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other legislation important to the welfare of the people. Later, a Presidential Order directed that no federal agency was to release information on governmentpersonnel to committees of Congress, thus blocking that avenue of investigation.
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    When the Committee reconvened in executive session later that afternoon, it was in a virtual state of shock. Several members berated the staff for not checking Chambers’ veracity before putting him on the stand.
    One Republican member lamented, “We’ve been had. We’re ruined.”
    Ed Hébert, a Louisiana Democrat, suggested that the only way the Committee could get “off the hook” would be to turn the whole file over to the Department of Justice and hold no more hearings in the case. “Let’s wash our hands of the whole mess,” he said. That appeared to be the majority view, and if Hébert had put his suggestion in the form of a motion, it would have carried overwhelmingly. I was the only member of the Committee who expressed a contrary view, and Bob Stripling backed me up strongly and effectively.
    I argued, first, that turning the case over to the Department of Justice, far from rescuing the Committee’s reputation, would probably destroy it for good. It would be a public confession that we were incompetent and even reckless in our procedures. We would never be able to begin another investigation without having someone say, “Why do you amateurs insist on getting into these cases? Why don’t you leave the job where it belongs—to the experts in the Department of Justice?” Beyond that, I insisted that we had a responsibility not to drop the case but rather, now that we had opened up the whole question, to see it through. I reminded the Committee members that Chambers had testified that on four different occasions he had told his story to representatives of government agencies and that no action had ever been taken to check the credibility of his charges. Judging from that record, we could only assume that if we turned the investigation over to the Department of Justice, the case would be dropped. And the truth would never be determined.
    I pointed out my suspicions: that while Hiss had seemed to be a completely forthright and truthful witness, he had been careful never to state categorically that he did not know Whittaker Chambers. He had always qualified his answer by saying that he did not know a man “by the name of Whittaker Chambers.” I argued that while it would be virtually impossible to prove that Hiss was or was not a Communist—for that would simply be his word against Chambers’—weshould be able to establish by corroborative testimony whether or not the two men knew each other. If Hiss were lying about not knowing Chambers, then he might also be lying about whether or not he was a Communist. And if that were the case, the charges were so serious—in view of the vitally important and sensitive positions Hiss had held—that we had an obligation running to the very security of the nation to dig out the truth.
    Bob Stripling, speaking from his years of experience as an investigator of Communist activities, made one very telling argument in support of my position. He reported that before and during the hearing, a calculated whispering campaign had been initiated against Chambers. The rumors were that he was an alcoholic, that he had been in a mental institution, that he was paranoiac. This, of course, did not establish that Chambers was telling the truth or that Hiss was a Communist. But, Stripling pointed out, this was a typical Communist tactic always employed to destroy any witness—and particularly any former Communist—who dared to testify against them.
    Finally my arguments prevailed and Karl Mundt, as acting Chairman, appointed me to head a Sub-committee to question Chambers again—this time in executive session, with no spectators or