Witness

by Whittaker Chambers

  It is sometimes said that the Communist penetration of the United States Government, while sensational, was after all comparatively small. The comparison is with the thousands of loyal Government employes. I think this a poor yardstick. Effectiveness, not numbers, is a more accurate measure of the infiltration. But even if numbers are the yardstick, I am inclined to believe, from what I saw of the operation through my relatively small peep-hole, that the Communist penetration was numerically great. J. Peters found perhaps the best standard of comparison.

  The first time I met Peters in Washington, we walked from the Union Station to a downtown restaurant. In New York, Peters’ manner had always been that of a minor commissar—a little more human than the breed, for he had a sense of humor—but reserved, innately distrustful, secretive. In Washington, he was like a king returned to his kingdom—suddenly gay and expansive. He enlarged on the party’s organizational and human resources in Washington, mentioning, among others, the man whose name he always pronounced “Awl-jur”—with a kind of drawling pleasure, for he took an almost parental pride in Alger Hiss. Then, with a little inclusive wave of his pudgy hand, he summed up. “Even in Germany under the Weimar Republic,” said Peters, “the party did not have what we have here.”

  III

  The first impact of this blueprint of Communist penetration is likely to be shock at the espionage revealed. That is not the important point. Espionage is always intolerable, just as it is indispensable. No government in sound political health, no government which was not subtly infected with the revolutionary virus of the age, could tolerate in its service any employe against whom there was a suspicion of Communist espionage or even of indiscretion that might serve an espionage purpose.

  The important point about the Washington apparatuses is that, in the 1930’s, the revolutionary mood had become so acute throughout the whole world that the Communist Party could recruit its agents, not here and there, but by scores within the Government of the United States. And they were precisely among the most literate, intellectually eager and energetic young men in a nation which by all its traditions of freedom, initiative and opportunity, its institutions and the circumstances of its geography and history, was farthest removed from the revolutionary struggles of Europe.

  The deeper meaning of the Soviet underground apparatus, and all the apparatuses that clustered hidden beside it, was not so much their espionage activity. It was the fact that they were a true Fifth Column, the living evidence that henceforth in the 20th century, all wars are revolutionary wars, and are fought not only between nations, but within them.

  The men and women Communists and fellow travelers who staffed this Fifth Column were dedicated revolutionists whose primary allegiance was no longer to any country—nor to those factors which give a country its binding force: tradition, family, community, soil, religious faith. Their primary allegiance was to a revolutionary faith and a vision of man and his material destiny which was given political force by international Communism, of which the American Communist Party and the Russian Communist Party (and hence the Soviet Government, which is only an administrative apparatus of the Russian Communist Party) are component sections.

  No other government in the world but that of the Soviet Union could possibly have corrupted these people from their original allegiance. They were not venal. They performed their espionage services without compensation, as a party obligation. The very repugnance of the task was a witness and a sacrifice to their faith. With few exceptions, offers of money would have outraged them. With few exceptions, they cared little or nothing for money as money. It is also absurd to say, as I have often heard it said, that they were moved by a desire for power. A few may have been, and these, like their kind the world over, would have sought power in terms of any situation they were in. The plain fact is that most of them held tangible power of some kind in the Government they were betraying, with every assurance that simply by not endangering their routine rise that power would grow. Neither power nor money moved them. Nor was adventure a factor. An incurably romantic Communist is a contradiction in terms. A romantic underground worker endangers himself and his whole apparatus. Faith moved them, as, in the final conflict, only equal faith can overcome them.

  The terrible meaning of the Washington apparatus is that, even in the United States, that stage of the revolution of our times has been reached, “that decisive hour,” which Karl Marx acutely forecast a hundred years before: when “the process of dissolution going on within . . . the whole range of the old society” becomes so violent “that a small section of the ruling class ... joins the revolutionary class.” This “small section,” says Marx, is “in particular,” the middle-class intellectuals.

  When this happens, it is very late in the night of history, and in the life of nations. What is irreparable is that faith between man and man which is the arterial pulse of community; for henceforth the conspirator is indistinguishable from the man beside you. Security shatters, not because there are no more locks, but because the men naturally trusted with the keys and combinations are themselves the conspirators.

  IV

  When a man deserts from such a concentration of hidden power as I have described, and the much greater power that lurks behind it, he challenges the underground in the one condition without which it cannot exist: its secrecy. The mere fact that the deserter, by an act of his own will, stands outside the control of the Communist Party is a threat. He must therefore expect that the party will act to remove the threat. All revolutionary experience shows that there is only one guarantee of a deserter’s silence: his death. Both the Communist Party and the deserter know, too, that if he goes to the police and informs against it, it will scarcely be worth the party’s while to kill him. Thus, a race often develops in which the party’s killers try to reach the fugitive before he can reach the police.

  The party’s problem is a practical one: 1) to protect the threatened apparatuses; 2) to reassure the loyal underground workers whose morale is bound to be shaken by a defection. It is necessary to demonstrate that the apparatus moves swiftly to safeguard them, and that no one can defy it with impunity.

