Grand Jury Testimony Excerpts/Alger Hiss/07-12-48

(Presented by Messrs Whearty, Strine and Donegan)

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BY MR. WHEARTY:
Q Mr. Hiss, were you personally present at the deposition in Baltimore on November 17th, when Mr. Chambers turned over the documents to the attorney?

A No, I was not.

Q You saw those first the following day in New York?

A That’s right. I think it was the very next day I saw Photostats of them.
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Q Have you ever seen the originals?

A No, sir.
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Q In my question to you, I wanted to limit it to the typed memos, only as to the typed memos.

A That’s right.

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…

A … Several of the typed memos there appeared to me to be summaries, rather than exact copies of State Department materials.

Q Mr. Hiss, did you recognize any of those memos as material you had seen in the State Department when you were there?

A I didn’t have any recollection of either the papers or the topics to which they referred.

Q With respect to the penciled or handwritten slips, of which you saw a photostatic copy, have you ever seen the originals of those?

A I have no independent recollection of those.

Q Have you seen anything but the Photostats?

A Nothing but the Photostats.

Q From your examination of the Photostats, are you able to say whether or not all those copies were in your handwriting?

A Three of the four appear to be; the fourth one did not seem to me to be.

Q If we show the originals of those here in the Grand Jury, would you take a look at them and tell us here what your reaction is today. I show you one which bears the identification number 4, and the signature of T.E. McDonald, Notary. Would you tell us whether that appears to be in your handwriting?

A Yes, that does look like my handwriting.

Q I show you one similarly identified, as number

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Q Is that in your handwriting?

A That certainly looks like my handwriting; yes, sir.

Q … I show you now a little slip, which bears the same name, and number 1. Does that appear to be in your handwriting?

A That does not look like my handwriting to me.

Q Does it seem to be too big or too little?

A Well, it just does not look like my idea of my handwriting.

Q I show you a similar paper, marked number 3, with the name McDonald also appearing. What is your best recollection or best statement on that?

A That looks, I would say, exactly like my handwriting.

Q That last slip of paper I showed you, that appears to be two different types of pencil used – one of blue and one of black. Do you have any memory of having written these slips?

A Not these particular slips, no, sir; but slips like them, yes.

Q Now, Mr. Hiss, would you tell us just under what circumstances you would prepare slips of this nature, which obviously appear to be memos you would make of longer and more formal memos that flowed over your desk at the State Department. What was your usual procedure – why would you make those notes – what did you do with them; and follow through with that, please, with respect to the

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notes.

A One of my duties, in the period in which the typewritten documents fall – and I am not sure I can identify the date of the handwritten ones; I notice they are dated by month and not by year – but assuming I wrote them, which seems to me, except for one of them, to be very, very likely, and assuming that I wrote them during the same three-month period of January to March, 1938 – during the period I was in Mr. Sayre’s office and later, one of my duties was to go over a great variety of material that came into the office where I was employed, and sort out what seemed to be of sufficient interest for my superior, and what he did not need to see.
In the case of Mr. Sayre, and I think in the case of Mr. Hornbeck, too, later on, both of them being very busy men, and the amount of material that came through being quite literally voluminous, they continually asked me to reduce as far as possible the scope and size of the material I would send through for them to see.
Quite frequently, I would report orally on papers of general information, that it didn’t seem to me that they needed to see, but that they might need to know for background the general content of; and in making such an oral presentation I might frequently have notes to help my memory in giving details.
So that I did from time to time make these little rough notes, to help me in describing orally papers that

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did not seem to me to be of sufficient interest to my chiefs to send them forward.
What I would normally do, as I recall it, was to have the pieces of paper with me when I went in to see Mr. Sayre, and I would see him on those matters whenever he would see me – it was not at a fixed hour.
I would tell him what the contents and special interest or significance were, and would probably have the actual papers with me, and would say, “If you want to see them, here they are, but I don’t think you need to see them.”
I would normally have thought that subsequent to that I would have taken the slips myself and destroyed them, torn them up and put them in the waste paper basket myself.

Q Was that your usual practice?

A Yes. I don’t have any distinct recollection of what I did in 1938. I think that about covers it.
I could have left them on papers, expecting that the office staff would themselves dispose of them, because the papers would go forward with the files, and I would expect them to take off my notes of no special significance,

Q Might you have taken the notes off and kept them in your desk for reference purposes?
A I don’t think I would be likely to have kept them after I had

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reported on them, but I might very well have kept them in my desk before I had an opportunity to report to Mr. Sayre on them. I might have prepared the papers in the afternoon and might not have a chance to see Mr. Sayre until the next morning. I might then very likely have kept them in my desk.

Q You never missed any from your desk, did you?

A No, I never did.
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