In the reading of Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, Chambers discusses why he made the choice to join the Communist Party in 1925. He believed in the communist ideology and that the ideology was the best chance for creating a more peaceful world. Yet, Chambers described the decision to his wife as “leaving the winning world for the losing world,” knowing that Communist Party was the side of probable defeat, he made that choice because to Chambers “in the last instance, men must act on what they believe is right, not on what they believe probable,” (2). Chambers was correct, because even though when it was created the Communist Party appeared as though it would continue indefinitely, Chambers saw first hand how the reality was not what people who believed in it thought it would be. Chambers’ initial hopes and actions, however, seem to be similar to that of other American citizens who became espionage agents for the Communist Party. In The Black Book of Communism, Courtois, one of the contributing authors, helps make a distinction between the philosophy and practice of communism. Courtois said, “As a political philosophy, communism has existed for centuries, … Utopian philosophy may have its place as a technique for evaluating society. It draws its substance from ideas, the lifeblood of the world’s democracies,” (2). Courtois explains how the communist doctrine Chambers and many others believed in came from a place of utopian and humanitarian ideas, therefore choosing to join and assist the Communist Party would appear to be the most successful way to make those ideas reality. Theodore Hall, an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos and a confirmed spy for the KGB discussed in the “Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies” documentary, is similar to Chambers in that vein. In 1997 Hall spoke to a visiting scholar, defending his actions at Los Alamos because he believed it was important that somebody “should go tell Stalin,” about the Manhattan Project, “so that it would not be a threat but a developing of a pathway towards a better, more harmonious world,”  (44:47 – 46:26). Hall saw his actions as humanitarian in motive, and that even if it was seen by others as a betrayal to his nation, he chose to betray in hopes of a better world being created in the long run, not out of hatred towards his home country.