Whittaker Chambers

"Whittaker Chambers was a key figure in the first major post-World War II spy case. He was a disillusioned communist who is a fascinating man and one of the attractions of this book is that it really gives Chambers his due. He was a very talented writer and a much tormented man who had become a Communist as a young man in college in the 1920s and he went into the Communist Party underground in the early 30s and become a courier for a Soviet spy ring. By the late 1930s he quit and secreted away some material that he wanted to have to protect himself. He warned the Russians that he had this material and if he was ever harmed he would use it. In 1939, after the Nazi-Soviet pact, he was persuaded by a friend that he needed to tell what he knew to the American government – he did but nobody really believed him. It was not until 1948 that he was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities against Alger Hiss, formerly a high-ranking State Department official. Hiss’s later trial riveted the country and this was the case that convinced many Americans that there had been significant Soviet espionage. It was shortly after Alger Hiss was convicted that Joseph McCarthy came to prominence, so the case had a huge influence on American public life."