Pumpkin Papers

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The name 'Pumpkin Papers" arose from four or five rolls of camera film hidden in a pumpkin at the Whittaker Chambers Farm in December 1948 Giant Pumpkin Species.jpg
The name 'Pumpkin Papers" arose from four or five rolls of camera film hidden in a pumpkin at the Whittaker Chambers Farm in December 1948

The Pumpkin Papers are a set of typewritten and handwritten documents, stolen from the US federal government (thus information leaks) by members of the Ware Group and other Soviet spy networks in Washington, DC, during 1937-1938, withheld by courier Whittaker Chambers from delivery to the Soviets as protection when he defected. They featured frequently in criminal proceedings against Alger Hiss from August 1948 to January 1950. The term quickly became shorthand for the complete set of handwritten, typewritten, and camera film documents in newspapers. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Background

For the Ware Group in Washington (1935-1938), Chambers couriered documents from federal officials to New York City to Soviet spymasters, the last of whom was Boris Bykov. During early 1938, Chambers withheld some documents as life insurance as he readied to defect and go into hiding in April 1938. According to Chambers, he put the documents in a manila envelope and asked his wife's nephew Nathan Levine to hide them (which Levine did, in a dumbwaiter in a Brooklyn home). In 1939, Chambers came out of hiding and joined Time magazine, where he worked through 1948. [4]

On August 3, 1948, Chambers testified under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Washington, DC, that he had been a Soviet courier in the 1930s. He named former federal officials in the Ware Group cell, including: John Abt, Nathan Witt, Lee Pressman, and Alger Hiss. On August 5, Hiss appeared before HUAC and denied the allegations. On August 20, Abt, Witt, and Pressman pled the Fifth, all three under advice of counsel Harold I. Cammer. On April 27, Chambers asserted on Meet the Press , then a national radio show, that Hiss had been a communist; in late September, Hiss filed a slander suit in a federal court in Baltimore against Chambers for making that allegation publicly.

Events

Freshman US Representative Richard Nixon prepares to make his Pumpkin Papers speech in 1950 (journalist Ted Knap seated with him) Ted Knap and Richard Nixon pumpkin papers.jpg
Freshman US Representative Richard Nixon prepares to make his Pumpkin Papers speech in 1950 (journalist Ted Knap seated with him)

According to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pumpkin Papers added a "dramatic sequence of events". [5] Between April and November (when Chambers was asked to produce evidence of Hiss' CPUSA membership in the slander case), Chambers had flip-flopped on whether his Ware Group had engaged in espionage. On November 17, 1948, Chambers surrendered the typewritten and handwritten documents to Hiss' lawyer William L. Marbury Jr. as part of pre-trial deposition in a slander case. At Hiss' request, Marbury in turn surrendered the typewritten and handwritten documents (sometimes called the "Baltimore Documents") to the United States Department of Justice in the hope that Justice would indict Chambers for espionage. The hard copy documents included summaries of United States Department of State documents in Hiss' handwriting as well as typewritten copies of official government reports. On December 2, 1948, HUAC investigators arrived at Chambers' farm in Westminster, Maryland, and took from Chambers five canisters of microfilm, after he retrieved them from a pumpkin he had hollowed out overnight to keep them safe – hence the "Pumpkin Papers". Nixon and HUAC investigation director Robert E. Stripling paraded the microfilm before the press. In less than two weeks, instead of indicting Chambers, Justice indicted Hiss, in part because the collective Pumpkin Papers provided strong evidence of espionage on Hiss' part. [6] [7] [5]

During two trials against Alger Hiss in 1949, "the star witnesses were the Pumpkin Papers". [5] FBI analysis proved that typewritten copies had been typed on a Woodstock typewriter (No. 230099) belonging to the Hiss family. [5] The majority of handwritten documents were in Hiss' hand (the others being in the hand of Treasury official Harry Dexter White). The Hiss defense team was unable to discredit the typewriter or typewritten documents during the trials. [5] In January 1950, a jury found Hiss guilty, and he was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

In 1950, Representative Nixon made a Pumpkin Papers speech to Congress, a few weeks after Senator Joseph McCarthy cited the Hiss case, starting McCarthyism.

In 1950 for passage of the McCarran Internal Security Act, Senator Karl Mundt told a Senate hearing that the act need to pass, based on what he had learned as a HUAC member about "the so-called pumpkin papers case, the espionage activities in the Chambers-Hiss case, the Bentley case, and others". [8]

Legacy

Subsequent, scandalous documents whose name mirrors to the Pumpkin Papers include the Pentagon Papers (1971) and the Panama Papers (2016).

