More than a quarter-century after
the glaring headlines, former State Department Official Alger Hiss
finally found the answer last week to a much disputed mystery in one of
the most celebrated spy cases of the cold war era. On being denounced
in 1948 as a Communist, Hiss filed a libel suit against his accuser,
Whittaker Chambers, who thereupon dug out some evidence that a relative
had hidden for him in an abandoned dumbwaiter in New York City. As he
later told it in his book Witness, he had saved an envelope full of
documents he had received from Hiss —typewritten summaries of State
Department papers, some memos handwritten by Hiss, and five pieces of
what turned out to be 35-mm. film .Chambers, then a TIME senior editor, gave the papers to the pretrial
investigators in the libel case, but he held back the film, partly
because he wanted to learn what was on it. Word of Chambers'
sensational new revelations quickly reached the House Un-American
Activities Committee, before which he had originally accused Hiss. When
Committee Member Richard M. Nixon issued a subpoena for any further
evidence, Chambers led agents to his Maryland farm and pointed to a
hollowed-out pumpkin. Fearful of prowling Hiss investigators, he said,
he had put the films in the pumpkin while he was gone for the day. Thus
were baptized the famous “pumpkin papers.”*Precious Secrets. Congressman Nixon made much of the films. He was
photographed peering at them through a magnifying glass. When the
Justice Department asked for them, he declared that he could not turn
over such precious “State and Navy Department” secrets unless the House
approved, but he soon released them. When Hiss was tried for perjury,
only two of the films were introduced;
prints from them showed State Department documents relating to
U.S.German relations in the late '30s. Despite their fame, however, a
prominent evidence expert, Professor Irving Younger of Cornell Law
School, writes in the current issue of Commentary that these films were
not conclusive evidence against Hiss since someone else could have
passed them to Chambers. Far more decisive, says Younger, were such
items as the summaries of State Department secrets typed on a
typewriter shown to have belonged to Hiss.
