Ware Group
Ware Group was a Soviet espionage ring inside the US government in 1930s and '40s Washington D.C.
While many defenders of Alger Hiss have denied that any such group ever existed, its existence was attested to by Lee Pressman, Nathaniel Weyl, Hope Hale Davis, John Abt and others.
Membership
The famous Ware Group Communist apparatus was organized by Harold Ware, a son of prominent communist "Mother" Ella Bloor.
This group acted as an adjunct of the NKVD of the Soviets. The principal function of the group was to obtain information desired by the NKVD particularly with regard to individuals.
Chambers stated that frequently he turned over to Peters sizable sums which he had collected from the Ware group. Chambers has identified John Abt, formerly with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, later with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and with the LaFollette Senate Civil Liberties Committee as having been a member of this group. In 1952 Abt was representing the Communist Party USA as co-counsel with Vito Marcantonio before the Subversive Control Board.
Following the death of Harold Ware in an automobile accident, John Abt married Ware's widow, Jessica Smith, who at one time was a secretary in the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D. C. Later, when she became editor of Soviet Russia Today, she was one of the few persons ever to register as a Soviet agent.
Other members who comprised this group were Lee Pressman, formerly with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and later general counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, Henry Collins, at one time a member of the Forestry Service of the Department of Agriculture, Nathan Perlow, an economist, and when known to Chambers was connected with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D. C., Charles Kramer, who was also employed by the La Follette committee while Chambers was in contact with him and Alger Hiss, who worked with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the State Department, the United Nations Organization, and finally was president of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace.