Operation Solo (15 page)

The KGB swore to the Politburo and International Department that before, during, and after the time Oswald lived in the Soviet Union it never utilized him as an agent or informant. The Politburo had confiscated his KGB file, and the copy that aides gave Ponomarev apparently contained nothing to contradict this claim.

Throughout the excited exchanges, Morris sat mute and phlegmatic, trying to transcribe into memory every word he heard. One of the Soviets finally took note of him and asked, “What are we going to tell this American here?” Ponomarev certified that Morris was completely trustworthy and declared he should be told the truth. Through an interpreter, Morris thereupon heard basically the same account given Ponomarev. Almost pleading, the Soviets beseeched him to believe they had nothing to do with the assassination.

Logic and professional training inclined him to believe them. While the Soviets had not foresworn assassination as an instrument of state policy, even low-level murders had to be approved in advance by the Politburo, and Ponomarev surely would have known of any plan to kill the president. Neither Ponomarev nor other ranking Soviets with whom Morris spoke could have faked the kind of shock he personally observed. If Oswald was as unbalanced as the Soviets alleged, Morris doubted that they would entrust Oswald with a mission tantamount to an act of war. If Oswald was a Soviet assassin, why would he openly present himself at the Soviet and Cuban embassies where CIA or Mexican
surveillants were likely to spot him? And what did the Soviet Union conceivably have to gain from the assassination?

However, Morris realized that among many angry Americans logic might not prevail and that the conspicuous Soviet trepidation was justified. The FBI or CIA quickly would ascertain that Oswald had fled to the Soviet Union and probably that he had visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico, and the findings would spawn reasonable questions. The Soviet Union was not known as a champion of human rights nor a haven for foreigners escaping economic or political repression. Why did Oswald want to live there, and why did the Soviets admit him, unless they expected to exploit him? Hundreds of thousands of KGB border guards patrolled Soviet frontiers not so much to keep aliens out as to keep Soviet citizens in! Why did the Soviets let Oswald go? Why did Soviet diplomats talk to him in Mexico?

Ponomarev and Morris had just heard plausible explanations and could see for themselves that they were offered earnestly. But how many Americans would believe whatever the Soviet government said? And what might the supposedly crazy Oswald say? If the U.S. government or a majority of Americans were persuaded that the Soviets had arranged or abetted the murder of the president, the United States would probably retaliate. Lesser provocations had started wars.

The bizarre murder of Oswald in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters after his arrest compounded Soviet fears. Now those prone to blame the Soviets could argue that the assassin had been assassinated to bury evidence of Soviet complicity. Some in the International Department proposed that Morris be sent home forthwith to convince the U.S. government of Soviet innocence.

The absurdity of the proposal was a gauge of the desperation of Soviet officialdom. As Morris diplomatically pointed out, he was among the last persons the American government or public was likely to believe. Although he had not been openly affiliated with the party since 1947, he had been a prominent communist and Soviet advocate. Any protestations by him of Soviet innocence would be construed as evidence of Soviet guilt and, besides, how was he supposed to know what he was talking about? The same
held true for the American party, and he urged that it be instructed to limit its statements regarding the assassination to expressions of regret and abhorrence of political violence. He also argued that the Soviet government should officially convey to the U.S. government, secretly or publicly, the complete truth about its dealings with Oswald, down to the last detail.

Ponomarev and Suslov ultimately agreed, and Morris flew back with instructions for Hall, landing in New York December 2. In a motel room near Idlewild Airport (now JFK Airport), he told to Boyle all he had heard and seen in Moscow pertaining to the assassination. Scribbling notes, anxious to be accurate, Boyle grasped the magnitude of the intelligence Morris was imparting and the urgency of transmitting it to Washington. They agreed to dispense with the customary summary report briefly outlining all the information the mission had yielded, and Boyle left for the FBI field office in Manhattan. En route he mentally composed an aseptic report that clinically stated facts and omitted any interpretation or comment. However, the raw facts he personally encrypted and dispatched to headquarters collectively communicated an unmistakable message: The Soviet Union had nothing to do with the assassination of President Kennedy, and its leaders were as stunned by the tragedy as was anyone else.

Without revealing the source of information, agents personally briefed President Johnson; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the slain president; and a few other administration leaders. The Warren Commission investigating the assassination received a secret summary of what Morris learned. Thus, within two weeks of the assassination, at a time when public passions and political emotions ran high, U.S. policymakers had compelling evidence that they did not have to act against the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, Oswald indisputably was a communist sympathizer, a subscriber to communist publications, an adherent of Fidel Castro, and a former resident of the Soviet Union who had wanted to return to the Soviet Union. And the government could not reveal to the public what Morris personally saw and heard in Ponomarev's office. So the communists embarked upon a systematic campaign to persuade the American people and the world that
ultra-rightists, rather than a communist sympathizer, killed President Kennedy.

