Whittaker Chambers

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Jay Vivian (David Whittaker) Chambers (April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer, editor, Communist party-member-turned-defector, best known for his testimony about the espionage and subversion of Alger Hiss.

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Youth and Education

Whittaker Chambers' father Jay Chambers was an illustrator and part of the New York-based Decorative Designers group, largely students of Howard Pyle (see the IOBA Standard, the Revere Collection, the Minsky Gallery, Oberlin College, and the Lewis Stark Bookplate Collection): his grandfather James Chambers was an editor for the now-defunct Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper. Chambers was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and spent much of his youth in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York (see photos of Lynbrook house and map). He was described in childhood as a loner whose parents frequently separated. After graduating from high school in 1919, he worked for two years in a bank before enrolling in Columbia University in 1921, where he discovered communism. Classmates included Louis Zukofsky (arguably the greatest American poet of the 20th century), Lionel Trilling (who later made him a main character in Middle of the Journey) and Meyer Schapiro; one of his mentors was Mark Van Doren. At Columbia University, his instructors recalled him as a talented writer who rarely went to class. He was expelled in 1922 for a blasphemous play.

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The Ware Group

In 1925, Chambers joined the American Communist Party (see official website) and wrote and edited for communist periodicals, including The Daily Worker and The New Masses (more). Chambers joined the Communist underground in the spring of 1932. It is claimed that in 1933 he was sent to Moscow for intelligence training, but Chambers always denied this, the incident having been based on a prank postcard he sent to friend Meyer Schapiro. His main controller in the underground was Josef Peters. Peters introduced Chambers to Harold Ware, head of the Ware group, a Communist underground cell in Washington that included Alger Hiss, Henry Collins and Lee Pressman. Hiss, meanwhile, took a job on the legal staff of the Agricultural Adjustment 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 where delivered to GRU Illegal Rezident (the chief of the NKVD or GRU station in the country of destination) Boris Bykov. He worked in this capacity from 1934 until he left the Communist party in 1938 having been alienated by the Great Purge of Josef Stalin. Chambers tried to convince Hiss to leave the party also; the two sat up all night after dinner one night arguing the point. Chambers recounted how Hiss, tears streaming down his face, refused to break with the Party because of his loyalty to his friends. It was the fanatacism of Hiss's wife, Chambers believed, that kept him in the party.

Chambers saved a collection of documents he received from Hiss to protect himself and his family against retribution from the secret apparatus as occurred in the Juliet Poyntz case. Ten years later they became known as the "pumpkin papers" because Chambers hid them in hollowed out pumpkins.

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Defection

After leaving the Communist party, Chambers' politics shifted right. In the late 1930s, Chambers joined the staff of TIME Magazine. Starting at the back of the magazine, reviewing books and film with James Agee, he would eventually rise to the position of senior editor. While at TIME, Chambers became known as a staunch anti-Communist, sometimes enraging his writers with the changes he made to their stories.

In late 1939, after the Soviet Union and Germany signed a non-aggression pact, Chambers approached assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle and spent three hours detailing what he knew about Communist activity within the United States. In the wake of World War II, Chambers' story was mostly ignored.

Chambers translated Felix Salten's children's book, Bambi, in 1927, while he was also editing the Daily Worker, a Communist newspaper in New York City. As recounted on page 239 of Witness, Chambers did so because wages on the Daily Worker were "intermittent and so small." He was asked to do the translation by Clifton Fadiman of Simon and Schuster, and the translation became an instant success, thus making Chambers an established translator. Chambers also wrote reviews of the early volumes of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History.

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Trial of the Century

After the war, Chambers' story caught the attention of a freshman Representative from California, Richard Nixon. On August 3, 1948, Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and presented a list of what he said were members of an underground communist network working within the United States government in the 1930s and 1940s (see testimony transcript). One of the names on that list was that of a State Department official who had participated in the creation of the United Nations: Alger Hiss. Hiss confronted Chambers on August 17, 1948 (see transcript testimony). The official White House response was to dismiss the case as a "red herring." Internally, White House staffers set about discrediting Chambers.

Chambers had skeptics. Hiss was well educated and had a long list of achievements to his name, and he vehemently denied the charges. Comparatively, Chambers was a drifter. Hiss had credibility; Chambers' story seemed fantastic, with little hard evidence. Hiss used this to his advantage, maligning Chambers in the press. Hiss even fabricated stories about Chambers having homosexual experiences, and used them to smear Chambers in public.

Hiss initially denied knowing Chambers, then later said he recognized Chambers as a man he had known as George Crosley. After Chambers accused Hiss of being a communist on the radio program "Meet the Press," Hiss filed a $75,000 libel suit. Then, in November 1948, Chambers led two HUAC investigators into a pumpkin patch in Maryland, where he brought out a hollowed-out pumpkin containing four rolls of microfilm. The contents of the microfilm became known as the "Pumpkin Papers" (see actual Pumpkin Papers photos). Nixon posed with a magnifying glass and these microfilms in a number of highly publicized photographs.

