Whittaker Chambers
Encyclopedia
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers (April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961), was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA
member and Soviet
spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury
and espionage
trial of Alger Hiss
. Both are described in his book published in 1952 entitled Witness.
spending his infancy in Brooklyn
. His family moved to Lynbrook
on Long Island
, New York
in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were named Jay Chambers and Laha. Chambers described his childhood as troubled because of his parents separation and caring for their mentally ill grandmother. Chambers' brother committed suicide shortly after withdrawing from his first year of college. Chambers would cite his brother's troubled life and eventually suicide as one of many reasons that he was drawn to communism as a young man.
After graduating from South Side High School
in neighboring Rockville Centre
in 1919, Chambers worked at a variety of jobs before attending Williams College
in 1920. He later enrolled as a day student at Columbia University
. At Columbia his fellow students included Meyer Schapiro
, Louis Zukofsky
, Clifton Fadiman
, John Gassner, Lionel Trilling
(who later fictionalized him as a main character in his novel The Middle of the Journey), and Guy Endore
. In the intellectual environment of Columbia he gained friends and respect. His professors and fellow students found him a talented writer and believed he might become a major poet or novelist.
Early in his sophomore year, Chambers wrote a play entitled "A Play for Puppets" for Columbia's literary magazine The Morningside, which he edited. The work was deemed blasphemous
by many students and administrators, and the controversy spread to New York City newspapers. Later, the play would be used against Chambers while testifying against Alger Hiss. Disheartened over controversy, Chambers left the college in 1925. (From Columbia, Chambers also knew Isaiah Oggins
, who went into the Soviet underground a few years earlier; Chambers' wife Esther Shemitz Chambers knew Oggins' wife Nerma Berman Oggins from the Rand School of Social Science
, the ILGWU, and The World Tomorrow
.)
Shemitz, who had studied at the Art Students League and integrated herself into New York City
's intellectual circles, met Chambers at the 1926 textile strike
at Passaic, New Jersey
. They then underwent a stormy courtship that faced resistance from their comrades, with Chambers having climbed through her window at five o'clock in the morning to propose. Shemitz identified as a pacifist and not as a revolutionary, demonstrated by her work at The World Tomorrow
pacifist magazine.
The couple had two children during the 1930s. Communist leadership had demanded that the family abort
the first pregnancy, but Chambers secretly refused. His decision marked a key point in his gradual disillusionment with communism. He regarded the birth of his first child as "the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life."
In a letter to J. Edgar Hoover
, Chambers wrote that he had numerous homosexual liaisons during the 1930s, starting in 1933. He said that his frequent traveling gave him an opportunity for 'cruising
', especially in New York City
and Washington D.C. He insisted that he kept these activities secret from everyone, including his communist handlers and his comrades given their negative attitudes towards homosexuality. Chambers also had heterosexual affairs.
Chambers told the FBI that he gave these practices up in 1938 when he left the communist underground. He attributed this change of heart to his newfound Christianity. Chambers' admissions, given the strong social attitudes against homosexuals in 1949, led to a hostile response.
wrote that Lenin's authoritarianism was "precisely what attracts Chambers... He had at last found his church."; that is, he became a Marxist. In 1925, Chambers joined the Communist Party of the United States
(CPUSA) (then known as the Workers Party of America
) and wrote and edited for Communist publications, including The Daily Worker
newspaper and The New Masses magazine. Chambers combined his literary talents with his devotion to Communism, writing four short stories in 1931 about proletarian hardship and revolt. One of these was Can You Make Out Their Voices?, described by critics as some of the best fiction from the American Communist movement.
Hallie Flanagan
co-adapted and produced it as a play entitled Can You Hear Their Voices?
(see Writings by Chambers, below), staged across America and in many other countries. Chambers also worked as a translator during this period; among his works was the English version of Felix Salten
's 1923 novel Bambi, A Life in the Woods
.
apparatus headed by Alexander Ulanovsky
(aka Ulrich). Later, his main controller in the underground was Josef Peters
(whom CPUSA General Secretary
Earl Browder
later replaced with Rudy Baker
). Chambers claimed Peters introduced him to Harold Ware
(although he later denied he had ever been introduced to Ware), and that he was head of a Communist underground cell in Washington that reportedly included:
Apart from Marion Bachrach, these people were all members of Franklin D. Roosevelt
's New Deal
administration. Chambers worked in Washington as an organizer among Communists in the city and as a courier between New York and Washington for stolen documents which were delivered to Boris Bykov, the GRU
Illegal Rezident.
's Great Purge
, which began in 1936. He was also fearful for his own life, having noted the murder in Switzerland of Ignatz Reiss, a high-ranking Soviet spy who had broken with Stalin, and the disappearance of his friend and fellow spy Juliet Poyntz
in the United States. Poyntz had vanished in 1937, shortly after she had visited Moscow and returned disillusioned with the Communist cause due to the Stalinist Purges.
Chambers ignored several orders that he travel to Moscow, worried that he might be "purged." He also started concealing some of the documents he collected from his sources. He planned to use these, along with several rolls of microfilm photographs of documents, as a "life preserver" to prevent the Soviets from killing him and his family.
In 1938, Chambers broke with Communism and took his family into hiding, storing the "life preserver" at the home of his nephew and his parents. Initially he had no plans to give information on his espionage activities to the U.S. government. His espionage contacts were his friends, and he had no desire to inform on them.
drove Chambers to take action against the Soviet Union. In September 1939, at the urging of anti-Communist, Russian-born journalist Isaac Don Levine
, Chambers and Levine met with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle. Levine had introduced Chambers to Walter Krivitsky
, who was already informing American and British authorities about Soviet agents who held posts in both governments. Krivitsky told Chambers it was their duty to inform. Chambers agreed to reveal what he knew on the condition of immunity from prosecution.
During the meeting, which took place at Berle's home in Washington, Chambers named 18 current and former government employees as spies or Communist sympathizers. Many names mentioned held relatively minor posts or were already under suspicion. Some names, however, were more significant and surprising: Alger Hiss, his brother Donald Hiss, and Laurence Duggan (all respected, mid-level officials in the State Department) and Lauchlin Currie
, a special assistant to Franklin Roosevelt. Another person named had worked on a top secret bombsight project at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.
