Word: crosleys
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Hiss stoutly continued to deny the charge. But he had backtracked once before. He had first denied ever having known Chambers, then admitted that he knew him as "George Crosley," a freelance writer. Would the rest of his story stand up under searching examination and a public confrontation with Chambers...
Last week, with television and newsreel cameras whirring, Hiss and Chambers faced each other in the big, air-conditioned House caucus room. To Hiss, Chambers was still "George Crosley."* To Chambers, Hiss was Hiss-"the closest friend I ever had in the Communist Party...
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...
...that, there seemed to be no record of any free-lance writer who used the name of George Crosley. Committee investigators, thumbing through old Washington files, could find no evidence that a lease had ever been made out to him. There was no title in his name for the Hiss car. Hiss himself admitted that he had never seen any of Crosley's articles (although Chambers had been writing regularly under his own name for the New Masses, where his picture appeared...
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...