Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

  Faced with the opportunity of espionage, a Communist, though he may sometimes hesitate momentarily, will always, exactly to the degree that he is a Communist, engage in espionage. The act will not appear to him in terms of betrayal at all. It will, on the contrary, appear to him as a moral act, the more deserving the more it involves him in personal risk, committed in the name of a faith (Communism) on which, he believes, hinges the hope and future of mankind, and against a system (capitalism) which he believes to be historically bankrupt. At that point, conscience to the Communist, and conscience to the non-Communist, mean two things as opposed as the two sides of a battlefield. The failure to understand that fact is part of the total failure of the West to grasp the nature of its enemy, what he wants, what he means to do and how he will go about doing it. It is part of the failure of the West to understand that it is at grips with an enemy having no moral viewpoint in common with itself, that two irreconcilable viewpoints and standards of judgment, two irreconcilable moralities, proceeding from two irreconcilable readings of man’s fate and future are involved, and, hence, their conflict is irrepressible.

  The question of conscience can arise only when, for one reason or another, a Communist questions his faith, as I was about to do, or as, later on, in different ways Wadleigh and Keith would do. Then it rises terribly indeed.

  XI

  To take care of the flow of documents which the sources now began to produce, it became necessary to set up a photographic workshop. The first workshop was organized in Baltimore. Among David Carpenter’s contacts were a man and wife who were Communist sympathizers. The husband was engaged in a small novelty business. His wife was a part-time teacher in the public schools. Carpenter arranged with them to rent the use of their apartment to the apparatus on whatever nights it was needed. I never told these people what their apartment was to be used for, and I doubt that Carpenter ever did. They always went out and left us alone on the nights when photography was done. But since photographic equipment was left in a suitcase or bag in their closet, they could scarcely have been in doubt that something rather odd was going on. (Incidentally, it was this man23 who, in Grand Jury days, asked to listen to me speak because the man he knew as Carl spoke like a European. )

  The existence of this Baltimore workshop has been established not only by my testimony, but by the testimony of the man and wife, and by Keith, who worked there briefly. It was the first workshop in which photography was done for Bykov, and it is Keith’s recollection that there were large numbers of documents. For documents from all the sources were at first photographed at the Baltimore apartment, though not all on the same night.

  The system of transmission was as follows. In the case of Alger Hiss, he would bring home a brief case containing documents from the State Department. I would go to his 30th Street house about the time of his arrival, that is about five o’clock in the evening, or a little later. We would transfer the documents from Hiss’s brief case to one that I had brought (thus if the documents were found in my possession, Hiss could always claim that I had stolen them from him). I would then take the documents to Baltimore to be photographed, returning them to Alger Hiss late the same night, or, possibly, in a few instances, the next morning.

  In the case of Harry Dexter White, George Silverman acted as the go-between. He would take a brief case of documents from White, which he would later give to me. They would be photographed in Baltimore and returned to Silverman the same night or the next morning. In the case of Wadleigh and Abel Gross, Carpenter was the go-between who received the brief cases of documents and turned them over to me.

  My function was primarily that of contact with the sources and intermediaries, like Silverman and Carpenter. It was poor organization for me, as courier, to be connected directly with the photographic workshop. It established a direct personal circuit between all parts of the apparatus. Bykov solved that problem in two ways.

  In New York, he introduced me to a young American “technical worker” whom he called “Felix.” Felix, said Bykov, was an expert photographer. Bykov then instructed Felix to move to Baltimore and find himself a job as a “cover.” That Felix promptly did, working for some downtown electrical or photographic concern. He also rented an apartment for himself and his wife on Callow Avenue, and set up a photographic workshop there. The original photographic workshop was presently abandoned, and I did not see its tenants again until we were all appearing before the Grand Jury in 1949.

  In the first Baltimore workshop I had already taught Carpenter the rudiments of photographic copying. He then organized a second photographic workshop in Washington, again renting an apartment belonging to the Communist Party members or sympathizers. I must once have known the name of those people, but I have forgotten it. I was in the Washington workshop only once or twice, and neither I nor anybody else has yet been able to locate it. Probably its identification must wait until David Carpenter decides to testify about it. So far, he has pled self-incrimination on all material points.

  The documents from the four active sources were now redistributed between the workshops. The material from Abel Gross and Wadleigh was photographed by Carpenter in the Washington apartment. Carpenter usually handled the whole transaction with the sources, receiving the documents from them, and returning them after they had been copied. He simply turned over to me the finished film for delivery to Bykov.

  At first, Carpenter developed the films. Later, for greater security in transmission, Bykov ordered that film was to be turned over undeveloped. It would be developed elsewhere, probably in one of Bykov’s New York workshops. Like me, Carpenter was a poor photographer, and his films, when developed, sometimes turned out to be botched. After one of those failures, which always aroused Bykov’s suspicions (“Carpenter, that dirty boy, is he working against us?”), Carpenter would go back to developing his film before turning it in. Then Bykov would again decide to receive the film undeveloped until the next botched job. That seesaw pattern continued to the end, and it is the reason why, among the film that in 1948 I secreted in a pumpkin, there were three spools which had lain undeveloped for ten years.

