Trial by Typewriter

Just two years ago, Alger Hiss, onetime State Department official, was found guilty of perjuring himself in testimony about Whittaker Chambers, former Communist courier. Before he was sentenced, Hiss told the court: "I am confident that in the future the full facts showing how Whittaker Chambers was able to carry out forgery by typewriter will be developed."

Hiss was referring to damaging evidence that had corroborated Chambers' accusation: copies of secret State Department papers typed on an old Woodstock typewriter that the defense agreed had once belonged in the Hiss household. During his two trials Hiss denied any responsibility for copying the documents, but his attorney reluctantly conceded that they had somehow been typed on the Woodstock.

Last week lawyers for Hiss filed a formal motion for a new trial. They are ready, they told the court, to demonstrate a technique of "forgery by typewriter." A "typewriter engineer" has built them a machine that they are sure can turn out documents indistinguishable from those typed on the Woodstock introduced in evidence. And if this is true, they argue, it is possible that the typewriter at the trial was a fake. Their story assumes that somebody had a typewriter built exactly like one formerly owned by Hiss and that this machine was then smuggled into the place where Hiss's own investigators found it.

Regardless of the motion for a new trial, Hiss, who has already served ten months of his five-year sentence, is eligible for remission of some 15 months for good behavior and may be released from the Lewisburg, Pa. federal prison in November 1954. He will be eligible for an earlier parole next November.

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