by John Barron
Even now, at the funeral, Fox could disclose few of these facts. But he resolved to hint at the truth by telling as much of it as he could.
In the foyer outside the chapel of a funeral home in northwest Chicago, Fox bent down to embrace a tiny, elegantly coiffed woman who in her late eighties remained unbowed, trim, and lovely. Officially, she was CG-6653S*; Fox called her Eva because he revered her. How many elderly women would hide with their husband underneath bed covers in Moscow copying secret Soviet documents, one holding a flashlight while the other wrote? How many would smuggle out copies encased in plastic wrapped around their bodies? How many would carry hundreds of thousands of dollars in shopping bags through the streets of New York and Chicago? How many so late in life would give up their life to espionage?
Two old friends, Carl Freyman and Walter Boyle, joined them. Freyman, in his late seventies and limping slightly, reminded Fox of a courtly grandfather; Boyle looked as lean, tough, and darkly handsome as he did forty years before when the commanding general of the first Marine Division decorated him on a Korean battlefield.
The four of them—Eva, Fox, Freyman, and Boyle—belonged to the small American team that challenged the Soviet empire on its own territory and terms; they were teammates. Morris always credited Freyman with saving his life. In 1952, while Morris lay near death, Freyman persuaded him to be a partner of the FBI, put him in the Mayo Clinic, and restored his will to live. Freyman was the first to perceive that Morris someday might penetrate the highest Soviet sanctums, and he recast the operation accordingly. And Freyman rescued Boyle’s career and brought him into the operation at a time when nobody else in the FBI wanted anything to do with him.
For eighteen years Boyle embarked Morris and Eva on their every mission, and wherever they alighted back in the United States, he was there, waiting to lead them past customs and to a hideaway to draft the first flash report to Washington. He saw or talked to them every day that they were in the United States, and he was at their call night and day. Always he carried a weapon, and they knew he instantly would use it in their defense. To them, he was as a son. In consequence of a false allegation of misconduct, FBI headquarters proposed removing Boyle from the operation. To the FBI, Eva, at the behest of Morris, spoke dulcet words whose import was not sweet: If Walt goes, we quit and the operation ends. Boyle stayed.
Fox started working with Morris and Eva after being appointed Boyle’s supervisor in 1971. He incidentally mentioned that his unexplainable absences at night or on weekends caused his wife to fear that he was seeing another woman. Eva’s blue eyes smiled at him. “Why don’t you introduce her to the other woman?” Morris and Eva became like relatives of the Fox family, and the children called them “Aunt Eva” and “Uncle Morris.” Eva in turn called Fox, who was part Sioux Indian, “my favorite Baptist Indian.” Although his ascent into the leadership of the FBI later separated him from the operation, he remained their friend and patron throughout his FBI career.
Eva asked if another team member, retired FBI Agent John Langtry, was coming to the funeral. Langtry had long worked with Jack in New York; he had assisted Morris and Eva whenever they were there, and she very much liked him. Fox explained that Langtry was unable to travel because he was recuperating from major surgery.
“Well, we can’t afford to lose John,” Eva said. “Now they’re only five of us left. We were a very little team. But we pulled off quite a caper, didn’t we?”
Some fifty relatives of Morris and Eva gathered in the chapel for the private service. Midway through the ritual, the rabbi paused and announced that Mr. James Fox, assistant director of the FBI, would speak. At mention of the FBI, some in the congregation gasped audibly; Boyle saw one woman, apparently unable to close her mouth, clasp her hand over it; another stared incredulously at Eva.
Fox, tall and dignified with gray hair, looked like a handsome, urbane diplomat as he stood behind the podium. “My name is Jim Fox. I am a friend of Morris Childs.” More gasps. Morris and Eva, friends of the FBI!
Most of you here today probably think you knew Morris Childs. I can tell you with certainty that outside the FBI no one here today knows of the enormous contributions Morris Childs made to the security of the United States.
I am not at liberty to detail exactly what Morris accomplished over the years. I can assure you that his accomplishments were staggering. And I can say that whenever I hear people talking about a sensational James Bond movie or something from Mission Impossible, I think, “I know a better story, the story of Morris Childs.”
Morris was as kind and gentle as any man I have ever known. Yet for all his gentleness, leaders of both the free world and communist world repeatedly sought his advice.
Once we told a very high White House official [Henry Kissinger, then national security advisor to the president] that we had reviewed the operation and decided to discontinue it for security reasons. This official replied that while he respected our judgment, he had to have the information Morris provided and that the operation would continue.
I recall two occasions on which Morris perhaps sensed something of the enormity and importance of his achievements.
On February 29, 1988, at our headquarters in Washington, Director William Sessions, in the presence of Eva, presented Morris with the highest award the United States government can give a civilian. Morris, in failing health, struggled to his feet and for five or six minutes brilliantly told of what it means to serve freedom and the future of our children.
In late 1989, I stayed away from the office to work at home and by chance turned on the early CNN news showing the collapse of the Berlin Wall and communism in Eastern Europe. I put work aside and throughout the day watched history unfold before my eyes. That night I telephoned Morris and simultaneously we said the same thing, “Did you watch television today?” Together we marveled at the convulsions revolutionizing the communist world.
