Operation Solo Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  one - WE WON

  two - MOSCOW’S MAN

  three - FORSAKEN AND FOUND

  four - THE FIRST LIMITS

  five - THE LUCK OF THE FBI

  six - INTO THE KREMLIN

  seven - ALMOST CAUGHT

  eight - THE SENSATIONAL BECOMES ROUTINE

  nine - PLAYING WITH THE KGB

  ten - BIG BUSINESS RESUMES

  eleven - A CROSSROAD IN HISTORY

  twelve - CRITICAL INTRIGUES

  thirteen - THREATS FROM WITHIN

  fourteen - THE TRIAL

  fifteen - UNDER SUSPICION

  sixteen - UNDER SIEGE

  seventeen - TO GO OR NOT TO GO?

  eighteen - THE WINDOW CLOSES

  nineteen - DANGEROUS DARKNESS

  EPILOGUE

  APPENDIX A: SOLO MISSIONS

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

  APPENDIX C: KGB OFFICERS IN SOLO

  APPENDIX D: SECRET COMMUNIST DOCUMENTS

  INDEX

  Copyright Page

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED to all who contributed to Operation SOLO and kept it secret. Specifically, it is dedicated to Morris Childs, Eva Childs, Jack Childs, Alexander Burlinson, Carl Freyman, Walter Boyle, John Langtry, James Fox, and Ivian Smith, all of whom represented the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  By their deeds, all exhibited a shared conviction: “Freedom never comes free. Freedom at any price always is a bargain.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  IN ADDITION TO THANKING benefactors named in the Foreword, I thank others, without implying that any of them necessarily endorses the accuracy or concurs with the conclusions of what I have written.

  William Gunn was a research assistant to every FBI Director from J. Edgar Hoover to William Webster. After retiring from the FBI, he worked with me as a researcher and helped conduct the initial interviews with Morris and Eva Childs in the early 1980s. He also interviewed other sources by himself.

  Former Assistant Director Raymond Wannall supervised SOLO from FBI headquarters during the last years of his career and saved the operation when congressional committees were about to inadvertently destroy it. He favored me with unique perspectives of the operation as it was viewed from headquarters.

  Former FBI Agents Edward Miller, Donald Moore, William Brannigan, and Edward Jones confirmed the broad history of SOLO and provided details of various aspects of it.

  Herbert Romerstein, formerly a staff member of the House Intelligence Security Committee and the U.S. Information Agency, briefed me about personalities prominent in the American and Soviet Communist Parties, and constructively critiqued the manuscript.

  Professor Harvey Klehr of Emory University made available his excellent history of the U.S. Communist Party, The Heyday of American Communism, and generously shared with me references to Morris Childs that he discovered in the Moscow archives of the Comintern.

  Former FBI Agent Wesley Roberts facilitated my many interviews with Eva Childs and advised me as to how I could communicate with other primary sources.

  Chicago attorney Charles Goodbar, in ably representing Eva, greatly facilitated publication by solving or dissipating a number of legal problems.

  William Shulz, managing editor of the Reader’s Digest, out of personal friendship reviewed and beneficially critiqued the manuscript.

  Alfred Regnery, president of Regnery Publishing, Inc., agreed to publish this book at a time when other publishers expressed no interest in “a book about the Cold War.” Throughout its preparation, he encouraged me.

  Richard Vigilante, senior editor at Regnery, expertly edited the manuscript and counseled me on deficiencies that needed my attention.

  FOREWORD

  WHILE WRITING A BOOK about the Soviet KGB during the early 1970s, I interviewed many former FBI agents and, in ensuing years, some favored me with their friendship. In 1977 one of them outlined to me what he described as a great espionage operation that the FBI had long conducted against the Soviet Union. The principal American spies were Morris Childs, his wife Eva, and his brother Jack Childs. The retired agent said that all three were elderly, that both brothers were in very poor health, and that the FBI was ending the operation. An accurate account of it would benefit the public and the country; an incomplete or distorted account could be harmful. Accordingly, he and other former agents, for whom he purported to speak, recommended that I ask the FBI if someday I could write the story and begin research while the three main protagonists were still alive.

