National Affairs: A CAST OF CHARACTERS

In sworn public testimony, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers named 37 U.S. Government employees “connected with the Soviet espionage organization.” Since then, 17 of the 37 have refused under oath to say whether they were Communists or spies; six have not been called to testify to the charges made by Miss Bentley and by Chambers; one, Harold Ware, died in 1935, and 13—including Alger Hiss and William Remington, now in prison for their perjury—swore that the Bentley-Chambers accusations were false. Among the more interesting cases named by Bentley and/or Chambers:

Harold Glasser, 48, was brought into the Treasury Department by Harry Dexter White, moved from one key job to another, was a top adviser to State Secretary Marshall on the explosive Trieste issue at the 1947 meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow. Chambers named Glasser as the Soviet agent assigned to “control” White and make him turn over to the Communists “everything of importance that came into his hands.” Glasser resigned from Treasury in December 1947, was recommended by Dean Acheson and Treasury Secretary John Snyder for a place as economist with the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds in New York. He left this job, after refusing to testify as to Communist espionage.

Alger Hiss, 49, went to Washington as secretary to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, was an adviser to Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta, and was secretary of the Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco Conferences which gave birth to the United Nations. Against this bright star of the New Deal, Whittaker Chambers made a shocking accusation: Hiss was a Communist. Hiss challenged Chambers to make his charges without immunity. Chambers did, and they were tested in court. Hiss is now in the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa.

Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, 54, was named by Miss Bentley as the head of the espionage group that included Harry Dexter White. Silvermaster resigned from the War Assets Ad ministration in November 1946. Last April he refused to answer 178 times to questions asked him by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. With William Ullmann as his business partner and housemate, Silvermaster now lives at Harvey Cedars, N.J., where he is a building contractor.

William Ludwig Ullmann, 45, also lived with Silvermaster in Washington when they were federal employees. In the basement of their home there, Ullmann kept elaborate photographic equipment. Given a Treasury job by Harry D. White, Ullmann later became an Army Air Forces major. Miss Bentley said Ullmann took and photographed war plans from the Pentagon. Ullmann used the Fifth Amendment to duck questions.

Virginius Frank Coe, 46, first cited by Chambers in 1939, was technical secretary of the Bretton Woods Monetary Conference in 1944, became secretary of Harry D. White’s prize product, the International Monetary Fund, and was not dismissed from this $20,000-a-year job until December 1952 —shortly after he refused to answer congressional questions.

Victor Perlo, 41, was named by Miss Bentley as head of a Red cell in Washington in which she had worked. Perlo entered Government service under the NRA in 1933, later became an economic analyst for Treasury’s division of Monetary Research. Perlo, who has invoked the Fifth Amendment, is now an economic consultant in New York City.

Lee Pressman, 47, was another of the able young men who swarmed to Washington in the first days of the New Deal. Former general counsel for the WPA and for the C.I.O., Pressman admitted in 1950 that he had been a Communist, but he denied charges of espionage.

Nathan Witt, 50, was secretary of the National Labor Relations Board from 1937 to 1940, when important labor-management decisions were being made. Witt, named by Chambers as a member of the Communist cell organized by Harold Ware, invoked the Fifth Amendment. He is now a New York lawyer.