Berle found Chambers' information tentative, unclear, and uncorroborated. He took the information to the White House, but the President dismissed it, to which Berle made little if any objection. Berle kept his notes, however (later, evidence during Hiss' perjury trials).
Berle notified the FBI of Chambers's information in March 1940. In February 1941, Krivitsky was found dead in his hotel room. While police ruled the death a suicide, it was widely speculated that Krivitsky had been killed by Soviet intelligence. Worried that the Soviets might try to kill Chambers too, Berle again told the FBI about his interview with Chambers. Nevertheless, the FBI took no immediate action, in line with the political orientation of the USA which viewed the potential threat from the USSR as minor, when compared to that of Nazi Germany
.
(The FBI did interview Chambers in May 1942 and June 1945, without further action. Only in November 1945, when Elizabeth Bentley
defected and corroborated much of Chambers's story, did the FBI begin to take Chambers seriously.)
's latest book, Finnegans Wake
. He started at the back of the magazine, reviewing books and film with James Agee
and then Calvin Fixx
. When Fixx died in October 1942, Wilder Hobson
succeeded him as Chambers' assistant editor in Arts & Entertainment. Other writers working for Chambers in that section included: novelist Nigel Dennis
, future New York Times Book Review editor Harvey Breit
, and poets Howard Moss
and Weldon Kees
. During this time, a struggle arose between Soviet-sympathizing and anti-Communist staffers at TIME. Chambers and Willi Schlamm
led the anti-Communist camp (and both later joined the founding editorial board of William F. Buckley, Jr.
's National Review
). Theodore H. White
and Richard Lauterbach
led the pro-Soviet camp. TIME founder Henry R. Luce came to support the anti-Communist camp before the end of World War II in 1945. With Luce's blessing, Chambers received a promotion to senior editor in September 1943 and was made a member of TIMEs "Senior Group", which determined editorial policy, in December.
By early 1948, Chambers had become one of the best known writer-editors at TIME. First had come his scathing commentary "The Ghosts on the Roof" (March 5, 1945) on the Yalta Conference
(in which Hiss partook). Subsequent cover-story essays profiled Marian Anderson
, Arnold J. Toynbee
, Rebecca West
and Reinhold Niebuhr
. The cover story on Marion Anderson (December 30, 1946) proved so popular that the magazine broke its rule of non-attribution in response to readers' letters:
During this period, Chambers and his family also became members of Pipe Creek Meeting of the Quakers
near his Maryland farm.
(HUAC). Here he gave the names of individuals he said were part of the underground "Ware group" in the late 1930s, including Alger Hiss
. He thus once again named Hiss as a member of the Communist Party, but did not yet make any accusations of espionage. In subsequent HUAC sessions, Hiss testified and initially denied that he knew anyone by the name of Chambers, but on seeing him in person (and after it became clear that Chambers knew details about Hiss's life), said that he had known Chambers under the name "George Crosley". Chambers had published previously using the pseudonym George Crosley. Hiss denied that he had ever been a Communist, however. Since Chambers still presented no evidence, the committee had initially been inclined to take the word of Hiss on the matter. However, committee member Richard Nixon
received secret information from the FBI which had led him to pursue the issue. When it issued its report, HUAC described Hiss's testimony as "vague and evasive."
, not pleased with the allegation that the man who had presided over the United Nations
Charter Conference was a Communist, dismissed the case as a "red herring".
In the atmosphere of increasing anti-communism that would later be termed McCarthyism
, many conservatives viewed the Hiss case as emblematic of what they saw as Democrats' laxity towards the danger of communist infiltration and influence in the State Department. Many liberals, in turn, saw the Hiss case as part of the desperation of the Republican party to regain the office of president, having been out of power for 16 years. Truman also issued Executive Order 9835
, which initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947.
The five rolls of 35 mm film known as the "pumpkin papers" were thought until late 1974 to be locked in HUAC files. Independent researcher Stephen W. Salant, an economist at the University of Michigan, sued the U.S. Justice Department in 1975 when his request for access to them under the Freedom of Information Act was denied. On July 31, 1975, as a result of this lawsuit and follow-on suits filed by Peter Irons and by Alger Hiss and William Reuben, the Justice Department released copies of the "pumpkin papers" that had been used to implicate Hiss. One roll of film turned out to be totally blank due to overexposure, two others are faintly legible copies of nonclassified Navy Department documents relating to such subjects as life rafts and fire extinguishers, and the remaining two are photographs of the State Department documents introduced by the prosecution at the two Hiss trials, relating to U.S./German relations in the late 1930s.
for espionage was five years. Instead, Hiss was indicted for two counts of perjury
relating to testimony he had given before a federal grand jury
the previous December. There he had denied giving any documents to Whittaker Chambers, and testified he hadn't seen Chambers after mid 1936.
Hiss was tried twice for perjury. The first trial, in June 1949, ended with the jury deadlocked eight to four for conviction. In addition to Chambers's testimony, a government expert testified that other papers typed on a typewriter belonging to the Hiss family matched the secret papers produced by Chambers. An impressive array of character witnesses appeared on behalf of Hiss: two U. S. Supreme Court justices, Felix Frankfurter
and Stanley Reed
, former Democratic presidential nominee John W. Davis
and future Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. Chambers, on the other hand, was attacked by Hiss's attorneys as "an enemy of the Republic, a blasphemer of Christ, a disbeliever in God, with no respect for matrimony or motherhood."
In the second trial, Hiss's defense produced a psychiatrist who characterized Chambers as a "psychopathic personality" and "a pathological liar."
The second trial ended in January 1950 with Hiss found guilty on both counts of perjury. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
started the magazine National Review
and Chambers briefly worked there as senior editor (perhaps most famously writing a scathing review, "Big Sister is Watching You", of Ayn Rand
's Atlas Shrugged
).
He also wrote for Fortune
and Life
magazines.
In 1952, Chambers's book Witness was published to widespread acclaim. The book was a combination of autobiography and a warning about the dangers of Communism. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
called it one of the greatest of all American autobiographies, and Ronald Reagan
credited the book as the inspiration behind his conversion from a New Deal Democrat to a conservative Republican.
