Soviet Intelligence expert Jerrold Schecter served as Time magazine’s Moscow bureau chief in the 1960s/70s and was an associate White House press secretary and spokesman for the National Security Council under the Carter Administration. His historical accounts of Nikita Khrushchev, the Kremlin’s intrigues of the 1940s and 1950s, Communist espionage and foreign policy are primary sources for many academics and historians. Few people have had their finger on the thermometer of the Cold War like Schecter. He’s taking part in our Russian Sundays at the 92nd Street Y series with a discussion, Reinventing the Bolshevik Code: From Brezhnev to Putin, on November 26.
First, we asked him to put on his old media hat and explain how a former Communist spy turned government informer, Whittaker Chambers, was able to become Time magazine’s managing editor in the 1940s. Schecter’s reply:
Whittaker Chambers rose to the position of foreign editor of Time in 1944 because he was a brilliant wordsmith and his views on the threat of Communism fit with those of Time Inc. Editor in Chief Henry Luce. Chambers was a natural enemy of Time correspondents in the field because as a former Communist he was convinced that he knew the world better than they did. “.. he knew what went on in the dark and they did not,” as the late Thomas Griffith, a legendary foreign editor of Time explained, in his book Harry and Teddy: The Turbulent Friendship of Press Lord Henry R. Luce and His Favorite Reporter, Theodore H. White. See Chapter Ten, The Rebellion of the Correspondents, which makes for a rich read filled with well-written anecdotes on Chambers, his wars inside Time Inc. and the alliances he formed and those who fought against him, such as Teddy White and John Hersey.
In 1940 when Chambers joined Time as a book reviewer his Communist past was known, but not his role in transmitting espionage materials from Alger Hiss to his Soviet control officer, or Chambers’ contacts with Harry Dexter White at the Treasury Department. In 1948 when Chambers’ role as a courier of materials from Hiss was revealed by Richard Nixon, his position at Time was fatally compromised and he resigned. See Sam Tanenhaus’ Whittaker Chambers: A Biography, Chapter 24, Indictment.
