19481776 Club
Chambers and Hiss meet face to face, and cameras are rolling
The House committee's first televised hearing puts an accused spy and his accuser in the same Washington room.
Three weeks after Whittaker Chambers named him as a former communist, Alger Hiss had not once admitted, under oath, to knowing his accuser. On August 25, 1948, the House Un-American Activities Committee brought the two men together in Washington, D.C., for a hearing broadcast live into American homes, the first congressional session ever televised. Hiss had already conceded, after seeing Chambers in person at a New York hotel, that he'd known him under the alias "George Crosley." The public now watched the two argue it out directly, on camera, for the first time…
