PRE-WAR SPY RING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26842, 5 August 1948, Page 5

PRE-WAR SPY RING

AMERICAN COMMUNISTS FORMER STATE OFFICIALS NAMED HOUSE INQUIRY CONTINUED N.Z.P.A.—Copyright. WASHINGTON, Rec. 9 p.m. Aug. 3. The dramatic Congressional spy investigation mushroomed still further to-day when a number of former high Government officials were named by a former Communist as key figures in the. pre-war Communist underground. Whittaker Chambers, an associate editor of the magazine Time, testifying under oath to the House Un-American Activities Committee, said the Communist group included Lee Pressman. Nathan Witt, Alger Hiss and his brother Donald Hiss. John Abt. and Henry Collins. Group in Washington Chambers said he was a Communist from 1924 to 1937, and served in the underground, chiefly in Washington. ” The head of the underground group was Nathan Witt, then attorney for the National Labour Relations Board. Lee Pressman was also a member of this group, as was Alger Hiss, who, as a member of the State Department, later organised conferences at Dumbarton Oaks, San Francisco, and the American side of Yalta. Alger Hiss served as secretary-general of the San Francisco Conference where the United Nations was founded. Chambers said the primary purpose of the underground movement was to infiltrate into the United States Government. The group’s eventual objects were espionage, and the overthrow of the Government “by any or all means.” Collins was once with the Agriculture Department, and Abt was assistant Attorney-general in 1937 and 1938, and an active supporter of Henry Wallace. Lee Pressman was formerly a general counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organisations, but resigned to support Henry Wallace, after the C. 1.0. announced its opposition to Wallace. ' Donald Hiss formerly held an important position in the State Department, and is now practising law in Washington. Alger Hiss is now head of the Carnegie Foundation for World Peace. Information Offered Chambers said that two days after Russia signed the non-aggression pact with Germany, he had told Mr A. A. Berle, then Assistant Secretary of State, about a Communist spy ring, but nothing was ever done about his information. “ I knew the underground from which certain members of Miss Bentley’s group were apparently recruited.” Chambers said that after he broke with Communism he lived in hiding for a year, “ sleeping by day and watching through the night with a gun within easy reach. I had a sound reason for supposing the Communists might kill me.”