Operation Solo (27 page)

“The new relationship between China and us is a crossroad in history,” Morris declared. “We are looking at a historic change. I hope we can say we helped a little to bring it about. I think we can.”

twelve

CRITICAL INTRIGUES

THE INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENT in March 1972 again summoned Morris to Moscow, supposedly to arrange for Gus Hall to travel to Hanoi and Havana via the Soviet Union. Actually, it wanted him available before, during, and after the secret talks between Kissinger and Brezhnev that were to take place in April.

After shepherding Hall around during his Moscow stopover, Morris received a briefing from Ponomarev about current Chinese machinations. The Chinese were just as virulently anti-Soviet as ever, but now they were scheming more cleverly. Instead of reviling the parties of both Eastern and Western Europe as Soviet stooges, they were courting them, enticing them to enter into an anti-Soviet alliance.

“They found a few Italians on
L'Unita
[the Italian party newspaper] whom they bought for five cents, as we would say. One of them spent a month in China and wrote ten pro-Chinese articles for
L'Unita
. They were very well done and very clever in justifying Maoism. The Chinese took the writer to a concentration camp
where he saw a professor. This professor said that during the Cultural Revolution he was beaten, forced to clean toilets, etc. But now the professor agrees this was the correct thing to do.” The Italian party had brushed off Soviet protests about the articles. The Chinese also were making inroads into the Spanish and Rumanian parties.

Ponomarev declared that Mao had converted China into an armed camp seething with anti-Soviet animosity and that he was murdering anyone who disagreed with him. “Lin Piao was Mao's designated heir but he spoke out against Mao's position. We do not know all the details but Lin Piao was against their anti-Soviet line. So Mao eliminated him like he did Liu Shao-Chi. Liu's flight didn't reach its destination; he was shot down by a Chinese fighter plane.”

In passing, Ponomarev confided, “We have good relations with the Cambodian resistance movement” (the Khmer Rouge, who were about to annihilate between I million and 2 million men, women, and children, primarily by driving the entire urban population of Cambodia into the jungles).

Kissinger came in April to discuss disarmament agreements that the Soviets hoped Nixon would sign during a summit conference with Brezhnev in May. Brezhnev reviewed the discussions with Morris and asked for advice about how to deal with Nixon. He reported that, because of U.S. actions in Vietnam, parties around the world were screaming at the Soviet Union to cancel the summit conference, but the Soviets intended to proceed unless some cataclysmic event in the next couple of weeks made the conference politically impossible. Brezhnev also said that he had “great respect” for Kissinger, whom he characterized as a “vigorous and smart negotiator not to be underestimated.”

From the conversations with Brezhnev and Ponomarev, Morris made three primary conclusions:

(1) The Chinese were keeping their part of the bargain with the United States by doing exactly what they said they would do and urged the United States to do.

(2) The Soviets craved agreements with the United States so much that they would proceed with the summit conference no matter what other communists said.

(3) Whatever Kissinger said to Brezhnev, he said the right things.

Morris arrived in New York on April 30, and the intelligence and analyses he brought were delivered by hand to the White House and put to good use forthwith.

Without consulting or informing the Soviets, the North Vietnamese initiated a massive offensive against South Vietnam. Nixon had to decide between the military necessity of countering the offensive and the perceived political desirability of the summit conference. SOLO told him the Soviets would meet, almost no matter what he did, and on the eve of the summit conference he ordered North Vietnamese harbors mined and blockaded and the aerial bombardment of North Vietnam intensified. Foreign communist parties, privately and publicly, shouted at the Soviets to cancel the summit conference. The Soviets, just as Morris predicted, sent word to Kissinger that the meeting still was on.

On May 26, 1972, in Moscow, Brezhnev and Nixon signed an agreement (SALT I) that restricted the number of strategic ballistic missiles the United States and Soviet Union could maintain during the next five years and an agreement that limited the development of antiballistic missile (ABM) defenses. These modest agreements, which did little to reduce existing arsenals, enraged Gus Hall, who wrote a vituperative letter accusing the Soviets of conniving with the imperialists and selling out North Vietnam, and he ordered Morris to hand the letter personally to Brezhnev.

