Operation Solo (29 page)

Surely, the GRU or KGB knew about the diagrammed capabilities of the F-14, the F-15, and the F-16 (which in flight turned out to be equal to or better than the projections of the designers hovering over computers in New York, Texas, Missouri, and California). At the next Politburo meeting Andropov could announce important, verified intelligence gained from MORAT, which the Politburo itself had instigated and for which it deserved congratulations. Boyle says, “We [the FBI and Morris] played them like a harp.”

After they finished the supper laid out by the housekeeper, they drank bourbon and Nikolai asked questions about America. “How much of a factor was religion in the United States?” Morris, a student of the Talmud, Bible, and Koran, lied and said he really didn't pay much attention to religion. But he had read surveys which showed that a large majority of Americans said they believed in God and that a majority said they went to church. Morris then asked how much of a factor was religion in the Soviet Union.

“It's like weeds in a garden,” Nikolai said. “You can stomp them out in one place and they keep sprouting in some place else.” The party controlled the hierarchy of what was left of the Russian Orthodox Church, but it could not control the feelings of the
people. Even many party members wanted their daughters to be secretly married by a priest and themselves wanted to be buried by a priest. Then there were the “sects,” the most pernicious being the Baptists because they practiced what they preached. They were sober, diligent workers who showed up on time, did their job honestly, and then went home to their religion. Consequently, managers coveted them as workers and tolerated, even tacitly encouraged, their proselytizing at work—the more good workers the better. “Maybe someday we'll be the Soviet Union of Baptist and Muslim Republics.”

Morris thought,
I'll tell Jim that the Baptists are making as much of a nuisance of themselves in the Soviet Union as they are in America
. He also thought,
Blest be the ties that bind.

One of the verbal agreements of the May 1972 conference between Nixon and Brezhnev stipulated that Brezhnev would visit the United States in June 1973. Brezhnev was both excited and apprehensive about the journey, and in April of 1973 the Soviets called Morris and Hall to Moscow to help him and them prepare for it. Hall in turn asked Morris to help prepare him for the talks at the Kremlin. Morris advised him to explain to Brezhnev that the growing Watergate scandal conceivably could result in the impeachment of Nixon or compel him to resign from office.

At the Kremlin, Hall did explain, but Brezhnev was mystified. He asked, “
Chto etot Vatergate
?”—“What is this Watergate?” Ponomarev replied that it was a petty matter Nixon's political opponents were trying to magnify out of all proportions; it amounted to nothing.

When Hall was present Morris usually deferred to him, saying nothing unless asked a direct question. Now he spoke up, “Boris, that is exactly what I thought until a few weeks ago. I believe Gus felt the same way. No one can be blamed for not understanding Watergate. Most Americans don't understand it or care about it. But things are changing rapidly, aren't they, Gus?”

Hall may have been thuggish, uncultured, avaricious; he was not stupid. He picked up the cue and proceeded with the recitation he and Morris had rehearsed. Nixon's political opponents were trying to exploit a trivial incident to reverse the results of the
1972 elections. He and Comrade Morris thought they might succeed. “There is a real chance that Nixon will be forced out of office and you can't be sure he will be around.”

Brezhnev then asked of the assembled Politburo and Central Committee members, “Is this correct?”

Suslov answered, “If Morris [not Hall] says so, it probably is.”

Brezhnev nodded at Morris but spoke to Hall. “This is an example of comradely cooperation between fraternal parties. It is an example of why we so esteem you, Comrade Morris, and your party. We will pay attention to this strange Watergate business.”

They talked next about Brezhnev's trip to the United States, and, as Morris said to Boyle, Brezhnev “acted like a little kid going off to his first summer camp.” He had confidence in Nixon and Kissinger; but what would happen to him in a land marauded by gangsters, drug addicts, and insane people who daily murdered people, even public officials? Hall, who had been briefed by Morris, who had been briefed by Boyle, assured Brezhnev that he would be accorded a respectful and secure welcome. The United States Secret Service would protect him just as securely as it did Nixon, and he could bring along his own KGB bodyguards with whom the Secret Service would collaborate. It would be good if a few of them went to Washington right away to talk to the FBI and Secret Service.

