Sketches in History | The Witness and the Secret
Hello, and welcome back to Sketches in History! I'm Lottie Archer, your guide. Every week, we sit together in my grandfather's study and open my magical notebook to a sketch from history, letting it pull us into the past to experience a moment first-hand. Last time, we stood on a frozen mountain road in North Korea and watched soldiers fight their way home through impossible cold, and we learned that discipline is what you do when nobody is making you do it. I can't wait to see where we go today!
It's a quiet evening in the study. The lamp on grandfather's desk is on, and the room is warm and still. Outside I can hear the trees moving in the wind.
Let's walk over to the desk. I notice two things tucked underneath the lamp base. Do you see them? The first is a newspaper, folded in half, with a headline I can just barely read: HISS CONVICTED OF PERJURY. The second is a small photograph. Black and white. It shows two men, both in suits, sitting at a long table covered in microphones. One of them is looking straight at the camera. The other is looking at his hands.
I pick up the photograph. The men in it look very serious and very tired. It’s like they have been sitting at that table for a long time, and neither one of them is happy to be there. Something about it makes me feel like I walked into the middle of an argument. I am so excited to see what that notebook tells us about the headline and the photograph.
But first, let's learn our Word of the Day: testimony. Testimony is when you tell what you know. In a courtroom, when a witness raises their right hand and promises to tell the truth, what they say after that is called testimony. It is one of the most powerful things a person can give, because testimony can change what people believe, what judges decide, and what history remembers. But testimony is only as good as the person giving it. And one of the hardest things in the world, sometimes, is figuring out whose testimony is true. That is why before a person shares their testimony in a courtroom or at a congressional hearing, they swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth which is an oath. If they break that oath during their time in the courtroom, then they will be breaking the law. This is just one measure to ensure that the testimony shared is the true.
Alright. Let's see what the notebook has to show us.
The sketch shows a large, formal hearing room. Rows of seats filled with people and long tables at the front where men in suits sit with papers stacked in front of them. Cameras on tripods along the walls and light is coming in from the windows on one side. At the center of the room, facing a row of congressmen on a raised platform, two men sit at separate microphones. One is trim and confident, chin up. The other is heavyset and rumpled, looking at a paper in his hands.
The lines of the sketch begin to blur. I can hear the room talking. The lamp flickers. The room starts to shift.
Are you ready? Close your eyes, hold on tight, and let's go!
We made it!
Oh, it is loud in here. Every seat is full. Reporters are scribbling. Cameras are clicking. I can smell cigarette smoke and newsprint. We are in a United States government hearing room in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1948. And we are about to watch one of the strangest arguments in American history.
The confident man at the microphone is named Alger Hiss. He is polished and calm, and everything about the way he sits says: I am not worried. He went to Harvard. He helped write the rules for the United Nations. He shook hands with presidents. He is exactly the kind of person that Washington, D.C. is full of: smart, successful, and very sure of himself.
The rumpled man is named Whittaker Chambers. He is an editor at a magazine called Time. He is not polished. He does not sit with his chin up. But he is saying something that has the whole room on edge.
He is saying that Alger Hiss is a spy.
Listen. The congressman at the center of the raised platform leans into his microphone.
Congressman: "Mr. Chambers. You are stating, under oath, that Mr. Hiss here was passing secret government documents to agents of the Soviet Union?"
Chambers: "Yes. I knew Alger Hiss. We worked together. I was a member of the Communist Party, and so was he, and he gave me State Department documents to pass along. That is what I know."
Alger Hiss disagrees. He says that he has never been a Communist, never passed documents to Chambers, and even says he’s not certain if they have ever met.
That is the argument at the center of this whole room. One man says this happened and the other says it did not. Somebody is lying. The question is who.
There is a young congressman near the end of the platform. He is watching all of this very carefully. His name is Richard Nixon, and he is one of the few people in the room who has decided he believes Chambers. Do you see how he is leaning forward? He has a notebook in front of him, and he keeps writing things down. I think he is going to keep asking questions long after everyone else has stopped.
Months pass and investigators find something. Hidden on a farm, inside a hollowed-out pumpkin, there are rolls of microfilm: photographs of secret government papers. Experts compare the typing on those papers to a typewriter that belonged to the Hiss family. They match. They find handwriting that matches Hiss and slowly, the evidence builds.
When the charge comes down, it isn't spying, because too much time has passed for that. The charge is lying under oath. Alger Hiss is put on trial for saying things under oath that were not true. And in January of 1950, a jury decides: guilty. He is sent to prison for nearly four years.