Media

Actor Cary Grant alludes to the Pumpkin Papers atop Mount Rushmore during the climax of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film North by Northwest North by Northwest movie trailer screenshot (28).jpg
Actor Cary Grant alludes to the Pumpkin Papers atop Mount Rushmore during the climax of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film North by Northwest

In his 1949 book The Red Plot Against America, HUAC investigator Robert E. Stripling claimed that he had named the Pumpkin Papers. [9]

The nascent conservative movement led by William F. Buckley Jr. lionized Chambers as a hero, [10] and Buckley's magazine National Review (founded 1955) continues to mention the Pumpkin Papers regularly. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]

The Pumpkin Papers receive regular mention in the press, from local [7] to national outlets. [16]

Books about the Hiss case starting coming out before the it finished and continued in the 21st century, all mentioning the Pumpkin Papers. [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] Richard Nixon, who rose to national fame during the Hiss case, mentions the Pumpkin Papers in four of his books. [23] [24] [25] [26] The name Pumpkin Papers even appear in book titles on its own. [27] [28] Even the Pumpkin Papers Irregulars appear in a novel. [29]

The Pumpkin Papers appeared in film as well. Actor Cary Grant alludes to the Pumpkin Papers atop Mount Rushmore during the climax of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film North by Northwest when he tells actress Eve Marie Saint, "I see you've got the pumpkin" (in this case, a statue full of microfilm). That same year, the Three Stooges movie Commotion on the Ocean includes microfilm in a watermelon.

Irregulars

This group (allegedly a "secret society") formed in New York City in 1977 by Paul Seabury [30] with meetings notionally off-the-record. [15] Annually on the Thursday closest to Halloween it holds a dinner to announce the Victor Navasky Award for "most disloyal American". [15] Long-time members include Grover Norquist. [31] Members have included Buckely, Nixon, Ronald Reagan, [32] Robert H. Bork, [33] James Q. Wilson, [34] and Clare Booth Luce. [35]

Recipients of the group's annual "Victor Navasky Prize" include:

Speakers have included:

A supporter of Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White who has attended several dinners described a typical evening at the "one time secret institution". [43]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alger Hiss</span> Alleged Soviet agent and American diplomat (1904–1996)

Alger Hiss was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a US State Department official and as a UN official. In later life, he worked as a lecturer and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whittaker Chambers</span> Defected communist spy, writer, editor (1901–1961)

Whittaker Chambers was an American writer and intelligence agent. After early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), he defected from the Soviet underground (1938), worked for Time magazine (1939–1948), and then testified about the Ware Group in what became the Hiss case for perjury (1949–1950), often referred to as the trial of the century, all described in his 1952 memoir Witness. Afterwards, he worked as a senior editor at National Review (1957–1959). US President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.

Julian Wadleigh (1904–1994) was an American economist and a Department of State official in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a key witness in the Alger Hiss trials.

Marion Bachrach was a member of the Ware group, a group of government employees in the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who were also members of the secret apparatus of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) in the 1930s. She was the sister of John Abt.

Headed by Victor Perlo, the Perlo group is the name given to a group of Americans who provided information which was given to Soviet intelligence agencies; it was active during the World War II period, until the entire group was exposed to the FBI by the defection of Elizabeth Bentley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whittaker Chambers Farm</span> Historic house in Maryland, United States

The Whittaker Chambers Farm, also known as the Pipe Creek Farm, is a historic cluster of farm properties near Westminster in rural Carroll County, Maryland. The farm's historic significance comes from its ownership by Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961), a pivotal figure in American Cold War politics. In December 1948, Chambers hid the "Pumpkin Papers" (microfilm) while awaiting a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee to relinquish any intelligence stolen from the US Government by members of the Soviet spy rings within the federal government. Chambers also wrote his best-selling 1952 memoir Witness there. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1988, in a somewhat controversial decision. The property remains in the Chambers family and is not accessible to the public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dumbwaiter</span> Elevator for food

A dumbwaiter is a small freight elevator or lift intended to carry food. Dumbwaiters found within modern structures, including both commercial, public and private buildings, are often connected between multiple floors. When installed in restaurants, schools, hospitals, retirement homes or private homes, they generally terminate in a kitchen.