  Without confirming or denying the information imparted to me, the FBI said that the subject I broached was extremely sensitive and highly classified. It requested that I pledge never to mention or allude to the subject in any writings or conversation. If I could not freely make such a commitment, the FBI needed to know that, then and there. I promised to say nothing. A few weeks later, a senior FBI executive asked to talk to me about “a vital national security matter.” He stated that because of new developments and because American lives were at stake, the FBI had to be sure I would honor my pledge never to say anything about the subject I had raised at headquarters. I gave him my assurances. There is nothing remarkable about not publicizing classified information whose disclosure would imperil the lives of American spies, and I mention these incidents only because they are relevant to what subsequently happened.

  The operation about which I learned in 1977 continued well beyond 1977, and Morris and Eva Childs were aware that I had suppressed my knowledge of it. That is one reason why they indirectly approached me in 1982 through FBI Agent Michael Steinbeck. He said that the operation in which Mr. and Mrs. Childs were involved finally had ended and they wished to discuss with me the possibility of my writing a book about their experiences. The FBI stated that it would neither oppose nor contribute to such a book; however, if I desired, it would facilitate an initial meeting between me and the Childses, who were in hiding under government protection.

  We first met in Santa Monica, California, where we were joined by former FBI Agent Walter A. Boyle. For an unprecedented eighteen years, Boyle had served as the “case agent” closest to Morris and Eva. Morris looked upon him as a son and invited him to participate in our beginning interviews. Steinbeck was present as an escort but did not take part in the interviews. I found Morris, Eva, and Boyle fascinating and saw each as a striking character in a drama. Never have I enjoyed interviews more. Morris and Eva later came to Washington, and in a Georgetown suite we talked many hours a day for the better part of a week about the history in the making that they had witnessed and at times had helped to make. We became friends and very much looked forward to working together on a book.

  We were about to begin work full time when the FBI advised Morris and Eva that the Justice Department had ruled they could not tell their story to me. No one from the Justice Department ever spoke to me, and I received only a hearsay explanation of the rationale behind the ruling. Supposedly, a relatively junior Justice Department attorney reasoned thus: Many of the details Morris and Eva would necessarily reveal in recounting their espionage careers remained classified top secret, and the government still refused to release these details to anyone. If the Justice Department allowed Morris and Eva to tell their story, it in effect would be sanctioning release of top secret data exclusively to me. That would represent unacceptable favoritism toward one journalist. More important, the release of such secrets through Morris to me would make it difficult for the Justice Department to resist demands that had been filed under the Freedom of Information Act requesting that other secrets be revealed.

  Morris was
disappointed and angry but there was little he could prudently do. He was eighty-one; his health was terrible; he believed, probably correctly, that the KGB and Communist Party were hunting him; he needed the protection and support of the government; and he had to consider the welfare of Eva. Still, he retained hope that Americans someday might learn of his secret life and its meaning. And we continued to see each other, particularly when the FBI brought him to northern Virginia for consultations or to lecture at its academy in Quantico.

  In 1987 Ronald Reagan ordered the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon Morris and awarded posthumously to his brother Jack. The president offered personally to decorate Morris at the White House and to host a luncheon or dinner in his honor. The FBI persuaded the president that security considerations made a White House ceremony imprudent, and so Director William Sessions presented the medal at FBI headquarters. At the insistence of Morris and Eva, I was invited to a private, unofficial reception afterward.

  Gathered in a hotel suite on Pennsylvania Avenue were Morris’ best FBI friends. I was privileged to meet and speak with some of them: Walt Boyle; John Langtry, who for twelve years was the case agent of Jack Childs; Carl Freyman, who long ago persuaded Morris to ally himself with the FBI; and Assistant Director James Fox, a patron of Morris and Eva since 1971.

