Operation Solo (46 page)

Boyle and other agents packed Morris and Eva off in August 1981 to a condominium apartment high in an elegant building north of Miami. It gave them spectacular views of the Atlantic Ocean, the Inland Waterway, moored yachts, and the lights of Miami. The apartment was spacious enough to allow each a study and to accommodate guests. Guards patrolling the lobby twenty-four hours a day permitted no one they did not recognize to go near it without first consulting Morris or Eva.

FBI agents visited often, and they formed special friendships with three of them: Ivian C. Smith, Wesley Roberts, and Barbara
Moser. Smith first called upon them after taking charge of the Miami field office, and he realized he had stumbled onto a gold mine of intelligence that still could be mined. Eva recalled, “After I.C. [Smith] became boss, it was kind of like we were back in business. People started coming down out from Miami and down from Washington, and they brought us up to Virginia and treated us like royalty. They asked Morris lots of questions about what was going on in Russia, and they asked me about wives and people we knew in Moscow, and sometimes they asked about things that happened a long time ago. These talks perked Morris up; he could stay up explaining things all night without getting tired.”

Since his first heart attack in the 1940s, Morris long had beaten both the medical and actuarial odds. Many times ambulances rushed him to hospitals and physicians feared for his life, yet always he came home. In late May 1991, Eva had to summon an ambulance and this time she sensed that he would not be coming home. She stayed at the hospital, and when he died on June 2, she was holding his hand.

Eva in June 1991 was eighty-one or ninety-one or somewhere in between, and there was nothing more she could tell the FBI. However, Smith had secured a written commitment from Washington that the FBI would provide for Morris and Eva for the rest of their lives, and it did. The Miami office arranged for Eva to have a female companion; Agents Roberts and Moser visited often; Jim Fox called regularly from New York; and nieces and nephews from Chicago came to see her. Still, the FBI and Eva were careful to conceal her whereabouts from all but the most trusted people. As late as 1993, Gus Hall made inquiries in Chicago in an effort to discover where she was.

Eva very much looked forward to publication of the story she and Morris lived, and she was prepared, in secure surroundings, to talk to journalists and historians about it. Having heard that she had been in the hospital, I in June 1995 telephoned her, and she assured me she was going to be all right. Three days later, Eva died.

Some one hundred relatives and friends, including quite a few young people, gathered in the same Chicago chapel where services for Morris were held. There was no longer any reason to conceal
the truth, and a eulogist announced the presence of five representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—Barbara Moser, Wesley Roberts, Carl Freyman, James Fox, and Walter Boyle. Characterizing Eva as an American heroine, the eulogist told something of her feats as a spy and her contributions to the United States. This time the gasps from the congregation expressed awe and pride rather than shock and anger. After the service, many of the mourners, especially young people, crowded around to shake the hands of the FBI agents.

I remarked to Wes Roberts that it was especially sad that Eva did not live to see the book she made possible. “She read every word of the manuscript,” he replied. “She died a happy and fulfilled woman.”

APPENDIX A: SOLO MISSIONS

MORRIS CHILDS (CG-5824S*) accomplished fifty-two missions under FBI control into the Soviet Union and other communist countries; Jack Childs (NY-694S*) accomplished five. Eva Childs accompanied Morris on all but two of his missions from 1962 onward. Listed below are the dates and destinations of each mission. The five missions made by Jack Childs are designated “Agent 69”; otherwise, the missions listed were made by Morris Childs. The list does not include missions to Canada and Mexico.

APPENDIX B: SOVIET PAYMENTS TO THE U.S. COMMUNIST PARTY

THE SOVIET UNION BEGAN supplying money to the U.S. Communist Party through SOLO in 1958. Initially, representatives of the Canadian Communist Party gave the money to Jack or Morris Childs in Toronto or New York. Beginning in 1960, KGB officers handed the money to Jack Childs during clandestine meetings around New York. Listed below are the amounts the Soviets paid each year. Occasionally, when Morris Childs was in Moscow, the Soviets gave him in foreign currencies the equivalent of a few thousand dollars. Some of the amounts listed are odd because of the conversion of these currencies into dollars.

APPENDIX C: KGB OFFICERS IN SOLO

THE KGB FOR TWENTY-THREE years assigned officers posing as diplomats at the United Nations to deal with Jack and Morris Childs—to pass messages, documents, and money, and to receive messages from them. Listed below are the names of these officers and the years they worked in SOLO (which the Soviets called MORAT) while posted in New York.

APPENDIX D: SECRET COMMUNIST DOCUMENTS

THE DISPARATE DOCUMENTS reproduced below illustrate secret communications and relations between the communist parties of the Soviet Union and the United States. Two also illustrate how Morris Childs exploited his knowledge of communism to manipulate the Soviets.

 

“Memorandum to Comrade Dimitrov”

Earl Browder, head of the American Communist Party, addressed this memorandum to Georgi Dimitrov who in 1938 was chief of the Comintern. Dimitrov forwarded it to Nikolai Yezhov, chairman of the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) with a recommendation that Browder's sister be relieved of espionage duties in Germany. The willingness of the Soviets to accede to Browder's request is an indicator of the importance they attached to Browder and the American Party. Historian Herbert Romerstein discovered the memorandum in Soviet archives.