More than a quarter-century after the glaring headlines, former State Department Official Alger Hiss finally found the answer last week to a much disputed mystery in one of the most celebrated spy cases of the cold war era. On being denounced in 1948 as a Communist, Hiss filed a libel suit against his accuser, Whittaker Chambers, who thereupon dug out some evidence that a relative had hidden for him in an abandoned dumbwaiter in New York City.
As he later told it in his book Witness, he had saved an envelope full of documents he had received from Hiss —typewritten summaries of State Department papers, some memos handwritten by Hiss, and five pieces of what turned out to be 35-mm. film (two developed strips, three undeveloped rolls).
Chambers, then a TIME senior editor, gave the papers to the pretrial investigators in the libel case, but he held back the film, partly because he wanted to learn what was on it. Word of Chambers' sensational new revelations quickly reached the House Un-American Activities Committee, before which he had originally accused Hiss.
When Committee Member Richard M. Nixon issued a subpoena for any further evidence, Chambers led agents to his Maryland farm and pointed to a hollowed-out pumpkin. Fearful of prowling Hiss investigators, he said, he had put the films in the pumpkin while he was gone for the day. Thus were baptized the famous "pumpkin papers."*
Precious Secrets. Congressman Nixon made much of the films. He was photographed peering at them through a magnifying glass. When the Justice Department asked for them, he declared that he could not turn over such precious "State and Navy Department" secrets unless the House approved, but he soon released them. When Hiss was tried for perjury, only two of the films (the two already developed) were introduced; prints from them showed State Department documents relating to U.S.German relations in the late '30s.
Despite their fame, however, a prominent evidence expert, Professor Irving Younger of Cornell Law School, writes in the current issue of Commentary that these films were not conclusive evidence against Hiss since someone else could have passed them to Chambers. Far more decisive, says Younger, were such items as the summaries of State Department secrets typed on a typewriter shown to have belonged to Hiss. --SNIP--
SOURCE http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917670,00.html
Hiss was one of many....they blasted Macarthy for bringing this to aboil citing his personal foebles. That is the tact of the commie, when the facts are against you, destroy the witness or prosecutor.
Hiss denied knowing Chambers, which was a lie.