Word: alger
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Accompanied by a committee investigator, Chambers was led to one room of Suite 1400 in the Commodore. Alger Hiss arrived in the suite's other room at 5:38. He was in a bitter mood. He had been forced to cancel a dinner date; he was furious because the discussion of a lie detector test (which Hiss later refused to take) had leaked out after the secret committee hearings; he was distressed because of the death of Harry White (see below). Said he: "I'm not sure I'm, in the best possible mood for testimony...
...name George Crosley. He denied that he had ever sublet an apartment from Hiss. But he did agree promptly that he had lived in the Hiss apartment. At this apparent contradiction Hiss exploded: "Would you tell me how you reconcile your negative answers with this affirmative answer?" "Very easily, Alger," Chambers answered quietly. "I was a Communist and you were a Communist...
Later that night, Alger Hiss called a press conference in his Manhattan apartment at 22 East 8th Street. He insisted that his brief acquaintance with Crosley-Chambers did not in the least affect his complete denial of any dealings with Chambers as a fellow Communist. He was not and never had been a Communist, Hiss repeated. Said he: "I do not believe in Communism. I believe it is a menace to the United States." Thus it appeared that either Alger Hiss never was a Communist or, if he once was, still...
Greater Responsibility. Up until the confrontation at the Commodore there had been nothing to choose between the accusations of Whittaker Chambers and the indignant denials of Alger Hiss. Now, on one pivotal question, Chambers had turned out to be dead right and Hiss to be dead wrong...
Morally, if not legally, it was up to Alger Hiss to prove that there ever was such a person as George Crosley. This week the committee would have Chambers and Hiss confront each other in public. But the committee had a greater responsibility than merely permitting the public to compare two stories. By all the means at its command, it had to find out-and tell the people-which story was true...