Hiss-Chambers Chapter 23: Henry Julian Wadleigh

This Podcast is the closest the trials get to high comedy.  Dreamy, arrogant State Department economist, Henry Julian Wadleigh, worked in the same area as Hiss (several levels below Hiss).  Wadleigh testifies that he passed State Department documents to Chambers in 1937 and 1938 without authorization.  He thus corroborates Chambers’ testimony that Chambers was the hub of a spy ring in State in those years.     But might he also help Hiss?  Could it have been Wadleigh who gave Chambers all those documents?  How might Hiss make a case that it was Wadleigh who passed the papers that Chambers said he got from Hiss?  Would Chambers have any reason to falsely accuse Hiss if he could truthfully accuse Wadleigh?     Lloyd Paul Stryker’s cross-examination succeeded in making Wadliegh look like a ridiculous head-in-the-clouds dreamer.  (Just like Chambers, Stryker hints, all these commies are weirdoes unlike the solid, respectable Alger.). Wadleigh made such a fool of himself that, when once Murphy objected to Stryker’s cross-examination, Judge Kaufman couldn’t rule on the objection because he was laughing so hard that he had hidden his face in his papers.