When Morris read the letter, he realized it had to be rewritten. Only two months before, Ponomarev declared that the Soviets were fed up with “deviationism” in foreign parties, and Hall's angry words could only brand him as a “deviationist.” In rewriting the draft, Morris transformed Hall into a loyal acolyte anxiously requesting guidance, yet the revision satisfied Hall because it still conveyed all of his original points. Now, though, Hall himself was not accusing the Soviets of making squalid deals with Nixon and betraying North Vietnam. Such charges were being spread as part of anti-Soviet propaganda, and they had begun to worry members of the American party.

As Morris prepared to leave for Moscow, a seemingly minor incident occurred at the Washington, D.C., Watergate apartment complex in Foggy Bottom between Georgetown and the State Department. A security guard apprehended men trying to break into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. At first, the attempted burglary generally was regarded more as a sophomoric stunt than as anything sinister. Republican Senator Robert Dole commented, “I don't know why anyone would want to break into the headquarters of the Democratic Party. All they would find is a bunch of unpaid bills.”

The Soviets took Hall's letter seriously, and Brezhnev instructed Ponomarev to give Morris a verbal reply pending a formal response. He said that the Central Committee understood Hall's concerns and wished to explain some facts. The summit conference long had been scheduled, and the North Vietnamese did not forewarn the Soviets of their offensive that provoked the American mining and blockade of Vietnamese harbors. At the time, nine Soviet ships were in Haiphong Harbor, and they barely escaped before it was mined. “When the blockade started, many Soviet ships were on the way to Haiphong. We asked the Chinese to allow these ships to unload at Von Pong [a Chinese port]. The Chinese refused and said they should go to Haiphong. The Chinese wanted a Soviet–U.S. confrontation and wanted us to war with the United States.”

Considering all factors, the Politburo decided it was in the interest of Vietnam and worldwide communism to proceed with the summit conference, and the Vietnamese did not object. Far from abandoning the North Vietnamese, the Soviets were increasing aid to them. “Night and day, trains are going to Vietnam… We exerted tremendous pressure on Nixon. Comrade Brezhnev told him it is a barbaric, horrible war in which innocent people are being murdered, and so on. We told him categorically that our people are indignant, that world opinion is opposed to the dirty war in Vietnam, that there is world indignation. We demanded an end to U.S. aggression. This discussion went on for three to four hours, and there was danger that Nixon would leave the room. But he stayed and listened. He tried to justify the U.S. actions but
failed. After Nixon went home, we gave hell to U.S. imperialism on our radio and television.”

Lies concocted by the “bourgeois press,” Brezhnev continued, had grossly distorted the results of the summit conference, and the Soviets needed to give Comrade Hall “more facts and arguments to counter the enemy.” But he need not worry. “We have no illusions about U.S. imperialism or about Nixon or about Kissinger or any others. There is no difference between a Nixon and a Johnson—which devil is better? But as Lenin taught us, we can see the difference between aggressive and reasonable people… The Nixon speeches are chiefly demagoguery. But some parts of his speeches can be used.”

Ponomarev also had some words about the agreements: “Of course, there is a difference between a document and deeds. But peaceful co-existence means that some documents need to be signed and implemented. We are aware that agreement on partial reduction of armaments and ABMs does not mean disarmament. We know that the number can be reduced but the quality can be improved. This is only a step in the direction of disarmament.”

That was the Soviet message to Hall. Over lunch, Ponomarev spoke informally to Morris “as friend to friend,” that is, for Morris' ears only. Hall had to be humored, but frankly the Soviets respected and even grudgingly liked Nixon and Kissinger because they were intelligent, they stood up for their beliefs—however wrong those beliefs were—and they gave the appearance of being honest. Of course, there was no such thing as an honest American politician but, so far as the Soviets knew, Nixon and Kissinger had not lied to them.

