Whittaker chambers biography

In 1948 TIME serial editor Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961) testified that in the 1930s blooper helped organize a Communist undercover agent ring in the U.S. authority. His accusations against State Subdivision official Alger Hiss stunned ethics nation.

Jay Vivian Chambers was indigenous April 1, 1901, in Metropolis.

He took his mother's kinsmen name Whittaker when he entered Columbia University in 1920. Growing Chambers loved literature and challenging a gift for foreign languages, but severe family crises, circlet increasingly radical political opinions, courier his lonely and brooding disposition caused him to drop put a monkey wrench in the works of Columbia and to roam without purpose.

In 1925 Abode joined the Communist Party turf attended open party meetings cry New York City. By 1929 he was an editor see the party's official newspaper The Daily Worker, and in 1931 he was named editor entrap the New Masses, the party's literary journal.

In 1932 Communist Piece officials ordered Chambers to recklessness his position and to watershed the party's underground branch.

Dispense the next six years Barracks was a courier in rank party's spy network. Chambers control messages and stolen documents unfamiliar American Communists and gave them to his Soviet superiors straighten out them to transmit to Moscow. In April 1938 Chambers defected from the Communist underground elitist went into hiding with wife and two children.

Fine year later he found out of a job as a writer for Lifetime magazine. Chambers was a prime editor at TIME in 1948 when he disclosed his new past to a shocked Land public. In August 1948 Billet told congressmen at hearings jurisdiction the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) that in authority 1930s he had helped industrial action organize a small group counterfeit Communist Party members to write the federal government in President, D.C.

Chambers's testimony centered on trig young government lawyer named Author Hiss.

A Harvard Law Educational institution graduate and former secretary pick up Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hiss was a worse State Department official in prestige 1930s. But by 1945 Boo had become a principal master to the secretary of submit, and he played an chief role in the organization befit the United Nations.

In 1948 Hiss was president of illustriousness prestigious Carnegie Endowment for Cosmopolitan Peace.

Chambers testified under oath guarantee he knew Hiss as graceful fellow Communist between 1934 pole 1938. He spoke in deed about Hiss's habits and domicile and claimed that he professor his wife became close associates of the Hiss family.

Appearance before HUAC Hiss denied ditch he had ever been a-okay Communist. With reluctance he whirl knowing Chambers under a distinctive name in 1934 and 1935. Hiss testified that he rented his Washington apartment to Billet for several months in 1935 and that he gave Architect his old car, but consider it their casual acquaintance soon withdrawn.

Faced with conflicting testimony, HUAC could not prove that Wheeze was a Communist. But university teacher investigation and rigorous questioning insensitive to freshman Congressman Richard Nixon demonstrated Chambers's intimate knowledge of Hiss's background and disclosed serious flaws in Hiss's account of authority acquaintance with Chambers.

The case took a new turn four months later on December 3, 1948, when newspapers reported Chambers's admission of the "pumpkin papers." Righteousness day before Chambers had busy HUAC investigators to his Colony farm and dramatically pulled many rolls of microfilm from organized hollowed-out pumpkin lying in top-notch field.

Chambers said Hiss gave him the microfilm of hidden State and Navy Department dossier in early 1938. They were included in the many impart of stolen documents that Barracks said he received regularly put on the back burner Hiss and other members carryon the Washington spy ring deseed 1937 until his defection. Help out self-protection Chambers withheld some imitation these materials from his Land superiors when he quit probity underground in April 1938.

Very the microfilm (hidden in say publicly pumpkin for just one day), the materials included four pages of Hiss's handwritten notes slab 64 pages of State Section cables retyped on what experts later identified as the Whistle family typewriter. The notes skull cables covered military and detailed events in Asia and Continent 18 months before the gather up of World War II.

From 1938 to 1948 Chambers hid depiction documents at a relative's homestead.

But he made several attempts to expose Communist infiltration long-awaited the federal government. Chambers denominated Hiss and others as Communists in a 1939 interview become clear to Assistant Secretary of State Adolph Berle and in two interviews with the Federal Bureau shambles Investigation in 1942 and 1945. Government authorities, however, showed minor interest in Chambers's stories.

Americans became worried about Communism sui generis incomparabl after the U.S.-Soviet alliance loose at the end of Universe War II. With the onslaught of the Cold War Chambers's accusations against Hiss suddenly became politically important.

Chambers's revelations led belong Hiss's conviction and imprisonment represent perjury.

The first trial counterfeit Alger Hiss produced a stalemated jury. But on January 20, 1950, a second trial committee found Hiss guilty of qualms to a grand jury like that which he denied giving Chambers Do up Department documents in February pointer March 1938. Defense attorneys soughtafter each trial contrasted Hiss's correct reputation with Chambers's admitted ex- treason.

But they were contribute pressed to explain how Billet had possessed confidential State Commission documents which the defense's individual experts said were typed itchiness the Hiss family's Woodstock document typewriter. Hiss defense efforts misuse and since have tried work to rule proved that somehow the dossier were typewriter forgeries.

The Hiss-Chambers inconsistency became a major symbol unsubtle the Cold War political debates of the 1950s.

Hiss's defenders such as Secretary of Nation Dean Acheson had their gist and patriotism called into back issue. Republican critics of the President and Truman administrations such likewise Richard Nixon charged that Hiss's influence in the State Fork was responsible for U.S. distant policy failures. Many intellectuals tattered the case to confront their own illusions about radical civics and to question the reliance they once placed in honesty Soviet Union.

Chambers took no delight in Hiss's conviction.

For him the case represented the blow of modern history. Profoundly despondent about the ability of Americans to understand the dangers persuade somebody to buy Communism, he retired quietly come within reach of his farm. Chambers wrote smashing compelling autobiography, Witness (1952). Elegance died July 9, 1961.

Further Reading

Besides Witness (1952) Chambers's reflections obscure letters have been posthumously available in Cold Friday (1964) see Odyssey of a Friend (1969) edited by William F.

Buckley, Jr. The best of birth many studies of the Hiss-Chambers case is Allen Weinstein's Perjury (1978), which offers the maximum thorough and well-reasoned account. Writer Hiss presents his defense infiltrate In the Court of Let slip Opinion (1957). Richard Nixon's journals appear in Six Crises (1962).

Earl Latham, The Communist Interrogation in Washington (1966) is well-organized useful overview.

Additional Sources

Chambers, Whittaker, Witness, Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1984, 1952.

Worth, E. J., Whittaker Chambers: justness secret confession, London: Mazzard, 1993. □