Whittaker
Chambers was
born in Philadelphia on 1st April, 1901.
He joined the American Communist Party
in 1924 and at various times edited the New
Masses and the Daily Worker.
Chambers worked as a spy for the Soviet Union before leaving the party
in 1938. The followed year he joined Time
Magazine.
In August 1948 Chambers appeared before the House
of Un-American Activities Committee
and during his testimony claimed that Alger
Hiss, a senior U.S. State Department official, was a spy. After
a federal grand jury investigation of the cases, Hiss was charged
with perjury. His first trial in 1949 ended in a hung jury but in
the second trial in 1950, he was found guilty and sentenced to five
years imprisonment.
Chambers wrote about the Hiss case in his book Witness
(1952). Whittaker
Chambers
died on 9th July,
1961.
(1) Whittaker Chambers, Witness
(1952)
Like the soldier, the spy stakes
his freedom or his life on the chances of action. The informer is
different, particularly the ex-Communist informer. He risks little.
He sits in security and uses his special knowledge to destroy others.
He has that special information to give because he once lived within
their confidence, in a shared faith, trusted by them as one of themselves,
accepting their friendship, feeling their pleasures and griefs, sitting
in their houses, eating at their tables, accepting their kindness,
knowing their wives and children. If he had not done these things
he would have no use as an informer.
(2)
Whittaker Chambers, testimony before the House
of Un-American Activities Committee
(3rd August, 1948)
I joined the Communist Party
in 1924 and left in 1937. For a number of years I had served in the
underground, chiefly in Washington. I knew it at its top level, a
group of seven or so men, from among whom in later years certain members
of Miss Bentley's organization were apparently recruited. Lee Pressman
was also a member of this group, as was Alger Hiss, who, as a member
of the State Department, later organized the conferences at Dumbarton
Oaks, San Francisco, and the United States side of the Yalta Conference.
The purpose of this group at that time was not primarily espionage.
Its original purpose was the Communist infiltration of the American
Government. But espionage was certainly one of of its eventual objectives.
Let no one be surprised at this statement. Disloyalty is a matter
of principle with every member of the Communist Party.
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