At Christmas, I received a card from Morris. With an unsteady hand, he wrote: “Our dreams of half a century are coming true in life—it is difficult to understand the speed and reality. We are glad we gave it a push.”
Well, Jim Fox didn’t give it much of a push. Morris and Eva Childs surely did. Few Americans have given our nation what they have given.
After the service, Fox and Boyle adjourned to a venerable Italian restaurant, settled into a booth, and over double martinis began reminiscing much like two generals reviewing an epic wartime campaign. Their conversation was disjointed, rambling from topic to topic. But in the anecdotes traded, they tried in one way or another to answer a basic question: How could we accomplish something so improbable for so long?
Of course, Morris himself was a large part of the answer. Boyle told a story about Morris, Angela Davis, and ten thousand dollars, a story whose climax he never reported to headquarters.
It began in 1970 during the trial of three convicts charged with murdering a guard at Soledad Prison in California. Someone smuggled weapons into the courtroom and a barrage of gunfire killed the presiding judge and three others. The FBI initiated a nationwide hunt for Angela Davis, a young communist and college instructor accused of plotting to slip the weapons into court. The search continued for nearly two months until Morris learned from a party official exactly where Davis was hiding in New York.
The FBI immediately arrested her and to protect Morris planted rumors attributing the capture to the acumen of field investigators and their supervisors. Headquarters felt guilty about crediting others for what Morris had done and proposed to compensate him with a cash bonus. To the Chicago official, it said: “Name any amount; we’ll pay it.” Boyle protested that Morris was not working for money and would resent being treated like a mercenary informant; he would most appreciate a brief letter from Director J. Edgar Hoover. Headquarters was adamant. By locating Angela Davis, Morris had saved the government millions of dollars that a continuing search would have cost, and he deserved a reward.2
The Chicago SAC (special agent-in-charge), Boyle,
Morris, and Eva sat around a big desk in the back room of the cover office the FBI maintained for the operation. After congratulatory remarks, the SAC started laying $100 bills, one by one, on the desk. Morris glowered at Boyle, elbowed the cash away, and inched his chair to the right, further distancing himself from the money. Barely speaking, he joined Boyle in escorting the SAC through the suite to the door. When they returned to the back room, the money, $10,000 in all, was gone; Eva had pocketed it.
Boyle and his wife had adopted six children, two of them black, through Catholic Charities of Chicago, and Morris knew that Boyle actively supported the charity. The next time Boyle came to the cover office, he saw on the desk in the back room an envelope addressed to him. Inside, he found a cashier’s check payable to Catholic Charities of Chicago in the amount of $10,000.
The so-called CIA deal said still more about Morris’ disdain for money and his motivation. While the FBI kept the CIA ignorant of the source, it necessarily shared some of the intelligence Morris provided, blandly prefacing reports with the phrase, “A source who has provided reliable information in the past advised…” However, CIA evaluation and subsequent verification of the often spectacular reports made clear that they emanated from someone with extraordinary access to communist rulers or maybe even a ruler himself.
Ultimately, the CIA tried to buy the operation, or buy into it, without knowing exactly what it was buying. It offered the FBI any amount—“there is no limit”—in return for “some control” of the operation and promised to pay the principal source an annual, tax-free salary of $250,000 for starters.
The FBI had no intention of selling “the family jewels,” as Boyle put it, but it felt obliged to relay the offer to Morris. The FBI paid him a small salary and he spent much of it on operational expenses. To earn a quarter of a million a year, he had only to keep on doing what he long had done.
It took Morris about thirty seconds to categorically and emphatically reject the offer. His loyalty resided with the FBI. “You have got to get people who devote themselves to this work because they believe in the Bureau and our country; not because they want money.”
This idealism impelled Morris to jeopardize his health, risk his life, and submit to all sorts of indignities. Although he and Eva were people of means, they themselves had to scrub the floors and toilets of their apartment because Morris judged it unsafe to admit a maid or any outsider into the apartment. Once when Morris, sick and exhausted, reported to Gus Hall upon returning from Moscow, Hall dragged him to his Long Island home and put him to work digging in the garden. His small body was weak and frail; his will was not.
A waitress interrupted Fox and Boyle to inquire if they wanted to order lunch. Again, they instead ordered more martinis and continued their reminiscences.3
When Boyle first learned that Gus Hall referred to Morris as his “secretary of state,” he thought it was some kind of joke. Morris assured him that Hall was quite serious. “To you, it sounds ridiculous. But if you think like they think, the title is quite logical. And you’ve got to learn to think like they think.” Much of Morris’ genius as a spy derived from a remarkable ability to think just as the Soviets thought and thereby exploit their delusions and myopia. For years he adroitly exploited Soviet delusions about the American Communist Party.
