Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) was an American writer and editor, earlier Communist party member and Soviet spy, later a government witness and anti-communist writer. Born Jay Vivian Chambers in Philadelphia, he grew up on Long Island and attended Columbia University. He joined the Worker's Party of America (at the time, the legal form of what became the Communist Party of the USA). In the late 1920s, he worked on the foreign desk of The Daily ... more

Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) was an American writer and editor, earlier Communist party member and Soviet spy, later a government witness and anti-communist writer. Born Jay Vivian Chambers in Philadelphia, he grew up on Long Island and attended Columbia University. He joined the Worker's Party of America (at the time, the legal form of what became the Communist Party of the USA). In the late 1920s, he worked on the foreign desk of The Daily Worker newspaper. Drifting out of the Party for a few years, he translated several books from German and French (including Felix Salten's Bambi). Four articles in The New Masses magazine landed him a spot as editor in 1931 and (briefly) editor in chief of that magazine in 1932. In the latter half of 1932, Chambers received an "invitation" (order) to work underground for Soviet military intelligence (then known as the GRU) based out of New York City. By the mid-1930s, he had been assigned to run an espionage apparatus in Washington, DC, then opened a second. With the Great Purge and Spanish Civil War of the later 1930s, however, he became disillusioned by the Party. The murders and disappearances of other Communist agents (specifically, Ignace Reiss/Poretsky's murder in Switzerland and Juliet Poyntz's disappearance in New York) convinced him that requests to go to Moscow meant death. He defected from the Party, hid underground for many months (living off proceeds from translation work), and resurfaced at TIME magazine in April 1939. Within a month at TIME, Chambers had landed a cover story (on James Joyce's Ulysses). He rose quickly to become editor of the "back of the book" (with James Agee), foreign editor, and then senior editor. His cover stories proved so popular that publisher Henry Luce broke the magazine's anonymous tradition and named Chambers as author of a cover story on singer Marian Anderson. By 1948, he had become special projects editor, reporting directly to Luce himself: Chambers had reached the height of his journalism career. Within months of joining TIME, however, Chambers had also first tried and then shied away from alerting the US Government to his two apparati. The Hitler-Stalin Pact (AKA Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, AKA Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) drove Chambers to meet with Adolf Berle, Assistant Secretary of State and member of FDR's Brain Trust. Berle took notes but no action on the 20+ names from Chambers for several years, after which FBI investigators started asking questions of Chambers. By the early 1940s, however, Chambers was less keen to supply details, a state which continued until his first testimony before HUAC in 1948. By August 3, 1948, Chambers found himself subpoenaed and testifying before the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). This came about from the defection of others. In 1945, a cipher in the Soviet embassy in Canada, Igor Gouzenko, had defected and began working with Canadian and American intelligence sources. A few months later, American-born Soviet operative Elizabeth Bentley defected to the FBI. After years of debriefing, the FBI let Bentley testify before HUAC. In late July 1948, Bentley named Chambers in her testimony. HUAC subpoenaed Chambers on August 1, 1948, for an August 3 appearance. On August 3, 1948, when asked, Chambers named more than a dozen names, mostly from the two apparati he had run more than a decade earlier. Among those were the names of seven former Federal officials. The most prominent of these, Harry Dexter White, was an American economist and senior US Treasury official who had served as a principal in the Bretton Woods conference and in the formation of both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. White denied Chambers' allegations on August 13, then died of a heart attack on August 16. Five others pled the Fifth Amendment and would not answer HUAC questions. That left Alger Hiss alone, the only other former official to deny the allegations and the most senior after White. (By then, Hiss had become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.) In fact, Hiss had publicly demanded the earliest opportunity to deny the allegations, which HUAC granted on August 5. HUAC called Chambers and Hiss together, first on August 18 privately, then publicly on August 25, 1948 ("Confrontation Day" -- the first-ever televised congressional hearing). At that time, Hiss backed down, saying that although he had never known "a man named Whittaker Chambers," he might have known him as "George Crosley." Two days later (August 27, 1948), on a radio episode of "Meet the Press," Chambers answered in public (outside of the immunity granted before Congress) that Alger Hiss had been a Communist. Hiss threatened to