Ignace Reiss
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Ignace Reiss – also known as "Ignace Poretsky," "Ignatz Reiss," "Ludwig," "Ludwik", "Hans Eberhardt," "Steff Brandt," Nathan Poreckij, and "Walter Scott " – was one of the "Great Illegals" or Soviet spies who worked in third party countries where they were not nationals in the late 1920s and 1930s. He was known as a nevozvrashchenec ("unreturnable").
Reiss' brother died in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920 (here, Polish soldiers display captured Soviet battle flags after the Battle of Warsaw)
Reiss received the Order of the Red Banner (here, first variant, on red cloth (1918–1924))
The Great Purge by Joseph Stalin of Bolshevik revolutionaries led Reiss to defect (here, Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, all marked either for assassination or execution
Lausanne railway station, where Reiss met Schildbach, who led him to his death
Whittaker Chambers
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Whittaker Chambers was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from the Soviet underground (1938), worked for Time magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware Group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century, all described in his 1952 memoir Witness. Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at National Review (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.
Hartley Hall at Columbia University, where Chambers boarded in the 1920s
Juliet Stuart Poyntz (circa 1918), whose disappearance spurred Chambers to defect
Adolf A. Berle (circa 1965): Member of the FDR administration who took Chambers's 1939 report. Initially enthusiastic, he later downplayed the report.