Ware Group
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Ware Group

The Ware Group was a covert organization of Communist Party USA operatives within the United States government in the 1930s, run first by Harold Ware (1889–1935) and then by Whittaker Chambers (1901–1961) after Ware's accidental death on August 13, 1935.

Harold Ware founded the group under the auspices of J. Peters by Summer 1933. Ware was a Communist Party (CP) official working for the federal government in Washington, D.C.

The first known meeting of the Ware Group occurred in late 1933 with eight members: John Abt, Henry Collins, Alger Hiss, Victor Perlo, Lee Pressman, Nathaniel Weyl, and Nathan Witt.

Initially, Peters instructed that members make "exceptional money sacrifices" to the Party, study Marxist theory and Party doctrine, observe "strictest secrecy," and to obtain "any government documents" available to them. (Known members later claimed that it was merely a Marxist study group.)[clarification needed]

By 1934, the group had grown to some 75 members, divided into cells.[citation needed] Members initially joined Marxist study groups and then into activities on behalf of the Party. They shared a belief that Marxist ideologies were the correct way to approach the problems of the ongoing Great Depression. Chambers also stated that Ware could have been acting "pursuant to orders from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States."

The Ware group started among young lawyers and economists hired by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). This New Deal agency reported to the Secretary of Agriculture but was operated independently of Department of Agriculture bureaucracy. All the members of the Ware Group were dues paying members of the Communist Party. J. Peters considered the Ware Group one of his major sources of income. Nathaniel Weyl felt that members of the Ware Group were acquiring "the training in the complex business of running a state that would be in high demand and short supply when the United States chose Socialism" and that "in a Communist regime they would be poised to move to the head of the table."

Ware died in an automobile accident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in August 1935. J. Peters, who had introduced Whittaker Chambers to Harold Ware the year before, placed Chambers in charge of the Ware Group.

Chambers claimed that members of the group joined other "apparatuses" under his leadership.

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