Witness

By Otto Fuerbringer

When I came to TIME, Whittaker Chambers was writing foreign news, then editing. For most of us, we'd get files from correspondents and stringers, plus clips and research, write our stories, then work with the checkers to get it all right. Chambers would just close his door and, ignoring the research, write stories based on his own knowledge of Communist corruption and duplicity. In the end, of course, he was right; but he wasn't practicing Time Inc. journalism, and many on the staff resented it.

He was a secretive man. Everybody knew he had been a Communist, but none suspected he had engaged in espionage. On two occasions, I had lunch with him. We would follow a circuitous route from the office to a steakhouse in the 50s west of Broadway, where he would take a seat at a table with his back to the wall so that he could see the whole room. He would explain to me that he might have been followed by Communists who were out to get him.

After the second Hiss trial, Luce said he didn't want Chambers back at the magazine. Some of his friends, citing his forthright testimony in the trial, thought he should be allowed back. But Luce said: "A converted Communist on the staff? That's fine. But a man who spied against America?" Much as he admired Chambers as a journalist, he couldn't tolerate that.

--Otto Fuerbringer