Word: hissing
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...Hiss insisted that he stopped seeing Chambers by mid-1936?about 18 months before the period when Chambers claimed to have received secret documents from him. But in interviews with Hiss and one of his lawyers, Weinstein learned that Pediatrician Margaret Nicholson recalled for the Hiss defense team that she encountered a heavyset, "very gruff man" at the Hiss home in January 1937. "You may not come in!" declared the man. Writes Weinstein: "From newspaper photographs in 1949, Dr. Nicholson recognized the man who had answered the door as Whittaker Chambers...
...Hiss a Soviet agent? Noel Field, a confessed Soviet agent in the State Department, and his wife Herta fled to Czechoslovakia in 1948 and were questioned by both Czechoslovak and Hungarian security officials. Czech Historian Karel Kaplan, who read the interrogation records 20 years later, told Weinstein that the Fields named Hiss as a Communist underground agent during the 1930s. Indeed, writes Weinstein, "Herta Field, when seized in Prague, initially believed that American intelligence agents had come to kidnap her and bring her back to give evidence against Hiss...
Chambers testified that he gave Hiss and three other agents Bokhara rugs in January 1937 as gestures of appreciation for their undercover work. Hiss admitted receiving a red oriental rug from Chambers, but said it was in 1935 and was partial payment for a debt. Two other recipients told the FBI that they had received their rugs in early 1931. Moreover, a rug expert hired by the defense established from a description on a sales slip that Hiss's rug was apparently one of four that had been bought by a Communist agent for Chambers in December...
...Hiss framed? After Hiss's conviction, he insisted that Chambers had forged the 64 typewritten pages used as evidence at the trial. But, in the files of Hiss's lawyers, Weinstein found reports from two experts confirming that the documents were definitely typed on Hiss's Woodstock (serial number: N230099) by his wife Priscilla...
During December 1948 and January 1949, Hiss insisted to the FBI and a grand jury that he did not know what had happened to the typewriter; probably, he said, Priscilla had sold it to a junk dealer. But Weinstein found a letter in the defense files demonstrating that as early as Dec. 1, 1948, Hiss knew that Priscilla had given the typewriter in April 1938 to the son of a former maid. Says Weinstein: "While the FBI searched frantically for the machine, Hiss's brother Donald, aided by the maid's son, traced the typewriter in February 1949 but said...