Six Crises by Richard Nixon Page B

he change the hiding place. Fearing that they might be found in his house by Hiss’s investigators, whom he had seen near his farm, he stashed the rolls of microfilm away in a hollowed-out pumpkin and replaced the pumpkin in its original place in the patch. It was a fine hiding place—but it was used only for one day, not ten years!
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    When Stripling and I arrived at the Committee office, it was already past ten in the evening. And we stayed there until dawn, studying the photostats of typewritten and handwritten documents which Chambers had turned over to the Justice Department at the deposition hearing on November 17, and the hundreds of pages of photostats of State Department documents developed from the five rolls of microfilm.
    Both Stripling and I had heard literally thousands of words of testimony before the Committee on Un-American Activities charging that Communist agents were guilty of espionage against the United States Government. But for the first time we had before us absolute proof ofthose charges. It was no longer a case of one man’s word against another. Here was physical evidence that no words could deny.
    Our major problem, on which we made a critical decision that night, was what role the Committee should now play in the case.
    The Justice Department had finally begun to move on Chambers’ charges as a result of the production of the “pumpkin papers.” Chambers had been subpoenaed to appear before the Grand Jury in New York later that day—Monday, December 6. Should we turn over the microfilm to the Justice Department and leave the responsibility for further investigation completely in its hands? We decided not to do this. On the basis of the record to date, we simply did not have confidence that the Justice Department would resist the political pressures being brought to bear in behalf of Hiss and against Chambers. Several reasons led us to this conclusion.
    In the two-week period between November 17—when Chambers turned over the typewritten and handwritten documents to Justice Department officials in Baltimore—and December 1, no one from the Department had appeared to follow up this disclosure or even to question Chambers.
    And then a story had been leaked to the press that the Justice Department was “going to drop the Hiss-Chambers investigation for lack of evidence”—two weeks after the Justice Department had received documentary evidence pointing to Hiss’s guilt.
    Under the circumstances, we felt our lack of confidence was well justified.
    We also faced an acute problem of time. The term of the blue-ribbon Grand Jury in New York was to expire in just nine days, on December 14. If it failed to return an indictment against Hiss, it would probably be months before the case could be presented to a new grand jury. By that time, the political pressures which Hiss would be able to summon to his aid would build up immensely.
    And, as a result of the November elections, the Chairmanship of the Committee on Un-American Activities would change in January from the Republicans to the Democrats. Some Democrats, like Ed Hébert, might be just as vigilant in pursuing the investigation as the Republicans had been. But in view of Truman’s campaign promise to seek the outright abolition of the Committee, we thought it was more likely that the Chairmanship would go to someone less independent of Administration pressures than Hébert. Consequently, we decided to hold publichearings beginning Monday, December 6. But even more important, we decided that under no circumstances would we turn over the microfilm which we had in our possession to the Justice Department until we had been given absolute assurance that the case would be vigorously prosecuted.
    The week of December 6, the Committee’s schedule was even heavier than it had been during the critical period before the decisive Hiss-Chambers confrontation on August