  The documents from Hiss and White were photographed by Felix in his Baltimore apartment. Felix would meet me in Washington in the early evening. I would turn over to him the brief case of documents that had been given me by Hiss or Silverman (for White). Felix would drive back to Baltimore with them in his car. After they were photographed, he would return them to me, usually later that same night in Washington, or, occasionally, in Baltimore. I would then return them to Hiss or Silverman late that same night. On nights when, for some reason, Felix was going to return the brief case to me in Baltimore, I would sometimes drive from Washington to Baltimore with him.

  One night, as we returned to Baltimore, I asked Felix to drive me downtown. We decided that he should first drop the brief case of documents at his apartment. He parked the car near Callow Avenue in such a position that, from where I sat, I could see Felix go into an apartment house and come out again. I did not know the number of the house and I tried to put what I had seen out of my mind, for until then I had not known where Felix did his photography and I did not want to know. It was due to that slender chance that, eleven years later, I was able to point out to the F.B.I. the block of houses which I believed I had seen Felix enter. In a matter of hours, the F.B.I. discovered that, in 1937, a man named Felix Inslerman had rented an apartment in that block of Callow Avenue. A few more hours, and the F.B.I. had located Felix, who until then had been no more than a first name. He was living near Schenectady, N. Y., where he was employed by the General Electric Company (before that he had worked for the Glenn L. Martin airplane factory near Baltimore). Among other interesting oddments in Felix Inslerman’s house, the agents found a Leica camera.

  A camera leaves tiny, characteristic abrasions on film, just as a gun scratches a bullet that it has fired. Thus, it is possible to establish from those minute marks what camera was used in photographing a given strip of fi
lm. In the celebrated pumpkin were two strips of developed film on which Felix had photographed State Department documents given me by Alger Hiss. A Government expert certified that the minute marks on the film had been made by the same Leica camera which was found in Felix’s possession in Schenectady. In both Hiss trials, the defense agreed to stipulate the point. That is the law’s way of saying that the defense agreed to consider it as an established fact.

  Felix pled self-incrimination.

  XII

  The Washington apparatus was not Bykov’s only apparatus. He headed at least one other, based in New York City, with sources in Chicago, New England, Washington and elsewhere. Its function was industrial espionage, which, in an age of total war, means military espionage. I never had direct connection with that apparatus (though I was once introduced to one of its members). I knew of its existence and its personnel from hearsay. My testimony about it was later corroborated and amplified by Keith, who played in it roughly the same role that I played in the Washington apparatus. It is an important part of the Hiss Case that few people are aware of.

  At the time I first testified about it, I knew only of two of its members and their names. One of them was important. He was the head of the experimental laboratory of a great steel company, himself a metallurgist of conspicuous ability, and a Communist. He was scarcely out of engineering college when he made certain useful inventions or improvements in metallurgical processes which he turned over at once to the Soviet consul in San Francisco. In 1937, he spent his week-ends, I had been told by Keith, flying from Chicago to New York to meet Bykov, presumably to transmit information to him. I considered the man so dangerous that (without mentioning Keith or Bykov) I turned over his name to United States security officers years before the Hiss Case began.

  Another member of the second apparatus had been an expert in the War Department. He was a White Russian refugee in the United States. I believe that he had been a Tsarist officer before the Russian Revolution. His sister had not escaped from Russia. She was still living in Moscow. Keith once described to me how Bykov used to bring the unhappy expert to tears by threatening to have his sister turned out on the Moscow streets if he did not produce the material that Bykov demanded.

  There were at least two other members of that apparatus whom I did not know about, but about whom Keith later testified. One was a man strategically placed with a nationally known munitions company. At the time of Keith’s testimony, in 1949, this man had transferred to a nationally known aircraft company in California. Another member of the apparatus was a Russian engineer, also a refugee. I know only his surname and the fact that he was apparently useful to the Soviet apparatuses. Very likely, investigation has turned up other connections of this group, but of that I cannot speak.

  I knew of the group at all only because, in 1937, Bykov decided to release Keith from the underground. “You look like a Russian,” Bykov said to me in explaining his purpose, “but you are really an American; you get things done. Keith looks like an American, but he is really a Russian; he is a dreamer.” Bykov planned to detach Keith gradually from the apparatus and therefore proposed to send him first to Washington to work with me. It was that tactic of Bykov’s that enabled me to testify about the second apparatus. For, in Washington, Keith, who had always been friendly with me, gave me the facts about the second apparatus that I later gave the F.B.I.

  Some time in the late summer of 1937, Keith, with Bykov’s blessing, left the Soviet apparatus and returned to the open Communist Party in Los Angeles. There he once more met the man who had recruited both of us into the underground, John Sherman. When I shook hands with Keith in Washington (for the last time, I thought), I gave him as a stake all of my own money that I could spare. He did not know what lay behind my eyes as I wished him well or with what friendly envy I stood watching his car head for the West. For I already knew what I could not tell him—that I, too, must soon go out of the Communist Party by a road that could never be as simple as Keith’s.