  Morris had been so near death so many times that I think he had lost fear of a natural death; he did dread death in a Soviet execution chamber or from an assassin’s exploding bullet. He once remarked to me, “I hope I can die quietly and peacefully without any of them knowing.” On June 2, 1991, eight days before his eighty-ninth birthday, Morris died just that way in a hospital bed with Eva and a rabbi at his side.

  In the judgment of Eva and me, Morris’ death and the disintegration of the Soviet Union removed any justification for further withholding his story, and in 1992 I began work on the book, with Eva’s indispensable help.

  Upon marrying Morris in 1962, Eva became his full and equal partner in espionage and thereafter accompanied and assisted him on almost all his many missions into the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. She sat by Morris during the pre-launch briefings and the post-mission debriefings. She was a confidant of the head of the U.S. Communist Party and his wife; she was a friend of the FBI agents who ran the operation. Eva alone was an extraordinary, original source.

  In addition she made available a rare trove of papers, records, files, and notes assembled and kept by Morris. Among them were copies of Soviet documents he and she smuggled out of Moscow; copies of reports from Morris and Jack to the FBI; detailed notes reconstructing secret briefings the Soviet rulers gave Morris; notes recording conversations with these rulers; and memoranda Morris submitted to the Politburo.

  In 1987 FBI Agents Charles Knox and James Milburn spent eleven days with Morris and Eva recording on tape Morris’ reminiscences of a lifetime. The FBI made handwritten transcripts of these conversations and gave Eva, a party to them, copies of most of the transcripts, and she gave those she had to me. Eva also supplied from Morris’ memorabilia numerous photographs, some of which appear in this book. One in particular had significant consequences; it shows Morris and Leonid Brezhnev together in the Kremlin.

  Before her death, Eva stated her intention to bequeath these files and records to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in the hope that they will be useful to future researchers.

  Beyond documentary data, this book is based upon hundreds of hours of interviews with FBI participants in the operation, including James Fox, Carl Freyman, Walter Boyle, and John Langtry. They appear as major characters in the book, and the narrative provides ample means for readers to assess their qualifications to testify as expert eyewitnesses to history. The special qualifications of Boyle and Langtry merit mention.

  From 1962 on, Boyle embarked Morris and Eva on and recovered them from every mission and wrote the mission reports. When they were in the United States, he talked to them almost every day. He made the daily operational decisions and was consulted at all the major operational conferences in Washington, New York, and Chicago. No one was closer to Morris and Eva; no one knew more about them and the operation than did Boyle. Fortunately for history, Boyle kept a log of his career.

  Langtry in New York administered an elaborate clandestine communications system designed and built by the Soviets. Through this system the FBI regularly received messages from the Kremlin and, in the name of Jack or Morris, sent back whatever the United States wanted the Soviets to hear. Langtry handled many millions of dollars smuggled into New York by the KGB, and he drafted the reports of what the KGB and communist leaders told Jack. After he retired, the FBI recalled Langtry to write a secret “in-house” history of the operation and put at his disposal all the documents he required. Langtry personally saw much of the operation; he read everything about it.

  Boyle and Langtry, in countless interviews and conversations, generously shared with me their unique knowledge and insights. They took time to scrutinize, criticize, and correct the manuscript. Certainly I alone am responsible for any errors or defects in this work, but the book could not have been written without such gifts from Morris, Eva, Boyle, and Langtry. The names and contributions of other important benefactors are cited in the Acknowledgments.

  There are four appendices. Appendix A lists the dates and destinations of each of the fifty-seven missions into enemy territory Morris, Eva, or Jack accomplished under FBI control. Appendix B lists, year by year, the amount of money the Soviet Union illicitly supplied the U.S. Communist Party from 1958 to 1980. Appendix C identifies the KGB officers who worked in the United States with Morris and Jack from 1958 to 1982. Appendix D replicates documents that illustrate various phases of the operation.

