Operation Solo

by John Barron

  In New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Boyle developed contacts among customs and immigration officials who gladly helped him and the FBI. In Seattle he didn’t have any, but he persuaded authorities there to pass Morris and Eva without questions or inspection. Unbeknown to him at the time, one of the customs officials had second thoughts and panicked. Had he let in narcotics smugglers or Mafiosi or spies? To cover himself, he went to the FBI agent assigned to the airport, said that someone impersonating an FBI agent duped him into admitting two dubious characters and that the impersonator himself appeared to be “under the influence.” This allegation was inherently implausible. Why would a trained customs inspector blindly obey the orders of some strange drunk? If he had doubts about the validity of FBI credentials shown him, he could have confirmed or dispelled them by a one-minute telephone call. Did Morris and Eva fit the profile of the types of people inspectors are taught to guard against? Without making any inquiries of his own, the Seattle agent relayed the allegation to headquarters as if it were credible and the FBI soon determined that the allegedly drunken impersonator was in fact Walter Boyle from Chicago.

  Kelley was away, and his chief deputy directed Wannall, “Go out there and fire him.”

  Wannall protested, “But shouldn’t we get the facts first?”

  “All right, get the facts and then fire him.”

  Chicago SAC Held called just as Boyle was sitting down to breakfast after early Sunday Mass. “Ray Wannall is here and he wants to talk to you. Please come to the office, the sooner, the better.”

  It was to have been a family day—the park and zoo followed by hamburgers and sundaes for the six children—and Boyle was disappointed at having to disappoint them, but he was pleased that Wannall had flown out to discuss SOLO.

  Wannall was interested in something else. After polite salutations, he said, “Walt, I’d like for you to go to your office now and sit down and write a detailed account of your trip to the West Coast. I want you to put down everything that happened, from beginning to end. You can’t include too much detail. Take as much time as you need. Dick and I will be waiting.”

  Boyle started to exclaim Why! But a stare from Held said, For your own sake, just do as he says.

  Dutifully, Boyle detailed the whole trip: Upon arriving in Los Angeles, he in accordance with rules notified the Los Angeles office that he was in the area and where he was staying. After learning that the flight from Norway had been diverted, he notified the Los Angeles office that he was leaving the area. When he alighted in Seattle he informed the local field office that he was there; he obtained assistance from customs and immigration officials; he told the Seattle office he was leaving.

  Wannall read the narrative slowly and remarked, “It looks like you didn’t get much sleep on that trip.”

  The anger welling within Boyle caused him to blurt out an impertinence that surely would have provoked a less gentlemanly and insightful superior than Wannall: “I didn’t go out there to sleep.”

  “All right Walt,” Wannall said. “I’ll be here for a few days and I’m sure we’ll talk again.”

  SAC Held was pure, old-time FBI, a Hooverite, relentlessly tough and courageously fair, and Boyle knew that if he could get to him he could get the truth. But every time Boyle peered into Held’s office, there sat Wannall on the leather sofa. Finally Boyle persuaded a fellow agent to entice Wannall out of the office, and he was able to speak to Held alone. “What the hell is going on?”

  “You’re under massive investigation for being drunk on duty. Right now, Ray Wannall is the best friend you have. He and the Bureau are checking out every word you wrote and, thus far, everything checks.”

  To this day, Boyle refuses to disclose who called him at home late at night. Maybe the call came from Burlinson or Langtry or a secret SOLO ally at headquarters. A better bet would be that the caller’s initials were R.H., as in Richard Held. Be that as it may, the caller was informed and spoke authoritatively. Everything Boyle wrote about the trip to Los Angeles and Seattle had been confirmed. Nevertheless, the FBI intended to remove him from SOLO on the pretext that his expertise was needed at headquarters. The caller offered some advice, “You didn’t hear this from me, but it wouldn’t hurt if you told 58 about the situation. In fact, if I were you that is exactly what I would do and I would do it right away.”

