Wonderful Whittaker Chambers
Wonderful Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) was a Soviet spy for a brief period of his life but realized his error and fought to expose the evils of Communism.
Communism is the central experience of the first half of the 20th Century, and may be its final experience--will be, unless the free world, in the agony of its struggle with Communism, overcomes its crisis by discovering, in suffering and pain, a power of faith which will provide man’s mind, at the same intensity, with the same two certainties: a reason to live and a reason to die.
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) was a Soviet spy for a brief period of his life but realized his error and fought to expose the evils of Communism.1 He was one of the more influential figures of the last Century. Still, few history books give credit to this man. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and early on, his family moved to the New York City area, taking up residence in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York. At South Side High School, he excelled at English and language studies. Upon graduation from high school in 1919, Chambers worked as a laborer and bank clerk. In 1921, he entered Columbia University, where he participated in the school’s literary activities. He wrote for the undergraduate magazine “Varsity” and edited the academic journal The Morningside. While considered one of the best undergraduate students, Chambers’ attendance record was poor. It was a new interest that prevented him from going to class and graduating – Communism.
It was from 1925 to 1937 that Chambers ensconced himself in the Communist movement. During this phase of his life, he graduated from a simple activist to an underground espionage agent. After Stalin’s purges in 1937, Chambers became disillusioned, broke with the Communists, and became a staunch Christian. He became senior editor of Time, heading its foreign news section in 1944. He evolved into an ardent anti-Communist and was acutely aware of the struggle between the Godless system of Communism and Christianity. In his remarkable 1952 autobiography, Witness, he provided this stirring account of the great battle:
The communist vision is the vision of man without God. It is the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man’s liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man’s destiny and reorganizing man’s life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in His image, but because man’s mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals.
Chambers testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) in 1948. Here, Chambers bravely identified several members of a secret Communist cabal that had burrowed into the United States government in the 1930s and 1940s. Chambers identified Alger Hiss as one of the principal players of this network. Hiss was a high-level Department of State official who had advised President Roosevelt at the wartime Yalta Conference and was a crucial figure in the negotiations that led to the formation of the United Nations. Hiss was also the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
As a spy courier, Chambers hid documents and notes in Hiss’ handwriting in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm. These “Pumpkin Papers” that Chambers produced almost sealed the case. As a result of the HCUA hearings, Hiss faced conviction for lying under oath. A five-year sentence included 44 months at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, before building the entire espionage case, the three-year statute of limitations prevented the filing that charge.
Not only did the press vilify Chambers during the HCUA hearings, but professionals also attacked him. For example, during testimony, a psychiatrist took the stand to say that Chambers was a psychopath. Never mind the fact that the good doctor never examined Chambers.
In 1995, the military released years of work that decoded secret Soviet messages that proved the Communist infiltration of the government during the 1940s. Called the Venona Project, this effort confirmed much of what Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, and other ex-Communists told HCUA and other congressional committees (e.g., the McCarthy Senate investigation).2 Despite this proof and other documentation and analysis, many people reject Chambers, vilify McCarthy, and still come to the defense of Hiss.
There seems to be an epidemic of amnesia among baby boomers because much of the “Red Scare” mantra crystallized from the HCUA, a committee of the House, not the Senate where McCarthy held office. As such, most liberals and some conservatives sadly react to the discussion of Chambers as proof of the terrible “McCarthy witch hunt.” The truth is that McCarthy was trying to expose a terrible menace that drove him to an early grave at 48. While he was not a perfect man, like all of us, the falsehoods perpetrated against him sent him to the grave. For example, conventional wisdom says that McCarthy ruined the lives of those he investigated. McCarthy did not want to release the names of the people he was investigating until convictions occurred. He did not want to jeopardize those who may have been innocent. It was the media who leaked names to the press, not McCarthy. To be fair and open, some writings suggest Chambers was a private critic of McCarthy. That is understandable based on the hysteria and lies propagated by the media during his lifetime.
