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Whittaker Chambers was born in Philadelphia and raised on Long Island. While a student at Columbia College, he edited The Morningside literary magazine (now Columbia Review).
In 1925, he dropped out altogether to join the Communist Party of the United States of America or CPUSA (then the Workers Party of America). He wrote first for The Daily Worker newspaper, then for The New Masses magazine. Shortly after becoming the magazine's editor in 1932, he received orders to enter the Soviet underground.
After initial work in New York, Chambers took over a Washington apparatus and added a second. Sickened by Stalin's Great Purges and Soviet actions during the Spanish Civil War, he defected from the Party in 1938. He lay low in Florida, then hid out in Maryland, all the while eking out a living as a translator.
A year later (1939), Chambers joined Time magazine. Having proved himself (with colleague James Agee) in the "Back of the Book," he rose to become foreign editor, senior editor, and finally special project editor for publisher Henry Luce. He wrote more than a dozen cover stories including Albert Einstein, James Joyce, Marian Anderson, Arnold Toynbee, Reinhold Niebuhr, C. S. Lewis, Pope Pius XII, Tito, Stalin, and even Karl Marx.
In August 1948, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) subpoenaed Chambers to testify about communists in the U.S. Government. He named names, including Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss. Both men refuted the allegation, but White died a few days later. Hiss held firm to his position and sued Chambers for slander (after a famous episode on Meet the Press). Chambers produced the famed "Pumpkin Papers" which included typed and handwritten documents from Hiss and White. He contradicted his position that espionage had not occurred nor formed a major activity. The U.S. Department of Justice could have indicted either Hiss or Chambers but decided on Hiss. A jury found Hiss guilty in January 1950.
Chambers had resigned from Time in December 1948. After the Hiss Case, he published a best-selling autobiography, Witness (1952). Otherwise, he found himself a social outcast, able to work only at the newly formed National Review at the invitation of William F. Buckley, Jr. Chambers resigned after a short stint. He returned to college to finish his B.A. With both his children married, he died of a seventh heart attack on his Maryland farm (1961).
Chambers's wife published a second book, Cold Friday (1964). President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Medal of Freedom posthumously (1984). Interior Secretary Donald Hodel had the farm put on the National Historic Trust (1988).