  IN SELECTING A PLACE to live, Morris had to satisfy the divergent demands of his multiple lives. He needed a home that was in keeping with his ostensible status as a wealthy businessman, which is what Hall and the Kremlin thought he was. But as a devoted proletarian he did not want to live ostentatiously on the North Shore like a greedy capitalist. The necessity of traveling so often and his inability, because of security reasons, to employ servants made maintenance of a house impractical.

  Morris solved the problem by buying a penthouse in a handsome building occupied primarily by wealthy and friendly black families. In Moscow Morris was regarded as a comrade so principled that he was even willing to live among the “black asses,” as the Russians called them.

  Wannall visited the penthouse which Eva, with art, antiques, Oriental carpets, and fine crystal, had transformed into an inviting home. During dinner she flirted with him while Morris entertained with tales of adventures in the Soviet Union, including the story of how he and the director of the Leningrad Shipyard became so drunk that they got into a fistfight with each other. He recalled that, when he first saw Moscow in 1929, trees lined many boulevards and the beautiful architecture reflected the verve and imagination of Russians. But Stalin soon ordered the trees cut down and scarred the face of the city with huge, box-like buildings that glowered menacingly down at the people. Friends in 1947 told him that Stalin later persuaded himself that the felling of the trees, that he had ordered, was part of a plot to enable German aircraft to land on the streets and that he executed many of the “plotters.” Eva piped up, “That Stalin, he was such a barbarian.”

  Over the years, some things had changed for the better; some had not. Ponomarev still expected Morris to bring aspirin, Alka-Seltzer, and Contac; everybody still wanted Camel and Chesterfield cigarettes, and cosmetics. “They want anything American,” Eva interjected. “Secretly, they like us, really.”

  SOLO was not discussed until after dinner. While Morris excused himself supposedly to call Jack in New York, Eva remarked they had heard Walt might be leaving. Well, she understood, nothing is forever; Walt needed to get on with his career, and certainly if anyone ever deserved a promotion, Walt did. Doubtless the Bureau had more important things for him to do, doubtless it had operations more important than SOLO. And Walt had been stuck in Chicago a long time; let’s see, how long had he been fiddling around with their little operation—about thirteen years? That was a long time. Of course, nobody understood Morris as well as Walt did, and Morris trusted him, and nobody understood the operation as well as Walt did, except maybe Al (Burlinson) and John (Langtry), but they also heard that Al was retiring.

  Wannall, being a young man, might find it hard to understand, but old people tend to get into a rut, to expect, perhaps unreasonably, that things will continue the way they were. Sometimes old people start thinking of a young man as a son, especially when after many years they know they always can count on him. Still, Eva understood, but she wanted Wannall also to understand. Maybe the time had come for her to stop. She had traveled to Moscow at least twenty times; each time she was afraid, and when she wrapped documents around her body she was terrified. She was most terrified when Morris was over there without her. Outside of him, Walt was the person she relied upon most. If he were to go, she did not want to go on. If she did not go on, she was not sure Morris would; Wannall would have to take that up with Morris. Of course, if Morris quit, so would Jack.

  To Wannall, it was clear Eva spoke for Morris. She starred in a cabaret written, directed, and staged by him, essentially a reprise of the blackmail he had perpetrated on the Soviets in Moscow. But Wannall was a forthright man, and so he
spoke to Morris frankly: yes, the Bureau was considering transferring Boyle to headquarters—what did Morris think? Morris said Boyle was his best friend, and he could not imagine SOLO continuing without him.

  Having listened to Wannall’s report of his findings and his conversations with Morris and Eva, Kelley asked him if he thought Boyle was innocent. Wannall recited available facts: To the extent investigators could check Boyle’s written account, they had corroborated all he said. They had not located any witnesses to the encounter between him and the complaining customs official in Seattle, but no one else interviewed there thought he had been “under the influence”; none of his present or past associates interviewed had ever seen him drink to excess, much less on duty. Boyle had received a disciplinary transfer to Chicago in 1962, evidently for threatening an inspector with physical violence, and not long afterward headquarters had reprimanded him—the reason was unclear. Ever since, his record had been exemplary, as outstanding as it could be. Boyle had for years maintained an intimate professional and personal relationship with the most important asset the FBI had, and the results spoke for themselves.

