Six Crises by Richard Nixon Page A

Sub-committee which had questioned Chambers in New York on August 7. After that hearing, he had made it clear that he still had great doubts about Chambers’ credibility.
    But now he had had enough. He said: “Mr. Hiss, let me say this to you now—and this is removed from all technicalities, it’s just a man-to-man impression of the whole situation. . . . I will tell you exactly what I told Mr. Chambers so that it will be a matter of record,too: either you or Mr. Chambers is lying . . . and whichever one of you is lying is the greatest actor that America has ever produced. Now, I have not come to the conclusion yet which one of you is lying and I am trying to find the facts. Up to a few moments ago you have been very open, very co-operative. Now, you have hedged.
    â€œWe met Mr. Chambers forty-eight hours after you testified in open session. Mr. Chambers did not know or have any indication as to the questions that we were going to ask him and we probed him for hours . . . and we literally ran out of questions. There wasn’t a thing that came to our minds that we didn’t ask him about, those little details to probe his own testimony or rather to test his own credibility.
    â€œNow if we can get the help from you and, as I say, if I were in your position, I certainly would give all the help I could, because it is a most fantastic story. What motive would Chambers have? You say you are in a bad position, but don’t you think that Chambers destroys himself if he is proven a liar? What motive would he have to pitch a $25,000 position as a respected Senior Editor of Time magazine out the window?”
    Hiss was shaken to his toes by this blast. Up to this time he had, not without considerable support from the press and from President Truman himself, tried to imply that the entire hearing was a “Republican plot” to smear the New Deal. Now for the first time, a Democrat had begun to question his story. Hiss reacted by counterattacking Hébert as hard as he could.
    â€œIt is difficult for me to control myself,” he exclaimed. “That you can sit there, Mr. Hébert, and say to me casually that you have heard that man and you have heard me and you just have no basis for judging which one is telling the truth. I don’t think a judge determines the credibility of witnesses on that basis.”
    But Hébert, not to be cowed, fired back: “I absolutely have an open mind and am trying to give you as fair a hearing as I could possibly give Chambers or yourself. The fact that Mr. Chambers is a self-confessed traitor . . . and a self-confessed former member of the Communist Party—has no bearing at all on the alleged facts that he has told . . .”
    â€œHas no bearing on his credibility?” interrupted Hiss.
    â€œNo, because, Mr. Hiss, I recognize the fact that maybe my background is a little different from yours,” replied Hébert, who had been a New Orleans newspaper editor for many years. “But I do know policemethods, and you show me a good police force and I will show you the stool pigeon who turned them in. We have to have people like Chambers to come in and tell us. I am not giving Mr. Chambers any great credit for his previous life. I am trying to find out if he is reformed. Some of the greatest saints in history were pretty bad before they were saints. Are you going to take away their sainthood because of their previous lives? Are you not going to believe them after they have reformed? I don’t care who gives the facts to me, whether a confessed liar, thief, or murderer—if it is facts. That is all I’m interested in.”
    Hiss had a bear by the tail. He tried to change the subject. “I would like to raise a separate point,” he said. The real issue, he again insisted, was not whether Chambers knew him or he knew Chambers; it was whether he and Chambers had had the one particular