Reprinted from The
New York Times, July
23, 1973
By
ALGER HISS
For
several years - increasingly in recent months - I have
had a sense of déjà vu. The impression
comes from a series of incidents in recent political
trials together
with
disclosures seeping out of the Watergate swamp. I am
reminded of parallels with incidents in my Congressional
hearings and trials that began 25 years ago next month.
These are my six parallels:
(I) Tapping
of telephones and bugging of dwellings. Some weeks before my appearances before the grand jury that indicted
me for perjury, my lawyer was told by the F.B.I. agent
in charge of the Baltimore office that the F.B.I. had
three file drawers full of my telephone conversations.
The agent remarked that there had been nothing in the
transcripts to support the charges Whittaker Chambers
had made. The law at that time did not permit me at
my subsequent trial to demand these transcripts, although
as early as the Olmstead case Justice Holmes had called
wiretapping "dirty business." During my trial
and my appeal, my home telephone was tapped and my
apartment was bugged. Similarly the home and office
telephones of my lawyers were tapped. Tapping of the
lawyers continued through the period when they prepared
a motion for a new trial. I was then in jail with no
telephone to tap. But I have reason to believe that
as recently as a year ago my telephone was once again
being tapped.
(2) Using
as principal witness an unstable informer beholden
to the prosecution. In the Berrigan case, the chief prosecution witness
was Boyd Douglas, who had a record of impostureship
and tall tales and who, as a Federal prisoner facing
additional charges, was under the thumb of the prosecution.
In my case Whittaker Chambers had a similar record
and as an admitted perjurer could have been indicted
at the pleasure of the Department of Justice. A young
Congressman, Richard M. Nixon, publicly opposed the
indictment of Chambers on the ground that it would
destroy the case against me.
(3) Tendentious
and prejudicial press stories based on official leaks
or statements. In
the Berrigan case, prior to the indictment, J. Edgar
Hoover, Director of the F.B.I., testified before a
congressional committee that the F.B.I. had discovered
a plot to capture Henry Kissinger and blow up heating
tunnels in Washington. Prior to and during my trials
there was a barrage of inspired adverse publicity,
including the release (before my indictment) by Mr.
Nixon of documents Chambers had produced which he claimed
to have received from me.
(4) Delay
in producing Government records as ordered by the court. In the Ellsberg case this tactic was so manifest that
it led to sharp reproof by the judge. In my case the
confusion and stress of a lengthy and complex trial
led my counsel to discover only after the second trial,
when it was too late, that some papers ordered produced had
never in fact been forthcoming. An instance of delay
that, because of perseverance by my counsel,
did not succeed; we had asked for ChambersŐ passport
file. The prosecution contended that it would take
two or three weeks to locate it. When we obtained an
order, on formal motion. the file was produced that
same afternoon.
(5) Forgery
by typewriter. In
the Ellsberg case, a statement by E. Howard Hunt, a
member of the White House "plumbers," disclosed
that he had been granted access to State Department
files and had forged a telegram from President Kennedy
purporting to order the assassination of Diem. I noted
that Hunt, unable to get from the F.B.I. the kind of
typewriter used by President Kennedy when he was in
the White House, regarded his forgery as a poor one
because, he said, since the Hiss case typewriting is
subject to special scrutiny. In my case it was only
after my conviction that my counsel, on consulting
a metallurgist, discovered that the old Woodstock (which
after my indictment we had located in a junk shop)
had been tampered with to make its typing conform to
the typeface irregularities of the machine that, on
his retirement from business, my father-In-law had
given to my wife.
(6) Attempts
to influence the trial judge. It
came out in the Ellsberg case that Judge Byrne had
met with President Nixon at the San Clemente White
House during the trial to discuss the possible appointment
of the judge as Director of the F.B.I., a post then
vacant because of Hoover's death. In my case, after
the first trial had ended with a hung jury there was
an immediate widespread attack, led by Congressman
Nixon, that the trial judge, Samuel Kaufman, was partial
to the defense. On the day the jury was dismissed,
Mr. Nixon called for a Congressional Investigation
of Judge Kaufman's fitness to serve on the bench. This
action, treated by a sector of the press as a demand
for impeachment, was calculated to influence whatever
judge would preside at the second trial. (Judge Kaufman
was not selected to serve at that trial.)
These
parallels illustrate Professor Francis A. Allen's point
that political trials are "particularly susceptible
to unwise and even abusive uses." This susceptibility,
the imbalance between the vast power of the Federal Government
and the limited resources of an individual defendant,
plus the inevitable attraction of the media to such cases,
make it of paramount importance that in political trials
there be the most faithful adherence to those safeguards
of individual rights (of late so patently in jeopardy
in our country) that have been a major accomplishment
of the centuries-long development of Anglo-American law.
Finally,
I note with fresh optimism that the present climate
of opinion should facilitate speedy action in the case
brought
last fall by the American Civil Liberties Union (under
the seldom-implemented Freedom of Information Act)
for release of all the F.B.I. files in my case - files
denied
to scholars and to the press until now.
My
hopes, as they have always been, are for vindication.
I am not interested in seeing the Biter Bitten.
