Six Crises by Richard Nixon Read Free Book Online Page B

and himself. Much more was at stake than what happened to either of them as individuals. Turning to me, he said with great feeling, “This is what you must get the country to realize.”
    The visit was not too productive in obtaining any additional information about his relationship with Hiss. But one incident occurred to confirm my conviction that when he spoke of Hiss, he was talking about someone he knew rather than someone whose life he had studied. I happened to mention the fact that I was a member of the Society of Friends. He said that he and his family attended the Friends’ meeting in Westminster. He recalled that Mrs. Hiss, at the time he knew her, also had been a Friend.
    Then his eyes lit up, he snapped his fingers, and he said, “That reminds me of something. Priscilla often used the plain speech in talking to Alger at home.”
    I knew from personal experience that my mother never used the plain speech in public but did use it in talking with her sisters and her mother in the privacy of our home. Again I recognized that someone else who knew Priscilla Hiss could have informed Chambers of this habit of hers. But the way he told me about it, rather than what he said, again gave me an intuitive feeling that he was speaking from firsthand rather than second-hand knowledge.
    Two days later I asked Bert Andrews to drive with me to Chambers’ farm so that I could get his impression as well. Andrews grilled him as only a Washington newspaperman can, and Chambers met the test to Andrews’ complete satisfaction. On this visit another small but somewhat significant item came up which seemed to corroborate Chambers’ story. I asked him if he had anything in the house which Hiss might have given him during the time that he knew him. Chambers brought out a volume of Audubon prints which he said Hiss had given him one Christmas. As we thumbed through it, he pointed to a drawing of a hooded warbler and said, “As I recall, the Hisses had this in the dining room of one of the houses they lived in.”
    As a final test, two days before Hiss was to appear on August 16, I asked Bob Stripling to drive to Westminster with me. Stripling had almost a sixth sense in being able to distinguish the professional “Redbaiters” from those who were honestly trying to help the Committee in its work of exposing the Communist conspiracy. He, too, had been convinced by this time that Chambers knew Hiss. But as we drove back to Washington, he made a most perceptive observation: “I don’t think Chambers has yet told us the whole story. He is holding something back. He is trying to protect somebody.”
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    When our Sub-committee met again in executive session in Washington on August 16, we found a very different Alger Hiss from the confident, poised witness who had appeared before us in public session just ten days before. Then he had succeeded in giving the impression of being completely honest and forthright—trying his best to enlighten some clumsy Congressmen who had either been taken in by a vicious maniac or who were fooled in a terrible case of mistaken identity.
    Now he was twisting, turning, evading, and changing his story to fitthe evidence he knew we had. Despite our efforts to keep Chambers’ testimony of August 7 secret, Hiss had learned that Chambers had been able to give us intimate details of their association together.
    After a few preliminary questions, I had the Committee clerk show Hiss two pictures of Chambers. Then I asked him: “After looking at those pictures, I ask you if you can remember that person, either as Whittaker Chambers or as Carl or as any other individual you have met.”
    Ten days before, he had given everyone at the public hearing the distinct impression that the face was completely unfamiliar to him. Now Hiss was to make the first of several subtle but significent changes in his story. He said: “In the