Adrian Lee is a Solicitor-Advocate in London, specialising in criminal defence, and was twice a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate.
Seventy years ago, in May 1952, an extraordinary memoir was published that would have a profound impact on the nascent American Conservative movement.
Unusually, the author, Whittaker Chambers, a one-time writer-editor for Time magazine, was a former member of the American Communist Party and a self-confessed Soviet spy.
The 808-page book, entitled Witness, became a bestseller, and was even serialised in the Saturday Evening Post, then America’s most widely circulated weekly magazine.
A cursory glance at the volume reveals the reason for its success: the quality of the writing. Susan Jacoby, author of Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, remarked that Witness was “written with such emotional conviction that it is hard to put down even today”.
Until 1948 few people had heard of Whittaker Chambers. In personality terms, he was not an impressive figure. Chambers, a burly and ponderous middle-aged man, possessed little charm and had no public speaking ability.
Arthur Schlesinger, a writer and historian commented in 1997 on a meeting that he had with Chambers in 1946:
“I was writing a piece on the American Communist Party for Life magazine, and someone told me I should talk with Whit Chambers. I found a squat, lugubrious, unprepossessing, taciturn man initially resistant to my questions and studiously uninformative in his answers.”
Later, Schlesinger succeeded in striking a rapport with him but at the end of their meeting, Chambers informed him that he had originally suspected that he was a communist and was on his guard. T.S. Matthews, Time’s managing editor, remarked of Chambers that there was “a suppressed air of melodrama about him.”
Chambers first entered the public’s conscience by accident. On 31st July 1948, a forty-year-old American, Elizabeth Bentley, answered a subpoena and appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to testify at a public hearing of her activities as a courier for Soviet spies.
Bentley, a middle-class woman with several academic degrees, had joined the Communist Party in March 1935 and had subsequently been engaged in espionage until 1945.
The years of stress had taken their toll and by the mid-Forties she was suffering from both alcoholism and depression. The worse her condition became, the more she feared that her Soviet paymasters would eventually dispose of her. Eventually, she defected and became an FBI informant.
At the HUAC hearing, Bentley (dubbed the “Red Spy Queen” by the press) mentioned Chambers’ name as a former Communist contact and a subpoena for his attendance followed.
Amongst the three Democrats and the three Republicans who attended the HUAC session on 3rd August 1948 was a young, first-term, Californian congressman, Richard M Nixon, who’s career progression would be forever linked in the public’s mind to the events about to unfold.
Ironically, Nixon was not initially impressed with Chambers a witness, describing him later in unflattering terms:
“His clothes were unpressed; his shirt collar was curled up over his jacket. He spoke in a rather bored monotone and seemed to be an indifferent if not a reluctant witness.”
Chambers began by reading from a pre-prepared statement which concluded dramatically: “I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.”
He then went onto describe what he called the “Ware Group”, an underground organisation of the American Communist Party formed in 1933.
Originally established as a Marxist study group, the Ware Group was aimed at recruiting the young graduate elite of the new Roosevelt Administration. Special advisors, senior staffers, lawyers and economists employed within the New Deal agencies were their targets.
This was a huge advancement, as previously the Communist Party had attracted mainly poor, working-class, Eastern European emigres. It was also highly lucrative for the Party, as members were instructed to make “exceptional money sacrifices” each month.
By 1934, it had grown to 75 members, divided into cells. Chambers became the leader of the Ware Group in 1935 and told HUAC that the principal aim of the group was to infiltrate America’s federal government and to place its members in positions of influence.
During the hearing on 3rd August, Chambers mentioned the names of several of the group’s most active participants. One name sent a ripple through the committee room: Alger Hiss.
Hiss was regarded widely as New Deal royalty and one of the most senior high-flyers in the Democratic administration. The 43-year-old graduate of both John Hopkins University and Harvard Law School had served variously at the Justice Department and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, before transferring to the State Department in 1936.
In 1944 he was appointed as Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs and was responsible for drawing up plans for the new United Nations. In February 1945, Hiss attended the “Big Three” Yalta Conference as part of the American delegation.
(Infamously, Yalta determined the east-west partition of post-war Europe.)
Hiss went on to be Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on International Organisation, which created the UN Charter. In 1946 he was appointed as President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
On 5th August, Hiss appeared before HUAC and denied ever being a Communist or having personally met Chambers. Democrats vocally supported Hiss and denounce his accuser.
Chambers returned to the committee on 17th August and in the presence of Hiss, repeated his allegations. Hiss threatened Chambers with a libel action should he repeat the allegations in public. Chambers duly obliged on a national radio programme and Hiss responded by filling a lawsuit.
On 17th November, Chambers responded by producing 65 pages of documents stolen from the State Department in 1938, typed on Hiss’s personal typewriter and a series of letters handwritten by Hiss. Experts confirmed Hiss’s handwriting and the typeface of his typewriter.
On 2nd December, Chambers handed over five rolls of 35mm film allegedly taken by Hiss of State Department documents. It was the beginning of the end for Hiss, who by this time had changed his account of events several times.
Because of a statute of limitations, Hiss could not be charged with espionage, however, the Grand Jury indicted him on two counts of perjury. The first trial ended in a hung jury, but on 21st January 1950, after re-trial, Hiss was convicted. He was subsequently given a five-year prison sentence.
Hiss maintained his innocence until his death at the age of 92 in 1996. Liberal America refused to accept the verdict and turned its venom against the ambitious Richard Nixon.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, intelligence emerged that pointed to Hiss being an agent for Soviet military intelligence (GRU) and operating under the codename “Ales”. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democratic Senator, conceded: “Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important.”
Chambers’ memoir, Witness, is a book from a bygone era, but continues to provide insights that are relevant today.
Firstly, it explains how a person who had lost his religious faith replaced it with a utopian political creed. Secondly, it describes how totalitarian states seek to covertly subvert and undermine liberal democracies. Thirdly, the book reveals the process of awakening and de-radicalisation, as the ideology is exposed as a sham.
Finally, it stands as testament to the personal courage of an individual determined to speak the truth, despite facing the wrath of establishment opinion.
Whittaker Chambers became a conservative and a senior editor at National Review. He died in 1961 but was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously by President Reagan in 1984.