Chambers, Whittaker (born Jay Vivian Chambers) (1910–1961)

US journalist, writer, and Soviet agent. An active US communist 1925–29 and 1931–38, he wrote for the Daily Worker and edited the New Masses. He became an 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.

He was born in Philadelphia and studied at Columbia University. He gained a modest reputation as a writer, and later translated several works, notably Bambi, into English. 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. Chambers was also an editor of the National Review 1957–60.