↩ the History · a speech, filed

At the Hotel Commodore

Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, and the Nixon subcommittee · the Hotel Commodore, New York · August 17, 1948
text: Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States, the committee print, proofed against the page photographs · a work of the United States government, in the public domain · the identification through McDowell's ruling
colour carries the act's function; a dashed underline marks a predicted misfire; hover or focus any span for its filing

I am now perfectly prepared to identify this man as George Crosley.

Mr. Nixon. Would you spell that name?

Mr. Hiss. C-r-o-s-l-e-y.

Mr. Nixon. You are sure of one "s"?

Mr. Hiss. That is my recollection. I have a rather good visual memory, and my recollection of his spelling of his name is C-r-o-s-l-e-y. I don't think that would change as much as his appearance.

Mr. Stripling. You will identify him positively now?

Mr. Hiss. I will on the basis of what he has just said positively identify him without further questioning as George Crosley.

Mr. Stripling. Will you produce for the committee three people who will testify that they knew him as George Crosley?

Mr. Hiss. I will if it is possible. Why is that a question to ask me? I will see what is possible. This occurred in 1935. The only people that I can think of who would have known him as George Crosley with certainty would have been the people who were associated with me in the Nye committee.

Mr. Stripling. Can you name three people whom we can subpena who can identify him as George Crosley?

Mr. Hiss. I am afraid I will have to confer with the individual members. The people, as I recall them, who were on that staff—and they were in and out of Washington constantly—were Mr. Raushenbush. I would like to consult Steve Raushenbush. I don't know whether Crosley ever called on him.

Mr. Nixon. Where is he now, Mr. Hiss?

Mr. Hiss. I don't know.

Mr. Stripling. He is in Washington.

Mr. Hiss. Robert Wohlford was one of the investigators.

Mr. Nixon. Do you know where he is?

Mr. Stripling. Department of Justice.

Mr. Hiss. I don't remember the name of the very efficient secretary to Mr. Raushenbush. Miss Elsie Gullender, I think her name was. Do you know the whereabouts of Miss Elsie Gullender? If his first call was at the central office and he was referred to me, Miss Gullender might remember him. She saw many, many people. If his first call was directly to me, as the press had a perfect right to come to any of us, directly and individually, and as the legal assistant, as the counsel, I shared seeing the press with Mr. Raushenbush; and on the particular matters where I was the investigator and counsel presenting the case, I saw practically all the press. In the cases he was handling, he saw practically all the press.

Mr. Nixon. Mr. Hiss, another point that I want to be clear on, Mr. Chambers said he was a Communist and that you were a Communist.

Mr. Hiss. I heard him.

Mr. Nixon. Will you tell the committee whether or not during this period of time that you knew him, which included periods of 3 nights, or 2 or 3 nights, in which he stayed overnight and one trip to New York, from any conversation you ever had any idea that he might be a Communist?

Mr. Hiss. I certainly didn't.

Mr. Nixon. You never discussed politics?

Mr. Hiss. Oh, as far as I recall his conversations—and I may be confusing them with a lot of other conversations that went on in 1934 and 1935—politics were discussed quite frequently.

May I just state for the record that it was not the habit in Washington in those days, when particularly if a member of the press called on you, to ask him before you had further conversation whether or not he was a Communist. It was a quite different atmosphere in Washington then than today. I had no reason to suspect George Crosley of being a Communist. It never occurred to me that he might be or whether that was of any significance to me if he was. He was a press representative and it was my duty to give him information, as I did any other member of the press.

It was to the interest of the committee investigating the munitions industry, as its members and we of its staff saw it, to furnish guidance and information to people who were popularizing and writing about its work.

I would like to say that to come here and discover that the ass under the lion's skin is Crosley, I don't know why your committee didn't pursue this careful method of interrogation at an earlier date before all the publicity. You told me yesterday you didn't know he was going to mention my name, although a lot of people now tell me that the press did know it in advance. They were apparently more effective in getting information than the committee itself. That is all I have to say now.

Mr. McDowell. Well, now, Mr. Hiss, you positively identify——

Mr. Hiss. Positively on the basis of his own statement that he was in my apartment at the time when I say he was there. I have no further question at all. If he had lost both eyes and taken his nose off, I would be sure.

Mr. McDowell. Then, your identification of George Crosely is complete?

Mr. Hiss. Yes, as far as I am concerned, on his own testimony.

Mr. McDowell. Mr. Chambers, is this the man, Alger Hiss, who was also a member of the Communist Party at whose home you stayed?

Mr. Nixon. According to your testimony.

Mr. McDowell. You make the identification positive?

Mr. Chambers. Positive identification.

(At this point, Mr. Hiss arose and walked in the direction of Mr. Chambers.)

Mr. Hiss. May I say for the record at this point, that I would like to invite Mr. Whittaker Chambers to make those same statements out of the presence of this committee without their being privileged for suit for libel. I challenge you to do it, and I hope you will do it damned quickly.

I am not going to touch him [addressing Mr. Russell]. You are touching me.

Mr. Russell. Please sit down, Mr. Hiss.

