Chapter 5: The First HUAC Hearing

A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case

Above, Elizabeth Bentley, who gave evidence at the first HUAC hearing. Pic: Library of Congress

In 1948, Whittaker Chambers is Time Magazine’s Senior Editor. He is forced against his will to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee about his past in the Communist underground. He names seven names, but the Committee zeroes in on one of them — Alger Hiss. With this begins the doom of both men, major climate change in American politics, and the career of a future President.

Further Research:

Episode 5: The best book about the colorful House Un-American Activities Committee is Walter Goodman’s “The Committee: The extraordinary career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1968). Goodman was a liberal, mildly mocking of HUAC, but even he had to admit that 1948 was HUAC’s “Vintage Year.” Pages 247-67 concern the Hiss-Chambers hearings.

Chambers’ account of his testimony is at pages 535-50 of the 1980 Regnery Gateway edition of “Witness.” Other accounts are in Alistair Cooke (1952) at 55-59 and Weinstein (2013) at 13-18.

A lacerating review of Alistair Cooke’s book (the 1950 edition) was written by the great British feminist and essayist Rebecca West, was published in the University of Chicago Law Review in 1952, and is available at https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2686&context=uclrev. I commend Mr. Cooke’s book especially for the narration of the trials, which I believe he covered for The Manchester Guardian. His verbal sketches of the courtroom scenes — the judges, lawyers, and witnesses — are almost worthy of Henry James. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Cooke retained so much of his English detachment that he fell for Hiss’s pose as an honorable gentleman; and Cooke simply does not get the red-hot Chambers. Cooke’s courtroom descriptions are wonderful, but my opinion is that Ms. West’s criticisms are correct. By the 1952 edition of his book, which covers Hiss’s claims of “forgery by typewriter” (Podcast #25), Cooke seems to have concluded that Hiss was guilty.

Richard Nixon, though he was almost silent during Chambers’ first testimony, recorded his impressions of Chambers in the first chapter of his 1962 book “Six Crises” (“Never . . . was a more sensational investigation started by a less impressive witness.”).

The transcript of most of HUAC’s 1948 Communist hearings was published in 2020 by Alpha Editions. “Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government, Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, Second Session, Public Law 601 (Section 121, Subsection Q(2)).” Chambers’ first testimony is at 563-84. I find these transcripts fascinating because you see HUAC’s members first believe Chambers, then Hiss, and then slowly conclude that Hiss is, as Representative Hebert said, the greatest actor that America has ever produced.

Questions: Imagine you are Whittaker Chambers. You are forced in 1948 to testify about your underground Communist past. Do you talk about the chat group only, or the spy ring, too? The first was silly, the second was a crime. Do you name names, including the brilliant man who was your only friend in those years?

About naming the names of your co-conspirators, you had less than 24 hours notice before your testimony. There was no time to reach out and call them. Maybe they reformed shortly after you did and are leading upstanding lives like you are.

Before Congressional committees, there are no rules of evidence. Any question may be asked and any answer may be given. What questions can you anticipate? If you testify only about the chat group and you are asked point blank about spying, what answer will you give? Reveal the crime of spying, or commit perjury? How do you say something, something to alert the government and the public to the truth, without ruining your life and your friends’ lives?

Based just on this first testimony, do you find Chambers generally believable? Totally believable? Do you fear that, while telling the truth most of the time, he may succumb to the temptation to brighten pastel shades into primary colors to make his story more dramatic? What is his motive to tell the truth? What is his motive to lie? Does he seem a reluctant witness? Do you have a feeling that, once he got the subpoena, he thought to himself, “OK, let ‘er rip. There’s gonna be a big scene and I want to be the star”? Do the questions and comments of the HUAC members and staffers, especially Chief Investigator Stripling, give you confidence in HUAC as a finder of fact? What is your impression of the Acting Chairman, Karl Mundt, and of Hiss’s chief defender, the racist, anti-Semite, Democrat, and ardent New Dealer from Mississippi, “Lightnin’ John” Rankin?