Whittaker Chambers was an American author, journalist, and spy. After dropping out of Columbia University, Chambers joined the open Communist Party in 1925. He wrote and edited for the New Masses and
Chambers in 1948
Hartley Hall at Columbia University, where Chambers boarded in the 1920s
Juliet Stuart Poyntz (c. 1918), whose disappearance spurred Chambers to defect
Adolf A. Berle (c. 1965): Member of the FDR administration who took Chambers's 1939 report. Initially enthusiastic, he later downplayed the report.
Alger Hiss was an American government official who, in 1948, was accused of spying for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perj
Whittaker Chambers
…in 1948. Among those whom he accused of membership in the Communist Party was a prominent Washington, D.C. lawyer and former government official, Alger Hiss. Hiss sued Chambers for slander and, in response, Chambers produced evidence of Hiss's activities as a Soviet spy while he had served in the US State…
Hiss in the Johns Hopkins University yearbook, 1926
Hiss (front row, second from left) with Edward Stettinius (front row, far left) in Yalta c. January 1945
President Harry S. Truman addresses the first UN Conference in San Francisco (from left: unknown person, Truman, Harry Vaughan, Edward Stettinius, Hiss) on June 26, 1945.