Witness was a bestseller for more than a year and helped pay off Chambers' legal debts.
. He had suffered from angina since the age of 38 and had had several heart attacks previously.
His second book, Cold Friday, was published posthumously in 1964 with the help of Duncan Norton Taylor. The book prophetically predicted that the fall of Communism
would start in the satellite state
s surrounding the Soviet Union
in Eastern Europe
. A collection of his correspondence with William F. Buckley, Jr., Odyssey of a Friend, was published in 1968; a collection of his journalism---including several of his Time and National Review writings, was published in 1989 as Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers.
as well as Alger Hiss
as a covert member of the Communist Party. White died shortly thereafter, so the case did not receive the attention that the charges against Hiss did. Transcripts of coded Soviet messages decrypted through the Venona project
, revealed in 1995, have added evidence regarding White's covert involvement with Communists and Soviet intelligence. A bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, headed by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
concluded:
The Moynihan study, while publishing the #1822 Ales cable, offers no documentary evidence regarding White.
, The Weekly Standard
, The Leadership Institute, and the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
. He is regularly cited by conservative
writers such as Heritage's president Edwin Feulner
.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan
posthumously awarded Chambers the Presidential Medal of Freedom
, for his contribution to "the century's epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism." In 1988, Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel
granted national landmark status to the Pipe Creek Farm
. In 2001, members of the George W. Bush
Administration held a private ceremony to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Chambers's birth. Speakers included William F. Buckley Jr.
In 2007, John Chambers revealed that a library containing his father's papers should open in 2008 on the Chambers farm in Maryland. He indicated that the facility will be available to all scholars and that a separate library, rather than one within an established university, is needed to guarantee open access.
On January 6, 2010, The Medfield farmhouse at Pipe Creek Farm, in which Whittaker Chambers wrote Witness, was severely damaged by a fire that began in an electrical panel at the front entrance of the home.
In 2011, author Elena Maria Vidal
interviewed David Chambers about his grandfather's legacy. Versions of the interview were published in the National Observer
and The American Conservative
.
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
member and Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury
Perjury
Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...
and espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
trial of Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
. Both are described in his book published in 1952 entitled Witness.
Youth and education
Whittaker Chambers was born in Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
spending his infancy in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. His family moved to Lynbrook
Lynbrook, New York
Lynbrook is a village in Nassau County, New York, USA. The population was 19,427 at the 2010 census. The Village of Lynbrook is inside the Town of Hempstead. The Village of Lynbrook's current mayor is William Hendrick....
on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1904, where he grew up and attended school. His parents were named Jay Chambers and Laha. Chambers described his childhood as troubled because of his parents separation and caring for their mentally ill grandmother. Chambers' brother committed suicide shortly after withdrawing from his first year of college. Chambers would cite his brother's troubled life and eventually suicide as one of many reasons that he was drawn to communism as a young man.
After graduating from South Side High School
South Side High School (Rockville Centre, New York)
South Side High School is the only public high school in the town of Rockville Centre, New York. South Side serves grades 9 through 12 and boasts a variety of academic, extra-curricular and athletic programs, including the International Baccalaureate Curriculum in junior and senior years. School...
in neighboring Rockville Centre
Rockville Centre, New York
Rockville Centre is a village located in Nassau County, New York, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the village had a total population of 24,023. The town is made up of middle to upper middle class residents, most of the wealthier residents residing on the north side of town near the...
in 1919, Chambers worked at a variety of jobs before attending Williams College
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
in 1920. He later enrolled as a day student at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. At Columbia his fellow students included Meyer Schapiro
Meyer Schapiro
Meyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for forging new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art...
, Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...
, Clifton Fadiman
Clifton Fadiman
Clifton P. "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality.-Literary career:...
, John Gassner, Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...
(who later fictionalized him as a main character in his novel The Middle of the Journey), and Guy Endore
Guy Endore
Samuel Guy Endore , born Samuel Goldstein and also known as Harry Relis, was a novelist and screenwriter. During his career he produced a wide array of novels, screenplays, and pamphlets, both published and unpublished...
. In the intellectual environment of Columbia he gained friends and respect. His professors and fellow students found him a talented writer and believed he might become a major poet or novelist.
Early in his sophomore year, Chambers wrote a play entitled "A Play for Puppets" for Columbia's literary magazine The Morningside, which he edited. The work was deemed blasphemous
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
by many students and administrators, and the controversy spread to New York City newspapers. Later, the play would be used against Chambers while testifying against Alger Hiss. Disheartened over controversy, Chambers left the college in 1925. (From Columbia, Chambers also knew Isaiah Oggins
Isaiah Oggins
Isaiah Oggins was an American communist and spy in the Soviet underground who worked in Europe with his wife and in the Far East before being arrested, sentenced, and eventually executed under the orders of Joseph Stalin.-Early life:The third of four children, Oggins was born 1898 in Willimantic,...
, who went into the Soviet underground a few years earlier; Chambers' wife Esther Shemitz Chambers knew Oggins' wife Nerma Berman Oggins from the Rand School of Social Science
Rand School of Social Science
The Rand School of Social Science was formed in New York City by adherents of the Socialist Party of America in 1906. The school aimed to provide a broad education to workers, imparting a politicizing class-consciousness, and additionally served as a research bureau, a publisher, and the operator...
, the ILGWU, and The World Tomorrow
The World Tomorrow (magazine)
The World Tomorrow: A journal looking toward a Christian world was an American political magazine, founded by the pacifist organization Fellowship of Reconciliation and published in New York City by FOR's Fellowship Press at 108 Lexington Avenue.-Main Editors:The World Tomorrow seems to have had...
.)
Personal life
In 1930 or 1931, Chambers married the young artist Esther Shemitz (1900–1986).Shemitz, who had studied at the Art Students League and integrated herself into New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's intellectual circles, met Chambers at the 1926 textile strike
1926 Passaic Textile Strike
The 1926 Passaic Textile Strike was a work stoppage by over 15,000 woolen mill workers in and around Passaic, New Jersey over wage issues in several factories in the vicinity...
at Passaic, New Jersey
Passaic, New Jersey
Passaic is a city in Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 69,781, maintaining its status as the 15th largest municipality in New Jersey with an increase of 1,920 residents from the 2000 Census population of 67,861...
