Julian Wadleigh
Encyclopedia
Henry Julian Wadleigh was an American economist and the United States Department of State official in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a key witness in the Alger Hiss trials.

Biography

Julian Wadleigh was born in 1904. He went to an English “public” school, and then to Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

 where he read classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

. He returned to the United States where he received fellowships at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 and the Brookings Institution.

In the early 1930s he started as an economist at the Department of Agriculture. Becoming more involved with radical politics, he joined the Socialist Party. Later he moved to the State Department, working in the trade agreements division and negotiating trade pacts in Turkey and Italy.

In the mid 1930s, he became acquainted with Eleanor Nelson, a communist. When Wadleigh, a committed socialist, expressed the desire to act against growing the fascist movement in Europe, Nelson put him in touch with communists in Washington.
He passed along documents to the Soviet Union through his main contact, Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...

, at the Washington Zoo.

The defection of Trotsky and subsequent purges in 1937, as well as Wadleigh's work abroad, resulted in infrequent contacts. Soon after, Chambers told him that he had quit the Communist Party, as they both were suspected of being Trotskyites and were in danger of being killed. In August 1939 Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, which disgusted Wadleigh, who vowed to have nothing more to do with the communists.

Wadleigh stayed at the State Department in the 1940s but felt that his own career stalled because rumors lurked about his communist sympathies. He divorced and remarried around this time. After the Allies of World War II
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

 invaded Italy, he was sent to assess food security for the war-stricken population. He shared an apartment in Rome with his brother, Richard Wadleigh, an Army intelligence officer who had led the First Armored Division into the city.

In 1948, Chambers accused Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...

of being a communist spy. Wadleigh testified before a grand jury and HUAC, and was a key witness in the Hiss prosecution. He did not actually know of Hiss's role, but served to corroborate the role Chambers played. He said he collaborated with communists, but never became a party member. He admitted taking classified documents while working in the State Department for Soviet intelligence. Wadleigh testified on the witness stand that he strongly believed his own transmission of papers to Chambers in the late 1930s "could not be used against us, but could be used against Germany and Japan." As federal prosecutor Thomas Murphy summed up, Wadleigh only wanted to stop the rise of fascism; "we all came to hate it, but he saw it earlier."
Chambers detailed his espionage relationship to Wadleigh as well as events in the Hiss Case in his autobiography Witness (1952).

Further reading

  • Alexander Vassiliev’s Notes on Anatoly Gorsky’s December 1948 Memo on Compromised American Sources and Networks

External links

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