  Do you personally think Boyle can and should remain a linchpin of SOLO?

  Unequivocally and emphatically, Wannall said yes. Thereupon, Kelley ordered the allegation against Boyle dismissed and effaced, and decreed that he would remain in Chicago; Wannall was to inform everybody; and if there were any residual problems at headquarters, Kelley himself was to take care of them.

  CONGRESS ENACTED LEGISLATION, effective in 1975, mandating that FBI agents retire by age fifty-five, and as Burlinson was nearing seventy, he had to leave after thirty-five years of service. He and Freyman were the fathers of SOLO, and for other team members his departure was akin to the death of a family patriarch. Headquarters continued to make the policy decisions and support the field offices. But in terms of daily operational decisions and the nurturing of Morris, Jack, Eva, and Roz, Langtry and Boyle were now the fathers.

  In one of the most odious duties of their careers, the “fathers” soon had to put Morris and Jack under surveillance, placing wiretaps on their home telephones and otherwise looking for indicators that they might be double agents actually working for the Soviet Union. Neither had done anything whatsoever to warrant such suspicion. On the contrary, both had for more than two decades loyally, bravely, and brilliantly served the United States. Again and again, the intelligence they produced had proven to be accurate, and numerous evaluators likened it to intellectual gold.

  The FBI decision to investigate its two most important assets and reassess its greatest operation resulted primarily from pressures exerted by CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. A man of formidable intellect, Angleton wielded considerable influence in the American intelligence community and had a personal following in other government agencies, including the FBI. Perhaps as a counterintelligence chief should, he looked skeptically upon defectors and Soviet nationals recruited by the CIA, viewing them as possible double agents sent or made available by the Soviets to purvey deceptive information or infiltrate U.S. operations.

  There was a notable exception. Angleton reposed inordinate confidence in KGB Major Anatoly Golitsyn who in 1961 fled from the Soviet embassy in Helsinki where he processed intelligence reports. From these reports, Golitsyn supplied clues that eventually led to the arrest of dangerous Soviet spies in Western Europe, and as long as he presented factual data, he was a very valuable defector.

  But there came a time when Golitsyn had no more new facts to give. He replaced them with imaginative theory and conjecture. According to one of his theories, the conflicts between the Soviet Union and China were not real; they were a hoax, a grand disinformation scheme. The trusting Angleton embraced this view until the end of his career. Golitsyn also asserted that the next Soviet defector to arrive in the United States would be a controlled KGB agent dispatched to worm his way into the CIA and to assist other spies on the outside.

  The next significant defector to arrive was Yuri Nosenko, who came in 1964. After Angleton and his lieutenants thought they detected serious discrepancies and falsifications in Nosenko’s account of himself, the CIA incarcerated and psychologically tortured him in an effort to extract a confession, but he never confessed. The FBI, which possessed information unavailable to the CIA, always considered Nosenko a bona fide defector and ultimately the CIA agreed, as did all other Western security services that interrogated him. Angleton, however, remained unconvinced.

  The FBI had recruited a KGB officer, code named “Fedora,” who posed as a Soviet diplomat at the United Nations. Queried by the FBI, Fedora confirmed some of what Nosenko had told the CIA and said he was a genuine defector. In Angleton’s eyes, he thereby convicted himself of being a double agent participating in a plot to foist off another double agent on the CIA. Angleton thereupon commenced an unremitting campaign to convince the FBI that Fedora was a Soviet plant.

