Julian Wadleigh (1904–1994) was an American economist and a
Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...
official in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a key witness in the
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in con ...
trials.
Background
Henry Julian Wadleigh was born in 1904. He went to an English "public" school, and then to the
University of Oxford
, mottoeng = The Lord is my light
, established =
, endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019)
, budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20)
, chancellor ...
where he read
classics
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...
. He returned to the United States where he received fellowships at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
and the Brookings Institution.
Career
In the early 1930s he started as an economist at the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
State Department
Becoming more involved with radical politics, he joined the
Socialist Party
Socialist Party is the name of many different political parties around the world. All of these parties claim to uphold some form of socialism, though they may have very different interpretations of what "socialism" means. Statistically, most of th ...
. 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
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
through his main contact,
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...
, at the Washington Zoo.
The defection of
Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian M ...
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
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
, 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
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
, 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
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
invaded Italy in 1943, 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.
Hiss Case
In 1948, Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being a communist spy. Wadleigh testified before a grand jury and the
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
(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).
[
]
Testimony dates include December 9, 1948.
[
] Herman Greenberg of Greenberg,
Forer &
Rein was Wadleigh's legal counsel until shortly before he appeared before HUAC in December 1948.
[
]
See also
*
List of American spies
*
John Abt
*
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet spy (1932–1938), defected from the Soviet underground (1938), ...
*
Noel Field
Noel Haviland Field (January 23, 1904 – September 12, 1970) was an American communist activist, diplomat and spy for the NKVD, whose activities before and after World War II allowed the Eastern Bloc to use his name as a prosecuting rationale du ...
*
Harold Glasser
Harold Glasser (November 24, 1905 – November 16, 1992) was an economist in the United States Department of the Treasury and spokesman on the affairs of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) 'throughout its whole ...
*
John Herrmann
John Theodore Herrmann (November 9, 1900 – April 9, 1959) was a writer in the 1920s and 1930s and is alleged to have introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss.
Biography
Herrmann was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1900. He lived in Paris in ...
*
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Statutes of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in con ...
*
Donald Hiss
Donald Hiss (December 15, 1906 – May 18, 1989), also known as "Donie"
and "Donnie",
was the younger brother of Alger Hiss. Donald Hiss's name was mentioned during the 1948 hearings wherein his more famous and older brother, Alger, was ac ...
*
Victor Perlo
*
J. Peters
J. Peters (born Sándor Goldberger; 11 August 1894 – 1990) was the most commonly known pseudonym of a man who last went by the name "Alexander Stevens" in 1949. Peters was a journalist, political activist, and accused Soviet spy who was a leadin ...
*
Ward Pigman
William Ward Pigman (March 5, 1910 – September 30, 1977) was a chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at New York Medical College, and a suspected Soviet Union spy as part of the "Karl group" for Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU).
Biograph ...
*
Lee Pressman
Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following hi ...
*
Vincent Reno
*
Harold Ware
*
Nathaniel Weyl
*
Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White (October 29, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was a senior U.S. Treasury department official. Working closely with the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financial policy toward the Allies of World W ...
*
Nathan Witt
Nathan Witt (February 11, 1903 – February 16, 1982), born Nathan Wittowsky, was an American lawyer who is best known as being the Secretary of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from 1937 to 1940. He resigned from the NLRB after his commun ...
References
External links
*
''Wartime American Plans for a New Hungary: East European Boundary Problems'' ''My father was a spy''''The ordeal of Alger Hiss''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wadleigh, Julian
Admitted Soviet spies
1904 births
1994 deaths