Witness: Cold War Classics

Chapter 7, “Underground: The Second Apparatus,” begins with Chambers’s identification of a small core of upper-middle class professionals—most notably Alger Hiss—whom he regards as having had a greater impact on the political fate of humankind than any similarly sized group in history. Hiss also names Harold Ware as prominent Communist. Ware had built a peerless network of collaborators within the US government and other powerful social circles. Chambers believes the New Deal facilitated radical socialists’ rise through Washington’s ranks by creating a bevy of worker-oriented programs, none of which were guarded themselves against Communist infiltration.

Chambers eventually moves from New York to Washington, DC, where he becomes an agent for Ware. In this new circle, he meets Alger Hiss and his wife Priscilla, along with many other prominent officials in the State and Treasury departments. Rather than engage in the dangerous espionage, Ware’s group coaxed agents to shift US policy towards pro-Communist positions.

The Chambers hire a Black maid and insist that she share the table with them at dinner: a point on which Chambers notes an overlap between Communist and Christian teachings.

Chambers becomes strongly associated with Hiss, who initially regards Chambers as a Russian. Accordingly, Hiss treats him with great generosity.