Operation Solo (50 page)

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Authors: John Barron

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Presidential Medal of Freedom for Intelligence
Propaganda campaigns
Pushkin, Aleksandr
Radio propaganda
Radio transmissions: difficulties with; rubber doll signal
Railways, underground communist line
RCMP.
See
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Reader's Digest
Reagan, Ronald; attitude toward Soviets; meeting with Gorbachev
Reed, John
Religion
Religious sects
Revisionism
Rezidencies
Riesel, Victor
Roberts, Wesley
Romerstein, Herbert
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
“Rubber duck”
Ruckel, Raymond
Ruling class
Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Revolution
RYAN.
See
Operation RYAN
Sadat, Anwar
SALT.
See
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
San Francisco, California
SASH.
See
Operation SASH
Schlossberg, Sonny; illness of; marriage to Morris
Science and technology
Scott, Hugh
SDI.
See
Strategic Defense Initiative
Sea of Peace
Secret documents
Select Senate Committee on Intelligence Activities
Semichastny, Vladimir
Serov, General Ivan
Sessions, William
Seven-Day Arab-Israeli War
Shanghai, China
Shanghai Communiqué
Shelepin, Aleksandr
Sino-Soviet split
“SK” radio transmission
Smith, Howard K.
Smith, Ivian C.
Smith, Walter Bedell
Smith Act; court ruling against prosecution of communists; passage of
Socialized agriculture
SOLO.
See
Operation SOLO
South Korea
Southern Christian Leadership Council
Soviet-Chinese friendship monuments
Soviet parliamentary delegation
Soviet Union.
See also
International Department of the Central Committee; KGB; Operation MORAT; Politburo; Sino-Soviet split;
specific Soviet leaders
: as ally to U.S.; anti-Soviet campaign in China; arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald; attitude toward Nixon administration; attitude toward Reagan; build-up of paranoia; Correlation of Forces doctrine; delusions about U.S.-Chinese relations; deposition of Khrushchev; deterioration of relationship with China; differences with China over nuclear war; economic difficulties; economic disorder; fear of another Korean War; German invasion of; intelligence concerning U.S. and Chinese activity in Vietnam; invasion of Prague; Morris' invitation to Moscow in 1958; Moscow conference of foreign ministers; negotiations with China; Order of the Red Banner award to Morris; payments to the U.S. Communist Party; poaching in American territorial waters; propaganda campaigns; purchase of American grain at below-market prices; reaction to election of Carter; reaction to election of Nixon; reaction to U.S.-Chinese negotiations; reasons for sustaining American Communist Party; secret documents; subsidies to the American Communist Party; Treaty of Alma Ata; Twentieth Communist Party Congress; Twenty-third Party Congress
Spanish Civil War
Speakeasy
Special comrades.
See
KGB
Special Source intelligence.
See
Operation SOLO
Stalin, Josef; abolishment of Comintern; detention of Lovestone; Krushchev's denunciation of; persecution of Jews; trust in Hitler
Stalingrad
Stalinists
Stanford University
Star Wars
State and collective farms
Steinbeck, Michael
Stenogram
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
Strategic Defense Initiative
Struggle Against Revisionism
The Struggle for Russia
Sullivan, William K.; efforts to recruit Rosslyn Childs; failure to disseminate report on Soviet-Czechoslovakia relations
Summers, Harry
Summit conferences
Suslov, Mikhail: attitude toward Nixon administration; Boyle's knowledge of; briefing on communication between Brezhnev and Nixon; on China as international threat; meeting with Hall and Morris; as mentor to Morris; as negotiator with China; relations with China after deposition of Khrushchev; Soviet reaction to U.S.-Chinese negotiations; Soviet view of world affairs; on visit from Hugh Scott
Switzerland
Talanov, Nikolai
TARPRO.
See
Operation TARPRO
Ten Days That Shook the World
Teng Hsiao-Ping
Terrorist bombings
Thatcher, Margaret
Third World countries
Timofeevich, Timmy
“Tiny”
Tito, Josip
“TOPLEV” program
Tower, John
Transfer money.