When Chambers broke with Communism in 1937, he told his wife they joined the “losing side.” He tried to warn the Roosevelt Administration two years later about Communist infiltration. Specifically, Adolf Berle (Assistant Secretary of State) took Chambers’ information directly to Roosevelt. The lack of response was typical, making sense because FDR had an infatuation with “Uncle Joe” (Stalin). After failing to expose the Communist menace to FDR, Chambers used his position as a Time magazine writer and editor to warn Americans that Stalin’s regime was as dangerous as Nazi Germany. Much to the displeasure of Time reporters, he would rewrite articles that he believed were too slanted in favor of communist causes. Chambers’ best works of that period have been compiled into a book titled Ghosts on the Roof.
When Chambers passed in 1961, the Associated Press waged a sad war of words against the man. In protest, the Sentinel Star of Orlando, Florida, published a dissenting editorial:
The staid, powerful Associated Press handled the news of Whittaker Chambers in a peculiar way. Chambers, you may remember was a $30,000 a year senior editor of Time who, in 1948, put the finger on Alger Hiss, the State Department spy, and lost his job, his reputation and his health. The only reason we can think of is patriotism. He made a clean breast of everything; he wanted to atone for his mistake by warning of the US of its danger.
The AP’s handling tends to indict him for being loyal to the US. The AP calls him a “turncoat Communist.” Turncoat is a despised appellation, and the inference is that anyone who turns from Communism should be despised. The AP says Chambers “tattled.” Telling the truth is honorable, but from childhood, we are taught that tattling is unworthy. The AP says Chambers “recited” to a “Congressional spy-hunting committee.” Here, the inference is that he repeated a cooked-up story and that spy-hunting is not a serious matter.
Whereas the AP calls Hiss “brilliant,” it kisses off Chambers as being “pudgy, short and fat” and says, “he lived with a woman outside marriage.” This was before he married a woman to whom he was devoted for 30 years until his death… We are living in peculiar times, gentlemen of the Associated Press, when patriots are maligned.
President Ronald Regan posthumously awarded Chambers the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984. The Medal’s citation reads:
At a critical moment in our Nation’s history, Whittaker Chambers stood alone against the brooding terrors of our age. Consummate intellectual, writer of moving majestic prose, and witness to the truth, he became the focus of a momentous controversy in American history that symbolized our Ccentury’s epic struggle between freedom and totalitarianism, a controversy in which the solitary figure of Whittaker Chambers personified the mystery of human redemption in the face of evil and suffering. As long as humanity speaks of virtue and dreams of freedom, the life and writings of Whittaker Chambers will ennoble and inspire. The words of Arthur Koestler are his epitaph: “The witness is gone; the testimony will stand.”
It is fitting to close this paper with a small sampling of the more inspirational quotes by Chambers (Statement before the House Un-American Activities Committee, August 3, 1948):
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.
“Foreword in the Form of a Letter to my Children,” Witness, 1952:
A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something.
Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom.
The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.
The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God.
Communism is the central experience of the first half of the 20th century, and may be its final experience--will be, unless the free world, in the agony of its struggle with Communism, overcomes its crisis by discovering, in suffering and pain, a power of faith which will provide man’s mind, at the same intensity, with the same two certainties: a reason to live and a reason to die.
In closing, it is sad to say that we have relegated great people like Chambers to the dustbin of history as a nation. Meanwhile, many people today believe that personalities like Michael Moore and George Soros are “patriots.”
Primary printed sources for this essay include:
The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors by Herbert Romerstein, Eric Breindel, Regnery Publishing (October 2001).
None Dare Call It Treason - 25 Years Later by John A. Stormer Liberty Bell Press; (May 1999). Stormer exposes many of the treasonous historical facts, and he supplies copious referenced details. This is the book to read to fully understand the depth of the treason throughout the 20th Century (and today!).
His birth name was Jay Vivian Chambers, and he assumed his mother’s maiden name, Whittaker, in the 1920s, and he subsequently used several aliases.
The book Venona Secrets details the information compiled from the namesake military project. This book provides concrete evidence that American Communists successfully infiltrated the State Department, Treasury Department, Office of Strategic Services (OSS), Justice Department, Agricultural Department, Commerce Department, the Office of War Information, the War Production Board, the Board of Economic Warfare, the Civil Service Commission, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the army, the navy, Congress, the Manhattan Project, the United Nations, and the White House.