Lauchlin Bernard Currie was a Canadian economist best known for being President Franklin Roosevelt's chief economic advisor during World War II. After Roosevelt's death, he led the first World Bank survey mission to Colombia and eventually settled there, becoming an economic advisor to the Colombian government. This permanent relocation, however, was not entirely voluntarily, as the U.S. had refused to renew his passport in 1954. It is possible that this occurred because he had been named by two Soviet defectors and in nine partially decrypted cables sent by Soviet agents, but he was never charged with a crime and debate remains around if he knowingly collaborated.

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.