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The defense reverted to Hiss's original "insanity defense" (to wit, that ''Chambers'' was insane), calling a psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Binger, who attempted to psychoanalyze Chambers without interviewing him, testifying that “Mr. Chambers is suffering from a condition known as a psychopathic personality.”<ref>Edward W. Knappman, ed., ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=mLP8D2Od2SkC Great American Trials: 201 Compelling Courtroom Dramas]'' (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1994) ISBN 1578591996, p. 444. Ironically, the standard work on psychopathic personality, the landmark ''[http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/sanity_1.PdF The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality]'' (St. Louis, Mo.: CV Mosby Co., 1941) by Hervey Cleckley (coauthor of ''The Three Faces of Eve''), identifies  the psychopathic personality as possessing superficial charm and good intelligence, absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking, absence of nervousness or psychoneurotic manifestations, lack of remorse and shame, etc. (See pp. 338-339 [PDF 353-354])&mdash;characteristics far more descriptive of Hiss than Chambers. "I never liked him. I knew him..." said Ambassador James Cowles Hart Bonbright. "There was something about Alger that didn't ring true. He was young and attractive, he wrote well, but he just didn't seem trustworthy." Peter Jessup, [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?mfdip:6:./temp/~ammem_YVYl:: Interview with James Cowles Hart Bonbright], Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, February 26, 1986</ref> So thoroughly did his testimony collapse under scrutiny that the prosecutor’s [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hisstrialtranscripts.html cross examination] of Binger has been used as a model<ref>[[#refBerresford92|Berresford 1992]]: 105, n. 83</ref> to teach generations of law students.<ref>Gilbert Geis and Leigh B. Bienen, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=xdbQMywnrdwC Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to O.J. Simpson]'' (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998) ISBN 1555533604, p. 151</ref>

The defense reverted to Hiss's original "insanity defense" (to wit, that ''Chambers'' was insane), calling a psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Binger, who attempted to psychoanalyze Chambers without interviewing him, testifying that “Mr. Chambers is suffering from a condition known as a psychopathic personality.”<ref>Edward W. Knappman, ed., ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=mLP8D2Od2SkC Great American Trials: 201 Compelling Courtroom Dramas]'' (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1994) ISBN 1578591996, p. 444. Ironically, the standard work on psychopathic personality, the landmark ''[http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/sanity_1.PdF The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality]'' (St. Louis, Mo.: CV Mosby Co., 1941) by Hervey Cleckley (coauthor of ''The Three Faces of Eve''), identifies  the psychopathic personality as possessing superficial charm and good intelligence, absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking, absence of nervousness or psychoneurotic manifestations, lack of remorse and shame, etc. (See pp. 338-339 [PDF 353-354])&mdash;characteristics far more descriptive of Hiss than Chambers. "I never liked him. I knew him..." said Ambassador James Cowles Hart Bonbright. "There was something about Alger that didn't ring true. He was young and attractive, he wrote well, but he just didn't seem trustworthy." Peter Jessup, [http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?mfdip:6:./temp/~ammem_YVYl:: Interview with James Cowles Hart Bonbright], Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, February 26, 1986</ref> So thoroughly did his testimony collapse under scrutiny that the prosecutor’s [http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/hisstrialtranscripts.html cross examination] of Binger has been used as a model<ref>[[#refBerresford92|Berresford 1992]]: 105, n. 83</ref> to teach generations of law students.<ref>Gilbert Geis and Leigh B. Bienen, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=xdbQMywnrdwC Crimes of the Century: From Leopold and Loeb to O.J. Simpson]'' (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998) ISBN 1555533604, p. 151</ref>

Among the symptoms of psychopathic personality, Binger mentioned “abnormal sexuality.” An important part of the Hiss defense strategy was to exploit Chambers’s sexual preference in order to portray him as mentally ill and therefore not a credible witness: [http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/hiss_timothy_naftali.pdf Hiss himself dictated for the record] a rumor that Chambers had been treated in 1938 “for gonorrhea, frigidity, shock, and persecution complex.” Writing in [http://www.ox.ac.uk/ Oxford University]'s ''[http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/ Oxonian Review]'', professed "liberal" Daniel Hemel sums up:

Among the symptoms of psychopathic personality, Binger mentioned “abnormal sexuality.” An important part of the Hiss defense strategy was to exploit Chambers’s sexual preference in order to portray him as mentally ill and therefore not a credible witness: [http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/hiss_timothy_naftali.pdf Hiss himself dictated for the record] a rumor that Chambers had been treated in 1938 “for gonorrhea, frigidity, shock, and persecution complex.”<ref>Timothy Naftali, “Alger Hiss and the Chambers’ Secrets,” Alger Hiss and History, Inaugural Conference, April 5, 2007 (New York University, Center for the United States and the Cold War), p. 6</ref> Writing in [http://www.ox.ac.uk/ Oxford University]'s ''[http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/ Oxonian Review]'', professed "liberal" Daniel Hemel sums up:

{{cquote|[W]hat is striking about the Hiss trial is not that the prosecution engaged in shameless red-baiting (it did not), but that Hiss’s defense team engaged in shameless gay-baiting. Unable to discredit Chambers based on the facts of the case, Hiss’s lawyers (with the defendant’s encouragement) sought to smear Chambers based on the fact that he was bisexual. Fortunately, the jurors in the Hiss case were not as horrifyingly homophobic as Hiss and his attorneys. In retrospect, if either side of the trial engaged in egregious behaviour, it was the defense&mdash;[http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/who-killed-alger-hiss/ not the prosecution].}}

{{cquote|[W]hat is striking about the Hiss trial is not that the prosecution engaged in shameless red-baiting (it did not), but that Hiss’s defense team engaged in shameless gay-baiting. Unable to discredit Chambers based on the facts of the case, Hiss’s lawyers (with the defendant’s encouragement) sought to smear Chambers based on the fact that he was bisexual. Fortunately, the jurors in the Hiss case were not as horrifyingly homophobic as Hiss and his attorneys. In retrospect, if either side of the trial engaged in egregious behaviour, it was the defense&mdash;[http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/who-killed-alger-hiss/ not the prosecution].}}