Operation Solo
Page 18
In Moscow, Ponomarev expressed concern for the safety of Morris and Jack and the security of MORAT. He said that Morris should continue to deal personally with chiefs of foreign parties and attend international communist conclaves as a secret delegate. However, in the United States the Soviets intended to use MORAT “only for confidential, urgent, and illegal matters.”
Shortly after Morris returned from Moscow on June 29, 1968, Jack’s KGB handler, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Chuchukin, signaled Jack to come to an emergency meeting. The Soviets wanted Hall and Morris to know the political situation in Czechoslovakia was rapidly deteriorating and there might be trouble. Referring to the Czech leadership under Alexander Dubcek, Chuchukin angrily declared, “If those revisionists don’t stop, something will have to be done.” Chuchukin summoned Jack twice more in the next ten days to advise him that Soviet efforts to reason with the Czechs and persuade them to return to the party fold, as defined by Moscow, had failed. All Chuchukin said proclaimed to Jack and Morris that the Soviets were about to act against Czechoslovakia. Accordingly, Burlinson notified headquarters that “A Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia appears imminent.”
At the time, Assistant Director William Sullivan controlled dissemination of SOLO intelligence and he deemed the report too vague to be forwarded to the White House, State Department, CIA, or anyone else. After Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in August 1968, New York and Chicago vehemently protested the failure of headquarters to circulate vital intelligence that the United States might have used to deter the invasion. Headquarters lamely responded, “You didn’t tell us how and when.”
When the invasion began, the Central Committee flashed a message to Jack for Hall, exhorting him and the American party to support the Soviet military intervention. If the Soviets had outlawed the baking of bread or sexual relations between husband and wife, Hall would have supported them. But he needed to know what to say and how to defend what in the eyes of many in the West, including many Western communists, was indefensible. To find out, he dispatched Morris to Moscow on August 23, barely two days after the invasion.
When Morris arrived, Ponomarev was engaged in discussions with representatives of the Czech regime newly installed in Prague with the help of tanks and bayonets. While waiting for him, Morris conferred with Mikhail Polonik, who had succeeded Kazakov as the KGB’s Moscow manager of MORAT. Polonik spoke to him courteously and respectfully in excellent English, and asked whether he could recommend any operational changes and if he had any complaints about the performance of the “New York [KGB] comrades.” Morris saw an opportunity and gently picked it up.
He had no complaints; he had only admiration for men who left their wives and children at night and on weekends to do their duty at personal risk. He also admired the sacrifices of the communications and cryptographic personnel who had to work nights and weekends to service MORAT. Morris had to account for the money, so he was familiar with the deliveries and their dangers, and he could recall only one time, a time when ice and snow made countryside roads impassible, that the New York comrades failed to deliver as scheduled. The radio messages always had been transmitted as scheduled. As for operational techniques, he really was not as qualified as Polonik and his comrades to judge—they had worked impeccably thus far—but he would ask Jack. And speaking of Jack: Sometimes he could be rude, even insolent, to your comrades. He really does not mean to be. He is just letting out emotions he cannot let out anywhere else. Remember, he is constantly risking the ruination of his wife, children, and himself.
Polonik politely interjected that everyone understood the pressures under which Jack labored and that everyone regarded him as a very able and devoted comrade. He thanked Morris for his evaluation of the New York comrades and hinted all might profit if it were repeated to some of Morris’ confidants, i.e., members of the Politburo.
The final draft of a communiqué pledging solidarity of purpose and action between the new Czechoslovakian regime and the Soviet Union was completed August 26. Just an hour afterward, Ponomarev received Morris. He looked gray, haggard, and in need of sleep yet seemed glad to see his old friend, someone he could really trust. And he spoke personally and frankly.
