by John Barron
At the Kremlin, Hall did explain, but Brezhnev was mystified. He asked, “Chto etot Vatergate?”—“What is this Watergate?” Ponomarev replied that it was a petty matter Nixon’s political opponents were trying to magnify out of all proportions; it amounted to nothing.
When Hall was present Morris usually deferred to him, saying nothing unless asked a direct question. Now he spoke up, “Boris, that is exactly what I thought until a few weeks ago. I believe Gus felt the same way. No one can be blamed for not understanding Watergate. Most Americans don’t understand it or care about it. But things are changing rapidly, aren’t they, Gus?”
Hall may have been thuggish, uncultured, avaricious; he was not stupid. He picked up the cue and proceeded with the recitation he and Morris had rehearsed. Nixon’s political opponents were trying to exploit a trivial incident to reverse the results of the 1972 elections. He and Comrade Morris thought they might succeed. “There is a real chance that Nixon will be forced out of office and you can’t be sure he will be around.”
Brezhnev then asked of the assembled Politburo and Central Committee members, “Is this correct?”
Suslov answered, “If Morris [not Hall] says so, it probably is.”
Brezhnev nodded at Morris but spoke to Hall. “This is an example of comradely cooperation between fraternal parties. It is an example of why we so esteem you, Comrade Morris, and your party. We will pay attention to this strange Watergate business.”
They talked next about Brezhnev’s trip to the United States, and, as Morris said to Boyle, Brezhnev “acted like a little kid going off to his first summer camp.” He had confidence in Nixon and Kissinger; but what would happen to him in a land marauded by gangsters, drug addicts, and insane people who daily murdered people, even public officials? Hall, who had been briefed by Morris, who had been briefed by Boyle, assured Brezhnev that he would be accorded a respectful and secure welcome. The United States Secret Service would protect him just as securely as it did Nixon, and he could bring along his own KGB bodyguards with whom the Secret Service would collaborate. It would be good if a few of them went to Washington right away to talk to the FBI and Secret Service.
There were a lot of crackpots in America, and there might be some anti-Soviet demonstrations by a few lunatics walking around with stupid placards. But the U.S. military would keep them far away. “And our party has influence. We will persuade the press that these demonstrators are a lunatic fringe.”
Morris thought, Gus, you couldn’t persuade a single American journalist to say that apple pie tastes good.
Ponomarev invited or commanded Morris to lunch in his office suite, and there Morris discerned why Ponomarev, who only recently had emerged from the hospital, was so sprightly and happy. Morris always hid his knowledge of the Russian language from the Soviets and, except when talking to men of the International Department or KGB who spoke English, he conversed through an interpreter. The interpreters were invariably excellent and invariably male. Now Ponomarev had a new interpreter, Natalia, who was every boy’s dream. She had golden hair and blue eyes, and her black dress, which could have come from Marshall Field’s in Chicago, did nothing to conceal her lovely contours. She was twenty-five or so, she looked and talked like an American teenager, and Morris guessed she was the daughter of a Soviet diplomat or KGB officer and had gone to high school in the United States. He wondered just what sort of deal Ponomarev had made with her father. The male interpreters were efficient and emotionless; they tried to ease conversation and make it seem as though they didn’t exist. Natalia had a sense of shame and humor, and she blushed or giggled when something embarrassed or amused her. Ponomarev indulged her, and you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out why.
Natalia both blushed and giggled as she interpreted “delicate matters.” Comrade Brezhnev had a pretty young niece of whom he was especially fond. She was an Aeroflot stewardess and a highly qualified nurse who examined Brezhnev at night. She longed to see America. Could Brezhnev bring her along, and could she examine him at night?
Morris replied that the U.S. Secret Service doubtless was not unfamiliar with such matters and that the KGB should talk frankly with the Secret Service. All could be arranged among gentlemen.