On November 25, 1963, Jack Childs (NY-694S*) called for a “crash” meeting with Burlinson in New York. At 2:26 P.M. that day, the New York office flashed to Director J. Edgar Hoover in Washington a coded dispatch labeled “URGENT” and sent copies to SACs in Chicago, Dallas, and New Orleans. It said:

Soviet President Boris Yeltsin in his book
The Struggle for Russia
(Random House, New York, 1994) on page 307 quotes a memorandum KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny sent on December 10, 1963, to the International Department. It is based mainly on a report from “Brooks,” whom Yeltsin characterizes as “a well-known American communist and KGB agent.” “Brooks” at the time probably was the Soviet code name for Jack. Excerpts quoted by Yeltsin state:

Thus Yeltsin and KGB files confirm that Jack did what Hall dictated. So did Morris.

seven

ALMOST CAUGHT

THE SOLO TEAM JUDGED that Eva could be a rejuvenating and sustaining confidant of Morris, and in the beginning that is all the FBI expected her to be. However, through the tutelage of Morris as well as her own intelligence and daring, she transfigured herself from a sweet, caring social worker into perhaps the most effective female spy the FBI has ever had. In Moscow, she gathered from Kremlin wives insights into their husbands' private thoughts and emotions, the kind of intimate personal details no male could obtain. She gradually formed some of the wives into a sort of feminist movement and encouraged them to assert themselves in a male chauvinist world. Eva empowered the women by announcing that she would not attend a banquet or reception unless wives were invited, and her female friends knew that they owed their entrée into high male society to her.

When Boyle warned that interpreters reported every word she spoke to the ID and KGB, Eva said, “So much the better. We'll just be speaking to a larger audience, won't we?” Eva was not
only stealing Soviet secrets and smuggling out important documents, she was also becoming an agent of influence—someone who not only reported enemy behavior but also helped affect it.

If Eva could do so much as a female spy, how much could Jack's wife, Rosslyn, do? Surely Roz would be welcome in Moscow. She had gone there in the 1930s to work as a secretary for the Comintern, and her subsequent party record in the United States was unstained. Although she had not been politically active for years, she remained on good terms with Gus and Elizabeth Hall.

While Roz used the excuse that motherhood left her no time for party work, in fact, she had lost all faith in communism and the Soviet Union. She nonetheless supported Jack and Morris when they chose to resume party activity, for reasons she did not understand. She was courteous to the Halls and the few other party members who occasionally visited their home.

Toward the end of a brief vacation in Florida, Jack suggested that on the way back they stop in Washington, D.C. Roz assented, drawing up a detailed list of all the sights they should visit. But the trip did not turn out the way she had planned. When they presented their tickets at the Miami airport, the attendant said that because the coach section of their flight was overbooked, they were being upgraded to first class. Once on the plane, Roz noticed empty seats in coach. At Washington National Airport, two young men, who looked like linebackers for the Washington Redskins, introduced themselves as “friends of Mr. Sullivan” and announced that they had a car for them outside. Roz asked about their luggage. “It will be in the car,” Jack said. As soon as they stepped outside the terminal, a limousine with police escort stopped in front of them. Roz had reserved an inexpensive room in Alexandria. Instead, the limousine took them to one of the most elegant hotels in downtown Washington. Without pausing at the registration desk, the young men carried their bags to a lavish suite. Awaiting them in the room were flowers, chocolates, canapés, champagne, and a man Roz had never met—William K. Sullivan, then the FBI assistant director responsible for SOLO. He told her about the operation and Jack's role in it;
then he, in effect, said: Your country needs you. Your husband needs you. Will you join us?

Roz first spoke to Jack rather than to Sullivan, “I'm so proud of you.”

The Soviets wanted Jack to come to Moscow for consultations with the KGB, and they hoped that afterward he could fly to Havana, see Castro, and then report back to them. Before he and Roz departed in April 1964, Morris composed birthday greetings for Jack to deliver to Khrushchev in the name of Hall and the American party. Boyle thought the letter Morris wrote was outrageously saccharine and obsequious. “This isn't meant for the commanding general of the Marine Corps,” Morris said. “You've got to think like they do.”

Khrushchev long had been a sycophant. While presiding over the extermination of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s, he variously characterized himself as “Friend and comrade in arms of Stalin… Closest pupil and comrade in arms of Stalin… Stalinist leader of Ukrainians and Bolsheviks… Closest companion in arms of the great Stalin.” In 1944, Khrushchev compelled thirteen poets to write a collective poem to the Great Stalin from the Ukrainian People, and made 9,316,972 people sign the poem before sending it to Stalin. As a former sycophant, Morris reasoned that Khrushchev was vulnerable to sycophancy.

Morris was right. The letter so delighted Khrushchev that he ordered copies circulated among the Politburo and Central Committee, and he invited Jack to a state dinner honoring Algerian Premier Ben Bella on May Day. Famous marshals, four cosmonauts, and the entire Presidium were present. With much fanfare, Jack was introduced to all as the representative of the American party, and many drank fulsome toasts to him. As Morris had instructed, Jack responded with a treacly toast to Khrushchev, and Khrushchev in turn said to him: “Now this great day is complete. It is truly international and here stands a representative from the country in which this great day gave birth. When I hug you I hug your great Secretary [Hall]. Good health to him. He indeed is a staunch leader of your brave Party. Ah, he is my son! Enjoy yourself on this occasion. Sit with us. You are more than
welcome.” (The quotations of Khrushchev are extracted from a report Jack submitted to Hall.)