He walks out of the courtroom still saying he is innocent, which he will repeat for the rest of his life.
The notebook has more to show us.
We made it!
We are standing outside a courtroom in New York City. The year is 1951. There are people holding signs on the sidewalk. Some of the signs say FREE THE ROSENBERGS. The crowd is loud and upset, and the police are watching from the corners.
Inside, the trial is ending.
Two people are about to be sentenced: Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel Rosenberg. Julius is quiet and thin, with dark-rimmed glasses. Ethel is sitting very straight, with her hands folded in her lap.
They have been convicted of helping to pass secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Julius ran a network of people who collected secret military information. His wife's brother, a man named David Greenglass, worked at the laboratory where the United States built its first atomic bombs. Greenglass passed drawings and notes to Julius and investigators say Ethel helped by typing up some of those notes.
The judge is reading the sentence. It is very quiet.
Judge: "The crime you have committed is worse than murder."
He declares them both guilty.
The people who believed the Rosenbergs were guilty said justice was done. The people who believed the punishment was too severe, especially for Ethel, said something was wrong. I think that both groups are still arguing about this, even today.
Let's flip to the pages that brought us here and get back to the study.
We made it back!
The photograph is still on the desk. Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers at their microphones. I look at it differently now and can see the whole room around them. We know what happened after, and even now, we fully know who is telling the truth. That's the thing about testimony. You can't always see it on a person's face.
Remember our word of the day? That's right: testimony. Today we saw what testimony really looks like. It's a man walking into a room full of cameras and microphones and saying something that no one wants to hear. It's another man sitting at the same table and looking the whole country in the eye and denying it. It's a brother on a witness stand saying things that weren't completely true because he was scared. It's two people going to their deaths still insisting on their own version of the story. Testimony isn't just what you say in a courtroom. It's telling the truth.
Let's see what the notebook left behind for us to read.
After World War II ended, the United States and the Soviet Union became rivals in what was called the Cold War. Both countries had nuclear weapons, and both were gathering secrets about the other. In 1948, a man named Whittaker Chambers told Congress that a respected government official named Alger Hiss had been passing secret documents to Soviet agents. Hiss denied it. The evidence, including microfilm hidden on Chambers's farm, eventually led to Hiss being convicted of perjury, which means lying under oath. He served nearly four years in prison and maintained his innocence until his death in 1996. Documents released after the Cold War ended indicate he most likely was guilty. In 1950, a physicist confessed to passing secrets about the atomic bomb to Soviet agents. The investigation that followed led to the arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Julius had run a spy network for years. Ethel was accused of typing up notes about atomic bomb designs. Both were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. Years later, their convictions, especially Ethel's, remain the subject of serious historical debate. The Cold War spy cases of this era created enormous fear and suspicion in the United States. Some investigations were careful and fair. Others swept up innocent people who had done nothing wrong except hold unpopular beliefs. The challenge those years posed, how to protect a country from real threats without punishing people who don't deserve it, is one that every democracy has to figure out for itself.
This was a challenging trip through history. But that is true with history, isn’t it? When we read it, we learn about all kinds of things, good, amazing, and sometimes, very bad and hard to read. We watched two men face each other across a room full of microphones while the whole country tried to figure out who was telling the truth. We stood outside a New York courtroom as a family's life changed forever. Then we came home to a photograph that still doesn't give us an easy answer, even now.
Thank you for joining me on Sketches in History! Don't forget to subscribe to the 15-Minute History Podcast so you won't miss a single journey. And if there's a moment in history you'd love to explore with me, send your ideas to 15minutehistory@gmail.com.
Until next time, keep wondering, keep imagining, and remember... the past is just a page away.
Discussion Questions
Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss both told very different stories about the same events. Why is it so hard sometimes to know who is telling the truth? What would help you decide?
Alger Hiss said he was innocent for the rest of his life, even after he was convicted. Does it matter whether someone admits what they did? Why or why not?
Many people believed the punishment given to the Rosenbergs was too severe, especially for Ethel. How do you think courts should decide on a punishment that is fair?
Ethel Rosenberg's brother later admitted he had not told the complete truth about her. How do you think that made their sons feel? What does it mean when a witness tells a story that isn't fully honest?
The fear of spies during this time caused some people to be accused of things they didn't do. How can a country protect itself from real dangers without treating innocent people unfairly? Is that hard to get right?
