Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

  In any case, I was at the Hisses’ when Alger drove the Ford away. I was still there when he came back after having turned it over to the party. He was very pleased with himself. I never asked him any further details about the transaction.

  I would have been shocked if I had known that he had asked a colleague in the Department of Justice (the late W. Marvin Smith) to notarize the transfer of title. For Alger was now in the Department of Justice. He had left the munitions investigation and the Solicitor General of the United States, now Mr. Justice Reed, had appointed Alger Hiss his assistant. Stanley Reed would have been dismayed if he could have known that Alger Hiss raised the question of his going to the Department of Justice with the Communist Party in my person, knowing that I would confer about it with J. Peters. Presumably he would not have believed it at all, for he was to be a character witness for Hiss at his first trial.

  Neither Peters nor the Soviet apparatus had any immediate purpose for Alger Hiss in the Justice Department. But the munitions investigation was winding up. The Justice Department was a forward step in his career and might lead to a widening of contacts and of the apparatus.

  XVIII

  Peters was more often in Washington now, for Harold Ware was dead. His fondness for driving at high speeds had closed the career of one of the most dangerous, because one of the ablest, of native American Communists. He had been driving in Pennsylvania. A truck had turned out of a blind lane. Ware could not stop.

  The Ware Group was without a leader. But Ware must have a successor. Peters came down especially from New York for an election meeting of the leading committee of the Group. There was a long discussion in the living room of Henry Collins’ apartment. I was in the apartment at the time, but I took no part in the discussion. I sat alone in the dining room, reading.

  At last Peters joined me. He was worried. A crisis, he said, had developed in the Group. Victor Perlo believed that he should succeed Ware as Group leader. He was being stubborn and surly about it. All the other members of the leadership believed that Nathan Witt was Ware’s natural heir. A deadlock had resulted, for, though the rest might easily have outvoted Perlo, they did not wish to risk trouble in the Group by alienating him. Peters was also for Witt. So was I. But Peters did not wish to use his authority to act against any member of the Group in favor of another member. Peters asked me if I would come in and, since my personal authority was high with the Group, give my reasons why I was for Witt.

  I went in. I said that we must first of all treat the problem that had arisen as Communists, without personalities, and bearing in mind the peculiar nature of underground work and its unusual requirements, especially in the personal character of leadership. I asked Perlo’s pardon for observing that he was a tense and nervous man, and that his very belief in his own qualifications for leadership, while perhaps quite justified, would actually be a handicap so long as it was not shared by the rest of the Group. Of course, we Communists did not believe in any mystical rightness of majorities over minorities, but we did believe in practical solutions to practical problems. Witt was acknowledged to be quiet, firm and solid. He had the confidence of all the members of the Group except Perlo. Therefore, I was for Witt.

  Perlo, of course, was unconvinced, but he agreed to abide by discipline. Thereafter, he would scarcely speak to me. Later, according to Elizabeth Bentley, he rose to the leadership he coveted in her espionage group.

  I had no organizational authority whatever to act as I had done in the Witt election. The episode reflects the unclassified position I had acquired among the Washington Communists.

  XIX

  When Alger bought the Plymouth car, there was some talk of ways and means between the Hisses. I noted it, but I supposed that it was the common practice of well-to-do people who like to “talk poor.” Compared with us, the Hisses seemed affluent. I knew that Alger’s party dues were high, and, that, unlike some others, George Silverman, for example, he paid them scrupulously. I did not realize at any time I knew them how closely they must have had to contrive sometimes.

  But while Alger was in the Department of Justice, there was a real retrenchment campaign. The Hisses moved from the P Street house, a three-story brick house with a basement dining room, to a little box on 30th Street a few blocks away. The 30th Street house was much smaller and part of a row of similar frame houses so that in the living room we could sometimes hear the murmur of voices through the walls from the houses on either side. To make sure that our own voices did not carry, we took to foregathering downstairs. For like P Street, the 30th Street house also had a basement dining room. But, at P Street, the dining room was at the front of the house and, at 30th Street, it was at the back; a small kitchen and closet storeroom were at the front.

  Alger Hiss had scarcely settled in as Assistant Solicitor General of the United States when he again had an opportunity to change jobs. Francis Sayre, then an Assistant Secretary of State, asked Alger to become his assistant. Hiss had been in the Justice Department so short a time that the question of propriety was involved. But the opportunity to go to the State Department could not be passed up. We discussed the question at length and decided that at whatever cost in the Solicitor General’s good will, Alger Hiss must go to the State Department.

  There was not a question of direct espionage at that time. But Hiss and I sensed that that was what we were heading for, and we discussed it. But the first result that we foresaw from Alger’s new job was the possibility of widening the apparatus in the State Department. That soon became Alger’s underground activity and took the form of a regular campaign. Alger described several liberals in the Department whom he thought might make possible recruits. He began to invite them to the 30th Street house. It was slow work and the approach had to be cautious. In the end nothing came of any of those contacts.