Mr. Hiss. I will sit down when the chairman asks me.

Mr. Russell, when the chairman asks me to sit down——

Mr. Russell. I want no disturbance.

Mr. Hiss. I don't——

Mr. McDowell. Sit down, please.

Mr. Hiss. You know who started this.

Mr. McDowell. We will suspend testimony here for a minute or two, until I return.

(Short recess.)

Mr. Hiss. Mr. Chairman, would you be good enough to ask Mr. Chambers for the record his response to the challenge that I have just made to him?

Mr. McDowell. That has nothing to do with the pertinency of the matter that the committee is investigating, and I don't feel I should.

Mr. Hiss. I thought the committee was interested in ascertaining truth.

Mr. Stripling. What is the challenge?

Mr. McDowell. That he, Mr. Chambers, would make those statements he has made before the committee in public where they would not be privileged under congressional immunity. That I would take it would be strictly a matter up to Mr. Chambers and Mr. Hiss, but I don't feel the committee has any proper or parliamentary right to ask such a question.

The divergences

"I am now perfectly prepared to identify this man as George Crosley." against "Positive identification." — one of these men is asserting what he takes to be false, and the excerpt proves it without disclosing which. Hiss's man is a press representative he had no reason to suspect; the question Chambers answers describes a Communist Party member at whose home he stayed. They part on orientation, reality against deception, and the axis cannot be settled from inside the text. So the page files both as Assertion and leaves the catalogue's Lie unused, which is what the filing rules require and what the room was left with too: two accounts, a contradiction it could enter and not resolve, and nothing in the words to decide it. Everything the archive can do with this page it does by naming the gap and refusing to close it.

"I challenge you to do it, and I hope you will do it damned quickly." — Hiss files a Declaration, a challenge that exists because it is uttered, and the second person makes the two men the only parties to it. A reader files a Threat: the harm is a libel suit, the condition is stated in the sentence before — repeat it where the statements are not privileged — and the price of speaking outside is being sued. They part on function. What decides nothing is the uptake, because there is none: Chambers's answer to the challenge appears nowhere in the record, and the man who made it has to ask the chairman to go and get one.

"I don't feel the committee has any proper or parliamentary right to ask such a question." — McDowell files a limit on the committee's powers, keyed to pertinency and stated with the modesty of a man declining jurisdiction. Read against the same hour, the sentence files as the protection of the very shield the challenge was built to strip: the immunity that makes the accusation unactionable is congressional, the committee is the Congress in this room, and the question it will not ask is the only one that could move the words to where they could be answered. They part on scope — one procedural ruling among the day's business, or the proceeding declining to release its own witness into the law. The archive's Oval Office colloquy of 1973 works the same seam from the other side, where two men in a room with a recording system say the words "obstruction of justice" aloud precisely because nothing said there is expected to reach anyone.

"Mr. Chambers, is this the man, Alger Hiss, who was also a member of the Communist Party at whose home you stayed?" — the chairman files a Question about identity; the relative clause carries a Party membership and a series of overnight stays that a yes cannot separate from the face. They part on scope, and this is the one divergence on the page that gets repaired inside the page. Nixon interjects "According to your testimony," moving the clause out of the committee's voice, and the chairman puts the question again with the Party, the home and the stays taken out of it. What Chambers then answers is a four-word question about a face, in two words with no verb in them.

"(At this point, Mr. Hiss arose and walked in the direction of Mr. Chambers.)" and, a sentence later, "I am not going to touch him [addressing Mr. Russell]. You are touching me." — the print's note files a movement, which is what a stenographic record can see. The hand on Hiss's arm reaches the same record only because he says it aloud, and the sentence that puts it there is grammatically a report about someone else's conduct. They part on target: a description of the room, or an act performed on the record to make the room describable. The archive's Caucus Room page turns on the same limitation from the other direction — "Mr. Cohn nods his head at me" is how a wordless assent becomes evidence — and both pages are proceedings whose only product is a transcript, in which anything unspoken did not occur.

"I will on the basis of what he has just said positively identify him," then "Positively on the basis of his own statement," then "on his own testimony" — the committee files these as an identification, complete, and moves to Chambers. Read together they file as something narrower: three groundings in three turns, each of them the other man's words, from a witness who has spent twelve days saying he did not recognise the face. The counter-sentence sits between the second and the third — "If he had lost both eyes and taken his nose off, I would be sure." They part on orientation. Certainty about a face is asserted at its maximum by a man whose stated basis is not the face, and the print's next question asks whether the identification is complete.

"I thought the committee was interested in ascertaining truth." — Hiss files a report of a former belief, keyed to the committee's purpose, and the past tense withdraws it. McDowell files the same subject as pertinency: "That has nothing to do with the pertinency of the matter that the committee is investigating." They part on scope — what a hearing is for, against what is properly before it — and the exchange ends there, four sentences later, on a ruling about the committee's rights rather than on an answer from the witness who was challenged. Set it beside the archive's Caucus Room page, where a question about decency is taken up as a topic a man talks about. In both rooms the sentence that reaches for the purpose of the proceeding is answered in the proceeding's own terms, and in both the record moves on.