The Soviets regretted the necessity of interceding in Czechoslovakia but they had no choice. The “revisionist” policies of Dubcek, his “socialism with a human face,” were like a cancer that, unless excised, would grow and spread into Eastern Europe and even the Soviet Union. Unchecked, they conceivably could have propelled Czechoslovakia out of the Warsaw Pact alliance and splintered the international communist movement. Ponomarev acknowledged that the invasion had “created tensions with some parties” in Western Europe and asked if the Soviets could count on the “solidarity” of the American party.
Morris assured him that they could; under the leadership of Hall, the party was disciplined and reliable. A few dilettantes and poseurs might defect, but they did not matter.
“What is the general reaction in the United States?” Ponomarev asked.
Morris could have said: You probably have ensured that Richard Nixon will be the next president; you certainly have secured many, many billions more for the Pentagon; you have validated in the minds of the extreme Left the Chinese charge that the Soviet Union is just another chauvinist, imperialist power. But Morris was not in the business of giving the Soviets intelligence or analyses unless by so doing he served a clearly defined American interest. So he simply replied, “It is not favorable.”
They then came to Hall’s question about what the party line regarding Czechoslovakia should be. It was an embarrassing question, and Ponomarev disposed of it quickly. It ran: German revisionists, in connivance with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the CIA, with Dubcek acting, wittingly or unwittingly, as their front man, attempted to organize a counterrevolution. Fraternal neighbors of Czechoslovakia detected the plot and requested the Soviet Union to join them in rescuing the Czech people from imperialist aggression.
Morris knew that, to a majority of Americans who paid any attention to it, this explanation would convict the Soviets of being congenital liars as well as a menace. A month after talking to Ponomarev, he found that the Soviet justification of the invasion had been just as ill received by West European communists.
Morris landed in Budapest September 30 as a secret delegate to a conference of European party leaders to plan a more grandiose, worldwide conference. These smaller, preparatory meetings were important to the Soviets because they wanted to guarantee the outcome of the bigger assemblies. But among themselves the delegates talked mostly about Czechoslovakia, and for the first time in Morris’ memory their mood was anti-Soviet—not anticommunist, but anti-Soviet. Over dinner, a Soviet delegate gravely told Morris, “Revisionism is a virus infecting all communist parties.”
At Budapest, Ponomarev or another Soviet delegate admitted to Morris that the Soviets had failed fully to comprehend what was happening in Czechoslovakia until it was too late to do anything except use military force and that they had miscalculated the political and international consequences of the invasion. “Our military intelligence is perfect. Our political intelligence is just the reverse.” Soon Morris saw and read ominous and, to him, appalling signs that this assessment was accurate insofar as it pertained to “political intelligence” and political understanding of the United States.
The long, black limousine that took him from the airport toward his Moscow apartment on November 17, 1968, had to stop, and Morris parted the curtains to look at the passing convoy of tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, and artillery. Jets whistled low overhead, and he thought he was in the midst of a military maneuver. In some of the sections of Moscow he traversed, there were more troops than civilians and armored vehicles were everywhere. It was as if the Soviets expected the city momentarily to be besieged.
After a few hours at the International Department, Morris began to understand. The election of Nixon as president of the United States had stunned and frightene
d the Soviets. They viewed him as a fanatic anticommunist who might attempt to annihilate or overwhelm the Soviet Union by a surprise nuclear attack. Because the Soviets tended to act upon what they believed, this crazy belief was dangerous to everybody. Morris wanted never to appear to be trying to influence the Soviets, and he offered his judgments or analyses only when they requested them. But to the extent their questions allowed, he tried subtly to nudge the new czars in Moscow back toward reality without saying, “You’re crazy.”
No, the outcome of the election did not astonish him. He recalled telling everyone at the International Department back in the summer that the presidential contest appeared to be close and that either Nixon or Hubert Humphrey could win. True, Nixon was an inveterate anticommunist and he probably would turn out to be a tough adversary. He also was an astute politician adept at divining the mood of the American public, and the public, already deeply divided by the war in Vietnam, hardly was in a mood to start World War III. In any case, there was no immediate danger (i.e., no need to keep tanks rumbling around Moscow) because before undertaking any fundamental changes in foreign policy, Nixon would need time to organize and consolidate his administration.
