Chapter 31: The Second Trial - Chambers' Mental Condition

A Pumpkin Patch, a Typewriter, and Richard Nixon: The Hiss-Chambers Espionage Case

Psychiatrist Dr. Carl Binger

This Podcast presents the testimony of an eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Binger. He opined that Whittaker Chambers suffered from a mental illness, called “Psychopathic Personality,” which causes its sufferers to make false accusations that they sincerely believe to be true. Dr. Carl Binger was supposed to be, to use a baseball metaphor, The Clean-Up Hitter of The Hiss Defense. The Defense had loaded the bases with Hiss and his wife (we barely knew Chambers/Crosley), the character witnesses (Alger is a fine upstanding man), and the Catletts (we had The Typewriter when The Spy Documents were typed). Binger was supposed to bring all those runners and himself across home plate by answering a question so obvious that Hiss was asked it at his first HUAC appearance: why is Chambers lying? Chambers had no rational motive to lie, but . . . . maybe an irrational one. Chambers’ greatest fan would admit that his life was a target-rich environment of off-the-beaten-path behaviors. Prosecutor Murphy fought to the bitter end to keep Binger’s opinion from reaching the jury’s ears. But he had a good Plan B. His cross-examination of Dr. Binger has been called the most destructive cross-examination of a psychiatrist in history. The conventional opinion of scholars is that when Murphy was through with Binger, there was nothing left, not even mincemeat. To many, Binger’s testimony seemed a failed attempt to smear an honest man who was merely strange. See if you agree. FURTHER RESEARCH About Binger’s testimony, see Cooke at 304-13; Smith at 386-93, saying (at 391) that “Murphy cut the poor psychiatrist into ribbons” and (at 393) that “the psychiatric evidence turned out to be a boomerang”; and Weinstein at 510-16. One interesting aspect of this Case is the peek it gives into the morals and standards of this country’s Establishment in the late 1940s. Psychiatry had ceased to be new and frightening and had become, among many of the finest minds, almost a religion displacing Judaism and Christianity. Forward-looking thinkers ranked Freud with Aristotle, Copernicus, and Einstein as one of the giant pioneers of human thought. (Today, most see him as a great, brave pioneer but dismiss his all theories and techniques.). Alistair Cooke was so worshipful of psychiatry that he could not fathom Prosecutor Murphy questioning Dr. Binger’s opinion. Cooke seems to have thought Murphy outrageous when he demanded that the exalted expert make sense to the jury. More broadly, at the time of the Hiss trials, the range of proper behaviors was much narrower than it is today. Men worked and women stayed home to run the house and raise the kids; a web of laws and customs held blacks in inferior positions; swarthy-complected immigrants from Southern Europe, such as Italians, were barely considered to be white people; left-handed people were considered handicapped; people rarely married outside their religious denominations; homosexuality was a mental illness; proper citizens wouldn’t dream of going outdoors not in a coat and tie; and you could tell much more about people’s economic and social status by their clothing than you can today. Any deviation from these norms might prompt wrinkled noses, raised eyebrows, and even suspicions of mental illness. The latter was unfathomable and would bar you from decent society forever. The Hiss Defense tried to use such limits on propriety and decency to make Chambers unbelievable and despicable. The Defense failed because of Chambers’ articulateness and his cool under fire, and because of the cross-examination of Dr. Binger. And as Alistair Cooke wrote (at 312), the magician Binger could pull strange and frightening objects from his top hat, but he could not make the documents disappear. Questions: As you hear Dr. Binger’s direct testimony, do you think to yourself “My God, he’s got Chambers to a T. Thank God we have modern psychiatry to explain rare mental illnesses like Chambers’”? Or do Binger’s words strike you as modern witchcraft concealed behind two Harvard degrees? Psychiatry has changed hugely since 1949. If you have any knowledge of it, what would a mainstream psychiatrist (if there is such a thing any more) say of Chambers today? One said to me, “Probably neurotic, but not psychotic by any means.” Concerning procedure, do you agree with Prosecutor Murphy that merely allowing the jury to hear the 65-minute long question listing all of Chambers’ strange acts was itself unfair to Chambers and The Prosecution, and that the judges should have ruled on the admissibility of psychiatric testimony before?