Great Spies of the 20th Century

by Patrick Pesnot

has all the appearance of an untrustworthy man, with the head and look of a spy: fat, neglected and dowdy. In 1948 he was a journalist at Time Magazine, where he held an important role, that of being in charge of all communist related stories. What is more, this former militant left-wing extremist was well-placed to understand the movement. In any case, his thriving professional situation appeared to be inconsistent with his physical appearance. Chambers made everyone feel uneasy, even those who supported him and staunchly believed his accusations.

  Whittaker Chambers also knew that he often behaved like a scoundrel, a confession that would hardly give weight to his allegations, especially against a man as distinguished as Alger Hiss. Chambers knew this and subtly played up to this sneaky aspect of his character. In the eyes of public opinion, he certainly embodied the image of a communist activist who had been betrayed and now showed a sincere repentance, even recanting and converting to Catholicism. In fact, general opinion was even more hostile towards Alger Hiss, who was hiding under his bourgeois appearance and therefore did not have the courage of his convictions.

  Born into a modest family, Whittaker Chambers had lived a rather adventurous and questionable youth. He enrolled in the American Communist Party at a young age and in the mid 1920s, worked in the party's press office. In the early 1930s he was asked to go ‘underground' and thus break with the party. The order came from the highest authorities and according to Chambers, from the NKVD itself. He was even sent to Moscow to attend a spy training course. According to his confession, when he returned to the USA , he built up a proper intelligence network that primarily operated within the Democratic administration.

  This statement seems implausible. While there may be no denying that the Soviets wanted to infiltrate the US government, is it possible to imagine that they would have entrusted such a task to a man like Chambers, who had no significant contacts? It is more likely that Chambers was recruited by the NKVD and acted as a liaison between Soviets and those who provided the real information to Moscow. At Chambers' level, it is easy to see how he could be misled. He could readily believe that the entire Roosevelt administration was a Soviet spy nest. In the world of intelligence it is all about taking your best shot at the right time over and over again. Anything that could ultimately weaken the US government was an opportunity that had to be taken, especially as the Soviet leaders had always preferred, paradoxically, to have conservative spokespeople, rather than progressive or even socialist ones. In France, for example, it was well-known that Moscow always voted to the right!

  In 1937 or 1938, Chambers broke with the Communist Party and consequently with the Soviet intelligence services. After hiding out for a while, he later found a job as a journalist at Time. Very soon after, he met an aide of President Roosevelt, to whom he gave a list of officials he accused of being Soviet agents. This seems an odd place to submit your revelations. After all, if Roosevelt's administration had indeed been infiltrated, why would you confide in someone who was close to the president?

  In 1948, Elizabeth Bentley appeared before the Un-American Activities Committee. Immediately afterwards it was Whittaker Chambers' turn to turn the screw. It was a young investigator on the Commission that pulled Chambers out of the hat, a young man close to Richard Nixon, who was a member of the same committee and who worked closely with the FBI. And so, J. Edgar Hoover, the immovable FBI boss who to begin with had paid little attention to Chambers' allegations, now changed his tune. Having supported the Democrats for so many years, he now began to move closer to the Republicans, who according to political scientists, would win the next presidential election. With such opportunism, Hoover decided to help young Senator Nixon, who appeared to have a big future.

  Whittaker Chambers was called to testify before the commission. He immediately declared that several Democrat figures, including Alger Hiss, had formed a clandestine communist cell within the administration. However, he accused them of being militants, not spies. The difference is significant, even if there was such anti-communist sentiment at the time. Questioned in turn, Hiss vigorously protested before the committee and denied ever being a communist. He also swore that he had never met Whittaker Chambers, even when he was presented with photographs of him. His testimony made an excellent impression: between the sneaky Chambers and the civilised ‘spy' Alger Hiss, general opinion was divided. But the accusers were not about to stop there and would soon gain more support as they slowly ground Hiss down.

  Marie-France Toinet12

  [In Hiss' words]

  ‘If that is a photograph of Mr Chambers, then he does not have a very exceptional appearance. He looks like many people ... I would not swear that I have never seen this man. I would like to see him in person then I think I would be better to say if I have already met him'According to the author, Alger Hiss had just created his own noose. His answer was not clear enough. He seems to have denied any relationship with Chambers, which would make the headlines, while at the same time was not completely sure whether he recognised him or not. However, everything seemed to go well for him. He made a very good impression during his hearing and even the president of the commission, Karl Mundt, congratulated him on his cooperation. The majority of the press seemed to take his side and various editorials strongly attacked the methods of the committee, although these cooled somewhat later, after they feared that they had portrayed the committee in a bad light. One of the representatives, Herbert, suggested that the case be handed over to the Justice Department. Only Richard Nixon found that Hiss was not quite clear enough in his denial and wanted to continue the interrogation. He finally got the consent of the commission, who like him, knew that their fate depended on the credibility of Chambers.