  A minor caveat. Eva proved herself to be the kind of source a researcher covets, the kind of witness a lawyer likes to put on the stand. Many times she had said, “No, it didn’t happen that way,” or “I can’t remember,” or “I don’t know.” In short, she was a stickler for facts.

  However, Eva now and then had a problem recalling dates. She vividly remembered an intimate dinner with Fidel Castro at the Cuban embassy in Moscow, down to the menu (steak) and the smell of cigar smoke; however, she could not remember the date she and Morris dined there. There was one date she adamantly refused even to discuss: the date of her birth. I had to know how old Eva was, so I inquired of government sources who said that Eva Lieb Childs was born March 24, 1900. Asked if that was correct, Eva indignantly exclaimed, “No! I’m not that old.” I then asked, “All right, Eva, in which year were you born?” She said 1910.

  Doubtless, some clerk got it wrong and Eva is right. Regardless, anyone caring to read further will meet a lady who, at whatever age, for nearly two decades served alongside valorous and daring men with an equal amount of valor and daring.

  one

  WE WON

  THE FBI EFFACED RECORDS of the death, and no newspaper made mention of it. The United States had kept the secret for thirty years, and the FBI intended to keep it still. The communists never knew what had happened to Morris after he vanished, and they hunted him in vain; let them keep looking for him, and wondering.

  Elaine Fox overheard her husband, Assistant FBI Director James Fox, say over the phone, “When did it happen?… Yes, I will be proud to do it.”

  Reading the sadness on his face, she asked, “Is the old man gone?” Fox nodded yes and said he had agreed to speak at the funeral, then he retreated to his study to reflect and compose.

  If Jim Fox could have arranged the funeral, it would have been like a state funeral. He envisioned a long line of FBI agents and troops standing at attention on a ridge in Arlington National Cemetery overlooking Washington. He saw and heard the Marine Band marching and playing a dirge in front of a horse-drawn caisson bearing the casket draped with a new American flag. Perhaps even the president would be there. After all, Ronald Reagan had offered personally to decorate 581 at the White House.

  Had Fox been at libert
y to tell the real story of the greatest espionage operation in FBI history, he could have justified such a funeral and he might well have begun the eulogy by saying, “Here lies the greatest of American spies.”

  Morris risked his life on fifty-two missions into the Soviet Union and other parts of its empire, most lasting several weeks. For more than twenty years, the highest Soviet rulers—from Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Yuri Andropov on down—treated him as an intimate friend. They confided to him their innermost thoughts, ambitions, and apprehensions; their strategy and plans; what they would do and dared not do; their reactions to world events; and their real attitudes toward the United States and its leaders. Often they solicited his opinions and advice, and often they heeded it. The Soviets so trusted and esteemed him that on his seventy-fifth birthday, Brezhnev hosted a banquet at the Kremlin in his honor. The Soviet dictator eloquently thanked Morris for more than half a century of service to the Soviet Union and international communism, then awarded him a medal, the Order of the Red Banner.

  In the United States, Morris secretly served as the principal deputy to the head of the American Communist Party, Gus Hall. In effect, an FBI spy was the second-ranking figure in American communism. The Soviets smuggled money to the U.S. party through Morris and his brother, Jack Childs, and over the years they received from Moscow more than $28 million, which the FBI counted down to the penny.

  The voluminous secrets Morris stole from the Kremlin for more than two decades enabled the United States to read the minds of the men who ran the Soviet Union, to anticipate their actions, and to exploit their problems, most spectacularly their problems with China. It was like playing poker, knowing which cards everyone else at the table held.

  By elaborate ruses, the FBI concealed the identity of Morris and the nature of the operation from everybody—the State Department, the CIA, the Defense Department, and the National Security Council. FBI agents personally took the most sensitive reports from Morris to the offices of these and other agencies. There a few people were allowed to read the reports in the presence of the delivering agent, but they had to hand them back. Not until 1975 did the FBI finally inform the president and secretary of state of the source of the intelligence for which they and other policymakers clamored.