. They then underwent a stormy courtship that faced resistance from their comrades, with Chambers having climbed through her window at five o'clock in the morning to propose. Shemitz identified as a pacifist and not as a revolutionary, demonstrated by her work at The World Tomorrow
The World Tomorrow (magazine)
The World Tomorrow: A journal looking toward a Christian world was an American political magazine, founded by the pacifist organization Fellowship of Reconciliation and published in New York City by FOR's Fellowship Press at 108 Lexington Avenue.-Main Editors:The World Tomorrow seems to have had...
pacifist magazine.
The couple had two children during the 1930s. Communist leadership had demanded that the family abort
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
the first pregnancy, but Chambers secretly refused. His decision marked a key point in his gradual disillusionment with communism. He regarded the birth of his first child as "the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life."
In a letter to J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
, Chambers wrote that he had numerous homosexual liaisons during the 1930s, starting in 1933. He said that his frequent traveling gave him an opportunity for 'cruising
Cruising for sex
Cruising for sex, or cruising is the act of walking or driving about a locality in search of a sex partner, usually of the anonymous, casual, one-time variety...
', especially in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Washington D.C. He insisted that he kept these activities secret from everyone, including his communist handlers and his comrades given their negative attitudes towards homosexuality. Chambers also had heterosexual affairs.
Chambers told the FBI that he gave these practices up in 1938 when he left the communist underground. He attributed this change of heart to his newfound Christianity. Chambers' admissions, given the strong social attitudes against homosexuals in 1949, led to a hostile response.
Communism and espionage
In 1924, Chambers read Lenin's Soviets at Work and was deeply affected by it. He now saw the dysfunctional nature of his family, he would write, as "in miniature the whole crisis of the middle class"; a malaise from which Communism promised liberation. Chambers's biographer Sam TanenhausSam Tanenhaus
Sam Tanenhaus is an American historian, biographer, and journalist.-Biography:Tanenhaus received his B.A. in English from Grinnell College in 1977 and a M.A. in English Literature from Yale University in 1978. He is currently the editor of The New York Times Book Review and Week in Review...
wrote that Lenin's authoritarianism was "precisely what attracts Chambers... He had at last found his church."; that is, he became a Marxist. In 1925, Chambers joined the Communist Party of the United States
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
(CPUSA) (then known as the Workers Party of America
Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. As a legal political party the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood,...
) and wrote and edited for Communist publications, including The Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
newspaper and The New Masses magazine. Chambers combined his literary talents with his devotion to Communism, writing four short stories in 1931 about proletarian hardship and revolt. One of these was Can You Make Out Their Voices?, described by critics as some of the best fiction from the American Communist movement.
Hallie Flanagan
Hallie Flanagan
Hallie Flanagan was an American theatrical producer and director, playwright, and author, best known as director of the Federal Theatre Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration .-Background:...
co-adapted and produced it as a play entitled Can You Hear Their Voices?
Can you hear their voices?
Can You Hear Their Voices? A Play of Our Time is a 1931 play by Hallie Flanagan and her former student Margaret Ellen Clifford, based on the short story "Can You Make Out Their Voices" by Whittaker Chambers. This play is one of the earliest examples of Agitprop theatre in the U.S...
(see Writings by Chambers, below), staged across America and in many other countries. Chambers also worked as a translator during this period; among his works was the English version of Felix Salten
Felix Salten
Felix Salten was an Austrian author and critic in Vienna. His most famous work is Bambi .-Life:...
's 1923 novel Bambi, A Life in the Woods
Bambi, A Life in the Woods
Bambi, a Life in the Woods, originally published in Austria as Bambi. Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde, is a 1923 Austrian novel written by Felix Salten and published by Paul Zsolnay Verlag...
.
Harold Ware
Chambers was recruited to join the "Communist underground" and began his career as a spy, working for a GRUGRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
apparatus headed by Alexander Ulanovsky
Alexander Ulanovsky
Alexander Petrovich Ulanovsky was the chief illegal "rezident" for Soviet Military Intelligence , who was rezident the United States from 1931 until 1934 and later, with his family, prisoner in the Soviet gulag.-Background:Born into a Jewish family in Kishinev, , as Izrail...
(aka Ulrich). Later, his main controller in the underground was Josef Peters
J. Peters
J. Peters was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was an ethnic Jewish journalist and political activist who was a leading figure of the Hungarian language section of the Communist Party USA in the 1920s and 1930s...
(whom CPUSA General Secretary
General Secretary
The office of general secretary is staffed by the chief officer of:*The General Secretariat for Macedonia and Thrace, a government agency for the Greek regions of Macedonia and Thrace...
Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
later replaced with Rudy Baker
Rudy Baker
Rudy Baker , a Communist Party USA official, is today best known for his alleged role as head of the CPUSA's underground secret apparatus. He succeeded to the position in 1938, after the removal of J. Peters....
). Chambers claimed Peters introduced him to Harold Ware
Harold Ware
Harold Maskell "Hal" Ware was an American Marxist regarded as one of the Communist Party's top experts on agriculture....
(although he later denied he had ever been introduced to Ware), and that he was head of a Communist underground cell in Washington that reportedly included:
- Henry Collins, employed at the National Recovery AdministrationNational Recovery AdministrationThe National Recovery Administration was the primary New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. The goal was to eliminate "cut-throat competition" by bringing industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices...
and later the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). - Lee PressmanLee PressmanLee Pressman was a labor attorney and a US government functionary publicly exposed in 1948 for having been a spy for the Soviet foreign intelligence network during the middle 1930s...
, assistant general counselGeneral CounselA general counsel is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a corporation or government department. The term is most used in the United States...
of the AAA. - Alger HissAlger HissAlger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
, attorney for the AAA and the Nye CommitteeNye CommitteeThe Nye Committee, officially known as the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, was a committee of the United States Senate which studied the causes of United States' involvement in World War I...
; he moved to the Department of State in 1936, where he became an increasingly prominent figure. - John AbtJohn AbtJohn Jacob Abt was an American lawyer and politician. He spent most of his career as chief counsel to the Communist Party USA ....
