his last chapter he was summing up all the evidence to show why Alger was guilty and then concluded by saying, “The only alternative hypothesis is to presume that anyone could walk into his office, sit down at his desk and type out their material on his stationery.” When I read that I went into hysterics for I have done just that.

At that time I was a messenger for Western Union. From 1317 New York Ave. we handled most of the government offices in the downtown area. We had little traffic with White House and State — they had their own printers and were also on the pneu (pneumatic line). We did do letter and parcel traffic. When Sumner Welles moved into State, traffic picked up (1938?) and I soon found myself earning lots of money taking his letters out to Capitol Hill and returning with answers. One of the problems was returning to State during the lunch hour especially during the summer. Most frequently there would be no one there. This was not unusual then especially in government offices. Agriculture was the best — State the worst. So I would go down to Welles’s office (114 on the east side) and finding no one there I would tour the first floor and then back to the lobby to shoot the bull with the guard. I can recall one conversation with him that might be pertinent. I asked how he determined which people he passed on and those he made sign-in (and out). His reply was that his main job was to keep out Jews and screwballs and that anyone who looked legitimate could go right in. The latter would include Whittaker Chambers who also had a press card — guaranteed entry anywhere. I would guess he found out the same thing I did. The place was empty at noon. On one occasion I even went up to the old man’s office (212) but promptly got shooed out of there. About this time I was taking a typing course at night school so when time permitted I would return to Mr. Welles’s office and practice my typing on his stationery. The quick brown fox, etc. etc.

Sure this issue must have arisen during the trials. At that time there would have been a number of people around who knew — particularly the door guards. Why it was never aired is a mystery to me.

There must be a lot of people like me still around who can remember the ambience of that time (I am 72.). There was little security. I would ride my bicycle up to the front door of the White House. They used to keep the butler trays popped on the window sills of the foyer — I considered nipping one as a souvenir once. The West Wing was the press room and there was zero security there. I spent many an hour there waiting for press releases. Of that rather scanty crowd I can remember only Merriman Smith and Kenneth Jackson.

People who write about Washington of the pre-war years tend to project backwards their present concept of the place. But that distorts everything. In those days there was no A/C. People took to the great outdoors at every opportunity. A great example is Joe Kennedy’s first office in the government. I think it was the Bureau of Ships — a dingy old barroom at the southeast corner of 10th and New York Avenue. Coming up on the place I would look for his limo — if it wasn’t there the place was likely to be empty. Washington then was a small Southern town — casual, laid-back, unpretentious (P.V. McNutt was an exception). Security was less than minimal, people left their office unlocked and their windows open — unthinkable today.

…
N.B. The line about keeping out Jews is not notable in that context. Most of the embassies in town had some protective measures. Jews were regarded as a plague.”

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Feb 19

More on State Department Security

From the Defense Files, Hiss Case Evidence No Comments »

Maybe “moron” would be more like it. A few years ago, I found a letter from a former messenger who used to deliver documents to the State Department in the 1930s, and in the letter he talked about how after making deliveries, he would regularly slip unnoticed into the file room to practice his typing on an office typewriter.

Anyway, I thought I would post this document, which supports Harrison Salisbury’s recollection about the lack of security at the State Department (see Lewis Hartshorn’s comment in the previous post). This is from the defense files, and I think it’s pretty clear that security at State was, contrary to the prosecution’s assertions at the Hiss trials, rather lax, to say the least, and there’s no question that stealing files would have been a piece of cake for anyone with such intentions.

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Feb 19

How Chambers Could Have Gotten The Documents

From the Defense Files, Hiss Case Evidence 1 Comment »

One of the many abiding mysteries of the Hiss Case was how Chambers got hold of the State Department documents, if he didn’t get them from Alger Hiss. During the trials, the prosecution had Francis Sayre’s secretary, Eunice Lincoln, testify that security around the office was tight, and that no one could have gone in unnoticed.

The defense countered that with the testimony of Charles Darlington, a State Department official in the Trade Agreements division (where some of the documents originated), who said he happened to see Julian Wadleigh — who admitted stealing documents for Chambers — sitting in his office going through his papers. He also said he had gone to Hiss’s office and hadn’t been prevented from entering by Eunice Lincoln.

But it was Chambers himself who inadvertently provided the best evidence about how documents could easily have been stolen from the Department. The story came via a 1969 conversation that Alger Hiss had with the radical journalist Ella Winter, who had met Chambers in the 1930s. Winter then sat with John Lowenthal for a longer interview, in which she told him about the encounter. The interview raises all sorts of questions about what Chambers was up to, but I’m posting a couple of pages here just to focus on explanation about how easy it was to sneak documents out Foggy Bottom. Here are three pages from Lowenthal’s interview notes:

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