Operation Solo (43 page)

Boyle told Morris that he and Eva should maintain relations with Gus and Elizabeth Hall, and if necessary meet the KGB in New York. Jack would go on as before, transmitting and receiving messages, by radio and through drops, and picking up money. But the Bureau had determined that further missions into the Soviet Union would be too dangerous; Morris and Eva could never again leave the United States.

Steinbeck on August 11 sent another alert. Under threat of subpoena, the Justice Department had released to Senate staff members a comprehensive study justifying the legality of SOLO. The study laid bare the operation, and the FBI had no idea how many people might read it. Steinbeck next reported that a retired FBI agent who, as a surveillant in Chicago during the early 1960s, had learned something about SOLO, was blabbing about it to anyone who would listen. The loon had also written a manuscript, a copy of which the CIA had recovered from the debris of the Jonestown massacre in Guyana. Because the former agent seemed daft, apparently no one had paid any attention to him thus far. But if the Soviets got word of what he was saying or saw the manuscript, they would pay attention and understand.

The FBI now judged the operation hopelessly insecure, and on September 15 headquarters unilaterally decided to end it and begin to “disengage.” Listen to Eva:

Six days later, Steinbeck frantically called Boyle. The attorney general again had overruled the Bureau and ordered it not to stop. “Mike, I've done exactly what you said. I've told the main players exactly why the game is over. I can't go back now and rewrite the rules. You're going to have to tell the coaches that. Tell them what has been said, cannot be unsaid; tell them, you can't put the toothpaste back into the tube.”

Steinbeck responded the next day. “We concur. Your comments are appreciated. They will help us explain to those who still want to play.”

Morris was supposed to come to Moscow in October for the annual strategic, operational, and budget consultations. Following another FBI script, he went to New York and on October 3 while talking to Hall, he suddenly gasped and bent over, pretending to be disabled by back spasms. He dissuaded Hall from calling for an ambulance; it would be safer if a party doctor looked at him in the apartment. He asked Hall to help him to a taxi. Meanwhile, Eva, following the same script, beseeched Elizabeth Hall, as one wife to another, as a fellow member of their feminist club in Moscow, to help. Morris tried to hide sickness from her; she knew he was very sick and belonged in the Mayo Clinic. The party was Morris'
whole life, and he was determined to keep his appointments at the Kremlin. Eva feared he could not survive the journey; would Elizabeth please make Gus order Morris not to go to Moscow, to go to the hospital instead?

Early the next morning, an agent chalked a mark near a subway station signaling the KGB that a message had been deposited in a drop. The message said that because of illness Morris could not travel to Moscow. Pending his recovery, communications could be effected by radio and through drops. That afternoon, Elizabeth called Eva and said Gus wanted Morris to enter the hospital and not to worry about anything else.

The FBI, recognizing that SOLO someday must end, over the years developed a number of contingency plans for ending it. The most basic provided for emergency “evacuation and resettlement” of Morris, Eva, Jack, and Roz. On an hour's notice, agents could bundle them into hiding and then to residences in an area of the country where Soviet diplomatic personnel were forbidden to enter. Boyle scouted for desirable homes in Nevada and Southern California and kept current a list of those available for purchase. However, the sympathetic reaction of Hall to Morris' presumed illness showed that presently there was no emergency requiring Morris and Jack to suddenly disappear.

At an operational conference on October 25, 1978, the FBI tentatively decided to attempt a “field compromise” or ruse that would compel the Soviets to end the operation and make them think they were responsible for its collapse. According to the plan, Jack would request a personal meeting with his KGB handler and make sure their conversation was incriminating. Through a long-range microphone, agents would record the conversation, confront the KGB officer with the tape, and make a clumsy attempt to recruit him. The officer would race to the Soviet Mission and report that the FBI was onto him and Jack. The Soviets would then warn Jack and Morris that they were in danger, cease contact, and wonder what they had done wrong.

The FBI, however, saw no need to try the ploy immediately. Until a clear compromise or crisis occurred, it could continue to milk intelligence from the Soviet radio transmissions to Jack and
from his contacts with Hall. Jack falsely told Hall that while in the Mayo Clinic Morris had suffered a “cardiac incident” but doctors expected him to recover. Subsequently, Morris showed Hall a letter from a physician warning him not to make any long flights.

Continuing messages from Moscow did yield some valuable intelligence. One to Hall instructed the party to organize a propaganda campaign aimed at preventing deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe. Another directed it to discredit and vilify National Security Advisor Brzezinski. Such messages again enabled the United States to read Soviet minds and act accordingly. Carter did order deployment of the missiles, and the Soviets unwittingly enhanced Brzezinski's status.

 

 

THE FBI HAD ESTABLISHED an Analytical Unit and staffed it with gifted men and women who tried to solve riddles pertaining to crime and espionage. They also looked at data released pursuant to court orders or Freedom of Information Act demands.

A widow of a party member had filed a lawsuit accusing the FBI of defaming her late husband, and an analyst studying records the court compelled the FBI to give her made and reported a finding,
viz
: On the basis of records now available to the CPUSA, I conclude that Morris Childs of Chicago, former editor of the
Daily Worker
, is and long has been an asset of the Bureau. I also conclude that his brother Jack Childs of New York, known to be a confidant of Gus Hall, probably is and long has been an asset of the Bureau. I do not need or want to know whether these conclusions are correct. I respectfully submit that if Soviet analysts study the same data, they can draw the same conclusions.

