SOURCE: Draper, Theodore. “The Drama of Whittaker Chambers.” New York Review of Books 44, no. 19 (4 December 1997): 22-4.

In the following essay, Draper traces Chambers's involvement with the Communist party, his part in the Alger Hiss trial, and the importance of his ideas.

Unlike Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers left no mystery about his political beliefs. He was not a systematic thinker, but he was a man of ideas. Without his ideas, he was merely an informer who soon would have been forgotten. Chambers's ideas lay at the root of his actions, and both books under review, Sam Tanenhaus's biography of Chambers and Allen Weinstein's Perjury, now in a new edition, are notably weak in this respect, although they provide much information about Chambers.¹

Witness is a detailed story of Chambers's life, including its seamier aspects. But Chambers was not altogether satisfied with the book, because he had not wished to...