Morris, as would any male in the world, admired the physical beauty of Natalia. She won his heart by giggles that showed she recognized the underlying absurdity of the question she interpreted or translated. “What should Comrade Brezhnev wear in America?”
A man who held the power of life and death over the inhabitants of one-sixth of the world’s land surface needed to be told by a little seventy-year-old Jew from Chicago what kind of clothes to put on!
Walt, you have to think like they do. Instead of giving the simple, commonsense answer any juvenile clerk at J.C. Penney’s would have given, Morris poured out a polemic about clothes. The capitalists had duped American workers into thinking that any one of them could become a capitalist. Clothes in America were a symbol. Most Americans laughed at the goofy garb worn by Comrade Fidel; they wanted to wear clothes like those of a British prime minister or a fashion model. Soviet tailors should take Brezhnev’s measurements exactly, then the “special comrades” should have dark suits tailored for him in London, Milan, or New York.
Ponomarev lost his temper and brought Natalia nearly to tears. “He says he is sick and tired, and he used a bad word, of hearing about how much better everything is in the West.”
Morris, for the only time in Moscow, lost his temper. “Then you tell him to ask his own [obscenity] tailors what to put on Brezhnev’s fat ass.”
“Sir, I cannot use those words.”
“Use any words you want.”
Ponomarev rose, picked Morris up, and hugged him. The terrified and beautiful Natalia said, “He says, ‘We both are old and tired and we have worked too long. Are we not still friends?’” Morris said that they were.
On the flight out of Moscow, Morris and Eva were the only passengers in the first-class cabin. They declined the champagne but accepted a copy of the International Herald-Tribune. As the plane ascended from the runway, people in the rear cabin began to clap, shout, and sing La Marseillaise. Morris asked a stewardess why the people were shouting and singing. “Because, monsieur, we are leaving the Soviet Union.”
Morris said, “All right, bring us a bottle of champagne.”
thirteen
THREATS FROM WITHIN
MORRIS THOUGHT HE UNDERSTOOD all the implications of Watergate, and that is why he had Hall warn the Soviets about its potential consequences. He never imagined that the scandal could affect him and SOLO. But as more and more government officials were hauled before congressional committees and grand juries, as more leaked secrets appeared in the press, Morris and Jack increasingly worried about the security of the operation and their own personal safety. In an effort to reassure them, the FBI convened an operational conference in New York on May 31, 1973, a few days before Brezhnev arrived in the United States. Present were Assistant Director Edward S. Miller, Section Chief William A. Brannigan, Burlinson, Langtry, Boyle, Morris, and Jack.
“We have tremendous concern about security,” Miller began. “We have to provide extra special handling of this [SOLO] information because we are operating in special times. Many people are telling everything they know. Despite this horrible situation, we cannot let the whole organization go down the drain. The whole U.S. intelligence community is being tested. We cannot let these desperate people like [John] Dean and [H.R.] Halderman shape the destiny of our country. I assure you that security is absolutely the highest priority in the FBI.”
Jack spoke next. “Over almost twenty-two years we have built an apparatus for our government and country and we built it to our specifications. We said we were going to the very top. This is exemplified by my brother’s last trip. This is the apex. But the question is how can we save the apparatus in view of these ‘desperate people.’ We have had some great achievements and I am proud of them. But all the years of
sacrifice could go out the window with a situation such as we have today.”
Jack complained that since the death of J. Edgar Hoover in 1972, he and Morris felt they were functioning in a void and that they and their accomplishments were being ignored by the FBI leadership in Washington. “I remember a small thing. When my father died, Director Hoover sent a personal representative, an inspector, to express his sympathy. It was a small thing but to me, significant.”
Acknowledging that the FBI had experienced turmoil, Miller declared, “When the history of the first one hundred years of the FBI is written, the highlight will be this operation, the people in this room. When the history is written, this operation will be unique, not only in the FBI, but in the world. Nothing could equal it.”