According to Soviet interpretation of Marx and Lenin, the laws of history ordained that the American party ultimately would be the ruling party of the United States. Hence, to the Soviets the party represented the bona fide government of the United States, “temporarily out of power” but predestined eventually to assume its rightful rule. These premises were fantasies, yet if the Soviets repudiated the dogma that spawned them, if they admitted that Marx and Lenin were fallible, then how could they justify continuation of their power? Because they clung to foolish dogma, they behaved foolishly by treating “that ignoramus” Gus as president and Morris as secretary of state, “temporarily out of power.”
Morris understood that the Soviets also valued and sustained the American party because they vastly overestimated its influence, erroneously believing that in the 1960s and 1970s it could duplicate its successes of the 1930s. Because the party ardently supported the antiwar movement, the Soviets judged that the party was the primary instigator and manipulator of the movement. It was the same with any other movement or demonstration; if the party and noncommunists happened to agree on an issue and made common cause, in Moscow the party received the credit. Neither Hall nor Morris ever said to anyone in Moscow, “Yes, we were involved but our role was relatively minor.” And the men in Moscow responsible for directing the party had every incentive to exaggerate its importance and the results of their labors.
Comprehending the Soviet view of him and the American party, Morris acted out the role of the secretary of state or foreign minister of a Soviet satellite nation. As such, he regularly dealt with Soviet rulers and addressed most of them by their first name.
Fox and Boyle agreed that even Morris probably could not have accomplished what he did had it not been for unorthodox actions by the FBI.
They never knew the identity of the executive responsible but someone at headquarters cast the basic mold of the operation well before they joined it.
Morris returned from Moscow and Peking in 1958 with stunning intelligence imparted to him by Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Tse Tung, and Chou En Lai, and the FBI recognized that the operation now had unprecedented potential. Thus far, the Chicago and New York field offices had made and executed all the operational decisions without seeking approval or advice from headquarters. A question arose in Washington. Given the suddenly apparent potential of the operation, shouldn’t headquarters assume direct control of it?
According to FBI lore, the winning argument ran as follows: New York and Chicago created this operation. Chicago saw where it might go when none of us here dreamed it could go as high as it is going. New York and Chicago have brought us this far; they obviously know what they’re doing; they have done everything right. Why should we substitute our judgment for theirs? If you have players who are scoring touchdowns, you keep giving the ball to them; you don’t take it away from them. Let Chicago and New York run wild. We can always rein them in if necessary.
The decision not to change winning strategy and tactics had many enduring consequences. The FBI allowed New York Agent Alexander C. Burlinson to stay in the operation for twenty-four years. The FBI kept Walter Boyle in it for twenty years, John Langtry for fourteen years, and Carl Freyman for thirteen years. Never, before or since, has the FBI kept agents on the same case for so long.
The Chicago and New York offices as a result accrued a unique body of experience and expertise, and thus a capacity intuitively to make fine judgments and discern what was most significant. Boyle came to know more about Boris Ponomarev and Mikhail Suslov, two of the dominant Soviets with whom Morris most often dealt, than most people in Moscow; together with Morris, he could glean intelligence from their facial expressions. Langtry in New York came to know everything about the KGB officers who worked with Jack Childs, including which pasta their wives preferred.
Experience taught Morris and Jack they could count on their longtime FBI partners, with whom they could speak in “shorthand.” And a uniting spirit grew among what Eva called “our little American team.” Sometimes people on the periphery of the operation at headquarters accused Boyle and Langtry of “being too close to their assets.” The few people who really knew, who were recipients of the hurrahs from the White House, CIA, and State and Defense Departments, did not care how close they were.
Until the last years when events beyond the control of the field offices created dangers with which only headquarters could cope, headquarters granted Chicago and New York the broadest of liberties, allowing them to do what Americans do best—adapt, invent, innovate, imagine. If Boyle wanted to recruit a physician who would take cryptic calls from Morris overseas at all hours, a pharmacist who would supply false labels on prescription medicine for
Morris, a travel agent who would issue multiple airline tickets under fictitious names, he just did it. As Fox said over the fourth martini, “We always followed the rules. Of course, when we saw the rules weren’t working, we made up new ones.”
There evolved in Washington a mental set which held that the responsibility of headquarters was to support the men actually running the operation rather than tell them what to do. Consequently, headquarters and the special agents-in-charge of the Chicago and New York offices made available all that was needed—cover offices, special offices within the field offices, special stenographers, photographers, cipher and communications personnel, surveillants, money, and autonomy. Until nearly the end, headquarters let Chicago and New York “run wild” against the Soviet Union.
Also until nearly the end, headquarters kept the faith and the secret. It induced powerful men with powerful egos to undergo an implicitly humiliating ritual: You may read this report right now in my presence. You may not retain or copy the report. I must take it back to a special safe at headquarters. The few who knew never told their best colleagues—and this went on for almost thirty years.
When congressional meddling threatened to expose the operation, FBI Director Clarence Kelly and Assistant Director Raymond Wannall gambled as wildly as had Morris, Jack, Eva, and all the men in the field. Wannall told Senator Frank Church, chairman of a Senate committee investigating the FBI, that he was about to destroy the most important espionage operation the United States ever had sustained against the Soviet Union and that he was about to kill the most valuable American spy.
