Six Crises by Richard Nixon Read Free Book Online Page A

campaign. Kersten and I took the train to New York that afternoon and met Dulles in his hotel suite. His brother Allen, who later was to become head of the Central Intelligence Agency, was also there. Both men read the testimony. When they had finished, Foster Dulles paced the floor, his hands crossed behind him. It was a characteristic I was to see many times in the years ahead when we discussed important issues. He stopped finally and said, “There’s no question about it. It’s almost impossible to believe, but Chambers knows Hiss.” Allen Dulles reached the same conclusion.
    I asked Foster Dulles whether he thought I was justified in going ahead with the investigation. He replied without hesitation, “In view of the facts Chambers has testified to, you’d be derelict in your duty as a Congressman if you did not see the case through to a conclusion.”
    I was so wrapped up with the problems of making my own decision that I did not fully realize at the time the political courage and integrity Dulles demonstrated by this statement. He was Dewey’s chief foreign policy adviser in the campaign. If and when Dewey was elected President, which most people thought was pretty certain at that time, it was generally assumed that Foster Dulles would be named Secretary of State. As Chairman of the Board of the Carnegie Endowment he had approved the appointment of Hiss to his present position. It would be acutely embarrassing to him if Hiss should be discredited—or worse, proved to be a Communist. He could have suggested that I delay the proceedings until after the election. But both Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, in this instance and in every case in which I was to work with either of them during my years as Vice President, put the cause of justice and the national interest above any personal or political considerations.
    Still I was not satisfied. I decided to see Chambers again, this time alone and informally, not so much to get more information from him as to gain a more intimate impression of what kind of man he really was. I thought that if I could talk to him alone, I would be better able tosense whether or not he was telling the truth. To avoid any publicity, I made the two-hour trip from Washington to his farm by car. We sat on some dilapidated rocking chairs on his front porch overlooking the rolling Maryland countryside. It was the first of many long and rewarding conversations I was to have with him during the period of the Hiss case, and through the years until his death in 1961. Like most men of quality, he made a deeper impression personally than he did in public. Within minutes, the caricature drawn by the rumormongers of the drunkard, the unstable and unsavory character, faded away. Here was a man of extraordinary intelligence, speaking from great depth of understanding; a sensitive, shy man who had turned from complete dedication to Communism to a new religious faith and a kind of fatalism about the future. One thing that especially impressed me was his almost absolute passion for personal privacy. He seemed particularly to want to spare his children any embarrassment from what he had hoped was a closed chapter in his life. His wife, Esther, was exactly like him in this respect.
    Why then was he willing to sacrifice this privacy and risk his own financial security by testifying against Hiss and by testifying as he had before our Committee? I told him bluntly that many of those who questioned his credibility believed he must have some personal motive for doing what he had to Hiss.
    Chambers replied, “Certainly I wouldn’t have a motive which would involve destroying my own career.” He had come forward out of necessity, he said, as a kind of duty to warn his country of the scope, strength, and danger of the Communist conspiracy in the United States. It would be a great pity if the nation continued to look upon this case as simply a clash of personalities between Hiss