The Enduring Relevance of Whittaker Chambers’ Witness

American Thinker.com ^ | October 24, 2020 | David Gayvert

[yldstrk]

I never forget that he said he felt like he was leaving the winning side to join the losing side, but that the losing side was the right side.

[Verginius Rufus]

I have read two books by Whittaker Chambers:

One was Witness. The other was his translation of Felix Salten's novel Bambi.

[Track9]

Interesting account. I remember going from Witness to The Venona Papers. Very dense accounting by two excellent researchers. They had everybody dead to rights but said nothing because they didn’t want to reveal the existence of their program.

[Fiji Hill]

In the `1990's, I was working on a project that involved writing short biographies of historical figures for an upper grade-school to junior high level textbook series. For a chapter on "McCarthyism," I was assigned to write a biography of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. As a resource, I used the recently published memoirs of Pavel Sudoplatov, a Russian spymaster, who revealed details about he Rosenbergs' spying as well as The FBi-KGB War, a book by Donald Lamphere in which he revealed the Venona project.

However, I had apparently strayed off the reservation in including such research. The Rosenbergs were supposed to be portrayed as victims of "McCarthyism." I was paid for my manuscript, but when the book was published, instead of my article, there was another that used Communist publications as sources.

Shortly afterwards, the government released the Venona documents, which proved that the Rosenbergs were, indeed, Soviet spies. Much later, Alexander Feklisov, their Soviet case officer published his own memoirs adding even more details about their treason.

[Track9]

Thanks for the comments.. and prayers for a favorable election.