Whittaker Chambers was born on Monday, April 01, 1901 in Philadelphia and he was a famous author from United States.
Life in Brief:
- Being born on Apr 01, Whittaker was an Aries. - his ethnicity: White. - his father's name: Jay Chambers.
He attended the Columbia University (expelled in 1922).
Whittaker dated Esther Shemitz (wife).
He died on Sunday, July 09, 1961, in Westminster; cause of death: heart failure.
Famous Why : Accuser of Alger Hiss.
Biography :
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers on April 1, 1901 in Philadelphia) is famous for defecting as a Soviet spy and accusing Alger Hiss and other Federal officials of Soviet espionage during HUAC hearings in 1948.
Chambers grew up
on Long Island and studied at Columbia University, where classmates included many New York intellectuals such as Lionel Trilling, Clifton Fadiman, Louis Zukofsky, and Meyer Schapiro. In 1925, he joined the Workers Party of America (later the CPUSA). For more than half a decade he was a Communist writer and editor for the "New Masses" magazine and "Daily Worker" newspaper as well as a poet of the Objectivist school.
In 1932, Chambers was called into the Soviet underground. As a spy, he ran two apparatuses in Washington, DC, within the Federal government. Members included Harry Dexter White (who later helped found the IMF) and Alger Hiss (who later served as secretary general for the opening of the United Nations).
In April 1938, Chambers defected and went into hiding. A year later, he joined _TIME_ magazine, rising to senior editor. With James Agee, he made the "back of the magazine" important and then wrote important essays including "The Ghosts on the Roof" about Yalta in 1945. By 1948, "TIME" founder Henry Luce had made him the first staff member to be named for his articles.
In August 1948, the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) subpoenaed Chambers to testify. He named nine fellow spies including White and Hiss. White died a few days later. For the next two years, the Case was a front-page headline much of the time. Hiss fought the allegations, leading to the Hiss(-Chambers) Case and resulting in Hiss's conviction on two counts of perjury in January 1950.
Within six months of Hiss's conviction, Senator Joseph McCarthy had launched a second national Red Scare, Klaus Fuchs had confessed to atomic espionage in England, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been arrested (also for atomic espionage). Rep. Richard M. Nixon, a HUAC member, championed Chambers and rode his success all the way to the vice presidency under Dwight D. Eisenhower in the November 1952 elections.
After the Hiss Case, Chambers published "Witness" (1952), a best-selling autobiography. He served briefly as a founding editor of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s "National Review" magazine. Having suffered from angina as early as age 38, Jay David Whittaker Chambers died of his seventh major heart attack in July 1961. His wife, artist Esther Shemitz Chambers, published his essays as "Cold Friday" in 1964. President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984. The Whittaker Chambers Farm (AKA the Pipe Creek Farm) went on the National Historic Register in 1988.
Whittaker Chambers was born on Monday, April 01, 1901 in Philadelphia and he was a famous author from United States.
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