  At this stage of the proceedings there was one crucial question: did Hiss know Chambers or not? During a new hearing, Chambers provided relatively detailed information about Alger Hiss, his wife, his house, his lifestyle. Ultimately, Hiss’ personal details amounted for little and he was not the only one that Chambers was accusing. However, he was the only one that Chambers declared he knew personally.Therefore, if the prosecutors could prove that he was telling the truth about this, then all his other allegations would be taken seriously and the idea of a genuine communist conspiracy would be strengthened. Hence the fury of their pursuit, especially as Hiss was seen as a symbol and representative of the arrogant and favoured social class from the East Coast who had run the country for so long. On the other side was Nixon; a Republican from the West Coast, the son of a modest tram driver, who represented the figure of the forgotten working-class American who believed in old-fashioned values.

  In this regard, Nixon immediately understood the advantages that might result from the case. For him, it became a launch pad for election, while Hiss' defenders were too caught up in the course of events to notice.

  Hiss had already begun to make a retreat. During a new hearing, he claimed that he may have known Chambers, but under a different name, which was why he couldn't immediately identify him. Then, when he was presented with photographs, he made no comment. Nixon, who increasingly appeared to be the strongman of the commission, decided to set up a confrontation between Hiss and Chambers. To escape the pack of journalists, the meeting would take place discreetly in a hotel room. On this occasion, Hiss finally recognised Chambers, saying they had met in 1935 and that he had rented an apartment from him, which he had never actually paid for. Ignoring the rest of the statement, this confession made a very bad impression. It would now appear that Alger Hiss had lied at least once, so could the committee in all good faith believe him when he denied being a communist?

  Hiss committed another mistake a little later on when he attacked Chambers for libel. This put his opponents against the ropes. To defend himself, Chambers had to provide proof, otherwise he risked being sentenced for false testimony and perjury. Suddenly, the case now had a whole new dimension. Pushed by his rearguard who were operating at full speed, Chambers now declared that not only was Alger Hiss a communist, but he wa
s also a spy. This new declaration caused a sensation as the informant continued to reveal that he had documents that would undoubtedly prove that Hiss was involved in espionage. These new accusations were serious and even if the allegations against Hiss were made up, the case once more took on a whole new dimension.

  If Chambers did indeed have evidence that Hiss was a spy, why did he not mention this earlier? As for the documents he spoke of and had kept hidden for so long (microfilm and handwritten notes by Hiss on State Department paper), why were these only suddenly presented at the exact moment they were needed?

  What is even more amazing is where these documents had supposedly been hidden all this time: the first batch were hidden in a dumb-waiter at the house of Chambers' nephew, while the second batch were hidden in a hollowed-out pumpkin in Chambers' garden. This is why the papers have gone down in history as the ‘pumpkin papers', a name that the press, especially those opposed to Chambers, could not fail to laugh at. Beyond this, nothing more was known about the documents. As they were supposedly ‘secret', they could not be revealed to the public and only certain elements were extracted from them. What is important is that they existed and not what was in them exactly, which only reinforces the idea that they could have been fabricated. Moreover, one of the microfilms was analysed by a Kodak expert, who claimed that the wire used was manufactured after the war. However, having demonstrated this deception, the man was quickly returned to his post.

  It is tempting to see the hand of the FBI behind these latest developments in the case. It was a service that had the means to fabricate documents, as well as being able to put any necessary pressure on witnesses. Having said that, there is no evidence that the case was tampered with in any way. The only disturbing fact is that the FBI mobilised hundreds of agents during the case, which meant that Hoover was really committed to getting rid of Alger Hiss and forcing him to appear in court.

  Finally, it was time for Hiss to be judged and in fact, the trial was conducted in two stages. At the end of the first trial in 1949, the jury was unable to come to a decision and Hiss was able to relax. However, after the second trial a few months later, he was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. He was not actually convicted for espionage due to the fact that there were doubts about some of the facts that had happened before the war. Instead, he was found guilty of perjury. The prosecution alleged that he had lied, and as was seen in the Monica Lewinsky Affair, Americans take the issue of committing perjury before a judge very seriously.

  The former government official was jailed in March 1951. Hiss constantly protested his innocence and was submitted multiple requests for a retrial, but always in vain. He was finally released in 1954 but was not admitted back to the Massachusetts Bar until 1975, after being struck off after his conviction.13

  So what really happened? All indications are that Alger Hiss was a scapegoat. It is not impossible that he did flirt with the Communist Party and may even have been a member. But during the haunting climate of the witch hunts that prevailed in America after the war, he clearly panicked when he was accused. He even thought that he had got away with it to begin with, despite all the pressure. This was foolish though, as the other figures who had been accused alongside him chose to invoke the Fifth Amendment, which allows a US citizen to refuse to answer a question if he or she believes it might incriminate them. As a result, they avoided prosecution. But Hiss was stubborn and so went on the attack. In so doing, he allowed his accusers to mount a real war against him, although the case against him personally was not particularly important. The main purpose of the trial was to show that the Democratic Party had been completely infiltrated by the ‘reds'.

  The plot worked perfectly and at the same time, allowed the young senator, Richard Nixon, to become vice-president only three years later, in 1952.