Miller stressed how stringently the FBI guarded SOLO intelligence. “We are protecting this intelligence by hand-carrying it by armed messenger to the White House to the man who reads it. He reads it, and it is hand-carried right back to my office. This is how we are protecting the product. We know we have to do everything possible to preserve the security of the operation.”
However, Jack for the time being refused to be propitiated, and he continued alternately to brag, then gripe. “We have built this apparatus, and we are very jealous of it. When I say ‘we,’ I mean all of us including people in the Bureau. It is an apparatus that runs smoothly. We practically think the way the Russians do. My wife is now more involved physically than I am and so is my brother’s wife. My brother and I have come to the conclusion that we are prisoners, prisoners of the Communist Party, the Russians, prisoners of the apparatus. I cannot be more than two hours away from a radio message. The only real vacation I have ever had was when I had major surgery while Gus Hall and my brother were overseas. My brother has never had a vacation in twenty years.
“This thing so carefully built through so much dedication can be destroyed by lack of security. When I was overseas getting ready to go to Cuba, a column by Victor Riesel exposed the money operation. This article was shown to me in Moscow and they asked, ‘How come?’ When I came back from the mission, and it was a good mission, I was promised it would never happen again. But something happened again a few months later when my brother was on the other side.”
Morris had additional complaints of his own. “The Russians used to call us in for training in special techniques, codes, radio, etc. When the Bureau would get wind of it, somebody would come running up from Washington and ask us about it. They paid ten times the attention to these little things as to important matters that could affect the fate of the nation. I don’t know how much attention is paid to some of these documents my wife and I would spend hours copying.” Next he decried security lapses. “So there I sit talking to Suslov, not below the number-three man in the Soviet Union, and he pulls out an excerpt from the Congressional Record with a report from the FBI director about the budget and asks about it. I passed it off and remarked that they have to say those things to get their money. But how often can we go through these things?” Finally, Morris said something that must have been hard for him to say. “Human beings, no matter how tough, have sensitivities. I think as you get older, you get more sensitive. We used to get letters from the director after these trips. In the last years, we have come back with all kinds of information. But we don’t get these letters any more. This is not only a question of vanity, though we all have some vanity. I am talking beyond vanity—about friendship, loyalty, and esprit whereby you protect your own.”
Miller seemed to meditate for half a minute or so before saying, “We could and should have done more. We will.” And at once, he tried. Morris and Jack were just as much a part of the FBI family as he, Bill, Al, Walt, and John, and as family members they were entitled to be informed about family business, which of course was private. The death of Hoover naturally precipitated change and invited temporary organizational disarray. The new director, L. Patrick Gray, whose appointment had yet to be confirmed by a hostile Senate, was still adjusting to unfamiliar responsibilities. Gray, other FBI executives, and the FBI as an organization had fallen under severe political attack, which caused personal stress and diverted attention from normal duties.
Morris and Jack had emphasized the necessity of security; the FBI agreed and consequently enforced extraordinary security procedures to safeguard the operation. Because in the main they had succeeded, very few people either at headquarters or in the field, and nobody outside the FBI, had been fully informed of SOLO. Pending Senate confirmation of Mr. Gray and until “the clouds cleared,” no one else would be admitted to the “inner circle.”
The intelligence SOLO was producing—the verbal and documentary revelations of the thoughts and intentions of Soviet leaders and their reactions to the words and comportment of American leaders—was literally priceless. Miller said he seemed to recall reading in the top-secret files, now kept in special safes in his office, something to the effect that the CIA had offered to pay the FBI any amount of money to be a participant in the operation, even though it was ignorant of the nature of the operation and the identity of its principals. Morris himself that very morning eloquently had traced the effects of SOLO intelligence upon American–Chinese relations, and its contributions to a historic realignment in the balance of world power. Famous men, whose names were well known, hungered for their reports.