, chief of Litigation for the AAA from 1933 to 1935, assistant general counsel of the Works Progress AdministrationWorks Progress AdministrationThe Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
in 1935, chief counsel on Senator Robert La Follette, Jr.'s LaFollette CommitteeLaFollette CommitteeThe LaFollette Civil Liberties Committee, or more formally, Committee on Education and Labor, Subcommittee Investigating Violations of Free Speech and the Rights of Labor , began as an inquiry into a National Labor Relations Board investigation of methods used by employers in certain industries to...
from 1936 to 1937 and special assistant to the United States Attorney General, 1937 and 1938. - Charles KramerCharles KramerCharles Kramer, originally Charles Krevisky, was an American economist who worked for U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his brain trust. Among other contributions, he wrote the original idea for the Point Four Program. He also worked for several congressional committees and hired...
, employed at the Department of LaborUnited States Department of LaborThe United States Department of Labor is a Cabinet department of the United States government responsible for occupational safety, wage and hour standards, unemployment insurance benefits, re-employment services, and some economic statistics. Many U.S. states also have such departments. The...
National Labor Relations BoardNational Labor Relations BoardThe National Labor Relations Board is an independent agency of the United States government charged with conducting elections for labor union representation and with investigating and remedying unfair labor practices. Unfair labor practices may involve union-related situations or instances of...
(NLRB). - Nathan WittNathan WittNathan Witt was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board from 1937 to 1940...
, employed at the AAA; later moved to the NLRB. - George SilvermanGeorge SilvermanAbraham George Silverman was a mathematician and statistician who graduated from Harvard University.-Biography:...
, employed at the Railroad Retirement BoardRailroad Retirement BoardThe U.S. Railroad Retirement Board is an independent agency in the executive branch of the United States government created in 1935 to administer a social insurance program providing retirement benefits to the country's railroad workers....
; later worked with the Federal Coordinator of Transport, the United States Tariff Commission and the Labor Advisory Board of the National Recovery AdministrationNational Recovery AdministrationThe National Recovery Administration was the primary New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. The goal was to eliminate "cut-throat competition" by bringing industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices...
. - Marion BachrachMarion BachrachMarion Bachrach was the sister of John Abt and also a member of the Ware group, a group of government employees in the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who were also members of the secret apparatus of the Communist Party of the United States in the 1930s...
, sister of John Abt; office manager to Representative John Bernard of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party. - John HerrmannJohn HerrmannJohn Theodore Herrmann was the person who introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss.-Biography:He was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1900. He lived in Paris in the 1920s, as part of its famous expatriate American writers' circle, when he met his first wife, Josephine Herbst in 1924...
, author; assistant to Harold Ware; employed at the AAA; courier and document photographer for the Ware group; introduced Chambers to Hiss. - Nathaniel WeylNathaniel WeylNathaniel Weyl was an American economist and author who wrote on a variety of social issues. A member of the Communist Party of the United States from 1933 until 1939, after leaving the party he became a conservative and avowed anti-communist...
, author; would later defect from Communism himself and give evidence against party members. - Donald HissDonald Hiss-Biography:Donald Hiss was born on December 15, 1906, in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the Harvard Law School....
, brother to Alger Hiss; employed at the Department of State. - Victor PerloVictor PerloVictor Perlo was a Marxist economist, government functionary, and a longtime member of the governing National Committee of the Communist Party USA...
, chief of the Aviation Section of the War Production BoardWar Production BoardThe War Production Board was established as a government agency on January 16, 1942 by executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt.The purpose of the board was to regulate the production and allocation of materials and fuel during World War II in the United States...
, later joined the Office of Price Administration Department of Commerce and the Division of Monetary Research at the Department of Treasury.
Apart from Marion Bachrach, these people were all members of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
's New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
administration. Chambers worked in Washington as an organizer among Communists in the city and as a courier between New York and Washington for stolen documents which were delivered to Boris Bykov, the GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
Illegal Rezident.
Other covert sources
Using the codename "Karl" or "Carl," Chambers served during the mid-1930s as a courier between various covert sources and Soviet intelligence. In addition to the Ware group mentioned above, other sources that Chambers dealt with allegedly included:- Noel FieldNoel FieldNoel Field , was an American citizen. While employed at the United States Department of State in the 1930s, he was a Soviet spy...
, employed at the Department of StateUnited States Department of StateThe United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
. - Harold GlasserHarold GlasserHarold Glasser , was an economist in the United States Department of the Treasury and spokesman on the affairs of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration 'throughout its whole life' and he had a 'predominant voice' in determining which countries should receive aid...
, Assistant Director, Division of Monetary Research, United States Department of the TreasuryUnited States Department of the TreasuryThe Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...
. - Ward Pigman, employed at the National Bureau of Standards; Labor and Public Welfare Committee.
- Vincent RenoVincent RenoFranklin Vincent Reno was a mathematician and civilian employee at the United States Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in the 1930s. Reno was a member of the "Karl group" of Soviet spies which was being handled by Whittaker Chambers up until 1938...
, a mathematician at the U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving Ground. - Julian WadleighJulian WadleighHenry Julian Wadleigh , was an American economist and the United States Department of State official in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a key witness in the Alger Hiss trials.-Biography:...
, economist with the Department of Agriculture and later the Trade Agreements section of the United States Department of State. - Harry Dexter WhiteHarry Dexter WhiteHarry Dexter White was an American economist, and senior U.S. Treasury department official, participating in the Bretton Woods conference...
, Director of the Division of Monetary Research at the Secretary of the Treasury.
Defection
Chambers carried on his espionage activities from 1932 until 1937 or 1938 even while his faith in Communism was waning. He became increasingly disturbed by Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
, which began in 1936. He was also fearful for his own life, having noted the murder in Switzerland of Ignatz Reiss, a high-ranking Soviet spy who had broken with Stalin, and the disappearance of his friend and fellow spy Juliet Poyntz
Juliet Poyntz
Juliet Stuart Poyntz was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution , and a founding member of the Communist Party of the United States . After resigning from active work with the Party, she disappeared in 1937, never to be seen again...
in the United States. Poyntz had vanished in 1937, shortly after she had visited Moscow and returned disillusioned with the Communist cause due to the Stalinist Purges.
