Donald Niven Wheeler (1913–2002) was an American social activist, teacher, and Communist Party member, as well as an alleged Soviet spy. Background Donald Niven Wheeler was born on October 23, 1913, in White Bluffs, Washington. His parents were Francis Marion Wheeler and Jeanie Melissa Shaw. He had five siblings including sister Margaret Jean Wheeler Schuddakopf and brother George Shaw Wheeler. He was a graduate of Reed College. He was a brilliant scholar who upon graduation received a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, and there, spurred by what he learned through his studies in economics, he joined the university branch of the Communist Party. He did post-graduate work at the University of Paris but dropped out to join the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. There he met Mary Lukes Vause, a fellow graduate of Reed College, a new mother and the widow of his best friend, Clare Vause. They were married in 1938. He later returned to Oxford (1968) and completed his doctoral studies. Duncan Chaplin Lee, an Oxford classmate, described him as a really "progressive person". Career Government Wheeler was associated with various so-called "Comintern" organizations before being employed by the New Deal federal government, first in the United States Department of Agriculture, later the Department of Treasury. From 1941 to 1946, Wheeler was employed by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Washington, D.C. Communist Party USA Wheeler was allegedly a member of the white collar unit of the Communist Party of the District of Columbia. Franz Neumann, who worked with him in the OSS, allegedly gave a good report to Moscow, describing him as "a calm and progressive man". Perlo group In November 1943, Earl Browder, Chairman of the CPUSA, turned control of the Perlo group of Soviet spies over to Jacob Golos two months before Golos's death, and the group was subsequently taken over by his girlfriend, Elizabeth Bentley. Perlo later wrote to his Soviet supervisors of Wheeler: He has access to excellent material and once given an explanation of what was wanted, worked hard and bravely to get it... He has not been reckless but has gotten materials regularly under security conditions more difficult than those faced by most others in the group. According to Allen Weinstein, "Beginning in 1944, virtually the entire range of OSS analytic and planning documents on Nazi Germany and its postwar prospects flowed continuously from General Donovan's Washington headquarters