Franklin Victor Reno

Reno, a mathematician, worked for the government at the U.S. Army Proving Grounds in Aberdeen, Maryland. Reno had been a member of the Communist Party and had briefly known Whittaker Chambers, but by the time he was working for the Army had cut himself off from Communist activities. After Chambers left the Party, he visited Reno and asked him for money.

According to Meyer Zeligs, several of Reno's co-workers considered this visit a form of blackmail and gave Reno the $50 that Chambers was demanding. They also said that Chambers was threatening that if Reno didn't turn over to him a document - any document - that Chambers would expose Reno's Communist past to authorities. Reno gave Chambers a document that had been casually discarded. Chambers later turned it over to the government to prove his charges of espionage. The paper contained the firing tables of a 1917 Browning machine gun. 

In 1951, Reno was indicted on charges of concealing his membership in the Communist Party from the government. He pleaded guilty and served three years in prison at Leavenworth.