by John Barron
The New York office had to submit to headquarters by the fifth of each month an accounting of receipts, disbursements, and cash on hand. Accountants periodically came from headquarters for surprise audits and invariably found the New York records accurate to the penny.
Although Jack picked up the money from the KGB, Hall made Morris responsible for hiding and managing it. He didn’t care where or how it was hidden so long as Jack and Morris produced cash on demand. Because both SOLO and Hall required Morris to be in New York so often, he and Eva rented an apartment there, and it became a kind of financial center. Hall would tell Morris that he wanted, say, $300,000. Morris would call Burlinson or Langtry, and at an appointed time agents would meet him and Eva on the West Side with cash in a shopping bag. Lagging a little behind, agents would follow the couple until they had safely entered their apartment building. Any mugger who accosted them would have been shot on the spot.
Eva usually carried the money because she thought it more appropriate for a woman rather than a man to be seen on the streets with a shopping bag. If Morris and Eva were not in New York, Roz occasionally carted it just as Eva did. Once Jack boasted to Hall that he had just received $500,000. “Give $250,000 to Elizabeth and $250,000 to Morris,” Hall ordered. Trailed by agents, Roz marched into the offices of International Publishers, where Elizabeth worked, and handed over the quarter million. Later Hall flew to Chicago and with Morris drove to Minnesota to hide the other $250,000 at the home of Hall’s brother.
Langtry more often than not had to work on weekends regardless of whether money was delivered. Unless Boyle was present, Morris and Eva were his responsibility when they were in New York, and he had to be available if they needed anything or had something urgent to report. Boyle came to New York often, usually on weekends, to consult and coordinate. Morris and Jack sometimes joined them for weekend conferences, which took place at the cover office on Battery Place, at Burlinson’s home, or in hotel rooms.
As a consequence of these regular contacts and strategy sessions, the Chicago and New York offices at all times knew what the other was doing. Boyle kept Burlinson and Langtry fully apprised of Morris’ travels and findings. They in turn informed him of all they learned about the KGB, its personnel, equipment, and methods. As Jack correctly pointed out, if the KGB does something that succeeds in one place it will repeat the action in many other places. So knowledge of the operational techniques observed in New York would be useful to counterintelligence sections in field offices all over the country.
THE PRESENCE OF HALL had precluded the International Department and Morris from conducting the annual budget review when he last was in Moscow, and Morris had to fly back in January 1967. “I want you to look at something,” Ponomarev announced as he laid before him a batch of papers. Morris was appalled to see that they were American intelligence reports containing information he had supplied about activities of the American party. “This is serious,” Ponomarev said. “How could it happen?”
“I don’t know. Obviously, there’s a leak somewhere and we have to plug it. Are you at liberty to say where you got them?”
“Someone threw them into the yard of our embassy in Washington.”
“Then it could be a provocation.”
“It could be. But the information is accurate, is it not?”
“In general, it seems to be.”
Gradually, Morris sensed that he was not a suspect, that Ponomarev was alerting rather than accusing him. Nevertheless, he was furious and frightened.
The FBI ascertained the cause of the fiasco. It had enjoyed some success in mounting so-called dangle operations against the KGB and GRU; that is, dangling or parading one of its own before the Soviets and enticing them to recruit him. The Washington field office, which knew nothing about SOLO, was conducting such an operation, code named “TARPRO.” After anonymously tossing documents onto Soviet embassy grounds several times, it planned to send a U.S. navy officer to the embassy and have him say to the Soviets: “Look, I’m the guy who’s been giving you all those documents, and I can give you more if the money is right.” The documents selected did not appear to those who picked them to be particularly sensitive, and there was no indication that they emanated from a sensitive source; they could have come from virtually any informant in the party. (Thereafter, all data produced by SOLO was considered sensitive, and circulation was further restricted.)
During their last conversation before Morris left Moscow in January, Ponomarev candidly spoke of problems besetting the Soviet Union and the worldwide movement. He saw no hope of repairing relations with China; Castro was a real pain and his machinations in Latin America mainly were counterproductive; there was incipient trouble in Czechoslovakia. The Soviet economy constituted the biggest problem. Agricultural reforms promised by Brezhnev had yet to yield results, and the Soviets needed to buy grain, products, and technology from the West but they had little hard currency. Hall had requested from Brezhnev a subsidy of $1,740,000 for 1967; Ponomarev somewhat apologetically advised that the Soviets could afford only about $1 million. This time when he repeated his bon mot, “We can give you all the tanks and planes you want but we have no money,” he did not smile.
THE KGB CALLED JACK to Moscow in April 1967 ostensibly for routine operational discussions. The KGB officer directing MORAT from Moscow at the time was Vladimir Kazakov, who had been stationed in the United States and spoke English superbly. In a tone connoting neither friendliness nor hostility, he announced that he wished to review details of the operation with Jack.
Burlinson and Langtry had anticipated that someday the KGB might ask Jack how he handled the Soviet money and suggested that they rehearse an answer. Jack dismissed the suggestion out of hand. “They’re not interested in petty crap like that. We don’t have to worry.”
