Julian Wadleigh (1904–1994) was an American economist and a Department of State official in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a key witness in the Alger Hiss trials.

Background edit

Henry Julian Wadleigh was born in 1904. He went to an English "public" school, and then to the University of Oxford where he read classics and also the London School of Economics. He also studied at the University of Kiel in Germany. He returned to the United States where he received fellowships at the University of Chicago and the Brookings Institution.[citation needed] At the time of his death, Wadleigh was survived by a sister, Claire Hayes.[1]

Wadleigh married Edythe. Wadleigh had a daughter, Anne Gibert, and sons Jonathan, Larry, Robert.

Career edit

In the early 1930s he started as an economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture working in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration.[2]

State Department edit

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.[citation needed]

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, at the Washington Zoo.[citation needed]

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.[citation needed]

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 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.[3]

Hiss Case edit

In 1948, Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being a communist spy. Wadleigh testified before a grand jury and the House Un-American Activities Committee (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.[4] He admitted taking classified documents while working in the State Department for Soviet intelligence.[5] 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."[6] 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."[7] Chambers detailed his espionage relationship to Wadleigh as well as events in the Hiss Case in his autobiography Witness (1952).[8]

Testimony dates include December 9, 1948.[9] Herman Greenberg of Greenberg, Forer & Rein was Wadleigh's legal counsel until shortly before he appeared before HUAC in December 1948.[10]

Confession of Espionage edit

In an interview with the Washington Post in July 1949, Wadleigh admitted spying and that Chambers' testimony had been accurate. He said that he started spying in order to fight fascism but found increasing problems with Soviet efforts to enforce orthodoxy in science.[11]

Later life edit

At the time of the Hiss trial, the Wadleighs lived in Northern Virginia. They later moved to Massachusetts. Wadleigh died on April 23, 1994 in Brookline, Massachusetts.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Boston Globe, April 28, 1994, page 53
  2. ^ Arizona Republic, March 21, 1943, page 16
  3. ^ "Julian Wadleigh | 20th Century Woman".
  4. ^ "COMMUNISTS: The Government Rests". Time. June 27, 1949. Retrieved 27 July 2021.
  5. ^ Conklin, William R. (December 9, 1949). "Tells Hiss Jury He Channeled Up to 500 U. S. Documents to Soviet in 1936-37". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-07-02.
  6. ^ http://www.thenation.com/doc/19500211/bendiner[dead link]
  7. ^ http://www.thenation.com/doc/19500211/bendiner[dead link]
  8. ^ Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. Random House. pp. 385–386, 414–417, 425–427, 444–445 and other pages. ISBN 0-89526-571-0.
  9. ^ Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the United States Government – Part Two (PDF). US GPO. December 1948. pp. 1380-1381 (Robert E. Stripling), 1381-1385 (William Wheeler), 1385-1386 (Keith B. Lewis), 1386-1391 (Sumner Welles), 1391-1399 (John Peurifoy), 1399-1429 (Isaac Don Levine), 1429-1449 (Julian Wadleigh), 1449-1451 (Courtney E. Owens), 1451-1467 (Nathan L. Levine), 1467-1474 (Marion Bachrach). Archived from the original (PDF) on January 23, 2017. Retrieved 30 October 2018.
  10. ^ Hearings on Proposed Legislation to Curb or Control the Communist Party of the United States. US GPO. 1948. pp. 587 (Rein, address), 673 (Forer), 674 (Forer), 761 (Rein), 1342 (Forer, address, attorney, government agencies), 1432 (Greenberg, Forer & Rein, Wadleigh), 1438–1439 (Greenberg no longer Wadleigh), 1444 (Greenberg). Retrieved 4 July 2019.
  11. ^ Wadleigh, Henry Julian (24 July 1949). "Julian Wadleigh, Former State Department Economist, Tells Why He Gave His Country's Secrets to Russia: Wadleigh Has Luncheon Date With Jane B., Who Had Joined the Party". The Washington Post. p. B1. ProQuest 152147298.

External links edit