Witness At 60

Whittaker Chambers’s autobiography of a Communist agent is 60 years of age.  The Hiss-Chambers trial was a legitimate watershed moment in American history.  Along with Elizabeth Bentley’s testimony, we found out about dozens of people in positions of some prominence (including Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, both of whom just happened to be at Bretton Woods leading the US negotiators in the creation of the United Nations and International Monetary Fund, respectively) were spying for the Soviet Union (if not actively taking things even further and accepting direct orders).  When Chambers defected, he knew that his former life was over, and he was willing to accept going to what he expected would be the losing team—the team fighting international Communism—because it was the right thing to do.

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