Hiss-Chambers Chapter 24: Were the Families Friendly?

  There were two disagreements between the Hisses and Chamberses.  First was whether Hiss had been a Communist and Soviet spy with Chambers in the mid- and late 1930s.  Who was telling the truth could not be proved.  Hiss would never confess and, from his point of view, it’s almost impossible to prove that you did not do something years ago.  As for proof by external evidence, good luck.  When you join the Communist underground you don’t sign a contract and send a copy to the Justice Department.   But on the other issue — whether (as the Hisses said) the families had had a short, unpleasant business relationship that was effectively over in 1935 or (as the Chamberses said) they had had a close personal friendship that lasted into 1938 — external evidence might be found.     This Podcast takes you through Prosecution evidence that the two families had engaged in significant financial transactions in 1935, 1936, and 1937. The transactions were documented in a small pile of regularly kept business and government records, and concerned two cars and an oriental carpet that Chambers gave Hiss.  All these indicated a close personal friendship lasting at least into 1937.   Perhaps most convincing was the chief witness about rug, the man who bought it for Chambers and sent it to Washington.  (It arrived there, according to the records of the package room at Union Station, in January 1937.). The witness was Chambers’ best friend, college classmate, European traveling companion in 1923, Associate Professor of Art History at Columbia in 1949, and soon-to-be-called the world’s greatest art historian, Dr. Meyer Schapiro.