  But two other contacts, who at first were unwittingly part of the same campaign, yielded surprising results, though not those intended. From my first day in Washington, I had heard the name of Laurence Duggan as a likely underground recruit. I also heard constant rumors about Duggan’s great friend, Noel Field, a Harvard man and Quaker of good family who was in what was then the West European Division of the State Department. The Fields and the Duggans lived in the same apartment house.

  Hiss began an intensive campaign to recruit Field and Duggan. He reached the point of talking very openly to Noel Field. I was afraid to ask just how openly they were talking, for I might have been tempted to urge caution, and in such delicate negotiations much must be left to the tact of the negotiator, in this case Alger Hiss. Too much supervision or advice may lead to disaster, or at least to an awkward situation.

  I was soon to learn just how far the two young State Department men had gone. One night Alger reported to me that Noel Field claimed to be connected with “another apparatus.” “Is it possible?” Alger asked me in surprise. “Can there be another apparatus working in Washington?” I told him that it was quite possible, that it was probably a parallel apparatus. I asked Peters what he knew about it. “It is probably the apparatus of Hede Gumperz [Hede Massing],” he said. I had never heard of Hede Gumperz. I asked who she was. “Oh, you know,” said Peters—a stock answer when no more will be said. Peters urged me to let Noel Field alone. But Alger’s spirit was up. He was determined to recruit Noel Field.

  At the second Hiss trial, Hede Massing testified how Noel Field arranged a supper at his house, where Alger Hiss and she could meet and discuss which of them was to enlist him. Noel Field went to Hede Massing. But the Hisses continued to see Noel Field socially until he left the State Department to accept a position with the League of Nations at Geneva, Switzerland—a post that served him as a “cover” for his underground work until he found an even better one as dispenser of Unitarian relief abroad.

  At the time, I had wondered why the parallel apparatus would let Noel Field leave the State Department. It was General Walter Krivitsky who first told me that Noel Field had left the State Department on orders f
rom his apparatus to work for Krivitsky, who was then chief of Soviet Military Intelligence in Western Europe.

  During the Hiss Case, Noel Field, his wife, his adopted daughter and his brother all disappeared into Soviet-controlled Europe. From that, I infer that they had knowledge about Alger Hiss and others that made it inadvisable to leave the Fields in any part of Europe or the United States where American officials or subpoenas could reach them.

  In 1939 I gave to the security officer of the State Department, A. A. Berle, the name of Laurence Duggan as someone whom I believed, though I was not certain, to be connected with a Soviet apparatus. Duggan was then, or shortly afterwards, the chief of the Latin American Division of the State Department.

  My belief was based upon two incidents. When Noel Field left for Europe, Alger Hiss asked him if he would not use his great influence with Duggan to recruit him into the special apparatus. Noel Field replied that, since he was going away, “Duggan would take his place.” Hiss and I both assumed. therefore, that Duggan was working with the Massing apparatus. Hede Massing has told the facts, in so far as she knows them, in This Deception.

  In 1937, Colonel Boris Bykov decided that we should again make an attempt to recruit Duggan. From Peters I had learned that Frederick Vanderbilt Field (recently in and out of court and jail in New York in connection with bail for some of the convicted Communist leaders) was also a great friend of Duggan. For the express purpose of recruiting Duggan, J. Peters introduced me to Fred Field in New York. The great-grandson of Commodore Vanderbilt took me to lunch, appropriately at the Vanderbilt Hotel, and I watched with some amusement the casual way in which my millionaire comrade signed the chit.

  He went to Washington the next day and met Laurence Duggan. When he returned to New York, Fred Field told me that he had asked Duggan perfectly openly to work for the special apparatus, and Duggan had replied that he was “connected with another apparatus.”

  Duggan’s fatal fall from his New York office window during the Hiss Case troubled me deeply. I had a strange sense of knowing the Duggans, whom I had never seen. For the Hisses talked frequently about Helen Duggan, Laurence Duggan’s wife. Later on, by a curious chance, I was to meet her father and brother.

  XX

  Expansion went on in other directions also. From time to time, Peters would mention Harry Dexter White as a candidate for the special apparatus. I still refused to have anything to do with Wilton Rugg, whom Peters always mentioned as his best contact with White. One day Peters admitted that he had a better one. The better contact was Abraham George Silverman, the research director of the Railroad Retirement Board. I suspect that Peters was moved less by any sense of urgency about Harry Dexter White than by a desire to get George Silverman off his hands. Silverman, said Peters, was a whiner. Worse, he complained about the heavy party dues he had to pay (nothing could have outraged Peters more). He said frankly that he could do nothing with Silverman without hours of wrangling. He wanted to see what I could do with him.

  I got along with Silverman easily and pleasantly by the simple method of recognizing that he was a highly intelligent child, and by letting him, in so far as possible, do whatever he wanted in his own way. Then I would say no firmly or tell him why I thought that he was mistaken. I also listened patiently and sympathetically to his personal and financial woes. One of his griefs was that, on advice from Lauchlin Currie, he was occasionally playing the stock market. Currie’s advice did not always turn out well. Treated with consideration, Silverman co-operated readily, for he was a convinced Communist. He soon introduced me to White, delaying, as he explained to me, only until he was satisfied that I could handle that odd character.

