Six Crises Read Online Free Page A

Board Chairman was John Foster Dulles.
    Dulles, at the time of this hearing, was the chief foreign policy adviser to the Republican nominee for President, Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Hiss told the Committee that it was Dulles who had asked him to take the job at the Carnegie Endowment. 2
    Hiss described his work in the State Department—including his preparing the draft of the U. S. position for the Yalta Conference and then accompanying former President Roosevelt to the conference. His manner was coldly courteous and, at times, almost condescending.
    Had he concluded his testimony at this point—after denying any Communist affiliations or sympathy—he would have been home free. Hundreds of witnesses had denied such charges before the Committee in the past and nothing more had come of it because it was then simply their word against that of their accusers. In fact, this was one of the primary reasons the Committee itself was under such attack in the press at that time.
    But here Hiss made his first and what proved to be his irreversible mistake. He was not satisfied with denying Chambers’ charge that he had been a Communist. He went further. He denied ever having heard the name Whittaker Chambers. “The name means absolutely nothing to me,” he said.
    When Robert Stripling, the Committee’s chief investigator, handed him a photograph of Chambers, he looked at it with an elaborate air of concentration and said, “If this is a picture of Mr. Chambers, he is not particularly unusual looking.” He paused and then, looking up at Congressman Karl Mundt, the acting Chairman of the Committee, added: “He looks like a lot of people. I might even mistake him for the Chairman of this Committee.”
    Hiss’s friends from the State Department, other government agencies, and the Washington social community sitting in the front rows of the spectator section broke into a titter of delighted laughter. Hiss acknowledged this reaction to his sally by turning his back on the Committee, tilting his head in a courtly bow, and smiling graciously at his supporters.
    â€œI hope you are wrong in that,” Mundt shot back quickly.
    â€œI didn’t mean to be facetious,” Hiss replied, “but very seriously I would not want to take oath that I had never seen that man. I would like to see him and then I would be better able to tell whether I had ever seen him. Is he here today?”
    He then looked from side to side, giving the impression that he did not have the slightest idea who this mysterious character might be and that he was anxious to see him in the flesh.
    â€œNot to my knowledge,” answered Mundt.
    â€œI hoped he would be,” said Hiss, with an air of apparent disappointment.
    It was a virtuoso performance. Without actually saying it, he left the clear impression that he was the innocent victim of a terrible case of mistaken identity, or that a fantastic vendetta had beenlaunched against him for some reason he could not fathom. But even at that time I was beginning to have some doubts. From considerable experience in observing witnesses on the stand, I had learned that those who are lying or trying to cover up something generally make a common mistake—they tend to overact, to overstate their case. When Hiss had gone through the elaborate show of meticulously examining the photograph of Chambers, and then innocently but also somewhat condescendingly saying that he might even mistake him for the Chairman, he had planted in my mind the first doubt about his credibility.
    Karl Mundt, an experienced and skillful investigator, came back at Hiss strongly. He said, “You realize that this man whose picture you have just looked at, under sworn testimony before this Committee, where all the laws of perjury apply, testified that he called at your home, conferred at great length, saw your wife pick up the telephone and call somebody who he said must have been a Communist,