Whittaker Chambers was a confessed spy for the Soviet Union and the chief witness in the 1949 perjury trials of Alger Hiss. Chambers accused Hiss, who had been an important official with the U.S. State Department during the 1930s and 1940s, of being a Communist spy. Though Hiss denied it, Chambers produced microfilm of military secrets he claimed Hiss had given him. The allegations marked the beginning of anti-Communist investigations by congressional committees.

Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers on April 1, 1901, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1924, he joined the Communist Party and soon became involved with writing for various party publications. He was an editor for the Communist Daily Worker newspaper until 1929 and then took on a new role as a courier for the Russian spy system in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s. As early as the 1920s he used the name Whittaker, his mother's maiden name, but...