page_title: Harold Ware
section_title: Corroboration from Ware Group members
hierarchical_section_title: Harold Ware / Soviet espionage: Ware Group / Corroboration from Ware Group members
caption_attribution_description: English: w:Lee Pressman (1906-1969), American government functionary, labor lawyer, and Soviet spy.
context_page_description: Harold or "Hal" Ware was an American Marxist, regarded as one of the Communist Party's top experts on agriculture. He was employed by a federal New Deal agency in the 1930s. He is alleged to have been a Soviet spy and is understood to have founded the "Ware Group," a covert group of operatives within the United States government aiding Soviet intelligence agents.
context_section_description: Lee Pressman:  On August 28, 1950, Lee Pressman gave testimony against his former comrades.  He stated he had met Ware and that:
  In my desire to see the destruction of Hitlerism and an improvement in economic conditions here at home, I joined a Communist group in Washington, D. C, about 1934. My participation in such group extended for about a year, to the best of my recollection.
  Pressman also indicated that in at least one meeting of his group, perhaps two, he had met Soviet intelligence agent J. Peters. Pressman's 1950 testimony provided the first corroboration of Chambers' allegation that a Washington, D.C., Communist group around Ware existed, with federal officials Nathan Witt, John Abt and Charles Kramer named by Pressman as members of this party cell.
  Nathaniel Weyl:  In 1952, Nathaniel Weyl testified before the U.S. Senate Internal Security Committee that he had been a member of the Ware group, and that Alger Hiss had attended meetings as well – the only eyewitness corroboration of Whittaker Chambers's testimony that Alger Hiss was a Communist and Ware Group member.  Of his own Ware Group participation, Weyl said: "I was one of its less enthusiastic members."  Weyl described what could be interpreted as Ware's efforts to corral him into espionage and his own effort to extract himself from the group:
  Ware wanted me to try to get into the Foreign Service and be attached to the staff of William Bullitt, our first Ambassador to the Soviet Union ... I didn't think there was anything illegal about membership in the Ware unit, but nevertheless it was duplicitous ... I told Hal Ware that the Moscow idea was out and that I wanted to leave Washington and resign from government. He said: absolutely not. I forced his hand by committing an appalling breach of security. I showed up at a cell meeting with the girl I was having an affair with, a young lady who was not a Communist Party member and who had known nothing about the group. Ware withdrew his objections and I resigned from AAA.
  John Abt: In his 1993 autobiography, * John Abt, later long-time attorney for the Communist Party, confirmed that the Ware Group had existed, that it was a secret Communist Party unit, and that Ware had recruited him and several of the others named by Chambers for the Party.
  Hope Hale Davis: In her 1994 memoir, Hope Hale Davis also admitted to membership in the Ware group: Davis confirmed that it was engaged in illegal activity.
caption: Lee Pressman, shortly after leaving the Ware Group, working for the CIO (1938)
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