Doreen Rappaport, The Alger Hiss Trial,
Image No: 141
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Doreen Rappaport, The Alger Hiss Trial,
Image No: 141
   Enlarge and print image (39K)            << PREVIOUS   NEXT >>
Defense's Closing Statement / 143 1937. To convict Hiss, you must believe Chambers and find corroborating evidence, for Chambers is the only person to testify that Hiss passed him secret documents. And remember how many times Chambers lied. Remember at this trial when Chambers told the prosecutor that all these documents were given to him by Alger Hiss? But later when I asked him, "Are you sure you got Exhibit 10 from Hiss?" He answered, "I am not that sure. It was the kind of stuff that Harry Dexter White gave me." I don't understand that answer. Chambers spent months reviewing the stolen documents with the FBI. Before this trial he swore four times under oath that he got all of them from Hiss. And yet here, for the first time, he says that he thinks he got Exhibit 10 from White, a dead man who can't answer these charges. Now what is important about Exhibit 10? It was not typed on the Woodstock. The only office in the State Department that received Exhibit 10 was the Far Eastern Division. Was there a spy in that division? We know that there was a spy in the Trade Agreements Division. The spy was Julian Wadleigh. And what about this supposed visit by Chambers and Hiss to meet Bykov? Remember how differently Wadleigh described Bykov from Chambers. And why didn't Bykov testify and confirm Chambers's testimony?