When I came to TIME, Whittaker Chambers was writing foreign news, then editing. For most of us, we'd get files from correspondents and stringers, plus clips and research, write our stories, then work with the checkers to get it all right. Chambers would just close his door and, ignoring the research, write stories based on his own knowledge of Communist corruption and duplicity. In the end, of course, he was right; but he wasn't practicing Time Inc. journalism, and many on the staff resented it.
He was a secretive man. Everybody knew he had been a Communist, but none suspected he...