  Fedora informed the FBI that the KGB had a contact in the American Communist Party and that it gave money to the party. A few times he notified the FBI that a colleague was preparing to meet the contact and urged the FBI to follow him and identify the contact. Some of those in the FBI swayed to Angleton’s view of Fedora later argued that the fact that he provided information pertaining to SOLO indicated that the operation was “contaminated.”

  On the basis of a statement Ponomarev made to Morris, the FBI, without revealing its source, in September 1973 advised the CIA that the Soviet Union appeared prepared to grant diplomatic recognition to Israel. A short time later, on October 6, Egypt attacked Israel. Angleton then accused the FBI of disseminating disinformation spread to cause the Israelis to relax their vigil when war was imminent.

  Finally even those in the FBI who rejected all of Angleton’s theses as spurious, and they were a majority, acknowledged that SOLO had gone on for an extraordinarily long time and that a reappraisal might be appropriate.

  While also trained to be skeptical, Boyle and Langtry leavened their professional skepticism with common sense, logic, and a regard for demonstrable facts, and both would have bet their lives on the honesty and fidelity of Morris and Jack. Boyle observed to Langtry that, even if Morris were conspiring with the Soviets rather than against them, this veteran conspirator would say or do nothing in the United States to implicate himself because he could talk to the Soviets securely in Moscow almost any time he wished. Hence, telephone taps would be futile. Langtry in turn pointed out that, if Jack were colluding with the Soviets, he gladly would accept their invitations to come to Moscow instead of dodging them, as he had done since 1967. Nevertheless, Boyle and Langtry could not argue professionally against an investigation of Morris and Jack. Espionage can be ugly, and they now embarked upon the new and ugly duty of helping to spy on their friends.

  They could, however, argue for adoption of special procedures. Neither Boyle nor Langtry had any income outside their FBI salaries, and Boyle was raising six children. Over the years, both spent their own money on SOLO, in some months quite a bit relative to their incomes. Boyle was authorized to go anywhere at any time at government expense without having to explain why he went; and every conversation with Langtry in a way constituted “official business.” Yet when he flew to New York to talk privately with Langtry about “what to do right” within the FBI, he paid for his ticket out of his own pocket.

  After talking privately in New York on a Sunday, the two began making some demands of headquarters. The transcripts of conversations recorded by taps on the telephones of Morris and Jack should be read and evaluated by experienced field agents who had nothing to do with SOLO. Such evaluators could not be accused of bias. More important, those involved in SOLO should not see the transcripts because in talking to Morris and Jack they might inadvertently reveal knowledge that could only have come from private telephone conversations. The tapes and transcripts should be destroyed immediately after analysis, and no records of them should be kept anywhere. Do you have legal authoriza
tion for these wiretaps? Would you like someday to discuss them with a congressional committee?

  Headquarters agreed, and the investigation began. Boyle and Langtry dutifully watched for the least duplicity by Morris and Jack, as they always had—that was their job. Selected analysts in Washington reviewed SOLO files for reports that might have been inaccurate or misleading. The files dated back to 1951. Except for the first weeks when Jack was parrying with the FBI, they found no inaccurate reports. The analysts dismissed as absurd the CIA complaint that the FBI purveyed disinformation by reporting that the Soviets appeared ready to recognize Israel. The fact that war broke out in the Middle East shortly after Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, among others, told Morris this did not prove that what the Soviets said and Morris reported was untrue. It was preposterous to dream that Israel, then surrounded by fiercely hostile neighbors, would drop its vigil on the basis of a single report from an unknown, third-hand source about what the Soviets might do.

  The transcripts of the telephone conversations of Morris, Jack, Eva, and Roz revealed not one incriminating word, not one incongruity or contradiction, not one suspicious item. The only thing the FBI learned was that Morris and Eva played a game with each other, much like children played the game “Monopoly.” They took equal amounts of money and through separate brokers vied to see who could do better on the stock market. Eva played the game with girlish enthusiasm: “Now, don’t you tell Morris I bought this.”