Editing Whittaker Chambers (section)

===="Pumpkin Papers"====
Hiss filed a $75,000 libel suit against Chambers on October 8, 1948.<ref name=Britannica/> Under pressure from Hiss's lawyers, Chambers finally retrieved his envelope of evidence and presented it to the HUAC after it had subpoenaed them. It contained four notes in Hiss's handwriting, 65 typewritten copies of State Department documents and five strips of microfilm, some of which contained photographs of State Department documents. The press came to call these the "[[Pumpkin Papers]]" since Chambers had briefly hidden the microfilm in a hollowed-out pumpkin. The documents indicated that Hiss knew Chambers long after mid-1936, when Hiss said he had last seen "Crosley", and also that Hiss had engaged in espionage with Chambers. Chambers explained his delay in producing the evidence as an effort to spare an old friend from more trouble than necessary. Until October 1948, Chambers had repeatedly stated that Hiss had not engaged in espionage, even when Chambers testified under oath. Chambers was forced to testify at the Hiss trials that he had committed perjury several times, which reduced his credibility in the eyes of his critics.

The five rolls of 35&nbsp;mm film known as the "pumpkin papers" were thought until late 1974 to be locked in HUAC files. The independent researcher [[Stephen Salant|Stephen W. Salant]], an economist at the University of Michigan, sued the U.S. Justice Department in 1975 when his request for access to them under the Freedom of Information Act was denied. On July 31, 1975, as a result of this lawsuit and follow-on suits filed by Peter Irons and by Alger Hiss and William Reuben, the Justice Department released copies of the "pumpkin papers" that had been used to implicate Hiss. One roll of film turned out to be totally blank because of overexposure, two others are faintly-legible copies of nonclassified Navy Department documents relating to such subjects as life rafts and fire extinguishers, and the remaining two are photographs of the State Department documents introduced by the prosecution at the two Hiss trials, relating to US-German relations in the late 1930s.<ref>{{cite news
 | first = Tom
 | last = Gold
 | title = U.S. Releases Copies of 'Pumpkin Papers'
 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/01/archives/us-releases-copies-of-pumpkinpapers-copies-of-pumpkin-papers.html
 | newspaper = The New York Times
 | date = August 1, 1975
 | access-date = October 31, 2018
 | archive-date = July 28, 2019
 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190728221418/https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/01/archives/us-releases-copies-of-pumpkinpapers-copies-of-pumpkin-papers.html
 | url-status = live
 }}</ref>

That story, however, as reported by ''The New York Times'' in the 1970s, contains only a partial truth. The blank roll had been mentioned by Chambers in his autobiography, ''Witness''. However, in addition to innocuous farm reports, the documents on the other pumpkin patch microfilms also included "confidential memos sent from overseas embassies to diplomatic staff in Washington, D.C."<ref name="c-span.org video">{{cite web|last1=Tanenhaus|first1=Sam|title=c-cpan interview, 5/26/02|url=http://www.c-span.org/video/?170139-1%2Fwritings-whittaker-chambers|access-date=December 8, 2014|archive-date=October 31, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211031135124/https://www.c-span.org/video/?170139-1%2Fwritings-whittaker-chambers|url-status=live}}</ref> Worse, those memos had originally been transmitted in code, which, thanks to their presumable possession of both coded originals and the translations (claimed by Chambers, to be forwarded by Hiss), the Soviets now could easily understand.<ref name="c-span.org video" />

In taped recordings of President Nixon on July 1, 1971, he admitted that he had not checked the Pumpkin Papers prior to their use and he felt that the Justice Department was out to exonerate Hiss and a federal grand jury would indict Nixon's ally Chambers for perjury. The FBI continued investigating Hiss's innocence into 1953.<ref>{{cite news |last=Parry |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Parry (journalist) |url=http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story50.html |title=The Tapes: Nixon's Long, Dark Shadow |work=[[Consortium News]] |date=February 8, 1999 |access-date=September 9, 2021 |archive-date=February 8, 1999 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19990208225324/http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story50.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Bird |first1=Kai |last2=Chervonnaya |first2=Svetlana |author1-link=Kai Bird |author2-link=Svetlana Chervonnaya (political historian)|url=https://theamericanscholar.org/the-mystery-of-ales-2/ |title=The Mystery of Ales (Expanded Version): The argument that Alger Hiss was a WWII-era Soviet asset is flawed. New evidence points to someone else |work=[[The American Scholar (magazine)|The American Scholar]] |date=June 1, 2007 |access-date=September 9, 2021 |archive-date=January 19, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119185925/https://theamericanscholar.org/the-mystery-of-ales-2/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Haynes |first=John Earl |author-link=John Earl Haynes |url=http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page63.html |title=Ales: Hiss, Foote, Stettinius? |work=johnearlhaynes.org |date=June 7, 2007 |access-date=September 9, 2021 |archive-date=May 18, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170518062412/http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page63.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Lowenthal |first=John |author-link=John Lowenthal |year=2000 |title=The Alger Hiss Story: A Search for the Truth |volume=15 |work=[[The Times Literary Supplement]] |url=https://algerhiss.com/history/new-evidence-surfaces-1990s/the-venona-cables/john-lowenthal-i/ |access-date=September 9, 2021}}</ref>