“I cannot mention their names,” Miller went on. “I can remind you of what you said earlier. Whenever the Soviets talk to Nixon or Kissinger, they consult you before and after the talks. Do you think Nixon and Kissinger are disinterested in what they tell and ask you? Sometimes at the White House or State Department when people hand back reports to our messenger—he of course is more than a messenger—they send along handwritten notes of commendation or appreciation or congratulations. Sometimes we get letters or phone calls. But nobody can say anything about you because nobody knows anything about you; they only know what you produce. We can’t tell anybody, not even colleagues I would trust with my life, what the president or secretary of state or director of Central Intelligence says to us in confidence. Maybe we have been remiss. Maybe we should have tried to find some way to circumvent this rule so we could let you know how much what you are doing is valued. But to do that, we would have to talk about you and SOLO. None of us can have it all ways at once.”
On a scale of one to five, Boyle rated Miller’s performance a six, and he sensed that it had placated Morris and revived his faith. Langtry, like Boyle, was a military man and, like Boyle, he had kept silent while superiors spoke. But he sensed it was time to speak up and rein Jack in.
Langtry really understood and liked Jack. Undoubtedly, Jack and Morris had conferred before the conference and agreed upon what each would say, so whatever concerns Jack expressed were also those of Morris. Jack worked best on a loose leash so he could exercise his native brashness, initiative, and ingenuity as a self-described con man; but he had to be kept on a leash.
In complaining earlier, Jack mentioned that he recently had been upbraided by his KGB case officer (Vladimir Aleksandrovich Chuchukin). Brezhnev had sent an urgent message for Jack to deliver at once to Gus Hall; the message arrived on a Saturday night, and the KGB had not been able to reach Jack until it signaled on Monday morning for an emergency meeting that afternoon. “We must be able to contact you seven days a week,” Chuchukin had said.
Langtry said that the FBI could “guard” (monitor) any and all designated radio frequencies twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week if necessary. But he recalled that when Jack last underwent such intensive interrogation in Moscow, his KGB inquisitor had asked if Jack did not think it strange that everything about the operation always went off flawlessly. Jack should point out to Chuchukin that he precisely followed communication procedures dictated by the KGB and that the radio schedule issued by the KGB called for no transmission that Saturday night, so neither he nor his auxiliary radioman (NY-4309S*) had been by their receivers. Jack (actually Langtry) had checked the s
ignal site on Saturday morning, and there was no call for a meeting. According to the KGB plan, if the right chalk mark did not appear, Jack was free for the weekend.
Jack had been willing to give up many a Saturday and Sunday to smuggle the money. But always he had advance notice; if the KGB wanted to revise the communications plan to provide for sudden, emergency contact on Saturday night or Sunday morning, swell, “peachy keen.” In the meantime, don’t blame me for doing what you and your whole organization have told me to do.
Jack should say something else that Chuchukin, an intelligent man, would have to report, both in the interests of the KGB and self-protection: By effectively demanding that Jack be on call around the clock throughout the week, the KGB was jeopardizing MORAT. While handling clandestine communications, accepting and hiding illegal cash coming in now at an increasing rate that exceeded a million dollars a year, being at the beck and call of Gus Hall, and while supporting Morris, Jack needed and wanted to take care of his own family and business. What would the neighbors think if he skulked around the house all day awaiting messages from Moscow, never going to work or the grocery store? He believed the FBI watched KGB officers whom it had identified and tried to listen to their telephone calls. For Chuchukin to call him at home on a Saturday night over an open line was, as they had taught him in Moscow, suicidal, amateurish, irresponsible, dangerous.
Langtry also played basketball, and with a glance he passed the intellectual ball to Boyle. As reflexively as when he captained championship teams, Boyle picked it up and shot, “Jack, after dumping on the KGB and going through your poor-me routine, why don’t you apologize. Say you’re sorry for being rude; say you are under a terrible strain; say that you know he, his family, and his organization are under great strain; say you know something about bureaucracy. Then say, ‘If there are problems, do you want my brother to bring them up with Brezhnev, Suslov, Ponomarev, or Andropov?’”