See
Money transfers
Treaty of Alma Ata
Trotskyites
Truman, Harry; application of the Smith Act
Twentieth Communist Party Congress
Twenty-First Communist Party Congress
Twenty-Third Communist Party Congress
Twenty-Fifth Communist Party Congress
U Thant
Ulbricht, Walter
Ultra-nationalist faction
Underground Squad
Unestablished borderline
United Communist Party of America
United Mine Workers
U.S. Congress: investigation of FBI; mandatory retirement of FBI agents; meeting with delegation of Soviet parliamentarians; passage of Smith Act
U.S. Justice Department
U.S. Secret Service
U.S. Senate: demand for FBI files; Morris as communist candidate; Senate Intelligence Committee
U.S. State Department: denial of visas to Soviets seeking to attend American Communist Party convention; importance of FBI documents on Sino-Soviet breach; publication of 1956 Krushchev speech
U.S. Supreme Court
USS Pueblo
USSR.
See
Soviet Union
Vallejo, Rene
Venezuela
Vietnam.
See also
North Vietnam: Soviet attitude toward
“Vivian” mail drop
Von Pong
Wall Street Journal
Wang Chia Hsiang
Wannall, Raymond; appointment as assistant director of FBI; decision to inform Ford and Kissinger of SOLO operations; exposure of SOLO to Senate Select Committee; investigation of Boyle allegedly impersonating an FBI agent; meeting to consider Morris' and Eva's trip to Twenty-Fifth Party Congress; meeting with Morris to congratulate on mission success; operational conference; Sullivan's letter concerning Martin Luther King; testimony before Senate committee; visit to Morris' and Eva's penthouse
Warren Commission
Warsaw, Poland
Washington, D.C.
Watergate
Weiner, William
Westchester County, New York
Wisconsin
Wolfe, Bertram D.
“Women in White” offices
World Marxist Review
World Trade Center
Yekaterina (Morris Childs' cook/nursemaid)
Yeltsin, Boris
Yezhov, Nikolai
Young Communist League
Zamoyski, L.P.
Zhuravlev, Yuri
1
In the most guarded FBI files, Morris Childs was listed as CG-5824S*. Among themselves, FBI agents referred to him simply as “58.”
CG
meant Chicago;
S
meant security; and the asterisk meant that the source could never testify in court or be otherwise identified.
2
A jury acquitted Davis of the charges against her. Testimony from Morris might have interested a jury. However, Morris could not testify nor could information he provided be introduced as evidence.
3
Later recapitulating their conversation, Fox said, “We were not drinking to get drunk. We kept delaying lunch because we did not want the moment to end. We doubted it ever would come again.”
4
Author's Note: Many former American intelligence officers, CIA and FBI, among them some of my best friends, to this day cannot speak of the late Senator Church except with contempt. They condemn him as a left-wing ideologue who, in their opinion, irreparably damaged American intelligence for partisan political purposes. His actions pertaining to SOLO speak for themselves.
5
Among them were Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Yuri Andropov, rulers of the Soviet Union; Mikhail Suslov, head of the Ideological Department of the Soviet Central Committee; Boris Ponomarev, head of the International Department of the Soviet Central Committee; Otto Kuusinen, a theorist and early member of the Communist International (Comintern); Mao Tse Tung and Chou En Lai, rulers of China; Ho Chi Minh, ruler of Vietnam; Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, rulers of East Germany; Josip Tito, ruler of Yugoslavia; Fidel Castro, ruler of Cuba; and Palmiro Togliatti, head of the Italian Communist Party.
6
The American intelligence community has long believed that the CIA obtained the speech from the Israelis. That well may be. But according to unequivocal statements made to the author by FBI Agents Donald E. Moore, Walter Boyle, William Brannigan, and John O'Toole, the FBI procured the first copy available to the U.S. government. Branigan and O'Toole are dead; Moore and Boyle are not.
7
Historian Bertam D. Wolfe, who Morris also knew in the party, summed up the import of the speech thusly:
The speech is perhaps the most important document ever to have come from the communist movement… It is the most revealing indictment of communism ever to have been made by a communist, the most damning indictment of the Soviet system ever to have been made by a Soviet leader.
