(3 of 3)
Two nights later, Chambers accepted Hiss's challenge to make his charge public. On radio's Meet the Press program, he repeated his statement that Hiss had been a Communist.
Said Chambers: "I do not think Mr. Hiss will sue me."
This week the committee issued an interim report on its work and pursued new leads. After a long hunt for him, it caught up with J. Peters, a man with a Groucho Marx likeness who, Chambers said, was the Communist underground boss who introduced him to Hiss. Confronted by Chambers and asked if he knew him, Peters refused to answer on the grounds that he might incriminate himself. He gave that same answer to some 30 other questions. But he did admit that he knew Earl Browder.
Summing up the Hiss-Chambers case, the committee reported that Hiss had been "vague and evasive," while Chambers had been "forthright and emphatic." "The verifiable portions of Chambers' testimony," the committee said, "have stood up strongly; the verifiable portions of the Hiss testimony have been badly shaken." The hearing has "definitely shifted the burden of proof from Chambers to Hiss."
Commented the New York Herald Tribune, which has previously taken a skeptical view of the committee's work: "The committee has turned up a great deal more than a 'red herring' . . . has been unearthing important facts . . . has thrown valuable light upon the Communist problem."
* The committee proved that if there ever was a free-lancer named George Crosley, he had an extremely tough time of it. A search of the Library of Congress' extensive catalogues showed that one G. Crosley had had a book, of poems published in 1905 (when Chambers was four years old) and one G. E. Crosley, a medical doctor, had written a pamphlet on ultraviolet light in 1936. There was no record of a "George Crosley" having broken into print any time, anywhere during Chambers' lifetime.