Journalist, Author, Soviet Agent. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he studied at Columbia University, and gained a modest reputation as a writer. Translated several works, notably “Bambi”, into English. He was an active American Communist (1925 to 1929, 1931 to 1938), writing for the Daily Worker and editing the New Masses. Along the way he became an actual agent of Soviet intelligence and passed classified government information to Moscow. Disillusioned by Stalin’s purges, he became a virulent anticommunist and edited Time Magazine’s foreign affairs section. In 1948, he testified that many executive branch officials were Communist sympathizers and said that Alger Hiss had given him classified materials; this brought about a libel suit by Hiss, who was found guilty. The Hiss-Chambers trial remains a symbol of the whole era that extended from the idealism of Communism in the 1930s to the disillusionment of the late 1940s. Whittaker Chambers was also an editor of the National Review (1957 to 1960). He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on March 26, 1984. (bio by: Erik Lander)