There were a lot of crackpots in America, and there might be some anti-Soviet demonstrations by a few lunatics walking around with stupid placards. But the U.S. military would keep them far away. “And our party has influence. We will persuade the press that these demonstrators are a lunatic fringe.”

Morris thought,
Gus, you couldn't persuade a single American journalist to say that apple pie tastes good.

Ponomarev invited or commanded Morris to lunch in his office suite, and there Morris discerned why Ponomarev, who only recently had emerged from the hospital, was so sprightly and happy. Morris always hid his knowledge of the Russian language from the Soviets and, except when talking to men of the International Department or KGB who spoke English, he conversed through an interpreter. The interpreters were invariably excellent
and invariably male. Now Ponomarev had a new interpreter, Natalia, who was every boy's dream. She had golden hair and blue eyes, and her black dress, which could have come from Marshall Field's in Chicago, did nothing to conceal her lovely contours. She was twenty-five or so, she looked and talked like an American teenager, and Morris guessed she was the daughter of a Soviet diplomat or KGB officer and had gone to high school in the United States. He wondered just what sort of deal Ponomarev had made with her father. The male interpreters were efficient and emotionless; they tried to ease conversation and make it seem as though they didn't exist. Natalia had a sense of shame and humor, and she blushed or giggled when something embarrassed or amused her. Ponomarev indulged her, and you didn't have to be a genius to figure out why.

Natalia both blushed and giggled as she interpreted “delicate matters.” Comrade Brezhnev had a pretty young niece of whom he was especially fond. She was an Aeroflot stewardess and a highly qualified nurse who examined Brezhnev at night. She longed to see America. Could Brezhnev bring her along, and could she examine him at night?

Morris replied that the U.S. Secret Service doubtless was not unfamiliar with such matters and that the KGB should talk frankly with the Secret Service. All could be arranged among gentlemen.

Morris, as would any male in the world, admired the physical beauty of Natalia. She won his heart by giggles that showed she recognized the underlying absurdity of the question she interpreted or translated. “What should Comrade Brezhnev wear in America?”

A man who held the power of life and death over the inhabitants of one-sixth of the world's land surface needed to be told by a little seventy-year-old Jew from Chicago what kind of clothes to put on!

Walt, you have to think like they do
. Instead of giving the simple, commonsense answer any juvenile clerk at J.C. Penney's would have given, Morris poured out a polemic about clothes. The capitalists had duped American workers into thinking that any one of them could become a capitalist. Clothes in America
were a symbol. Most Americans laughed at the goofy garb worn by Comrade Fidel; they wanted to wear clothes like those of a British prime minister or a fashion model. Soviet tailors should take Brezhnev's measurements exactly, then the “special comrades” should have dark suits tailored for him in London, Milan, or New York.

Ponomarev lost his temper and brought Natalia nearly to tears. “He says he is sick and tired, and he used a bad word, of hearing about how much better everything is in the West.”

Morris, for the only time in Moscow, lost
his
temper. “Then you tell him to ask his own [obscenity] tailors what to put on Brezhnev's fat ass.”

“Sir, I cannot use those words.”

“Use any words you want.”

Ponomarev rose, picked Morris up, and hugged him. The terrified and beautiful Natalia said, “He says, ‘We both are old and tired and we have worked too long. Are we not still friends?'” Morris said that they were.

On the flight out of Moscow, Morris and Eva were the only passengers in the first-class cabin. They declined the champagne but accepted a copy of the
International Herald-Tribune
. As the plane ascended from the runway, people in the rear cabin began to clap, shout, and sing
La Marseillaise
. Morris asked a stewardess why the people were shouting and singing. “Because, monsieur, we are leaving the Soviet Union.”