<i>Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case</i> 1978 book by Allen Weinstein

Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case is a 1978 book by Allen Weinstein on the Alger Hiss perjury case. The book, in which Weinstein argues that Alger Hiss was guilty, has been cited by many historians as the "most important" and the "most thorough and convincing" book on the Hiss–Chambers case. Weinstein drew upon 30,000 pages of FBI documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, the files of the Hiss defense attorneys, over 80 interviews with involved parties and six interviews with Hiss himself. In 1997, Weinstein published an updated and revised edition of Perjury, which incorporated recent evidence from Venona project decrypted cables, released documents from Soviet intelligence archives and information from former Soviet intelligence operatives.

Carl Binger (1889–1976), AKA Carl A. L. Binger, was a 20th-century American psychiatrist. He wrote books and articles on a wide range of topics, including medicine and psychiatry, and testified in the trial of Alger Hiss.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">House Un-American Activities Committee</span> US investigative committee, 1938–1975

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist ties. It became a standing (permanent) committee in 1946, and from 1969 onwards it was known as the House Committee on Internal Security. When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Maxim Lieber was a prominent American literary agent in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. The Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers named him as an accomplice in 1949, and Lieber fled first to Mexico and then Poland not long after Alger Hiss's conviction in 1950.

Bertrand Albert Andrews Jr. was a Washington-based reporter for the New York Herald Tribune who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his article "A State Department Security Case."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander M. Campbell</span> American lawyer

Alexander Morton Campbell (1907–1968) was an Indiana lawyer who served in the United States Department of Justice as Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Criminal Division, formally from August 1948 through December 20, 1949, under Tom C. Clark as U.S. Attorney General (1945–49).

Nathan Levine was an American labor lawyer and real estate attorney in Brooklyn, New York, who, as attorney for his uncle, Whittaker Chambers, testified regarding his uncle's "life preserver." This packet included papers handwritten by Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, as well as typewritten by the Hiss Family's Woodstock typewriter. It also included microfilm, paraded to the public by U.S. Representative Richard M. Nixon and HUAC investigator Robert E. Stripling, dubbed the "Pumpkin Papers" by the press, which helped lead to the U.S. Department of Justice to indict Hiss for perjury.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Lowenthal</span> American lawyer

John Lowenthal (1925–2003) was a 20th-century American lawyer, civil servant, law professor, and documentary filmmaker, who defended the name and reputation of family friend Alger Hiss almost all his life.

Harold Rosenwald was an American lawyer, best known for working on the defense team of Alger Hiss during 1949 and in the prosecution of Louisiana governor Huey Long.

Robert E. Stripling was a 20th-century civil servant, best known as chief investigator of the House Dies Committee and its successor the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), particularly for collaboration with junior congressman Richard Nixon and for testimony gleaned from witness Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, the latter of whose allegations led indirectly to indictment and conviction of State Department official Alger Hiss in January 1950.

Louis James Russell was an American special agent and investigator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and a private detective agency involved in the Watergate scandal.

<i>Witness</i> (memoir) American Pre-Cold War memoir about Espionage

Witness, first published in May 1952, is a best-selling book of memoirs by American writer Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961), which recounts his life as a dedicated Marxist-communist ideologist in the 1920s, his work in the Soviet underground during the 1930s, and his 1948 testimony before the US Congress, which led to a criminal indictment against Alger Hiss and two trials in 1949.