The first question Kazakov asked was, “After our comrade gives you the money, what do you do with it?”
Jack realized he was about to undergo an interrogation for which he brashly had left himself unprepared, and he strung out his answer, playing for time to conceive explanations for the inexplicable and to leave himself escape routes—or at least enough time to escape from the Soviet Union.
He did what his general secretary (Gus Hall) directed, and mostly that meant he gave the money to Morris. At the instructions of Gus, he kept some money hidden in the ceiling of his basement in case Gus or the party suddenly needed it on weekends.
Why did the general secretary want Morris to be custodian of the money? Jack attacked, “Why in the hell don’t you ask him? If you think I’m a [obscenity] informant on my general secretary, you are full of [obscenity]. If you [multiple obscenities] can’t do your homework, you are more stupid than I thought.” Hall was, under American law, a convicted criminal and fugitive who had fled the law, been caught in Mexico and extradited, and locked in a U.S. prison as communist agent. What would happen to him if the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, or the New York police found a few hundred thousand dollars in cash at his homes or in his safe deposit boxes? Gus relied on Morris to prepare the party budgets and sequester the party cash. The Feds thought Morris was a decrepit, useless old man and paid no attention to him. That was Jack’s opinion; the (obscenity) comrades could decide for themselves.
Probably the interrogation was recorded, and Kazakov together with others that night analyzed Jack’s answers and prepared new sallies. The second day Kazakov noted that Morris much of the time was out of the United States. What did Jack do with the money then?
Jack said that usually he hid it in the basement or attic until Morris returned. There were exceptions. Now and then the party needed money immediately. Once, upon orders from Gus, his wife Roz personally delivered $250,000 to Gus’ wife Elizabeth. A few times Gus himself had driven to Jack’s house on Sunday to get money. The leaders of the American party were not robots; they did what circumstances dictated. Generally, though, Jack turned over the money to Morris, who concealed and disbursed it as Gus ordered.
How in the hell would Jack know? He and his brother always had done their jobs. He thought they ought to be thanked.
Like most professional inquisitors, Kazakov reserved the most potentially incriminating questions for the last. “When you give our comrade microfilm do you also give him an index of what it says?”
“I give him a brief list of the subjects.”
“How do you make up this list?”
“I type it.”
“But you didn’t type this list, did you?” Thereupon, Kazakov produced a menacing piece of paper. The FBI put Jack’s reports to the KGB on microfilm, and Langtry gave him a handwritten summary of the contents, which Jack was supposed to copy on the typewriter. Jack saw that instead of the typewritten version he had given the KGB Langtry’s handwritten notes. With Kazakov staring at him, Jack feigned brazen indifference.
“Any idiot can see that it is not typed.”
“Is this your handwriting?”
“No.”
“Then who wrote it?”
“My wife.”
“Why?”
“Goddammit, I sprained my wrist. It was in a cast. I couldn’t type or write, so I dictated to her.”
“You mean you have made her aware of our collaboration?”
“Look, Einstein, you guys made her aware. You had me bring her over here, and you talked to her. Remember? Don’t you read your own [obscenity] files? She’s been in the Party since she was a girl; she worked for the Comintern in Moscow; and there is no way I could do all I am doing without her knowing something about it. Besides, the list is meaningless to her.”
On Jack’s sixtieth birthday, April 15, 1967, the International Department gave a dinner party in his honor and at his request invited Kazakov. During the festivities, Jack went out of his way to introduce Kazakov to his friends Boris (Ponomarev), Mikhail (Suslov), and Nikolai (Mostovets). Kazakov watched as the most powerful men in the Soviet Union embraced Jack, and he listened as they drank effusive toasts to him.
With a single phone call, any one of these men could enhance his career and buy him a ticket back to the United States where he dearly wanted to take his wife and children, or they could destroy his career and impoverish his family. What was Kazakov to do? Risk antagonizing them by substituting his judgment for theirs, by confiding that, although he had no proof, he suspected that their dear American friend was an American spy who was making fools of them?
After Ponomarev spoke in tribute to Jack, Kazakov rose with the others to applaud. At the end of the evening, he wished Jack good luck and smiled. Jack thought the smile said, For now you’ve won. But I know.
Jack may have been completely wrong. No matter, he resolved, I’m never coming back.
ten
BIG BUSINESS RESUMES
THE INQUISITION OF JACK in Moscow simultaneously alarmed and mystified Burlinson, Langtry, Boyle, and Morris. Jack was the opposite of a coward, and they had never known him to lie to the FBI or his brother. He clearly believed the KGB suspected him, that only the patronage of the International Department saved him, and he was still uncharacteristically afraid.
The mistake Jack made in giving the KGB Langtry’s handwritten note along with the microfilm instead of a typed index merited questions. But Jack so plausibly explained away the incident that he was questioned about it only once. What then prompted the unprecedented five-day interrogation? Review of radio messages and contacts with the KGB in New York during the past six months yielded not a hint of an answer.