Boyle hoped to take a few days off during the Christmas season of 1968 to be with his children, and no one would have faulted him for doing so; for years he had been unable to use all the leave to which he was entitled. As it was, he and Morris worked until December 23, driven by the conviction that the incoming Nixon administration needed to be immediately informed of the misapprehensions the Kremlin had about it and their dangers. Much more was required than a simple, straightforward recitation of facts.
Headquarters had instructed the SOLO team to accompany reports with their own explanation of the significance of the contents; no one had empowered them to recommend, much less make political policy. Their interpretations thus had to show policymakers what ought to be done and the likely consequences of inaction without presuming to tell anyone what to do. At the same time, nothing in the analyses could hint that they were made by someone with rare understanding of Soviet mentality derived from lifelong immersion in communism and someone Soviet rulers trusted with their innermost thoughts.
In essence, the analysis Morris and Boyle submitted that December said: The Soviets are proceeding from the irrational premise that upon assuming office President Nixon may order a nuclear attack upon them. Unless they are disabused of this irrational assumption, they are likely to act irrationally.
Morris and Boyle hoped that the Nixon administration would conclude that, by all available diplomatic means, the Soviets must be reassured that the United States had no intention of attacking them.
Evidently it did, for by the time Morris returned to Moscow in March 1969 Soviet attitudes had undergone a striking change that could not have occurred without some American initiatives. All talk about impending war had ceased, and the tanks and troops so conspicuous the preceding November had disappeared. Suslov and Ponomarev said that achievements of understandings with the United States had become a primary objective of Soviet foreign policy. They hoped that Nixon would “see the light of reality” and agree to arms limitations, and they intended to be patient in negotiating with the Americans.
For the first time, however, they explicitly expressed fears that the United States and China would unite against the Soviet Union. Morris could not ascertain whether their concern arose from concrete intelligence collected either in Washington or Peking or whether it was based solely upon analysis of the drift of world events. Regardless, the political intelligence or analysis that the Soviets only a few months before had pronounced abysmal in this instance was excellent.
As for the Chinese, the Soviets seemed on the verge of losing all patience. Never before in all their many conversations with Morris about China, spanning nearly a decade, had the Soviets alluded to the possibility of war. Now they did, declaring they were prepared to employ military force against the Chinese if that proved to be the only way to deal with them. They did not want war and they planned one last appeal to the Chinese, but they were ready for war.13
The Soviets elaborated upon these positions while Morris attended an international conference of parties in Moscow during May and June. They were still afraid that Nixon might revert to policies of “Cold War and containment”; they worried increasingly about an accommodation between the Chinese and Americans, yet they remained committed to improving relations with the United States and reaching some arms agreements. Developments in China appalled them. Ponomarev told Morris that Maoists had murdered the former president of China, Liu Saho-Chi, and his wife, and thereby virtually destroyed the Communist Party.
Morris heard more from Brezhnev in September. He had to fly to Moscow to arrange for Hall to go to the funeral of Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, and when Hall came back to Moscow, Brezhnev briefed him and Morris about secret discussions between Kosygin and Chou En Lai conducted just a few days before on September 13, 1969. The Soviets judged it futile for the time being to try further to settle their ideological differences with the Chinese. So Kosygin proposed some relatively small, practical actions to rebuild civil relations—increased trade, sharing information about world affairs, exchange of newspaper correspondents, mediation of border disputes, and resumption of contacts between friendship societies. Chou listened sullenly and agreed to nothing, and Brezhnev predicted the Chinese would continue to agree to nothing.
In December 1969, during the annual review of the next American party budget, Ponomarev confirmed that the negotiations in Peking had come to naught. The Chinese had resumed their nasty calumny and bellicose propaganda against the Soviets, and Ponomarev despaired, “China is our most important international problem.”