sue Chambers for slander. More than a month passed before Hiss filed a $50,000 lawsuit for trial at the Federal court in Baltimore (Hiss' hometown). When Chambers reaffirmed his statement upon hearing that Hiss had finally filed suit, Hiss filed again, bringing the total to $75,000. By November 1948, both Chambers and Hiss had become involved in testifying before HUAC, a New York grand jury, and preparing for the Baltimore trial. At that point, Chambers remembered a "life preserver" he had hidden the Brooklyn residence of his wife's sister. Retrieving the package with his wife's nephew, he found 65 handwritten and typed documents (many of them from Alger Hiss -- also Harry Dexter White) and five rolls of microfilm. Chambers produced the papers during pretrial evidence for the civil lawsuit in Baltimore: these became the "Baltimore Documents." Hiss had those papers passed on to the US Department of Justice with the hope that they would lead Justice to indict Chambers. Upon learning of the Baltimore Documents, HUAC then subpoenaed Chambers for any remaining evidence. To ensure that no one (e.g. Soviet or American agents) would steal the documents before HUAC investigators arrived, Chambers hid the microfilm by hollowing out a pumpkin on his farm. HUAC member (and Chambers supporter) Richard Nixon paraded the "Pumpkin Papers" before the press, who headlined their finding for days. Nixon's parade not only began his rise in public awareness (leading eventually to the vice presidency and presidency) but pressured Justice to consider Hiss as carefully as Chambers for indictment. Eventually, Justice came to find that Chambers had already aired the extent of espionage he had until recently denied, while evidence indicated that Hiss had indeed known Chambers and passed secret documents to him, despite Hiss' denials. On December 15, 1948, Justice indicted Hiss on two counts of perjury (since the statute of limitations on treason had long ago run out). After two long, very public trials, Hiss was found guilt on both counts. On January 25, 1950, Hiss received a sentence of five years (60 months) but secured early release after 44 months for good behavior. (Hiss spent the rest of his life denying the allegations. The Venona Papers, made public in 1995, ended Hiss' campaign for all but a few diehards.) During the Hiss Case (dating from its onset in August 1948 through January 1950), much of Eastern Europe had fallen behind the Iron Curtain. China had fallen to Communism in 1949, just a few months after the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb (August 1949). Within two weeks of the Hiss verdict in January 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy made his famous Wheeling, West Virginia, launching the second Red Scare in America (known as McCarthyism). Before the end of the month, Karl Fuchs, a German scientist working on the atomic bomb in the UK, confessed to Soviet espionage. Fuchs identified the American Harry Gold, who led the FBI to David Greenglass. Greenglass in turn named Martin Sobell, Juius Rosenberg, and Rosenberg's wife Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (David Greenglass' sister) by June 1950. Throughout that period, the Hiss Case had also made headlines. Following the Hiss Case, Chambers found himself a social outcast. TIME magazine did not bring him back on staff, although they did take a few articles from him (for LIFE magazine). He spent the next two years writing his autobiography, Witness (Random House, 1952). The Saturday Evening Post serialized the book; Chambers read excerpts on NBC Radio and NBC Television. Although a best-seller for nearly a year, the book made proceeds that merely paid of legal debts and medical bills. (Chambers suffered one of many debilitating heart attacks after finishing the book.) He testified occasionally for congressional committees but contributed little (or even wrongly, according to Oliver Edmund Chubb). By 1957, he accepted a long-standing offer from William F. Buckley, Jr., to join the editorial board of his new National Review magazine. Chambers stayed through 1959, traveled to Europe with his wife (where he met Arthur Koestler, with whom he had corresponded for years), then came home to study at Western Maryland College. He died of a seventh and final heart attack at his farm, aged 60. Chambers' wife published a second book of his writings, Cold Friday (Random House, 1964), edited by TIME empire friend Duncan Norton-Taylor. President Reagan awarded him the Medal of Freedom in 1984. Secretary of Interior Donald Hodel put the Whittaker Chambers Farm on the National Historic Register in 1988. William F. Buckley, Jr., and Ralph de Toledano published books of letters by Whittaker Chambers (Odyssey of a Friend in 1969, Notes from the Underground in 1997). Since January 1950, on average more than one book per year has been published about the Hiss Case. Buckley and his followers have canonized Chambers. Careful reading of his articles and later essays (in Cold Friday), rather than letters selected by conservatives Buckley and Toledano indicate grave doubts and reveal many thoughts that run counter to Conservative thought. For more information, see: http://www.whittakerchambers.org/ (September 26, 2009) less