  In 1996, a number of encrypted telegrams were published that had been sent between Moscow and its agents in the west: the Venona Papers. One of the documents, dated 30 March 1945, refers to an agent with the codename ALES, and who had worked for the Soviet secret services since 1935. Some experts immediately made the link to Alger Hiss and that he probably was ALES. ‘Probably', that is all. However, in 1993 the Russian historian, General Volkogonov, said he had found no trace of Alger Hiss after searching the KGB archives dating from the Cold War era.

  Perhaps in the future we will know more. Indeed, the archives containing the Alger Hiss grand jury trial documents have been opened, despite the objections of the US government, and historians have plunged themselves into the thousands of pages of transcripts. Their work is not finished although some of them have been struck by Nixon's attitude during the trial. They describe him as a skilled manipulator and cite this rather extraordinary moment in particular:

  In a theatrical gesture, Nixon provoked the jurors by waving the microfilm that contained secret information from the State Department, known as the pumpkin papers, warning the court that he would force them to listen to the recordings. Nixon then told the grand jury, 'I will not relinquish the film!’

  Finally, showing that the Hiss trial was still of concern to Americans,Whittaker Chambers was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Four years later, the farm where Chambers had supposedly hidden the secret papers in a hollowed-out pumpkin was designated a national historic site!

  Chapter 3

  Boulanger: Stalin’s Villain

  This strange and nefarious tale is reminiscent in many ways of the story of Jean Moulin, and not just because it begins in Lyons during the war and involves the sinister Klaus Barbie. It is a story of the resistance and betrayal, but is even more gloomy than the legend of Jean Moulin due to the serious consequences that would occur within the French Communist Party. It is a story in which the secret services in particular played a very obscure role.

  At the heart of this case is a mysterious spy network called ‘Service B', a key part of the communist resistance and the militia. Two journalists called Roger Faligot and Remi Kauffer uncovered part of this secret network in 1985, revealing what was one of the masterpieces of soviet espionage during the war. Alongside the famous Red Orchestra and the soviet networks in Switzerland, this secret network not only communicated with Moscow, but also occasionally with contacts in London and the American OSS.14 Bringing together dedicated and courageous militants recruited from all sections of the population, ‘Service B' played a leading role in the struggle against the occupying forces. It also ended the infighting within the international communist movement and helped Stalin to settle various scores in order to help him preserve the secrets of his particularly Machiavellian brand of politics. And so both before and after the Liberation, many men and women were willingly sacrificed for the cause.

  It has often been said that Lyons was the capital of the Resistance. Until 1942 it was part of the unoccupied zone and the famous Resistance leader, Jean Moulin, was betrayed and arrested there by Klaus Barbie's men in 1943, a year before the events in this chapter took place.

  In Lyons, the FTP15 operated in a highly organised and effective network controlled by the CMZ, the military committee of the southern zone. At the same time, ‘Service B' formed an intelligence branch of the FTP and was directed by an architect called Boris Guimpel. ‘Service B' was still relatively unknown and as it was essentially a communist network, the communists themselves were keen to keep it quiet. The network worked directly and primarily with Moscow and after the war, its agents, including those in the Red Orchestra, could be considered as spies, even though they were to all intents and purposes ‘resistors'. Nevertheless, these communist activists very quickly became suspects and some even found themselves in serious trouble.

  In May 1944, a sudden vast wave of arrests decimated the CMZ, no doubt as the result of some betrayal. Between 13 and 15 May, Barbie and his henchmen received reliable information about resistance activities and arrested almost all of the regional FTP operatives. Only a few men escaped, one of whom was
their leader, Guimpel, who owed his survival to the extraordinary courage of his wife. One morning, militiamen and two Gestapo soldiers came to his house in Lyon. His pregnant wife, Manon was alone and opened the door. She clearly knew about her husband's work in the Resistance, as she was also active in the movement. When the men began to question her about her husband, she calmly replied that he had gone away. The men then decided to wait in the house and hold her at gunpoint, until her husband returned. When Manon Guimpel heard a noise outside on the stairs and the key turn in the lock, she screamed, ‘Boris, save yourself!'. Her husband ran back down the stairs as the soldiers rushed out and shot at the fugitive from the landing. Even though he was wounded, Guimpel managed to escape with his life. His wife was under no illusion about what would happen to her and she was indeed arrested, tortured and deported. However, she fortunately managed to escape and later rejoined her husband at the end of the war. A real tale of love and the Resistance!

  So who was the traitor? It was not long before the FTP had their suspicions, and their main suspect was a man who worked for the CMZ. His nickname was Boulanger, although his actual name was Lucien Iltis, an Alsatian born in Germany to a French father and a German mother. However, it was not just his origins that lead to him being suspected, but also his mysterious past that had already been a source of intrigue to his FTP comrades.

  Yet it was Boulanger who was to carry the main weight of suspicion after Barbie's raids. Firstly because he was not actually arrested and then later as he had managed to disappear shortly after the wave of arrests had taken place. It was not until later that he was found and even then, under very strange circumstances.

  Meanwhile, events were accelerating in May 1944 and it was not the moment to investigate who was behind the betrayal. The survivors were lying low and trying somehow to reconstruct the broken network, especially as they were about to embark on several military operations that would accompany the future liberation. Boulanger was temporarily forgotten. At least until 1945.