Revisiting Witnesses: 1940s

In America, the domestic Cold War began with naming names by defectors from the Communist or Soviet cause. For years, the accuracy of their stories was subject to debate. More recently, a consensus developed that those witnesses were speaking the truth -­- with corroboration coming from former Soviet archives opened in the early ’90s and documents decrypted in the course of the Venona program. Now, a decade later, this consensus looks premature. Retracing the steps of earlier researchers uncovered a wealth of archival documentation — from Russian, American, British and other sources ­– to cross-check what the witnesses said.

Click on Whittaker Chambers for a first look at what the documents say about two of the “most damning” pieces of evidence that Chambers produced against Alger Hiss.

THE WITNESSES

Americans

• Elizabeth Bentley
• Louis Francis Budenz
• Whittaker Chambers
• Hede Massing

Russians

• Igor Guzenko [Clark]
• Walter Krivitsky

THE STORY

• A 2009 Chambers Primer
• Whittaker Chambers in CPUSA files: 1927-1932
• Whittaker Chambers: The Underground Years
• The “Dinner Party” at the Fields’ I: Whittaker Chambers’s and Hede Massing’s Accounts (1939-1948)
• The “Dinner Party” at the Fields’ II: Noel Field’s Account, Comments by Massing and others (1948-1954)
• The “Dinner Party” at the Fields’ III: Skeletons in the Closet (1990s-2009)
• The Baltimore Documents: A Legal Issue
  • The Mary Martin Note
    • Background from CP USA and Venona Files
    • Chambers’ Story vs. Contemporary Reports
    • Events on the Soviet “Receiving” End
  • The Potez-63 Note

STILL MORE TO COME:

Watch this website for alerts on what the documents say about further evidence from Chambers and other Cold War witnesses.