On May 31, 1949, amidst unprecedented hype, Alger Hiss's perjury trial began. After that trial ended in a hung jury, a second was held, which ended with a one count conviction of Hiss on January 21, 1950. By then, Chambers had made a total of 14 appearances. Because of his testimony, he resigned from his position at Time and, at one point during the trial, Chambers attempted suicide.

In the aftermath, the Hiss trial cast a shadow upon the public credibility of many Democrats, liberals, and even President Truman himself. Chambers relates how he was told, except for him, the whole political climate of the early Cold War would have been different.

Congressman Richard Nixon was so skeptical of his background, he asked FBI Director Hoover to do a thorough background check. Nixon feared Chambers was a homosexual and had been confined to a mental hospital. The FBI found gaps in Chambers' life story for which Chambers could not account.

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Presidential Medal of Freedom

While the Hiss trial propelled Nixon's political career, Chambers derived little benefit from it. A social pariah, Chambers went to work on his Maryland farm, writing his autobiography Witness, published in 1952 and a bestseller for almost a year--helping to offset the tremendous legal expenses which had accumulated since 1948 (most of Hiss' expenses were born by friends). Before his death, Chambers served briefly as senior editor of William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review. He also wrote for Fortune and Life magazines.

Some critics of Chambers, then and now, maintain that his life was a paradox and he experienced so many changes of lifestyle and philosophy that his testimony was unreliable and self serving; others find his life, particularly as described in Witness, inspirational.

Suffering from angina from the age of 38, Chambers died of his seventh major heart attack on July 9, 1961, at the age of 60. A final book, titled Cold Friday, was published posthumously in 1964 with the help of Duncan Norton Taylor. It predicted, correctly, that the fall of Communism would start in the satellite states surrounding the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.

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". (click here for full citation.)

In 1988, Chambers' farm, the Pipe Creek Farm, was added to the National Register, listed under the Maryland Historic Trust.

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Members of the Karl group

"Karl" and "Carl" were cryptonyms used by Chambers in the mid-1930s as courier between the CPUSA secret apparatus and Soviet intelligence. It appears that after the mysterious death of the NKVD Illegal Rezident Valentin Markin in August 1934, within days the Karl group was transferred to the GRU Illegal Rezident Boris Bykov. Below is a partial list of members.

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Books written by Whittaker Chambers

After its publication, Witness remained on bestseller lists for well over a year -- paying Chambers' court debts. Cold Friday was published posthumously by his widow.

  • Svedek (Prague: Conservative Institute, 2005) [Czech translation -- also for Slovak ]
  • Witness (New York: Random House, 1952)
  • Cold Friday (New York: Random House, 1964), edited and with an introduction by Duncan Norton Taylor [and Esther Chambers].
  • Can You Hear Their Voices? (Poughkeepsie: Experimental Theatre of Vassar College (1931), edited by Hallie Ferguson Flanagan Davis
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Books translated from German by Whittaker Chambers

Having learned German as a child, Chambers relied on translation work to see him through lean times, including the period following his defection. His most enduring translation is of Felix Salten's Bambi; he also translated Heinrich Mann and Franz Werfel.

  • Weirauch, Anna Elisabet. The Scorpion (New York: Willey Book Co., 1948), revised edition.
  • Regler, Gustav. Great Crusade (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940), with a preface by Ernest Hemingway, translated with Barrows Mussey.
  • Weirauch, Anna Elisabet. Scorpion (New York: Greenberg, 1933).
  • Salten, Felix. The City Jungle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1932).
  • Salten, Felix. Samson and Delilah (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931).
  • Noder, Anton. Venetian Lover, the Romance of Giorgione (New York: R. Long and R. R. Smith, 1931).
  • Tralow, Johannes. Cards and Kings (New York: R. Long and R. R. Smith, 1931).
  • Edschmid, Kasimir. The Passionate Rebel, the Life of Lord Byron (New York: A. and C. Boni, 1930).
  • Bonsels, Waldemar. The Adventures of Mario (New York: A. and C. Boni, 1930).
  • Salten, Felix. Fifteen Rabbits (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930).
  • Salten, Felix. Bambi (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929), foreword by John Galsworthy.
  • Werfel, Franz. Class Reunion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929).
  • Mann, Heinrich. Mother Mary (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1928).
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Books collecting writings by Whittaker Chambers

William F. Buckley, Jr. and others have published collections of writings by Whittaker Chambers: none of these collections were published with the consent of the Chambers family.

  • de Toledano, Ralph. Notes from the Underground: The Whittaker Chambers-Ralph de Toledano Letters, 1949-1960 (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishers, 1997).
  • Teachout, Terry. Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931-1959 (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1989).
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. Odyssey of a Friend: Letters to William F. Buckley, Jr., 1954-1961 (New York: Putnam, 1969/1970).
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Caricatures of Whittaker Chambers

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Writings Online by Whittaker Chambers

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Wikipedia cross-references

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Sources

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