THE HISS CASE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 740, 18 September 1953, Page 5

THE HISS CASE

Sir,+Ais an inveterate reader of reviews, I found "Teacher’s" review of the Hiss case most interesting-especi-ally as two months’ search has yielded me only one of four books connected with the trial. The "suggestion of a bewildered jury overlooks one thing-the crux of the case was a simple matter of fact. Chambers produced secret documents stolen some 13 years before and typed on Hiss’s typewriter. The defence admitted that. Their dates showed they had been typed after Hiss claimed he had last met Chambers. They were papers to which Hiss had access. Chambers claimed Hiss gave -them. to him Treason cases differ from ordinary criminal cases in that apparent integrity .is no guarantee of a man’s innocence, It is the first essential of a successful spy that he should be above suspicion, In this case one man was obviously a monu-. mental liar and. as in most detective stories, the little lies gave the truth away. The little lies were on matters of fact. How did Chambers get the documents? Had he known Hiss after Hiss claimed he last saw Chambers? Chambers’s explanations. of his perjury, if improbable, are at least plaus- ible. His claim that he denied having known Hiss originally so as not to implicate Hiss is in the hallowed tradition of British schoolboys who do not implicate their mates when caught, and no one calls them psychopathic neurotics. But I have yet to see any other explanation than guilt or lapse of memory for the substantial number of retractions by Hiss and his wife between and during each trial. Repeated sudden corrections of memory when statements were disproved strain my credibility. I refer particularly to the many intimate details

of the Hisses’ life given by Chambers and his wife to prove, they knew the Hisses when the documents were stolen; details of the car disposal; of the Hisses’ houses; of Mrs. Hiss’s typing course and nursing course application. The Hisses denied these facts until the F.B.I. proved them true. Mémory lapses? Jowitt’s arguments based on Chambers’s suicide attempt are one reason his book was withdrawn in U.S.A. "Chambers gives a detailed account (in Wit-: ness) of how, after he discovered the documents which were ultimately to satisfy the courts that, Hiss and not he was lying, he decided to let those documents prove his innocence and the guilt of the Communist Party, and he took steps to take refuge in death from the persecution to which he was being subjected. . . Lord Jowitt alleges that Chambers attempted to commit suicide before he produced the documents, and draws sinister conclusions from this. . . He goes very far in suggesting that the jury might hdve brought in a different verdict Had they known what, in fact. never happened."-Rebecca West. I, too, doubt whether the. typist's identity could be proved from docu"ments themselves. More important, how did. they come to be typed on the Hiss typewriter? I suggest, the jury was more influenced by lack of any possible explanation of Chambers having them other poan through Hiss’s complicity. How could Chambers obtain 65 topsecret dccuments from Hiss’s department plus memos in Hiss’s handwriting (which Hiss’s superiors. claim should never have been committed to memos) and type copies on Hiss’s machine. stil] in Hiss’s possession, without Hiss ever even meeting him? For what. possible purpose this fantastic manoeuvring 13

years before a trial which it is doubtful Chambers could ever have foreseen? I doubt the jury’s bewilderment. The one thing they had to decide was which man was lying about facts. A majority of the first jury and all of the second, after hearing all the evidence and observing both men, decided Hiss was guilty. Then, too, they probably knew more of Communist philosophy. than Jowitt, who has never heard of a philosophy which excuses the abuse of the confidence of a man’s- country by making available secret documents tu

outsiders.

D.E.

H.

(Dunedin).

(Abridged.-Ed. )