There is about it a nightmare quality, felt alike by those who believe in communism and those who do not. To see one of the chief creators of the atmosphere of terror and of the monstrous cult of the living God calmly reporting to a Congress of those who were all terrorized agents of the terror and votaries of the cult; to hear the confidences as to what went on behind the scenes, torture, false confessions, judicial murder, perfidious destruction of the bodies and souls and very names of devoted comrades and intimates; to see the Reporter expects absolution and forgiveness and even continuance in absolute power because at long last he has revealed some of the guilty secrets in which he shared; to note the broad, self-satisfied smile which deprives the fearful avowals of any value of repentance; to catch in the flood of words only a sua culpa and not one syllable of mea culpa or a nostra culpa; to sense how much greater crimes have been committed against a helpless people by this little band whose deeds against each other are in part being recited; to think that men who are capable of doing such things to each other and tolerating, sanctioning, and applauding such actions, have managed to vest themselves of absolute power over belief and action, over manners and morals, over life and death and the good name of the dead, over industry and agriculture and politics and communication and expression and culture; and then to hear that the system which spawned these monstrous things is still the best in the world, and that the surviving members of this band are still in their collective wisdom infallible and in their collective power unlimited—who can read this recital without a sense of horror and revulsion?
8
Other Chinese leaders with whom Morris conferred included Hsuing Fu, Li Chi Hsin, Tang Ming-Chao, Lin Tang, Yu Chi-Ying, Li Shen Nin, Kang Sheng, Tent Hsia Ping, Hsu Bing, and Lili Ning Yi Ti.
9
Over the years, Morris took many documents out of the Soviet Union. Some were originals entrusted to him for delivery to Hall. Others were illicitly made copies. Interviewed nearly a quarter of a century later, he could not remember with certainty whether those he brought out in December 1960 were originals or copies.
10
One of Boyle's brothers became a physician, another an architect, and the third a university professor. His sister became a nun and teacher, continuing the traditions of Sister Catherine Pierre.
11
During the background investigation, Eva told a disguised investigator, “In the 1920s, most of us girls went to college to catch a good husband. I wanted a husband and a degree. In those days, degrees meant something.”
12
Mostovets referred to KGB officer Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko who, without ever knowing it, indirectly affected SOLO.
Soon after Nosenko arrived in the United States, influential CIA officers decided that he was a false defector purposely sent to spread disinformation, just as they decided that multiple reports of Sino–Soviet enmity were manifestations of a great disinformation scheme. The CIA, without any legal authority, built a little jail at one of its Virginia installations and locked him there in solitary confinement. For nearly twenty months, the CIA psychologically tortured him while trying to extract a confession, which it completely failed to do. Ultimately, the CIA exonerated Nosenko, made such restitution as it could, and for many years employed him as a consultant.
The FBI from the first judged Nosenko to be a bona fide defector and so told the CIA. There were several reasons. The leads he provided enabled the FBI and other Western counterintelligence services to unearth spies. Nosenko worked in the North American section of the KGB Second Chief Directorate charged with counterintelligence and recruitment of foreigners inside the Soviet Union. He reported that through homosexual entrapment the KGB had recruited a Canadian ambassador in Moscow. During interrogation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the ambassador confessed and died of a heart attack.
In Moscow, Nosenko had reviewed the KGB file on Oswald and observed the panic at KGB headquarters caused by Oswald's arrest. His accounts of Oswald's stay in the Soviet Union and of Soviet reaction to the Kennedy assassination coincided with what Morris had reported months earlier. So the FBI knew that Nosenko told the truth about perhaps the most important subject of which he had knowledge. Because of the secrecy shrouding SOLO, the FBI did not share these details with the CIA. It simply said he was legitimate.
Released from captivity and officially rehabilitated, Nosenko married a beautiful woman whom he met while she played the organ at a Washington restaurant. She became the organist of the Methodist church in a lovely Southern town, and he became chairman of its board of stewards. Townspeople asked him to run for mayor, which he declined to do because the Soviets had sentenced him to death in absentia. In 1974, he received American citizenship. Before the naturalization ceremony, the presiding judge, in a departure from custom, announced that no photographs of the ceremony would be permitted. Afterward Nosenko, stood on the courthouse steps with his wife, removed a tiny American flag from under his coat lapel, and pinned it on the front.

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