Facts on Alger Hiss

Publishing Mr. David Strickland's letter (June 2, 1994) under the caption Hiss not communist may arouse doubts after I explained in my previous letter that documents released by Russia after the collapse of the Soviet regime proved that Alger Hiss was spying for the Soviet Union.

Mr. Strickland is right when he writes that Hiss was never convicted of being a communist because being a communist was not illegal. I am sorry for not making that clear in my letter. Hiss was convicted on two accounts of perjury; 1) for having testified that he had not unlawfully removed copies of numerous State Department secret and confidential documents, and 2) for having testified that he didn't know Chambers and never met him after Jan. 1, 1937.

That being said, I am very much afraid the rest of Mr. Strickland's letter belongs to fiction!

First of all, Chambers' Christian name was not Whittier but Whittaker.

Second, Hiss sold Chambers his old car, not the Woodstock typewriter he, not Chambers, had used to type compromising documents. If that had been the case, Hiss who was very intelligent, would no doubt have told the grand jury and would have created doubts about Chambers credibility. Instead he said "Until the day I die, I shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got into my house to use my typewriter" i.e. to fabricate evidence of his espionage.

Third, I never heard that Chambers was in Richard Nixon's employment. Such a fact is highly improbable. Chambers was born in 1901, Nixon in 1913. He spent his college years in Whittier not with an imaginary Whittier Chambers. He graduated from Duke University in 1937 and joined a law firm in Whittier. At that time, Chambers was a journalist. Four years later, Nixon got a government job. After joining the Navy in 1942, he went to Noumea, New Caledonia. He was discharged from the Navy in 1945. He became engaged in politics at the end of that year and entered Congress in 1947. At the time, Chambers was a well known journalist and in 1948 he became a senior editor of Time magazine. His salary being US$25,000 a year, what could the almost penniless Nixon have offered him at that time?

As my documentation is limited, I do not know all the strange facts Mr. Strickland mentions. I would be very pleased if he could tell what his sources are.

ALEX WOLVESPERGES

Medan, North Sumatra