Hiss's team of attorneys had already begun a thorough ransacking of Chambers's past. The Hiss team also searched for evidence Chambers had been institutionalized and was homosexual. Communist party contacts turned up ex-comrades with much to say . . . . Hiss himself kept his lawyers supplied with useful tips on Chambers, many obtained through "anonymous" sources, presumably Hiss's own recollections.

Chambers's Time adversaries also offered help, repeating stories of his paranoia. Another helpful source was the journalist A.J. Liebling, The New Yorker's press critic. In the fall of 1948 Liebling acquired a second role as clandestine operative for Alger Hiss. Conveniently exempting himself from the standards he applied to his fellow journalists, Liebling tricked Chambers's mentor Mark Van Doren into handing over his Chambers correspondence and then delivered the letters to Hiss's attorney Harold Rosenwald. Van Doren rued this deception. Liebling did not. In fact, with remarkable audacity, he continued to report on the case in his "Wayward Press" columns even as he tweaked the nation's dailies for their biased coverage.

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