  I never doubted that the party’s first reaction to my break would be an attempt against my life. I assumed that sooner or later the G.P.U. would be given the assignment. I did not know whether they would elect the “wet” or “dry” method—whether they would try simply to kill me or whether they would prefer to trap me, smuggle me aboard a Soviet ship (there is often one lying in Baltimore harbor) for a later settling of accounts in Russia. “Das wird auch abgerecnet,” I once heard Colonel Bykov say in a voice taut with rage when he realized that an earlier fugitive had given him the slip and suspected (quite rightly) that it had happened with my help—“That account will also be settled.” I knew that he, or some other Bykov, would phrase a similar epitaph for me.

  Moreover, I deserted in the year of the long knives. In the twelvemonth in which my flight took place, more revolutionists deserted from the Communist Party, and the G.P.U. cut down more fugitives in their flight than in any other period of the party’s history. For “political differences were being settled”; Stalin was consolidating his power.

  In the Soviet apparatus there was a saying that sounds merely brutal, but whose cynicism betrays the wrenching effort of the soul to seek relief from the death in which it lives. It was: “Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a good natural death.” In those months, the G.P.U. had no time to commit “good natural deaths”; it killed without artistry. The secret police padded like ferrets through the undergrounds. From the buried darkness came sounds of struggle and cries, all the more chilling because it was impossible to know just what was happening. Then, suddenly, revolutionists with a lifetime of devoted activity would pop out, like rabbits from a burrow, with the G.P.U. close on their heels—Barmine from the Soviet legation in Athens, Raskolnikoff from the Soviet legation in Sofia, Krivitsky from Amsterdam, Reiss in Switzerland. Not that Reiss f
led. Instead, a brave and a lonely man, he sent his single-handed defiance to Stalin: Murderer of the Kremlin cellars, I herewith return my decorations and resume my freedom of action. But defiance is not enough; cunning is needed to fight cunning. It was foredoomed that sooner or later the door of a G.P.U. limousine would swing open and Reiss’s body with the bullets in the defiant brain would tumble out—as happened shortly after he deserted. Of the four I have named, only Barmine outran the hunters.

  Reiss’s death moved me deeply. But another murder touched me closely—that of Juliet Stuart Poyntz, Barnard College graduate. Midwestern American, former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, U.S.A., long an underground worker in a Soviet apparatus whose existence (until her death revealed it) I had not suspected. I had known Juliet Poyntz. She had been a member of the first unit of the Communist Party which I joined in 1925. A heavy-set, dark, softly feminine woman, she was also a little absurdly imperious and mysterious as Communist bureaucrats often become, sagging self-consciously under the weight of so much secret authority and knowledge.

  In 1937, Juliet Poyntz deserted from the Communist Party. She was living in a New York hotel. One evening she left her room with the light burning and a page of unfinished handwriting on the table. She was never seen again. It is known that she went to meet a Communist friend in Central Park and that he had decoyed her there as part of a G.P.U. trap. She was pushed into an automobile and two men drove her off. The thought of this intensely feminine woman, coldly murdered by two men, sickened me in a physical way, because I could always see her in my mind’s eye.

  I was not a quarry of those twilight manhunts. I was too small a figure, compared to those great ones in the underworld of Communism. I was affected but not endangered. Moreover, I had never been a Trotskyist. But these episodes from our daily life served me as profuse examples of what I could expect when I broke. I studied the mistakes by which the deserters were trapped as a man might study the chart of a minefield. I determined to fight the Communist Party as a Communist would fight, to prepare my break carefully, using against the conspiracy all the conspiratorial method it had taught me, and especially to guard against premature, impulsive actions caused by tensions more or less natural in the circumstances.

  Those months, when I was preparing my flight under the eyes of my acute, observant and habitually distrustful co-workers, were possibly the most dangerous, certainly the most nerve-wearing. I met my comrades regularly, often at night, in lonely places, in their houses, in automobiles—all ideal traps if I had become suspect. When I was with Colonel Bykov, I was not master of my movements. Most of our meetings took place in New York City. We always prearranged them a week or ten days ahead. As a rule, we first met in a movie house. I would go in and stand at the back. Bykov, who nearly always had arrived first, would get up from the audience at the agreed time and join me. We would go out together. Bykov, not I, would decide what route we should then take in our ramblings (we usually walked several miles about the city). We would wander at night, far out in Brooklyn or the Bronx, in lonely stretches of park or on streets where we were the only people. As we walked and talked, I would think: “Does he know anything? Is there anything in my manner that could make him suspicious? Where is he taking me?”

  I always assumed that one member of the Washington underground acted for Bykov as a pair of eyes and ears to observe and report my conduct. This is routine Communist practice. I never knew to whom those eyes and ears belonged. I also had reason to believe that the Soviet counter-intelligence had me under routine surveillance.

  Thus, my practical problem was to organize my flight and the safe removal of my family under eyes which could see me but which I could not see, while I took the calculated risk of nightly meetings with men and women who seemed perfectly unsuspicious. On the other hand, they might be suspicious and therefore operating against me with the same calculation with which I was operating against them.