He was more optimistic or at least hopeful about relations with the United States. Both Soviet and American negotiators engaged in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were “playing their cards close to the chest,” but the possibility of some agreements existed and the Soviets were willing to make concessions if the Americans reciprocated.
Enabled by SOLO to read the thoughts of Soviet rulers, Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and confidants within a year had transformed the attitudes of Soviet rulers. In November 1968, this little band of oligarchs viewed Nixon as the devil personified, threatening them with extinction. By November 1969, these same men sufficiently trusted Nixon to make dealing with him the foundation of their foreign policy. They did not like him—they still regarded him and the United States as enemies—but they respected him.
By nature and nurture, Kissinger was a scholar not prone to adulatory or extravagant statements. Years would pass before the FBI revealed to him (or to the president) who Agent 58 was and just why he could do what he did. Kissinger had no ties to the FBI, nothing to hide from the FBI, and nothing personally to gain from the FBI. But on his own he went to the FBI and said, “What you are doing is fabulous. You have opened a window not only into the Kremlin but into the minds of the men in the Kremlin. This is unprecedented in modern history.”
Through Missions 35, 36, and 37 to Moscow, Morris kept the window open during 1970 and précis of reports by him and Boyle show how wide the view given the United States was:
A vicious feud rends the Soviet leadership. An ultra-nationalist faction opposes Brezhnev, advocates rehabilitation of Stalin, and reinstitution of his repressive methods. However, Brezhnev will prevail and purge his opponents.
The Soviet people are not “pro-Israeli” but they are not “enthusiastically pro-Arab.” In fact, they don’t give a damn about the Middle East and they increasingly resent Soviet aid to Arab countries, believing that the money should be spent at home. For the Soviets, foreign aid is becoming a domestic problem.
The Soviets believe they are falling behind the United States in the “scientific and technological revolution” and that, unless they “catch up,” their military power and political influence will decline. They intend to allocate more resources to science and technology.
The Soviet Union has no intention of helping the United States leave Vietnam gracefully and will not cooperate with the United States in any manner regarding Vietnam. On the contrary, the Soviets plan to increase the quantity and quality of their military aid to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong.
The Soviets now are convinced that the Chinese want to become a silent partner of the Americans in world affairs.
While Morris was in Moscow, the FBI received a communication from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), a service it regarded and treated as a brother. A well-placed member of the Canadian Communist Party, revolted by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, brooded and concluded that he long had been on the wrong side. In the words of Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslav political philosopher who once ranked just below Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao as a communist ideologue, he “thought his way out of communism,” just as Morris had. Conscience impelled him to go to the RCMP and detail what he knew about communist subversion. The Canadians naturally were most interested in what the communists were doing in Canada, but toward the end of his confessional the convert told a story that caused his RCMP listener /interrogator to ask, “Are you willing to tell that face to face to the FBI?”
The Detroit field office, being nearest to Toronto, took the testimony and filed a report, which roughly said:
The CPUSA has an “elder statesman” who has ties with many Communist parties throughout the world, including the CPUSSR. He is Morris Childs, who years ago was district organizer in Chicago and later became secretly active in the leadership of the CPUSA. Childs travels extensively for the CPUSA, including trips behind the Iron Curtain. When he travels, he uses assumed names, and when introduced in foreign circles, he is introduced as Mr. So-and-So or as Mr. Smith. Source believes that through the many channels of Childs, the CPUSA is able to obtain funds from Moscow. Source does not know how the funds are passed or handled. Source believes the CPUSA could not sustain itself without outside support. Source said Childs has intimate contact with the leaders of the Canadian Communist Party. Source said he met Childs several times in Prague and considered him a conspiratorial figure. His name never appears among those listed as attending international party conferences, even though he speaks at them. Source said Childs undoubtedly has contact with “elderly statesmen” in Soviet bloc countries.