  XIII

  The volume of production by the Washington sources was high. Hiss’s, Wadleigh’s and Abel Gross’s brief cases were well filled. But Bykov was continuously exasperated by their material and distrustful of them. In part, this was a deliberate policy of harassment. In part, I think that at times Bykov convinced himself that he was being cheated. Usually, he would charge that the sources were purposely turning over worthless material and holding back more valuable information. In more charitable moods, he would merely sneer at the sources. Sometimes he would greet me, on my weekly arrival in New York from Washington, with a sullen stare and a favorite question: “How is our dear child today?” “What dear child?” I would ask, knowing perfectly well who was meant. “Unser lieber Advokat,” Bykov would answer derisively, “our dear lawyer.” I would think of Alger Hiss and the others whose whole lives now turned on doing the apparatus’ bidding.

  Yet I was in the curious position of agreeing with Bykov about the value of the material, but for different reasons. In the early days, out of curiosity, I read Hiss’s, White’s and Wadleigh’s documents. I quickly gave it up and seldom glanced at, them afterwards. I concluded that political espionage was a magnificent waste of time and effort—not because the sources were holding back; they were pathetically eager to help—but because the secrets of foreign offices are notoriously overrated. There was little about political espionage, it seemed to me, that an intelligent man, who knew the forces, factors and general direction of history in bur time, could not arrive at by using political imagination, backed by a careful study of the available legitimate facts.

  I can remember only one specific assignment that Bykov gave. He once instructed me to request “our dear child” to steal the State Department’s official seal—a request that Alger Hiss met with the same skeptical smile with which I delivered it. Otherwise, Bykov, in the Russian fashion, preferred the dragnet or volumetric production of documents. But he. was obsessed by all information about the anti-Comintern Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan. I once asked him what he expected to find out that he did not already know about the Pact. The secret clauses, he said. He asked suspiciously why I was not curious about them. I answered that the secret clauses did not make the slightest difference. Whether or not there were secret clauses, it would always be necessary to assume that there were and that they must be directed against the Soviet Union. It was not necessary to read them because anybody who knew the world situation could write them sight unseen for himself. Bykov could write them. Documentary proof of them would not change by one iota the diplomatic or military dispositions of the Soviet Union. Reluctantly, Bykov agreed.

  This is not said to minimize in any way the danger constituted by the Washington apparatus. It was formidable. No government can function with enemies dedicated to its destruction posted high and low in its foreign, or any other, service. Moreover, the Russians were able to use the Hiss (and possibly the Wadleigh) documents to break the State Department codes. Thus, in effect, they had a tap on the American diplomatic trunk lines. Of that fact I had no inkling until State Department officials testified to it in 1948. If Alger Hiss guessed it, and from his intimate knowledge of the State Department I do not see how he could have failed to, he did not mention it to me.

  In the persons of Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, the Soviet Military Intelligence sat close to the heart of the United States Government. It was not yet in the Cabinet room, but it was not far outside the door. In the years following my break with the Communist Party, the apparatus became much more formidable. Then Hiss became Director of the State Department’s Office of Special Political Affairs and White became an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. In a situation with few parallels in history, the agents of an enemy power were in a position to do much more than purloin documents. They were in a position to influence the nation’s foreign policy in the interests of the nation’s chief enemy, and not only on exceptional occasions, like Yalta (where Hiss’s role, while presumably important, is s
till ill-defined) or through the Morgenthau Plan for the destruction of Germany (which is generally credited to White), but in what must have been the staggering sum of day-to-day decisions. That power to influence policy had always been the ultimate purpose of the Communist Party’s infiltration. It was much more dangerous, and, as events have proved, much more difficult to detect, than espionage, which beside it is trivial, though the two go hand in hand.

  XIV

  In Washington, the work lapsed into the monotony of a well-organized underground apparatus—meetings by day, meetings and transmission of materials by night. Two meetings, with the precaution of long advance rambles to throw off possible surveillance, would occupy an afternoon.

  I had discovered at once that the meeting techniques used in New York were not suited to Washington. That big and beautiful village lacked the cover of teeming crowds. Its streets lay too open. People were too conscious of the proximity of government and, therefore, of security—at least the underground acted on the assumption that they were. Restaurants were too few, too small and too crowded, for in them crowds were a disadvantage. The man at the next table was almost certainly in some branch of the Government, and people in Government too often recognized one another. Movie houses, except at night, were too empty.

  I quickly decided that the most anonymous places in Washington were drug stores. In summer, everybody crowded in for a quick soft drink, in winter for coffee. At first, I met almost everyone in drug stores. The first man at such a meeting would buy a Coke or a pack of cigarettes, idle around the novelties or leaf through a magazine from the rack. When the second man appeared, neither would greet the other. They would saunter out on the street and greet each other only when they were satisfied that there was no surveillance.