Hunter Baker: The witness who changed history

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, WORLD Opinions contributor Hunter Baker returns to the mid-20th century, to the cold war, political intrigue, and a change of heart.

HUNTER BAKER: Once upon a time in America there were two young men born near the turn of the 20th century. Both men had troubled family backgrounds. But both young men were brilliant. One attended Columbia. The other Johns Hopkins and Harvard Law. One went on to become a senior editor of Time magazine making the modern equivalent of $300,000 a year because of his unusual talent as a writer. The other rose rapidly through the ranks of the federal government and was at FDR’s side at the Yalta conference.

Both men were secret communists and active agents of the Soviet Union.

The writer was Whittaker Chambers. His collaborator in Soviet espionage was Alger Hiss, a leading light of FDR's New Deal. The collision of their lives in midcentury America made the reputation of a man who would become one of the most consequential and tragic politicians of the 20th century…Richard Nixon.

After making a splash as a literary communist writing plays and working for the New Masses and the Daily Worker, Chambers was recruited to enter the communist underground. He interacted with American communists who had infiltrated the federal government. He mastered the techniques necessary to remain undetected and was able to obtain information for his spymasters regularly. Alger Hiss was one of his major sources within the U.S. government.

Chambers became increasingly aware of the terrifying and murderous nature of Stalin’s totalitarian leadership in the Soviet Union. Reflecting on the disheartening revelations, Chambers wrote of his state of mind, “I heard screams.”

Chambers escaped the communist underground and fed his family through freelance literary work—including being the English translator of Bambi. His circumstances improved considerably when he was hired by Time and became one of the major contributors to the magazine. Ironically, capitalism saved the fugitive communist. During World War II, he tried to make American leaders aware of the extent of communist infiltration, but the Soviets were officially allies and New Deal officials looked askance at such warnings. He was ignored.

AUDIO: Do you swear that the testimony you’re about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? I do. Sit down right there and talk into the microphone…

Toward the end of the 1940s, Chambers willingly appeared before the much-criticized House Committee on Un-American Activities to corroborate charges regarding communist infiltrators. Chambers did so at great personal cost. He would end up losing his job at Time and would earn the lasting enmity of American elites for exposing a New Deal star.

AUDIO: I certainly urge this committee not to follow any hit and run tactics…

When Hiss denied Chambers’ charges it was a one-day media rout. Hiss and the liberal establishment was triumphantly indignant. The portly, rumpled Chambers appeared to be a disgrace. But the junior Congressman Richard Nixon heard things in Hiss’s answers that raised his suspicions. In the end, Nixon’s dogged pursuit of the truth helped turn the tide in the case.

Hiss’s friends pushed him to go after Chambers for slander. Chambers played his trump card…the so-called “Pumpkin Papers”..documents he’d gathered before leaving the underground. The evidence led to perjury charges against Hiss and a conviction 75 years ago.

AUDIO: Alger Hiss, one-time high government official, will lose all civil rights after one year in prison…

Alger Hiss went to federal prison and became a persecuted celebrity for the American left. Richard Nixon ascended to the U.S. Senate, becoming Eisenhower’s running mate in 1952 and 1956, and later had both a triumphant and tragic presidency.

Whittaker Chambers went on to write one of the finest memoirs ever produced. It was titled “Witness.” It explained the legal case but went much further by delving into his testimony of faith. Chambers described how one day he looked at his baby daughter’s ears and was shaken by the unmistakable fact of design. It made him not only question his materialism, but his communism as well. So Chambers the atheist converted to Christianity, was baptized, and became a witness…a witness for man’s need for God and for faith in God as the foundation for freedom. He deserves to be remembered.

I’m Hunter Baker.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.