  I decided that five main points were essential to my break: 1) a weapon; 2) a hiding place; 3) an automobile for swift movement; 4) an identity, an official record of the fact that a man named Chambers had worked in Washington in the years 1937 and 1938; 5) a life preserver, in the form of copies of official documents stolen by the apparatus, which, should the party move against my life, I might have an outside chance of using as a dissuader.

  Set down in this way, with numbered points, for the sake of clearness, my plan of action may give a misleading impression of neatness and firmness. Actually, it was much more stumbling, improvised and random, for it must be remembered that I was troubled and confused. I had the general plan of my break in mind. I worked on the details as opportunity and new ideas occurred. Nor can I any longer, after so many years, be positive of the order or the exact way in which I did certain things. Thus, I have the impression that my secreting of microfilm and copies of documents was a late decision, hastily carried out; I was conscious of a general, but not of a specific purpose, for which I might need them.

  For defense, I bought a long sheath knife. I bought it chiefly with my lonely walks with Bykov and my automobile rides with other Communists in mind. It was a poor weapon, but the most easily procured and concealed, and therefore the only equalizer I risked carrying at that time. I wore it belted around my undershirt, and kept the strap across the handle and the shirt under my vest unbuttoned so that I could reach it more easily in a fight. About the time I began to carry a knife, Colonel Bykov developed a curious habit. He would crowd close to me when we sat together in a street car or subway train and repeatedly lurched against me when we walked on the street. He had never done this before. I instantly suspected that he was trying to feel if I was armed. I still think this must have been his purpose, not because he suspected that I was breaking, but because, by coincidence, it occurred to him at that time to find out if I was armed. And, by coincidence, he was right, though he did not find out.

  The problem of a car I considered of first importance. Both the Soviet apparatuses and the American underground used automobiles constantly in their operations. But Bykov was against automobiles. He could not drive and, perhaps for that reason, considered cars a hazard to underground work second only to the “American secret police”—one of his obsessions. Above all, I think he did not want the expense.

  I owned a Ford sedan which J. Peters had provided for me a year or two before Bykov’s arrival. Because of his prejudice, I had not at once told Bykov about this car. I am no longer certain whether I ever told him. In any case, the car was old and ailing; the Communist Party, having paid for it, knew of its existence and might easily trace it. For purposes of flight it seemed a serious handicap. I began a systematic campaign to get Bykov to finance a new car. I urged its importance in the work and, what I thought a telling point, the loss of prestige to the Soviet apparatus when I, its face in Washington, had to go on foot or accept rides from the sources and even the photographers, two of whom had their own automobiles.

  I had told Alger Hiss about Bykov’s automotive prejudice. I also told him about my campaign to get a car. We laughed about it. In this I had no double purpose. I did not foresee Hiss’s reaction. Alger, however, quickly grew serious and agreed that a car was a necessity of the work (after all, he had a stake in efficient operations). He offered to lend me four hundred dollars to use as part payment on a car. I declined. But I used Alger’s offer in my campaign with Bykov, who, to my surprise, one night suddenly capitulated. He explained that he did not have the necessary money on him at the time (he frequently carried hundreds of dollars in currency), but he authorized me to accept the money from Hiss, add it to whatever apparatus funds I might have on hand, and buy a car. He said he would give me the money for Hiss the next time I saw him. He always managed to forget it. When I broke, the repayment had not been made. I knew, of course, that if Alger claimed the loan, the apparatus would be bound to repay him.

  Since the Communist Party might later try to trace the new car, I decided not to buy it in B
altimore. With the loan from Hiss, I had my wife go to the Schmitt Motor Company in Randallstown, a village northwest of Baltimore. There she traded in our old car and bought a 1937 Ford. We had wings.

  The problem of a hiding place was equally important. I was sure that the Communist Party, once it learned of my desertion, would expect me to go as far away as possible from Baltimore. I decided that the unexpected tactic was to remain close to it. My wife and I began to look for quarters in a wide arc north and west of the city. Since we had little money, our hideaway had to be inexpensive. It had to have a commanding situation so that we could see around us in all directions. It could not be in a thickly populated neighborhood. We wanted only one or two rooms which had to be away from the street. We looked at many places before we found one that suited our peculiar needs. It was a big house, near the city, but in the country. It stood well back from the Old Court Road, near Pikesville, Md. The house was on a gentle rise with wide lawns around it. The road was visible for a distance in both directions. Best of all, there was a police dog. We rented two rooms at the back of the house.

  If the Communist Party did not succeed in taking my life, I assumed that it would try to act against me in other ways. I could not foresee what they might be, but I could see that I might need weapons with which to fight back. If I should ever have to tell my story (and the problem of becoming an informer confronted me, as it does every ex-Communist, from the moment I began to break with Communism), it would also be important to have some proof that I had worked with the Communist Party in Washington. There could be no more official proof, it seemed to me, than to let the Communist Party get me a job under my own name in the United States Government. This would serve two other purposes: by working under my own name, I would help to restore my identity, which for five or six years had been all but lost. And a job would bring in a little money which we badly needed for the break.