Title Card: The Concealed Enemy

First NEWSCASTER: Capitol Hill in Washington is again the nation's focal point as the 80th Congress convenes during one of the most crucial periods in the nation's history. The Republican-controlled Congress takes the helm in the House.

NARRATOR: As the Nixons posed beneath the cherry blossoms with baby Tricia, it was a heady time for a young Republican. The GOP controlled both houses of Congress for the first time in 20 years and the fervent anti-Communism that had helped Nixon win the election was well-suited to the times.

Second NEWSCASTER: Soviet Russia was expansively stabbing westward, knifing into nations left empty by war. Already, an iron curtain had dropped around Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria.

MAN: [testifying before HUAC] I am not now a Communist --

NARRATOR: And in the United States, the House Committee on Un-American Activities searched for Soviet sympathizers. Congressman Nixon soon became the junior member of that controversial, headline-making body.

And on August 3, 1948, shortly after the birth of Nixon's second daughter, Julie, an unlikely drama began that would make the issue of Communist subversion front-page news and make Congressman Nixon a national figure almost overnight.

[Chambers taking oath]

A strange, self-confessed ex-Communist and editor of Time Magazine, named Whittaker Chambers, appeared before the committee to make a sensational charge. Alger Hiss, protégé of Oliver Wendell Holmes, aide to Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta and one of the organizers of the United Nations was, said Chambers, a Communist intent upon infiltrating the highest offices of government.

WHITTAKER CHAMBERS: [testifying] Mr. Hiss represents the concealed enemy against which we are all fighting and I am fighting.

ALGER HISS: [testifying] My contacts with any foreign representative who could possibly have been a Communist have been strictly official.

NARRATOR: Most observers found Hiss persuasive, but Nixon had learned through Father John Cronin, a Catholic priest with FBI connections, that Hiss had been under suspicion for years. Nixon insisted the hearings continue.

Third NEWSCASTER: "Who's the liar?" might well be the title of the drama which unfolds before a packed caucus room where the House Un-American Affairs Committee members swear in Alger Hiss.

NARRATOR: The hearings were high drama. Rumors spread that Chambers was a psychopath. Hiss claimed never to have known him. President Truman denounced the proceedings as politically motivated and ordered government agencies to refuse to cooperate. Nixon charged that the Democrats were mounting a cover-up. The freshman congressman from Whittier had put himself in the center of it all.

RALPH de TOLEDANO, Early Nixon Biographer: Nixon realized that once he had committed himself, that if everything collapsed, if Hiss was exonerated or if the charges were not proved to the hilt, he would be badly hurt. Now, I don't think he would have been permanently hurt, but certainly, I think if that had happened, Richard Nixon would never have become a senator and never would have become president of the United States.

NARRATOR: "He immersed himself in the case with an absorption that was almost frightening," Pat Nixon remembered. When others were ready to drop the case, Nixon and chief investigator Robert Stripling talked them out of it. They were sure Hiss was lying when he claimed not even to have known Chambers and they set out to prove it.

ROBERT STRIPLING, Chief Investigator, House Committee on Un-American Activities: We went up and got Mr. Chambers, put him in the grand jury room, we put him under oath and we said, in effect, "You claim you know Mr. Hiss? Tell us all about him. What did he call his wife? What did she call him? Did they have a dog? Did they have a veterinarian? Did they have a doctor? Did they have a cook? Give us the housekeeping details, beginning at the front door." And he'd rattle on for two hours. It was very obvious that he, indeed, did know Mr. Hiss and quite well.

Mr. de TOLEDANO: There was also another factor and which I think is very important and that was a kind of personal animus. Hiss was arrogant on the stand and he rubbed Nixon the wrong way and he snapped at Nixon a couple of times and so on. And it became, I think, also a personal thing for Nixon. He saw that it could be a big issue and his whole temperament made him want to pursue it.

Mr. CHAMBERS: [testifying] I believe that I was first introduced to Mr. Hiss by Harold Ware and J. Peters.

NARRATOR: Chambers, now fighting a libel suit, leveled a still more sensational charge, one he had not yet shared with the committee. He claimed that Hiss had actually been a spy before the war, copying secret State Department documents which Chambers himself had passed on to a Soviet contact. Nixon was furious that Chambers had been holding out on him. He ordered any evidence Chambers might have subpoenaed, then left with his wife on a long-delayed Caribbean vacation.

Fourth NEWSCASTER: In the latest sensational turn of the Red espionage probe, the Maryland farm of the magazine editor becomes the focus of attention.

NARRATOR: From a hollowed-out pumpkin, Chambers produced apparent proof of espionage: microfilm of stolen documents. Nixon made the nation's front pages when he was plucked from mid-ocean and flown back to Washington for a press conference.

Representative NIXON: I am holding in my hand a microfilm of very highly confidential, secret State Department documents. These documents ...

NARRATOR: The microfilm, thereafter known as "The Pumpkin Papers," provided the evidence and the publicity Nixon needed. Finally, after two controversial trials, Hiss was found guilty of perjury and imprisoned. The Hiss case polarized American opinion about Richard Nixon. To conservatives, he had fearlessly rooted out a dangerous subversive, but in the eyes of many liberals, Nixon had destroyed an honorable man and set the stage for more unscrupulous Communist hunters. But there was no doubt that, at the age of 35, the congressman from Whittier had become a national figure.