  Harry Dexter White, then the chief monetary expert of the Treasury Department, had been in touch with the Communist Party for a long time, not only through his close friend, George Silverman, but through other party members whom he had banked around him in the Treasury Department. He was perfectly willing to meet me secretly; I sometimes had the impression that he enjoyed the secrecy for its own sake. But his sense of inconvenience was greater than his sense of precaution, and he usually insisted on meeting me near his Connecticut Avenue apartment. Since White was not a party member, but a fellow traveler, I could only suggest or urge, not give orders. This distinction White understood very well, and he thoroughly enjoyed the sense of being in touch with the party, but not in it, courted by it, but yielding only so much as he chose.

  He talked endlessly about the “Secretary” (Henry Morgenthau Jr.) whose moods were a fair barometer of White’s. If White’s spirits were up, I knew that the Secretary was smiling. If he was depressed, I knew that the Secretary had had a bad day. For some time, White seemed extremely casual in his manner toward me. I sometimes found myself wondering why I troubled to see him. But when once, quite by chance, I kept away from him for two or three weeks, I discovered that he was plaintive and felt neglected by the party, was very friendly and co-operative. I never really worried about White. For he and Silverman were almost fraternally close. Of the two, White was the more successful bureaucrat, and, in his special field, perhaps, had the better mind. But in all other fields, Silverman was much more intelligent and knew it. Their relationship seemed to have hinged for years on Silverman’s willingness to let himself be patronized by White to whom his sympathy was indispensable whenever, for example, the Secretary was snappish and White had one of his crises of office nerves. Each, in fact, was a tower of weakness—a leaning tower. But, as they leaned together, they held each other upright.

  XXI

  Peters pushed expansion outside the circles of the Ware Group. He brought me in touch with still another Communist underground, having no discoverable connections (except through him) with the Ware Group. The new group also included Government employes, but of a somewhat less exalted order.

  This second underground Peters introduced me to in the person of David Carpenter, a Baltimore Communist, a graduate of the University of Virginia and a paint chemist. Carpenter was a literal translation of his real name, which was Zimmerman. He had worked with Peters in an underground in Baltimore.

  There was only one thing that Carpenter and I ever agreed on —we disliked each other at sight. I never doubted that he was a devoted Communist. My instinctive distrust of him was based on questions of personal character, judgment and general ambiguity. He was a slight little man who was a good deal older than he looked. His complexion was leaden so that he seemed chronically unhealthy. There were lines in his face that looked like lines of dissipation, but were not. I was always expecting him to sidle up to me and whisper: “Feelthy pictures?”

  But I always knew that there was another side to Carpenter. He was bookish, and, with other people, liked to discuss philosophy. I suspected that he wrote poetry and was ashamed to admit it. He had grown up in one of Baltimore’s poorer neighborhoods. No doubt, his college education had been a grim struggle. It is probable that in his whole life nothing very good, joyous or uplifting had ever happened to him, and that, moreover, he was incapable of enjoying it if it had.

  For Carpenter was envious, and I know no way to deal with envy except to run away from it. Much worse, he was afraid of me, and there is almost no way to deal with that. He was afraid of me in general. Specifically, he was afraid that I had come to take over his kingdom. Working in some kind of loose relationship with J. Peters, he had established a number of connections among Government people in Washington. Most of them were Communists. Some were fellow travelers. They were all members or connections of Peters’ second underground apparatus, and Carpenter had met most, if not all of them, through the head of the apparatus, the girl he was living with. They knew him as “Harold,” and he had a curiously possessive feeling about them. They were his personal underground property.

  The difficulty of his position was twofold. First, Peters had connected Carpenter with me for the specific purpose of having him turn over to me several of his connections. Carpenter was torn by the possible loss of his contac
ts. But he was tempted by his connection with me, for he greatly wished to become a paid functionary in the special apparatus, and his contacts were his price.

  This I saw quickly. I tried to tranquilize and reassure him by keeping myself as much as possible out of his affairs and letting him handle relations with these people, with whom he soon connected me, as much as possible by himself.

  There were three connections. One of them worked at the Bureau of Standards. In college, he had been a member of the Communist-controlled National Students League. Let me call him Abel Gross. He was, Carpenter gave me to understand, a member of the Communist Party.

  Carpenter also gave me to understand that the third member of his trio was a Communist. He was a young employe of the Department of Agriculture named Henry Julian Wadleigh, whom I always called Julian. It was not until Wadleigh began to testify before the Grand Jury, in 1948, that I discovered that he had never been a Communist, but a very close fellow traveler.

  Carpenter was profuse in his promise of more contacts. But he was elusive about them. The contours of his netherworld always remained shadowy to me. But I now know that he had some kind of contact, apparently through Abel Gross, with an underground cell at least one of whose members worked in the War Department. For that unfortunate man killed himself in the course of the investigations in the Hiss Case.