References

  1. ↑ Annual Report for the Year Ended... United States National Archives and Records Administration. 1986. pp. 25, 89. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  2. ↑ Steven M. Chermak; Frankie Y. Bailey (2007). Crimes and Trials of the Century. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 179. ISBN   9780313341090 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  3. ↑ Thomas B. Allen (2008). Declassified: 50 Top-secret Documents that Changed History. National Geographic Books. ISBN   9781426202223 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  4. ↑ Whittaker Chambers (1952). Witness. Random House.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 John Ehrman (2000). "The Alger Hiss Case". Studies in Intelligence. Central Intelligence Agency. pp. 62–63. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  6. ↑ Theoharis, Athan G.; Rosenfeld, Susan; Powers, Richard G. (1999). The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 62–63. ISBN   9780897749916 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  7. 1 2 "Great pumpkin caper captivates: Nearly 70 years after the Hiss case, Chambers' son recalls family being treated well". Carroll County Times. October 11, 2016. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  8. ↑ Justia: Scarbeck v. U.S. paragraphs 20-1, accessed June 25, 2012
  9. ↑ Stripling, Robert E. (1949). The Red Plot Against America. Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania: Bell Publishing Company. pp. 22 (bio), 22–23 (HUAC). ISBN   9780405099762 . Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  10. ↑ Harry Paul Jeffers (2003). The 100 Greatest Heroes. Citadel Press. pp. 78–79. ISBN   9780806524764 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  11. ↑ "The Right Guide to D.C." NationalReview. August 8, 2005. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  12. ↑ "Witness to a Blaze". NationalReview. May 2, 2007. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  13. ↑ "You Stand a Ghost of a Chance to Get this Book". NationalReview. June 20, 2011. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  14. ↑ "12 Classic Essays" (PDF). NationalReview. October 2016. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 "Honoring the Origins of the Modern American Conservative Movement". NationalReview. November 16, 2018. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  16. ↑ "Today in History: Pumpkin Papers". CBS News. July 30, 1998. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  17. ↑ Ralph de Toledano; Victor Lasky (1950). Seeds of Treason: The True Story of the Hiss-Chambers Tragedy. Newsweek. pp. 218–224. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  18. ↑ Alistair Cooke (1952). A Generation on Trial: U.S.A. V. Alger Hiss. Knopf. pp. 92, 145, 162. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  19. ↑ Allen Weinstein (1978). Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. Knops. pp. 185, 283–284. ISBN   9780394491769 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  20. ↑ Richard Gid Powers (1995). Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism. Free Press. ISBN   9780684824277 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  21. ↑ Sam Tanenhaus (1997). Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Random House. pp. 290–317. ISBN   9780394585598 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  22. ↑ G. Edward White (2004). Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy. Enigma Books. ISBN   978-0-19-028841-9 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  23. ↑ Nixon, Richard M. (1962). Six Crises. Doubleday. pp. 49–52. ISBN   9780385001250 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  24. ↑ Nixon, Richard M. (1990). In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal. Simon & Schuster. p. 250. ISBN   9780671700966 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  25. ↑ Nixon, Richard M. (2008). Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Document. Princeton University Press. pp. xxvi, 33. ISBN   978-1400835683 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  26. ↑ Nixon, Richard M. (2013). RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. Simon & Schuster. pp. 68–69. ISBN   9781476731834 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  27. ↑ Tansey, Gene M. (1949). Pumpkin Papers, 1949: Being a Trilogy Found in a Pumpkin, Revealing the State of the Union as Never Spoken by Any President . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  28. ↑ Oeste, Bob (1996). The Last Pumpkin Paper: A Novel. Random House. ISBN   9780679448372 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  29. ↑ Mark A. Hewitt. Infiltrated: Duncan Hunter Thriller 7. Black Rose Writing. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  30. ↑ "Paul Seabury papers, 1941-1990". Online Archive of California. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  31. ↑ Nina J. Easton (2001). Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade. Simon & Schuster. pp. 81–82. ISBN   9780743211642 . Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  32. ↑ Peter Knight, ed. (2003). Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 161. ISBN   9781576078129 . Retrieved October 11, 2022.
  33. ↑ "Robert H. Bork Papers" (PDF). Library of Congress. 2020. Retrieved October 11, 2022.
  34. ↑ "James Q. Wilson Collection: 1949–2012" (PDF). Rand Corporation. 2013. Retrieved October 11, 2022.
  35. ↑ "Clare Boothe Luce" (PDF). Library of Congress. 2003. Retrieved October 11, 2022.
  36. ↑ "Sidney Hook Papers". Online Archive of California. 1978. Retrieved October 23, 2022.
  37. ↑ "Few Impartial on Panel Co-Chair". Los Angeles Times. February 11, 2004. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  38. ↑ "William J. Casey Papers" (PDF). Online Archive of California. 1984. Retrieved October 23, 2022.
  39. ↑ Closing Pandora's Box: Arms Races, Arms Control, And The History Of The Cold War. Basic Books. 1992. p. 430(fn5). ISBN   978-0-465-09809-5 . Retrieved October 23, 2022.
  40. ↑ Robert Novak (December 1, 2005). "Commentary: Removing J. Edgar's Name". RealClearPolitics. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  41. ↑ "American Betrayal Goes to the 36th Annual Pumpkin Papers Irregulars Dinner". Diana West. November 1, 2013. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  42. ↑ "Commentary: Bannon and Viguerie Meet, RINOs and Democrats Get Halloween Fright". The Tennessee Star. November 3, 2017. Retrieved October 10, 2022.
  43. ↑ R. Bruce Craig (2004). Treasonable Doubt: The Harry Dexter White Spy Case. University Press of Kansas. pp. 2–3. ISBN   9780700613113 . Retrieved October 11, 2022.

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