Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War

26. Spy Versus Spy: Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss

193 Spy versus Spy Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss The [Alger Hiss] case had all the elements of a fine drama, accusations of treason, unusual evidence, the launching of a presidential career, and enough inconsistencies and ambiguities to leave the issue of guilt or innocence in doubt for decades. John Ehrman, “The Alger Hiss Case” Elizabeth Bentley’s information revived the FBI’s interest in earlier warnings of Soviet espionage from Whittaker Chambers, a former communist who left the party after he became disillusioned by the Stalinist purges. Chambers’s warnings about spies in the government had been ignored over the years, but they were taken more seriously after Bentley’s defection because her story echoed much of his information. Chambers was summoned to appear at the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) with Bentley and named Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy, which launched a case that would highlight the debate over communism in America for decades to come. Chambers left the CPUSA in 1938, the year Bentley joined it. He was one of the rare native-born Americans in the CPUSA when he joined the party in 1925. Like Bentley, he was a student at Columbia University and his 26 194 The Golden Age of Soviet Espionage—the 1930s and 1940s American roots made him an attractive prospect for work in the CPUSA underground. After a stint as an editor for the New Masses, a CPUSA journal , Chambers cut his overt ties to the party and worked as a courier for the Ware Group, a spy ring of more radical New Deal officials run by Harold Ware of the Department of Agriculture. Among the New Dealers in the Ware Group was Alger Hiss, then an official of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, an agency created under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to balance supply and demand for agricultural commodities. As Allen Weinstein noted, Chambers and Hiss were born “three years, 200 miles and two worlds apart.”1 Chambers grew up in a broken middle-class home where his father was an alcoholic , and he dropped out of college to live a bohemian existence. He was a talented writer and linguist and published an acclaimed translation of Bambi from the original German, the novel that inspired the famed Disney film. He grew increasingly alienated from mainstream American society during the Depression and gravitated toward communism like many other intellectuals of the era. Hiss, conversely, was destined for success from childhood. He was born into a patrician family in Baltimore, but his early youth was clouded by his father’s suicide. Hiss was later a brilliant student at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School, where he studied under Felix Frankfurter, who later recommended him for a clerkship under Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. After Harvard, Hiss practiced law in Boston and New York until Roosevelt’s election. Attracted by New Deal social reforms, Hiss entered government and worked in various agencies before joining the State Department in 1936. During his college years, Hiss dabbled in leftist politics. The Depression ripenedhissocialistbeliefs,andintheearly1930s,hejoinedtheWareGroup. Like the Silvermaster and Perlo networks, Ware’s circle started as a Marxist discussion group but soon evolved into a spy ring. For the CPUSA and its Soviet masters, these networks were excellent seeding mechanisms where one member could advance another into government jobs with increasing responsibility and access to intelligence. Hiss was a seed that flowered brilliantly . As he ascended in the State Department’s ranks, he became a key intelligence producer for the ring and microfilmed classified documents to pass to Chambers, who would then courier them to the Soviets.2 195 Spy versus Spy • Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss By the late 1930s Chambers’s commitment to communism had been shaken by news of Stalin’s purges. Chambers left the party in 1938 and urged fellow communists to follow his example. He pleaded with Harry Dexter White and Hiss to abandon communism and was shocked that Hiss and his wife were unfazed by Stalin’s show trials.3 Fearing reprisals from the Soviets, Chambers went into hiding. He got word to the NKVD that he would expose its spying if he or his family were threatened, but he also fearedthathewouldbearrestedforespionageifhewenttotheFBI.Besides, he thought, the FBI would dismiss his warnings about Soviet espionage given the antifascist climate of the day. Stalin’s pact with Hitler changed Chambers’s...