Pumpkin Papers


The Pumpkin Papers, a set of typewritten and handwritten documents stolen from the US federal government by members of the Ware Group and other Soviet spy networks in Washington, DC, during 1937–1938, were 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.

Background

For the Ware Group in Washington, 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. In 1939, Chambers came out of hiding and joined Time magazine, where he worked through 1948.
On August 3, 1948, Chambers testified under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee 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

According to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Pumpkin Papers added a "dramatic sequence of events". Between April and November, 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 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.
During two trials against Alger Hiss in 1949, "the star witnesses were the Pumpkin Papers". FBI analysis proved that typewritten copies had been typed on a Woodstock typewriter belonging to the Hiss family. The majority of handwritten documents were in Hiss' hand. The Hiss defense team was unable to discredit the typewriter or typewritten documents during the trials. 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, giving rise to McCarthyism.
In 1950 in support of passage of the McCarran Internal Security Act, Senator Karl Mundt told a Senate hearing that the act needed 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".

Legacy

Subsequent scandalous sets of documents whose names mirror the Pumpkin Papers include the Pentagon Papers, Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Afghanistan Papers, and Pandora Papers.

Media

In his 1949 book The Red Plot Against America, HUAC investigator Robert E. Stripling claimed that he had named the Pumpkin Papers.
The nascent conservative movement led by William F. Buckley Jr. lionized Chambers as a hero, and Buckley's magazine National Review continues to mention the Pumpkin Papers regularly.
The Pumpkin Papers received regular mention in the press, from local to national outlets.
Books about the Hiss case were published into the 21st century, all mentioning the Pumpkin Papers. Richard Nixon, who rose to national fame during the Hiss case, mentions the Pumpkin Papers in four of his books. The name Pumpkin Papers appears as book titles, and the Pumpkin Papers Irregulars appear in a novel.
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". That same year, the Three Stooges movie Commotion on the Ocean includes microfilm in a watermelon. In 1982, The Atomic Cafe documentary film shows footage of FBI retrieval of the Pumpkins Papers, followed by a press conference with Nixon and Stripling.

Pumpkin Papers Irregulars

This group formed in New York City in 1977 by Paul Seabury with meetings notionally off-the-record. Annually on the Thursday closest to Halloween it holds a dinner to announce the Victor Navasky Award for "most disloyal American". Long-time members include Grover Norquist. Members have included Buckley, Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Robert H. Bork, James Q. Wilson, and Clare Booth Luce.
Recipients of the group's annual "Victor Navasky Prize" include:
Speakers have included:
Members have included: William F. Buckley Jr., Grover Norquist, Alfred Regnery.
A supporter of Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White who has attended several dinners described a typical evening at the "one time secret institution".

External sources

  • 2014 announcement
  • : Pumpkin Papers Canisters
  • : USA vs. Alger Hiss
  • Pumpkin Papers in Sam Tanenhaus papers
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