Wednesday, Dec. 5, 1962 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
2.7
Guilt of Alger Hiss Still Uncertain
By Fred Zimmerman
(Editor's note: This is the conclusion part article on the Alger Hiss case.)
A general consideration of the Hiss case must revolve on four intriguing factors: the record of hearings and trials, the political atmosphere at the time of the case, the personality and motivation of Chambers, and the personality and past of Hiss.
The official record has been picked to shreds by dozens of commentators, none of whom has found anything decisive. The strange political temperament of that time is
served his sentence. Now, suffering the consequences of having been judged a traitor—whether he is or not—he has little to lose, it seems, in either money or associations by admitting his guilt. (It seems, in fact, that he could live quite comfortably for the rest of his life on what many publishers would be willing to pay him to write an admission of guilt.)
Yet whenever Hiss has addressed himself to the question of guilt or innocence, it has always been to protest his innocence. Since 1948 he has been saying Whittaker Chambers framed him.
Alger Hiss
generally agreed to have had an effect, though of uncertain dimensions, on the outcome of the case. Chambers has died, having left a fascinating book that does not provide the answer.
THE ONLY APPARENT variable would seem to be Alger Hiss. If guilty, he could end the mystery "at any moment he chooses," as Chambers has put it, "with half-a-dozen words." Indeed, why doesn't he? Twelve years is a long time for a man—especially an intellectual, it would appear—to live with a lie. Hiss has
THIS CHAMBERS vehemently denied until his death, of course, bringing the entire complex case down to one basic and troublesome question: Who is lying, Hiss or Chambers? To this, certainly one of the most fascinating riddles of our time, there seems to be no way of finding the right answer (assuming the continued attitude of Hiss himself). It is therefore infinitely disconcerting to read through the books Hiss and Chambers have written about the case, for one is compelled to realize that one book is monstrously fraudulent and the
other is true; that one of these men is a pathological liar while the other is a tragic hero of Shakespearean proportion.
But which is which? That is the question.
Read separately, each of the books is disturbingly convincing. Hiss's book, "In the Court of Public Opinion," is exasperating in its lack of emotion. The former lawyer argues clinically that he has been framed. The dispassionate tone persuasively implies that Hiss still does not understand how he came to be mixed up in the affair.
AND THEN HERE is "Witness," a long and eloquent book, in which Chambers describes his torturous experience with communism and speaks matter-of-factly of his "close association" with Hiss in the party. In these books there is told a remarkable mystery story, and they will probably be studied in years to come, as they are now, by those seeking the missing piece to the puzzle.
But beyond the question of guilt or innocence there are more penetrating questions. These can only be seen dimly now; they may be clearly understood with the detachment that only the future can bring.
For one thing, it can safely be said that the detached American who looks back at the Hiss case in 20 years or so will find little of which to be proud in the way "justice" was administered here. Already there are disturbing points being raised, notably by the Earl Jowitt, about the hearings and the trials. Jowitt has searched the official record in vain for answers to what he considers to be basic lines of inquiry that were never taken. He suggests, as have others, that Hiss may have been guilty but that his guilt was never satisfactorily proved.
OTHER COMMENTATORS wonder about the role played by the press, particularly in the early stages of the case, and whether the conduct of HCUA members should not have left Hiss deserving of aquittal on grounds that he had been prejudicially tried.
The historian of the future can be expected to think not so much of a rare bird, a typewriter and State papers, as about the apparent disservice which can be done to
justice in a frenzied atmosphere such as that in which Hiss was convicted and Joseph Raymond McCarthy was created.
And suppose that someone succeeds in proving "forgery by type-writer," as Hiss pledged in his final statement to the court. Will this not indicate that there existed a reverse conspiracy, and possibly a more dangerous one? Could Whittaker Chambers, unaided, have deceived the U.S. Attorney General's office and the FBI? If not, as Fred Cook points out, Chambers must have had official collaborators—perhaps on several levels—in the perfection of his story.
BUT THE FUTURE, on the other hand, may find Hiss unquestionably guilty of espionage. The American of that time will then be confronted again with the dilemma which has plagued democratic man since his birth: How can both freedom and security be won and maintained? Is such an alliance possible?
His conclusion may be that in a complex world the only safe answer is restrictive legislation and all-powerful "investigating" committees. Perhaps, in fact, that unfortunate decision has already been made.
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