May 31, 2023
Photo: http://www.spartacus-educational.com
Now comes the witness who, in my opinion, dooms Alger
Hiss. He gives expert testimony supporting Chambers’ claim
that the typed spy documents were passed to him by Alger Hiss after
Mrs. Hiss typed them on the Hiss home typewriter. Lloyd Paul
Stryker did not ask this witness a single question on
cross-examination. Listen to this Podcast to learn who was
the witness and how he formed his expert opinion. After the
witness left the stand, all ears waited to hear Hiss explain how
dozens of documents, obviously prepared for espionage, got typed on
his home typewriter but he is still innocent.
FURTHER RESEARCH:
As one scholar put it, you wouldn’t want to hang a man based
on the testimony of Whittaker Chambers and nothing more, but how
could you disbelieve Chambers plus 64 pages of typewritten spy
documents that had been typed on the Hiss home typewriter?
Herbert L. Packer, Ex-Communist Witnesses: Four Studies in
Fact Finding (Stanford Univ. Press 1962) at 22.
The next witness is Raymond Feehan, sometimes called Ramos Feehan —
a great multi-cultural name, perhaps only possible in 1949 in New
York City. Mr. Feehan was an FBI employee and a member of the
profession of The Examination of Questioned Documents. I have
been unable to find a photo of him or any other information about
him — which makes him the perfect dispassionate expert.
Alistair Cooke describes him as “a vigorous, dark-haired F.B.I.
expert, . . .strictly a laboratory man . . . [who] appeared quite
untouched by the emotions of the case . . . . [and had] all the
basking pride of a travel lecturer much in demand.” Alistair
Cooke, A Generation on Trial (1952) at 168-69.
Mr. Feehan opined that the typed spy documents and another bunch of
documents, which everyone agreed had been typed on the Hiss home
typewriter, had been typed on the same typewriter. This
opinion, wrote Alistair Cooke (at 168), “provoked quick intakes of
breath from many casual spectators.”
It is often misstated that this Case turned on a typewriter.
That’s not true. Mr. Feehan formed his opinion before the
typewriter that everyone agreed was the Hiss home typewriter had
been found. Mr. Feehan based his opinion instead on a
comparison of two sets of documents — the typed spy documents and
the so-called Hiss Standards, which everyone had agreed had been
typed on the Hiss home typewriter. It is as if you proved
that the fingerprints on a certain glass were my fingerprints by
comparing them not to my fingers, but to a fingerprints (say, in
the files of the FBI) that everyone agreed were my
fingerprints. The Prosecution’s evidence, the evidence that
convicted Alger Hiss, would have been exactly the same if no
typewriter had ever been found.
Concurring in Mr. Feehan’s opinion was the founder of the
profession of The Examination of Questioned Documents, one Ordway
Hilton. Ordway Hilton, Scientific Examination of Questioned
Documents (Revised Edition) (Elsevier Science Publishing Co. 1982)
at 224-25, 232.
Questions: How will Hiss explain how the typed spy documents
got typed on his home typewriter? His Explanation #1, to the
Grand Jury, that Chambers snuck into the Hiss house and typed them
up himself when no one was looking, didn’t work. He’ll need a
damned good Explanation #2, won’t he? You’ll have to wait for
Podcast #26 to hear it. In the meantime, can you think of a
way that Chambers (or someone with more time and resources) could
make a ‘fake’ typewriter and produce typewritten documents that
looked exactly like documents that had been typed on the real Hiss
home typewriter? For that, you’ll need to wait for Podcast
#35.