THE JUDICIARY: Woman with a Past

For the first 13 days of its second run in Manhattan's federal court, the perjury trial of Alger Hiss had progressed with a singular absence of melodrama. Whittaker Chambers spent seven days as a witness, much of the time under crossexamination, stepped down with both his testimony and his Buddha-like calm intact. His shocking tale was corroborated as before by his wife and a long list of Government witnesses. Voices were seldom raised; time and repetition had lent a curious matter-of-factness to an incredible affair.

But last week, as Julian Wadleigh, former...