The major stumbling block to positive conviction about the
guilt of Alger Hiss is always Whittaker Chambers. It was
Chambers who by his testimony convicted Hiss, and it is
Chambers who by this same testimony clouds with persistent
doubt the justice of that conviction. One of the most strik-
ing examples of this paradox is to be found in Chambers'
changing versions of the date of his break with communism
and his clashing testimony regarding the role played by Hiss
-- his outright denial that Hiss had ever been a spy; his out-
right insistence that Hiss had been nothing else from the
earliest days of their acquaintance.

Just as Chambers' testimony about the collection of Hiss's
Communist dues veered to all points of the compass like a
weather vane in a williwaw, so does his testimony shift on
these basic points that are the crux of the case. Their signifi-
cance is simply this: If Chambers broke with communism in
1937, as he said repeatedly that he did, he could not have
collected documents from Alger Hiss in early April, 1938; if
Alger Hiss never engaged in espionage, as Chambers at one

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