Reporting this to Boyle on January 12, 1979, Steinbeck asked if Chicago thought it was time to proceed with the “field compromise.” Boyle said he wanted to talk to 58.

Eva in a 1993 interview recalled:

A telephone call on September 7, 1979, astonished Morris. Nikolai Mostovets was traveling in North America. Surely he was aware that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the FBI would not be indifferent to his travels. The Soviets always tried to conceal their relationship with Morris, yet from a Chicago hotel Mostovets called to invite him and Eva to dinner at the Cart Restaurant on the Chicago Loop.

Friendly and solicitous, Mostovets expressed Soviet concern about Morris' health and suggested he come to the Soviet Union and rest in a party sanitorium. Morris explained that, although he would like very much to come, doctors had forbidden him from traveling any long distance. Mostovets said that all of Morris' friends looked forward to the time when he could travel and resume work.

The FBI concluded that none of the SOLO leaks had yet reached or been understood in Moscow. But in late spring 1980, Steinbeck warned that, because of information made public in the
suit brought by the widow of the party member, headquarters believed that Morris was in danger, and Boyle alerted him to be ready to flee at any time.

Morris usually kept hidden in Chicago substantial amounts of Soviet cash upon which Hall could draw if for any reason Jack was unavailable. On May 28 in New York he falsely told Hall that neighbors reported men had been making inquiries about him and that he feared he suddenly might have to go into hiding. Therefore, he wanted to return all party funds in his possession, and he gave Hall $225,437 in cash. Hall, himself a former fugitive, understood and agreed that for the time being he and Morris should communicate through their wives or Jack. Elizabeth on June 2 flew to Chicago and collected from Eva the remaining party funds Morris had retrieved from a hiding place.

Jack, who suffered from chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and heart problems, fell ill. In his place Morris five times in June signaled the KGB requesting a personal meeting in hopes of discussing a possible successor to himself. For reasons no one understood, the KGB in New York did not respond.

Worried about Jack, Hall on June 29 visited him at his home and urged him to go to the Mayo Clinic, which seemed to have worked wonders for Morris. On August 11, an ambulance transported Jack to a New York hospital. On August 12, 1980, Steinbeck called Boyle: “69 just died of cardiac arrest.”

Eva said, “Morris was very sad. He and Jack were different. But they were brothers for seventy years and they'd been through a lot together and they were close. We all were close. Morris' youngest brother was killed in the war. Ben [the brother who ran the cover business in Chicago] had died. All his brothers were gone.”

The FBI could still talk to the Kremlin through the old-time Comintern radio operator, NY-4309S*, and they exchanged messages that culminated in a meeting on August 21 between KGB officer Konstantin Koryavin and Morris. Koryavin said the Politburo and all of Morris' friends in Moscow deeply regretted the death of Jack and inquired about Jack's family. Morris replied that the family was all right but that he feared he might be under FBI investigation. Given that and his failing health, he and Hall were
thinking about someone to succeed him. Then he introduced a man code-named “Caesar” as a candidate. Koryavin stated he would relay the proposal, and the two agreed to meet again on September 6. At that meeting Koryavin provided detailed instructions for a rendezvous between “Caesar” and the Soviets in Vienna on September 23. “Caesar” evidently passed Soviet examination, and it looked as if the FBI through him might be able to start a new operation. But not long after he returned from Europe, “Caesar” died.

The Soviets continued to send messages through 4309, and Eva and Elizabeth stayed in touch until the summer of 1981 when headquarters warned it believed that Morris was in imminent danger.

 

 

A HUGE VAN PARKED in front of Morris' apartment building and out of it stepped a fine-looking moving crew. Their overalls were immaculate; none had a pot belly; each had a bulge in his pocket, the kind a revolver makes. The chief of the crew was Walter Boyle, and that day he launched Morris and Eva, Agents 58 and 66, on their last FBI mission—this one to a lovely, hidden home watched over and visited by men and women of the FBI.

The window into the Kremlin and the minds of the men in the Kremlin finally had closed.

nineteen

DANGEROUS DARKNESS

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE window into the Kremlin closed provides another measure of the importance of Operation SOLO to the United States, and to the world.

A Royal Air Force helicopter on September 16, 1985, landed CIA Director William Casey in the courtyard of an old fortress by the sea in England. It was a redoubt of British intelligence, alternately known as MI-6 and the SIS. Among those awaiting Casey were Christopher Curwen, director of MI-6, and Oleg Gordievsky, who for some sixteen years had spied for the British from the upper reaches of the KGB.

At the apex of his Soviet career, Gordievsky was acting
Rezident
in charge of KGB operations in the United Kingdom; in other words, all KGB officers in London were taking orders from a British spy. In 1985 Gordievsky fell under suspicion, he believes, because of betrayals by one of the most squalid traitors in American history, CIA officer Aldrich Ames (responsible for the execution of at least ten U.S. agents in the Soviet Union; in 1994 he was sentenced to life imprisonment). The KGB recalled Gordievsky to Moscow, put him
under virtual house arrest, and began an interrogation. In accord with an emergency contingency plan, Gordievsky signaled MI-6 that he was about to be caught, and, in one of the most daring feats of peacetime espionage ever, the British plucked Gordievsky out from under the eyes and clutches of the KGB. (The rescue plan was so audacious that the British ambassador in Moscow reportedly threatened to resign if it was attempted. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is said to have replied, “Chris [Curwen] probably will resign if we don't try it. I need Chris.”