TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/52elect/52elect.015

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                                                                                November 3, 1952

THE NATION

The Alger Hiss Issue



     In the closing days of the campaign, the long-simmering
"softness to Communists" issue finally came to full boil. Two
weeks before, the Republicans had opened an all-out attack with a
nationwide TV broadcast in which Richard Nixon detailed Adlai
Stevenson's part as a character witness in the first Alger His
trial, and concluded; "his actions, his statements, his record
disqualify him from leading . . . the fight against Communism at
home and abroad . . ." Last week the Democrats launched a defense
and counterattack.

     At Cleveland, Adlai Stevenson set out to explain his
testimony again and more fully than before. Said he: "I had known
Alger Hiss briefly in 1933 . . . I did not meet him again until
twelve years later . . . He never entered my house and I never
entered his. I saw him twice in the fall of 1947. I have not seen
him since.

     "In the spring of 1949, I was requested by the lawyers for
Alger Hiss to appear at his first trial and testify as to his
reputation, I refused to do so because of the burden of my
official duties. I was then requested to give a sworn statement,
taken under order of the court . . ."

     "I said his reputation was 'good'-and it was . . . That was
the simple, exact, whole truth, and all I could say on the basis
of what little I knew of him . . . I am a lawyer. I think that
one of the fundamental responsibilities not only of every
citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give it honestly and
willingly . . . I would point out that 22 of the most
distinguished members of the American bar declared last week that
in giving this deposition I had 'done what any good citizen
should have done under the circumstances.'" Among the 22 members
of the bar were ex-Ambassador to Russia Joseph Davis, World War
II OSS Chief Major General William Donovan, a Republican, and
John W. Davis, 1924 Democratic presidential candidate who is now
supporting Eisenhower.

     "Inaccurate & Unsound." On the same day that Stevenson was
making his explanation, however, a dissenting opinion was
registered by 16 prominent New York lawyers-among them Harold
Gallagher, ex-president of the American Bar Association, and J.
Edward Lumbard, one of general Donovan's partners. The statement
issued by Stevenson's defenders, said the 16, was "inaccurate and
unsound" because it gave the impression that Stevenson was
required by court order to testify in the Hiss trial. "That was
not the fact," declared 16. "Governor Stevenson was not under
subpoena or otherwise required order of any kind was obtained was
to permit Governor Stevenson to testify without attending the
Hiss trial in person. In passing judgment on Governor stevenson's
action, therefore, it is to be borne in mind that he was an
entirely voluntary witness for Hiss."

     Stevenson's testimony, said the lawyers, showed on the face
of it that he did not know Hiss well. "It might well have
occurred to the governor," they went on, "that his testimony was
not being sought because he was peculiarly expert on the
character or reputation of Hiss . . . As a lawyer, he should have
been aware that his testimony as a voluntary witness on behalf of
Hiss might have been construed by the jury as implying a belief
in Hiss's innocence by the governor of Illinois."

     Mistrust & Innuendo. In his Cleveland speech, Stevenson also
attempted to turn the tables on his opponents. he began with
Ike's foreign policy adviser John Foster Dulles. "In December
1946," said Stevenson. "Hiss was chosen to be president of the
Carnegie Endowment by the board of trustees, of which John Foster
Dulles was chairman." Shortly thereafter, said the governor,
Dulles refused to believe a Detroit lawyer who informed him that
Hiss had a provable Communist record.

     One of the members of the Carnegie Endowment board during
Hiss's term as president, Stevenson went on, was general
Eisenhower-and Eisenhower was still a member of the board when it
twice refused to let Hiss resign after he had been indicted for
perjury. Said Stevenson: "I bring these facts to the American
people not to suggest that either General Eisenhower or John
Foster Dulles is soft toward Communists . . . I bring them out
only to make the point that the mistrust, the innuendoes, the
accusations which this (Republican) 'crusade' is employing
threatens not merely themselves, but the integrity of our
institutions."

     Said Dulles in reply: "I became a witness for the
prosecution against Hiss . . . I do not criticize Governor
Stevenson for responding to the dictates of his conscience. I
merely point out that his faith in Hiss outlasted mine . . . (On
cross-examination in the second Hiss trial, Dulles testified that
Hiss's reputation had been very good at the time Hiss was
appointed to the Carnegie Endowment job.) Also, Governor
Stevenson was misinformed when he said that I was chairman of the
Carnegie Endowment board when Hiss was elected president. That is
not true, I was elected chairman at the same meeting at which
Hiss was elected president . . ."

     Precision & Silence. Two days later in Boston, where
Democrats fear the communist issue may cost them Catholic votes,
Stevenson declared that the Republicans had done little to combat
Communism either abroad or in the U.S. Said he: "Men who seek to
fight (Communism) by indiscriminate accusation of their fellow
citizens-by spreading suspicion and smear and slander-are serving
no one but the Communists themselves . . . In fighting Communism
at home, I shall rely on such experienced guardians of our
security as J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and General Bedell Smith of the Central
Intelligence Agency. These men fight Communism as it must be
fought-with care, thoroughness, precision and silence."

     Republicans thought they were getting the better of this
argument over Stevenson's testimony in the Hiss case. In a
weekend speech, Nixon summed up the G.O.P. case: "Mr. Stevenson
has never expressed one word of indignation at Alger Hiss's
treachery. Like Dean Acheson, he says he does not question the
legal verdict. But, also like Acheson, to this day he has not
'turned his back on Alger Hiss.'"


Standard Effort

     Few events of the 1952 campaign had aroused more advance
excitement than Joe McCarthy's long-heralded blast at Adlai
Stevenson's record on Communism. Stevenson himself warned the
nation that it was about to hear "the most magnificent smears of
all times." Other Democrats said that McCarthy was planning to
make vicious personal accusations, and thereby gave him
invaluable publicity along with a fascinating aura of evil. But
when the day finally came this week, the Wisconsin senator failed
to live up to the Democratic billing. His nationwide TV broadcast
was a standard McCarthy effort, no more and no less.

     "Tonight," announced Joe, "I shall give you the history of
the Democrat candidate for the presidency, who endorses and would
continue the suicidal Kremlin-directed policies of this nation."
McCarthy referred to Wilson Wyatt. "Stevenson's personal manager
. . . former head of the leftwing Americans for Democratic Action
(who) condemned the Government's loyalty program in most vicious
terms . . ." He attacked a top Stevenson aide. Writer Arthur
Schlesinger Jr., for an anti-religion paragraph in a review of
Whittaker Chamber Witness.

     Bernard DeVoto, "another Stevenson speech assistant," said
McCarthy, once "denounced the FBI as nothing but 'college-trained
flatfeet,' and said 'I would refuse to cooperate with the FBI.'"

     Attacking Stevenson directly, McCarthy cited rear Admiral
Adolphus Staton (USN ret.) concerning a conference the admiral
had with Stevenson during World War II at a time when the
Democratic candidate "had been assigned the task of enforcing the
. . . law which ordered the removal of Communists from the radio
aboard our ships." Staton's statement as quoted by McCarthy:
"Stevenson said that he could not see that we had anything at all
against them and stated that we should not be hard on the
Communists."

     McCarthy displayed his usual tendency to imply conclusions
more sweeping than his facts warranted and he once, in referring
to Stevenson, said. "Alger-pardon me-I mean Adlai," a McCarthy
trick that he has used several times before.

     The speech would hardly change the course of the campaign.
Partisans of either side could balance it off against some of
Harry Truman's recent efforts.