The Soviets did regard the May 26 agreements as merely a “first step.” What they really wanted was a treaty whereby the United States and the Soviet Union each pledged never to launch nuclear weapons against the territory of the other. Morris marveled at Soviet chutzpah. Such a treaty obviously was unenforceable. But it would proclaim to Western Europe, Japan, and China that the United States was unwilling to risk its cities to protect theirs and thereby expose all American allies to Soviet bullying.

Ponomarev remarked that the Americans seemed to be stalling
and asked if Morris thought they might come around. Modestly noting his lack of military expertise, Morris asked, “If you were in their position, would you agree to such a treaty?” Ponomarev laughed and shrugged, as if to say
No harm in trying
.

Despite Soviet explanations, Hall remained unplacated, and in October 1972 he dispatched Morris to tell the Soviets that they were making too many concessions to the United States and undermining socialism everywhere. Morris again tried to represent these judgments as Hall's observations rather than opinions, but they nonetheless exasperated and angered the Soviets. They did not understand Comrade Hall's attitude, and, to be blunt, he did not know what he was talking about. Although the Americans had rejected a treaty banning nuclear strikes by the United States and the Soviet Union against each other, the Soviets were convinced that to date Nixon had dealt “honestly and fairly” with them; that Nixon and Kissinger tried to understand their concerns and candidly stated those of the United States. Soviet military and technical experts advised that the American concerns, from the American perspective, were in the main comprehensible and reasonable. In sum, the United States appeared to be negotiating in good faith, and no major foreign communist party, except the American and Chinese, opposed the ongoing negotiations, and the Chinese were hopeless in all matters. So what was the matter with Comrade Hall? Morris, who was well-versed in Sovietese, understood: Comrade Hall damn well better get in line.

Suslov and Ponomarev in many other discussions with Morris talked a lot about Nixon. They very much wanted him to win the presidential election only two or three weeks away but the Soviets had to be discreet in their support of him because if Democratic candidate George McGovern found out, he might get angry. Although they preferred to deal with Nixon and Kissinger above all others, Nixon still confused them. His feats in simultaneously “hijacking China,” improving American–Soviet relations, and escalating an unpopular war in Vietnam awed them. How did he do it? Morris thought,
Maybe one reason is that he always knows what you're thinking and what you plan to do, insofar as you know yourselves.

The Soviets theorized that Nixon's legerdemain was possible because his reputation as an inveterate anticommunist immunized him to charges of selling out to them. But what political tricks or acrobatics would he try next? If Nixon was reelected, the Central Committee wanted the American party to submit a “full analysis and evaluation” of his administration and its likely policies.

Morris and Eva returned to Chicago in time to vote for Nixon, who won the 1972 election by the largest majority ever, winning all of the fifty states except Massachusetts.

After the election, Morris pointed out more examples of Soviet detachment from reality. By October 1972, almost all rational, informed people in the United States knew that McGovern had no chance whatsoever of winning, yet the Soviets still thought he might win. Nixon had escalated the war in Vietnam; McGovern favored ending it on virtually any terms the communists dictated. Yet the Soviets preferred to deal with Nixon, the hawk, instead of McGovern, the dove.

The Soviets wanted the American party to tell them what Nixon was going to do. How on earth would the ragtag party know? Did they think that the party was more astute and knowledgeable than their Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the KGB?

Morris was seventy, and in the past thirteen months he had traveled to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe six times. He looked forward to a surcease from danger, to rest, and to enjoying the holidays with Eva. But Hall had to go to Moscow in December to attend ceremonies celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Soviet Union, and he demanded that Morris be there with him.

A few days before he left, Jim Fox and his wife invited Morris and Eva to dinner. Fox was proud of his family, his career, and home, and after Eva came to know him and his background she realized that he had cause to be proud. Fox's father drove a bus for the Chicago municipal transit system, and his mother worked at whatever jobs a woman without a college education could find in those days. The family on Sunday morning attended a Baptist church, no matter how inclement the weather or how late his father had driven the night before, and when he was thirteen Fox
went to a summer camp sponsored by the church. One of the counselors was an FBI agent, and by the campfire he enthralled the boys with accounts of how the FBI chased gangsters, spies, and Ku Klux Klansmen. Fox came home from camp resolutely sure of what he wanted to do in life.