Langtry submitted a hopeful theory, emphasizing it was only a theory. Kazakov appeared to be a rising star in the KGB, or else it would not have appointed him to supervise the servicing of MORAT in which Soviet leaders, from Brezhnev on down, personally were involved. Maybe he just wanted to familiarize himself with minute operational details so that he could do his job better and, if necessary, demonstrate to the Kremlin that he knew what he was doing. Jack was under extreme stress and maybe it, together with his guilt, caused him to misconstrue the purpose of the questions.
“I hope you’re right and you may be,” Morris said. “In any case, we must watch and listen to Gus very carefully in coming weeks.”
The Soviets communicated with Hall almost exclusively through Jack and Morris because they did not want to associate with him in the United States and lend credence to charges by anticommunists that he was merely their puppet. But Morris believed that, if they ever concluded that he and Jack were actually U.S. agents, the Soviet ambassador at the United Nations or in Washington would warn Hall and, because he was not a subtle man, his behavior would change markedly. If he stopped using Jack as an errand boy or asking for money or calling Morris, if he went to the United Nations or Washington, if he convened unusual meetings at party headquarters, he would be signaling trouble.
Hall gave no such clues. Rather, he confided to Jack his conviction that the FBI had bugged party offices around the country and ordered Jack to hire a specialist to inspect them electronically. Jack duly engaged a private investigator and helpfully drew up an inspection schedule for him. Forewarned of when the investigator was coming to each office, the FBI removed the listening devices before he arrived and put them back after he left. Jack reported, “They’re all clean, Gus.”
Hall also asked Jack’s advice about how to react to a cashiered FBI agent who, angered by his dismissal, approached the party with an offer to supply FBI secrets. Jack did not have to feign concern because he was very concerned. Again he thought quickly. He said that the approach was an obvious FBI provocation, an attempt to entrap Hall. If he accepted classified information, the FBI would arrest him for espionage. Hall told the former agent to stay the hell away from him.
Another good sign appeared in June 1967 after a chalk mark summoned Jack to an emergency meeting with his KGB handler that evening. The KGB officer handed him a copy of a speech Soviet Premier Kosygin planned to deliver to the United Nations about the Seven-Day Arab–Israeli War that had just ended. It was an apologia for Soviet actions and a denunciation of American actions in the Middle East. The Soviets wanted Hall to study the speech in advance so he would understand the positions the American party was to adopt regarding the war. Given the text, the State Department and U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg prepared a devastating rebuttal before Kosygin spoke. Goldberg told the FBI that prior knowledge of just what Kosygin would say was enormously valuable: “I don’t know where you got it, but if you get anything else like this, please let me have it.”
Manifestly, the Kremlin still trusted MORAT. Whatever suspicions Kazakov may have harbored, the KGB had been unable or unwilling to pursue them, and its failure illustrated the Soviet vulnerability the FBI so long exploited. The KGB had responsibility for conducting the operation and determining operational procedures; it had no control over policy governing the operation. The Politburo, Central Committee, and International Department dictated overall policy, the content of messages, how much money the American party would receive, when Morris came to Moscow. And when he came he talked most of the time to members of the Politburo, Central Committee, and International Department—and to the KGB only at their behest and his convenience.
After a Saturday night exchange of money and microfilm in the New York countryside, the FBI, using a cipher and code the KGB issued to Jack, sent a message to Moscow in his name. Typically, a message said: “To Able-Kit. Received 300 pairs of shoes April 6. Spring.” “Able-Kit” meant the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; “300 pairs of shoes” meant $300,000; “April 6” meant April 3 (in messages, three days were added to the
actual date of delivery); “Spring” meant Jack. The absence of other words meant the exchange occurred without incident and that Jack arrived home safely with the money.
The routine told the SOLO team much. Jack and Morris reported directly to the Central Committee rather than to the KGB. The Central Committee asked them to verify for it that the KGB had followed its orders and had not purloined any of the cash. The Soviet leadership unwittingly had made Jack, Morris, and their FBI confederates superiors of the KGB by retaining all authority over the operation without accepting any responsibility.
Morris warned though that the breach could swiftly and fatally close at any time. Seeing Jack in the veritable embrace of his political bosses, Kazakov retreated. If he had suspicions, he had no proof and was afraid to proceed without it. But if, as a result of some leak in Washington or mischance with documents in Moscow, the KGB ever acquired hard evidence, the patronage of Soviet rulers could not save Morris and Jack. Indeed, the rulers would turn on both of them with a vengeance.
Between October 1967 and June 1968, Morris journeyed into the Soviet bloc four times and mingled with communist leaders from North Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary as well as the Soviet Union. He reported that the Vietnamese were as determined as ever to wage war and that the Soviets were organizing all communist parties in the Western Hemisphere into a campaign to force the United States out of Vietnam. He also brought back seven thousand feet of film that showed imprisoned crewmen of the USS Pueblo, which had been seized off the high seas by the North Koreans.