Morris said, “All right, bring us a bottle of champagne.”

thirteen

THREATS FROM WITHIN

MORRIS THOUGHT HE UNDERSTOOD all the implications of Watergate, and that is why he had Hall warn the Soviets about its potential consequences. He never imagined that the scandal could affect him and SOLO. But as more and more government officials were hauled before congressional committees and grand juries, as more leaked secrets appeared in the press, Morris and Jack increasingly worried about the security of the operation and their own personal safety. In an effort to reassure them, the FBI convened an operational conference in New York on May 31, 1973, a few days before Brezhnev arrived in the United States. Present were Assistant Director Edward S. Miller, Section Chief William A. Brannigan, Burlinson, Langtry, Boyle, Morris, and Jack.

“We have tremendous concern about security,” Miller began. “We have to provide extra special handling of this [SOLO] information because we are operating in special times. Many people are telling everything they know. Despite this horrible situation, we cannot let the whole organization go down the drain. The whole U.S. intelligence community is being tested. We cannot let
these desperate people like [John] Dean and [H.R.] Halderman shape the destiny of our country. I assure you that security is absolutely the highest priority in the FBI.”

Jack spoke next. “Over almost twenty-two years we have built an apparatus for our government and country and we built it to our specifications. We said we were going to the very top. This is exemplified by my brother's last trip. This is the apex. But the question is how can we save the apparatus in view of these ‘desperate people.' We have had some great achievements and I am proud of them. But all the years of sacrifice could go out the window with a situation such as we have today.”

Jack complained that since the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972, he and Morris felt they were functioning in a void and that they and their accomplishments were being ignored by the FBI leadership in Washington. “I remember a small thing. When my father died, Director Hoover sent a personal representative, an inspector, to express his sympathy. It was a small thing but to me, significant.”

Acknowledging that the FBI had experienced turmoil, Miller declared, “When the history of the first one hundred years of the FBI is written, the highlight will be this operation, the people in this room. When the history is written, this operation will be unique, not only in the FBI, but in the world. Nothing could equal it.”

Miller stressed how stringently the FBI guarded SOLO intelligence. “We are protecting this intelligence by hand-carrying it by armed messenger to the White House to the man who reads it. He reads it, and it is hand-carried right back to my office. This is how we are protecting the product. We know we have to do everything possible to preserve the security of the operation.”

However, Jack for the time being refused to be propitiated, and he continued alternately to brag, then gripe. “We have built this apparatus, and we are very jealous of it. When I say ‘we,' I mean all of us including people in the Bureau. It is an apparatus that runs smoothly. We practically think the way the Russians do. My wife is now more involved physically than I am and so is my brother's wife. My brother and I have come to the conclusion that we are prisoners, prisoners of the Communist Party, the Russians, prisoners of the apparatus. I cannot be more than two hours away
from a radio message. The only real vacation I have ever had was when I had major surgery while Gus Hall and my brother were overseas. My brother has never had a vacation in twenty years.

“This thing so carefully built through so much dedication can be destroyed by lack of security. When I was overseas getting ready to go to Cuba, a column by Victor Riesel exposed the money operation. This article was shown to me in Moscow and they asked, ‘How come?' When I came back from the mission, and it was a good mission, I was promised it would never happen again. But something happened again a few months later when my brother was on the other side.”

Morris had additional complaints of his own. “The Russians used to call us in for training in special techniques, codes, radio, etc. When the Bureau would get wind of it, somebody would come running up from Washington and ask us about it. They paid ten times the attention to these little things as to important matters that could affect the fate of the nation. I don't know how much attention is paid to some of these documents my wife and I would spend hours copying.” Next he decried security lapses. “So there I sit talking to Suslov, not below the number-three man in the Soviet Union, and he pulls out an excerpt from the
Congressional Record
with a report from the FBI director about the budget and asks about it. I passed it off and remarked that they have to say those things to get their money. But how often can we go through these things?” Finally, Morris said something that must have been hard for him to say. “Human beings, no matter how tough, have sensitivities. I think as you get older, you get more sensitive. We used to get letters from the director after these trips. In the last years, we have come back with all kinds of information. But we don't get these letters any more. This is not only a question of vanity, though we all have some vanity. I am talking beyond vanity—about friendship, loyalty, and esprit whereby you protect your own.”