Chambers ignored several orders that he travel to Moscow, worried that he might be "purged." He also started concealing some of the documents he collected from his sources. He planned to use these, along with several rolls of microfilm photographs of documents, as a "life preserver" to prevent the Soviets from killing him and his family.
In 1938, Chambers broke with Communism and took his family into hiding, storing the "life preserver" at the home of his nephew and his parents. Initially he had no plans to give information on his espionage activities to the U.S. government. His espionage contacts were his friends, and he had no desire to inform on them.
Berle meeting
The August 1939 Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pactMolotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
drove Chambers to take action against the Soviet Union. In September 1939, at the urging of anti-Communist, Russian-born journalist Isaac Don Levine
Isaac Don Levine
Isaac Don Levine was a Russian-born American journalist and writer.-Biography:Born in Mozyr, Russia, Levine came to the United States in 1911. He finished high school in Missouri, and found work with The Kansas City Star and later The New York Herald Tribune, for which he covered the revolution of...
, Chambers and Levine met with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle. Levine had introduced Chambers to Walter Krivitsky
Walter Krivitsky
Walter Germanovich Krivitsky was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact before defecting weeks before the outbreak of World War II....
, who was already informing American and British authorities about Soviet agents who held posts in both governments. Krivitsky told Chambers it was their duty to inform. Chambers agreed to reveal what he knew on the condition of immunity from prosecution.
During the meeting, which took place at Berle's home in Washington, Chambers named 18 current and former government employees as spies or Communist sympathizers. Many names mentioned held relatively minor posts or were already under suspicion. Some names, however, were more significant and surprising: Alger Hiss, his brother Donald Hiss, and Laurence Duggan (all respected, mid-level officials in the State Department) and Lauchlin Currie
Lauchlin Currie
Lauchlin Bernard Currie was a Canadian-born U.S.economist from New Dublin, Nova Scotia, Canada, and allegedly an agent of espionage for the Soviet Union....
, a special assistant to Franklin Roosevelt. Another person named had worked on a top secret bombsight project at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.
Berle found Chambers' information tentative, unclear, and uncorroborated. He took the information to the White House, but the President dismissed it, to which Berle made little if any objection. Berle kept his notes, however (later, evidence during Hiss' perjury trials).
Berle notified the FBI of Chambers's information in March 1940. In February 1941, Krivitsky was found dead in his hotel room. While police ruled the death a suicide, it was widely speculated that Krivitsky had been killed by Soviet intelligence. Worried that the Soviets might try to kill Chambers too, Berle again told the FBI about his interview with Chambers. Nevertheless, the FBI took no immediate action, in line with the political orientation of the USA which viewed the potential threat from the USSR as minor, when compared to that of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
(The FBI did interview Chambers in May 1942 and June 1945, without further action. Only in November 1945, when Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American spy for the Soviet Union from 1938 until 1945. In 1945 she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence and became an informer for the U.S. She exposed two networks of spies, ultimately naming over 80 Americans who had engaged in espionage for...
defected and corroborated much of Chambers's story, did the FBI begin to take Chambers seriously.)
TIME Magazine
By the time of the Berle meeting, Chambers had come out of hiding after a year and joined the staff of TIME Magazine (April 1939). He landed a cover story within a month on James JoyceJames Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's latest book, Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
. He started at the back of the magazine, reviewing books and film with James Agee
James Agee
James Rufus Agee was an American author, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, he was one of the most influential film critics in the U.S...
and then Calvin Fixx
Jim Fixx
James Fuller Fixx was the author of the 1977 best-selling book, The Complete Book of Running. Best known as Jim Fixx, he is credited with helping start America's fitness revolution, popularizing the sport of running and demonstrating the health benefits of regular jogging.- Life and work :Born in...
. When Fixx died in October 1942, Wilder Hobson
Wilder Hobson
Wilder Hobson was an American writer and editor for TIME , FORTUNE , Harper's Bazaar , and Newsweek magazines. He was also a competent musician , author of an history of American jazz, and long-time contributor to Saturday Review magazine...
succeeded him as Chambers' assistant editor in Arts & Entertainment. Other writers working for Chambers in that section included: novelist Nigel Dennis
Nigel Dennis
Nigel Forbes Dennis was an English writer, critic, playwright and magazine editor.-Early life:Born at his grandfather's house in Surrey, England, Dennis was the son of Lt.-Col...
, future New York Times Book Review editor Harvey Breit
Harvey Breit
Harvey Breit was an American poet, editor, and playwright. He was married to poet and playwright Patricia Rinehart. He co-wrote the play The Disenchanted with Budd Schulberg, an adaption from Schulberg's novel of the same name, about the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Breit adapted other novels for...
, and poets Howard Moss
Howard Moss
Howard Moss was an American poet, dramatist and critic, who was poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine from 1948 until his death. He won the National Book Award in 1972 for Selected Poems.-Biography:...
and Weldon Kees
Weldon Kees
Harry Weldon Kees was an American poet, painter, literary critic, novelist, jazz pianist, and short story writer...
. During this time, a struggle arose between Soviet-sympathizing and anti-Communist staffers at TIME. Chambers and Willi Schlamm
Willi Schlamm
William S. Schlamm was an Austrian-American journalist. Born in Przemyśl, then part of the Austrian Empire, the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant, he became a Communist, being received when he was 16 years old by Vladimir Lenin in the Kremlin, After completing his Abitur , he became a writer...
led the anti-Communist camp (and both later joined the founding editorial board of William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
's National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
). Theodore H. White
Theodore H. White
Theodore Harold White was an American political journalist, historian, and novelist, known for his wartime reporting from China and accounts of the 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1980 presidential elections.-Life and career:...
and Richard Lauterbach
Richard Lauterbach
Richard Edward Lauterbach was the TIME magazine Moscow bureau chief during World War II.Lauterbach was among a group of several journalists employed by Time magazine including John Scott that demanded publisher Henry Luce fire Whittaker Chambers as head of the foreign news department because of...
led the pro-Soviet camp. TIME founder Henry R. Luce came to support the anti-Communist camp before the end of World War II in 1945. With Luce's blessing, Chambers received a promotion to senior editor in September 1943 and was made a member of TIMEs "Senior Group", which determined editorial policy, in December.
