Ramos C. Feehan

Feehan was an FBI document examiner. He was a crucial witness before the grand jury in December 1948, when he testified that the same machine used by Priscilla Hiss to type personal correspondence (of which they had obtained samples) also typed the copies of the State Department documents that Whittaker Chambers said he had received from Hiss for transmission to Moscow. Soon after hearing his testimony, the grand jury voted to indict Hiss for perjury when he denied giving Chambers any government documents. 

Feehan repeated his testimony at both trials and was not challenged by the defense, which insisted that the typewriter was out of the Hiss's home by the date that appeared on the State Department documents. After Hiss's conviction, his attorney, Chester Lane, began to gather evidence to impeach Feehan's testimony. Unknown to the defense, Feehan, after the first trial, conducted a test to see whether the typewriter found by the defense, Woodstock #230,099, had actually typed the State Department documents. Feehan concluded that it had, despite the fact that FBI field agents had already gathered information suggesting that #230,099 was manufactured too late to have been Hiss's machine. Feehan did not testify about his findings at the second trial