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Born: April 1, 1901 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died: July 9, 1961 - Westminster, Maryland
 hambers's family suffered severe financial privation in his early years. In 1925, after attending Columbia University, Chambers was inspired by Lenin's writings to join
the Communist Party, and he subsequently worked as an editor of the New Masses and the Daily Worker. In 1932 he was recruited as a spy by the Soviet Union. In the late 1930s, disillusioned with Stalin's purges, he underwent a radical change in ideology, becoming fervently right-wing, and joined the staff of Time magazine. In 1948, before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he identified Alger Hiss, a distinguished diplomat and administrator, as a fellow member of his spy ring in Washington, D.C., during the 1930s. He produced copies of State Department documents typed on Hiss's typewriter, and led federal agents to the "pumpkin papers"—microfilms of government documents, allegedly supplied by Hiss, hidden in a pumpkin on Chambers's Maryland farm. Hiss's subsequent investigation and trials were among the most sensational of the century and brought Richard Nixon to national prominence.
| Works by Whittaker Chambers |
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Witness (1952) |
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Chambers's autobiography, Witness (1952), became a best-seller. Intense in tone and extreme in its opinions, it resonated strongly with the anticommunist fervor sweeping the country. In his last years Chambers largely abandoned his conservative ideology.
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