By early 1948, Chambers had become one of the best known writer-editors at TIME. First had come his scathing commentary "The Ghosts on the Roof" (March 5, 1945) on the Yalta Conference
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D...
(in which Hiss partook). Subsequent cover-story essays profiled Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson was an African-American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century...
, Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...
, Rebecca West
Rebecca West
Cicely Isabel Fairfield , known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, DBE was an English author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, West was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public...
and Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world...
. The cover story on Marion Anderson (December 30, 1946) proved so popular that the magazine broke its rule of non-attribution in response to readers' letters:
Most TIME cover stories are written and edited by the regular staffs of the section in which they appear. Certain cover stories, that present special difficulties or call for a special literary skill, are written by Senior Editor Whittaker Chambers."Chambers was at the height of his career when the Hiss case broke later that year.
During this period, Chambers and his family also became members of Pipe Creek Meeting of the Quakers
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
near his Maryland farm.
The Hiss case
On August 3, 1948, Chambers was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities CommitteeHouse Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
(HUAC). Here he gave the names of individuals he said were part of the underground "Ware group" in the late 1930s, including Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
. He thus once again named Hiss as a member of the Communist Party, but did not yet make any accusations of espionage. In subsequent HUAC sessions, Hiss testified and initially denied that he knew anyone by the name of Chambers, but on seeing him in person (and after it became clear that Chambers knew details about Hiss's life), said that he had known Chambers under the name "George Crosley". Chambers had published previously using the pseudonym George Crosley. Hiss denied that he had ever been a Communist, however. Since Chambers still presented no evidence, the committee had initially been inclined to take the word of Hiss on the matter. However, committee member Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
received secret information from the FBI which had led him to pursue the issue. When it issued its report, HUAC described Hiss's testimony as "vague and evasive."
"Red Herring"
The country quickly became divided over the Hiss–Chambers issue. President TrumanHarry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
, not pleased with the allegation that the man who had presided over the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
Charter Conference was a Communist, dismissed the case as a "red herring".
In the atmosphere of increasing anti-communism that would later be termed McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
, many conservatives viewed the Hiss case as emblematic of what they saw as Democrats' laxity towards the danger of communist infiltration and influence in the State Department. Many liberals, in turn, saw the Hiss case as part of the desperation of the Republican party to regain the office of president, having been out of power for 16 years. Truman also issued Executive Order 9835
Executive Order 9835
President Harry S. Truman signed United States Executive Order 9835, sometimes known as the "Loyalty Order", on March 21, 1947. The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States, designed to root out communist influence in the U.S. federal government...
, which initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947.
"Pumpkin Papers"
Hiss filed a $75,000 libel suit against Chambers on October 8, 1948. Under pressure from Hiss's lawyers, Chambers finally retrieved his envelope of evidence and presented it to the HUAC after they subpoenaed them. It contained four notes in Alger Hiss's handwriting, sixty-five typewritten copies of State Department documents and five strips of microfilm, some of which contained photographs of State Department documents. The press came to call these the "Pumpkin Papers" referring to the fact that Chambers had briefly hidden the microfilm in a hollowed-out pumpkin. These documents indicated that Hiss knew Chambers long after mid-1936, when Hiss said he had last seen "Crosley," and also that Hiss had engaged in espionage with Chambers. Chambers explained his delay in producing this evidence as an effort to spare an old friend from more trouble than necessary. Until October 1948, Chambers had repeatedly stated that Hiss had not engaged in espionage, even when Chambers testified under oath. Chambers was forced to testify at the Hiss trials that he had committed perjury several times, which reduced his credibility in the eyes of his critics.The five rolls of 35 mm film known as the "pumpkin papers" were thought until late 1974 to be locked in HUAC files. Independent researcher Stephen W. Salant, an economist at the University of Michigan, sued the U.S. Justice Department in 1975 when his request for access to them under the Freedom of Information Act was denied. On July 31, 1975, as a result of this lawsuit and follow-on suits filed by Peter Irons and by Alger Hiss and William Reuben, the Justice Department released copies of the "pumpkin papers" that had been used to implicate Hiss. One roll of film turned out to be totally blank due to overexposure, two others are faintly legible copies of nonclassified Navy Department documents relating to such subjects as life rafts and fire extinguishers, and the remaining two are photographs of the State Department documents introduced by the prosecution at the two Hiss trials, relating to U.S./German relations in the late 1930s.
Perjury
Hiss could not be tried for espionage at this time, because the evidence indicated the offense had occurred more than ten years prior to that time, and the statute of limitationsStatute of limitations
A statute of limitations is an enactment in a common law legal system that sets the maximum time after an event that legal proceedings based on that event may be initiated...
for espionage was five years. Instead, Hiss was indicted for two counts of perjury
Perjury
Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...
relating to testimony he had given before a federal grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
the previous December. There he had denied giving any documents to Whittaker Chambers, and testified he hadn't seen Chambers after mid 1936.
Hiss was tried twice for perjury. The first trial, in June 1949, ended with the jury deadlocked eight to four for conviction. In addition to Chambers's testimony, a government expert testified that other papers typed on a typewriter belonging to the Hiss family matched the secret papers produced by Chambers. An impressive array of character witnesses appeared on behalf of Hiss: two U. S. Supreme Court justices, Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...
and Stanley Reed
Stanley Forman Reed
Stanley Forman Reed was a noted American attorney who served as United States Solicitor General from 1935 to 1938 and as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1938 to 1957. He was the last Supreme Court Justice who did not graduate from law school Stanley Forman Reed (December 31,...
, former Democratic presidential nominee John W. Davis
John W. Davis
John William Davis was an American politician, diplomat and lawyer. He served as a United States Representative from West Virginia , then as Solicitor General of the United States and US Ambassador to the UK under President Woodrow Wilson...
and future Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. Chambers, on the other hand, was attacked by Hiss's attorneys as "an enemy of the Republic, a blasphemer of Christ, a disbeliever in God, with no respect for matrimony or motherhood."
