biography
| name: |
Chambers, Whittaker
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originally Jay Vivian Chambers
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1910–61)
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| biography:
| Journalist, writer, and Soviet agent, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He studied at Columbia University, gained a modest reputation as a writer, and later translated several works, notably Bambi, into English. He was an active US Communist (1925–9, 1931–8), writing for the Daily Worker and editing the New Masses. Along the way he became an actual agent of Soviet intelligence, and passed classified government information to Moscow. Disillusioned by Stalin's purges, he became a virulent anti-Communist and edited Time magazine's foreign affairs section. In 1948, he testified that many executive branch officials were Communist sympathizers, and said that Alger Hiss had given him classified materials; this brought about a libel suit by Hiss, who was found guilty. The Hiss–Chambers trial remains a symbol of the whole era that extended from the idealism of communism in the 1930s to the disillusionment of the late 1940s. |
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