In the second trial, Hiss's defense produced a psychiatrist who characterized Chambers as a "psychopathic personality" and "a pathological liar."
The second trial ended in January 1950 with Hiss found guilty on both counts of perjury. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
After the Hiss case
Chambers had resigned from TIME in December 1948. In 1955, William F. Buckley, Jr.William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...
started the magazine National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
and Chambers briefly worked there as senior editor (perhaps most famously writing a scathing review, "Big Sister is Watching You", of Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
's Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged
Atlas Shrugged is a novel by Ayn Rand, first published in 1957 in the United States. Rand's fourth and last novel, it was also her longest, and the one she considered to be her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing...
).
He also wrote for Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
and Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazines.
In 1952, Chambers's book Witness was published to widespread acclaim. The book was a combination of autobiography and a warning about the dangers of Communism. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. was an American historian and social critic whose work explored the American liberalism of political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian"...
called it one of the greatest of all American autobiographies, and Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
credited the book as the inspiration behind his conversion from a New Deal Democrat to a conservative Republican.
Witness was a bestseller for more than a year and helped pay off Chambers' legal debts.
Death
Chambers died of a heart attack on July 9, 1961, at his 300 acres (1.2 km²) farm in Westminster, MarylandWestminster, Maryland
Westminster is a city in northern Maryland, United States. It is the seat of Carroll County. The city's population was 18,590 at the 2010 census. Westminster is an outlying community within the Baltimore-Towson, MD MSA, which is part of a greater Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia, DC-MD-VA-WV...
. He had suffered from angina since the age of 38 and had had several heart attacks previously.
His second book, Cold Friday, was published posthumously in 1964 with the help of Duncan Norton Taylor. The book prophetically predicted that the fall of Communism
Predictions of Soviet collapse
There were people who predicted that the Soviet Union would eventually be dissolved before the process of dissolution began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989....
would start in the satellite state
Satellite state
A satellite state is a political term that refers to a country that is formally independent, but under heavy political and economic influence or control by another country...
s surrounding the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. A collection of his correspondence with William F. Buckley, Jr., Odyssey of a Friend, was published in 1968; a collection of his journalism---including several of his Time and National Review writings, was published in 1989 as Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers.
Recent evidence
At Chambers's first testimony before HUAC, he implicated Harry Dexter WhiteHarry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White was an American economist, and senior U.S. Treasury department official, participating in the Bretton Woods conference...
as well as Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
as a covert member of the Communist Party. White died shortly thereafter, so the case did not receive the attention that the charges against Hiss did. Transcripts of coded Soviet messages decrypted through the Venona project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
, revealed in 1995, have added evidence regarding White's covert involvement with Communists and Soviet intelligence. A bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, headed by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...
concluded:
Thus, a Soviet cable of March 30, 1945 identified an agent, code-name ALES, as having attended the Yalta Conference of February 1945. He had then journeyed to Moscow where, according to the cable, he and his colleagues were "awarded Soviet decorations." This could only be Alger Hiss, Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of Special Political Affairs; the other three State Department officials in the delegation from Yalta to Moscow are beyond suspicion. The party was met by Andrei Vyshinsky, the prosecutor in the Moscow trials of 1936-38. By no later than June 1950, the U.S. Army was persed that ALES was Hiss. ... The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department.
The Moynihan study, while publishing the #1822 Ales cable, offers no documentary evidence regarding White.
Legacy
Chambers's book Witness is on the reading lists of the Heritage FoundationHeritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank based in Washington, D.C. Heritage's stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong...
, The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...
, The Leadership Institute, and the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal is a nonprofit educational organization based out of Mecosta, Michigan. It was founded in order to continue the legacy of Dr. Russell Kirk, an American political theorist, historian, social critic, literary critic, and fiction author...
. He is regularly cited by conservative
American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...
writers such as Heritage's president Edwin Feulner
Edwin Feulner
Edwin John Feulner Jr. is President of the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, a position he has held since 1977....
.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
posthumously awarded Chambers the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
, for his contribution to "the century's epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism." In 1988, Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel
Donald P. Hodel
Donald Paul Hodel is a former United States Secretary of Energy and Secretary of the Interior, and Chairman of the company FreeEats.com/ccAdvertising, which has had a controversial role disseminating push polls for the Economic Freedom Fund...
granted national landmark status to the Pipe Creek Farm
Whittaker Chambers Farm
The Whitaker Chambers Farm, also known as Pipe Creek Farm, was the home "of Whittaker Chambers, an ex-Communist whose revelations about his past espionage activities with Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, had major political repercussions after World War II...
. In 2001, members of the George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
Administration held a private ceremony to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Chambers's birth. Speakers included William F. Buckley Jr.
In 2007, John Chambers revealed that a library containing his father's papers should open in 2008 on the Chambers farm in Maryland. He indicated that the facility will be available to all scholars and that a separate library, rather than one within an established university, is needed to guarantee open access.
On January 6, 2010, The Medfield farmhouse at Pipe Creek Farm, in which Whittaker Chambers wrote Witness, was severely damaged by a fire that began in an electrical panel at the front entrance of the home.
In 2011, author Elena Maria Vidal
Elena Maria Vidal
Elena Maria Vidal is a historical novelist and noted blogger living in Easton, Maryland. She was born in Florence, Oregon and grew up in Frederick, Maryland...
interviewed David Chambers about his grandfather's legacy. Versions of the interview were published in the National Observer
National Observer
The National Observer was a weekly American newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company from 1962 until 1977. Hunter S. Thompson wrote several articles for the National Observer as the correspondent for Latin America early in his career....
and The American Conservative
The American Conservative
The American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....
.
See also
- Bibliography of Whittaker Chambers
- History of Soviet espionage in the United StatesHistory of Soviet espionage in the United StatesSince the late 1920s, the Soviet Union, through its OGPU and NKVD intelligence services, used Russians and foreign-born nationals as well as Communist, and people of American origin to perform espionage activities in the United States. These various espionage networks eventually succeeded in...
- List of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
External links
- Encyclopædia Britannica: Whittaker Chambers
- C-SPAN: American Writers series: Whittaker Chambers