Julia and Paul were unaware of the depth of Jane’s despair. They were worried about her and empathized with her misery and frustration but had no reason as yet to believe the crisis would not pass. The State Department had furnished her with a new passport and permitted her to return to France, and there was every indication her case could be resolved in the near future. There were even signs that the acrimonious political climate at home was beginning to improve. Ever since the nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings, when counselor Joseph N. Welch famously called the senator to account—“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”—McCarthy and his nasty sidekicks, Cohn and Schine, had been finished. Finally embarrassed by McCarthy’s excesses, the Senate had voted overwhelmingly to censure him, 67 to 22. These days, he was drunk by noon, his mad rants recognized for what they always had been—the ravings of a crazy, dangerous fanatic. With his reign of terror at an end, the reactionaries in Congress were quieter and their Red-hunting activities somewhat curtailed. Even Jane’s nemesis, the dreaded Mrs. Shipley, had retired.
In the meantime, the French authorities had given Jane une carte d’identité, which allowed her to function perfectly well within the country. And there were worse places to be marooned indefinitely than Paris. It was hard, at times, for them not to feel a bit weary of Jane’s dramatics, especially when they were always left with the uneasy sense that there was more to it all than she was saying, that she was concealing the worst of her sins. They did not know what folly she had committed and could only hope for her sake that it fell short of anything Dulles and his posse would feel obliged to pursue across the ocean.
Preoccupied with their homecoming and the busy holiday season spent back in the bosom of the Child clan, they had little time to ponder Jane’s fate. They had settled back into their former home at 2706 Olive Avenue, in Georgetown. The old three-story house looked rather neglected after being rented out for eight years, and they were determinedly whipping it into shape. Betty MacDonald, who dropped by to see them shortly after their return, sat in the kitchen and watched in amazement while Paul drew on the wall precise outlines of every one of Julia’s polished copper pots and iron skillets in an effort to impose order on her unruly mass of equipment. Inside each penciled circle, he wrote: “Please Replace.” Laughing at the memory, Betty said, “Julia was awfully messy, and that was something he couldn’t stand.”
They spent a pleasant afternoon talking and exchanging bits of news about old friends. In the course of catching up, Julia and Paul told Betty about Jane’s trials and tribulations. Betty was sorry to learn of Jane’s ongoing FBI investigation but was not surprised. The FBI had questioned her about Jane’s politics back in 1948 and Betty had told them that while her OSS colleague was a “liberal,” and had gotten into trouble for her outspoken support of the Indonesian revolutionary government, Jane was “entirely loyal.” Like many OSS veterans, Betty and her husband had also had their share of problems with the FBI. “Hoover was no friend of Donovan’s and did his best to destroy what was left of his reputation after the war,” she recalled. “The FBI hounded all the people that had worked for him in the Far East. Lots of people recruited by the OSS had been Communists or socialists at one time. Donovan and Dick spent days throwing out papers and going through the files to get rid of things that might be incriminating. They destroyed the records to keep them out of the hands of the FBI.” Betty had been home working one afternoon when two agents in dark suits and fedoras knocked on the door of her New Jersey home and announced they had orders to search the place. “They went through the library and removed two books: Mein Kampf and The Little Red Book, full of quotations from Chairman Mao.” She was never questioned by the FBI but remembered all too well “the feeling they were watching you.” Thinking of Jane, she added, “Those were horrible days, not knowing why it was happening or what they were after.”
Julia reassured herself that post-McCarthy Washington was a somewhat saner place. The country was on the mend after a virulent period. It was “now the land of Nixon-lovers, ‘Elvis the Pelvis,’ and other strange phenomena.” Perhaps that was why she was not more disturbed when the FBI came around to Olive Avenue that winter asking about Jane. Unflappable as always, Julia answered their questions; she was polite but firm. A brief note in her date book on February 14, 1957, reveals that when they asked if she thought Jane could be engaged in subversive activities, she told them she did not “think someone that funny and scattered could be a spy.” Her cool self-possession was such that she took the agents’ house call in stride, dismissing the visit as perfectly “pleasant.”
A few months later, while Julia and Paul were still trying to become acclimated to Washington’s tropical heat and humidity, they awoke on a sultry July morning to stunning news. Splashed across the front pages of all the newspapers were pictures of Jane and George along with giant headlines proclaiming them to be Russian spies: “U.S. COUPLE ACCUSED OF SPYING FOR RUSSIA: Linked to International Ring.” “2 EX-AIDES OF U.S. INDICTED AS SPIES,” proclaimed The New York Times, “Former Intelligence Officer and Wife, Once in OSS, Named as Soviet Agents.”
The opening lines of the Washington Post’s lead story took their breath away: “An American couple was indicted today as alleged members of a global spy ring personally organized in the Kremlin by Stalin’s late secret police boss, Lavrenti Beria.” The story went on to say that on July 8 a federal grand jury had accused George and Jane of transmitting secret information on American intelligence and U.S. installations abroad to Moscow intelligence. A dozen Russian nationals were named as coconspirators in the case. Although espionage was not an extraditable offense, the U.S. Attorney’s Office was working to convince the French government to return the Zlatovskis to America to stand trial. It added that the pair faced “a possible death penalty under the charges.”
Paul ran out and bought every newspaper he could lay his hands on. He and Julia spent the morning poring over the stories in a state of shock. According to the complicated picture presented in the indictment, Jane and George were minions in a spy ring that had flourished “since 1940 and right up to this day.” They were charged with working for a Lithuanian-born Soviet agent named Jack Soble, a small-time importer of bristles and animal hair, who had been recruited by Beria to set up the Soviet intelligence cell. In January 1957, the Justice Department arrested the ringleaders, Jack Soble and his wife, Myra, and in April the two pleaded guilty to “receiving and obtaining” U.S. defense secrets. Another member of the ring, Jacob Albam, arrested at the same time, also pleaded guilty. The plea deal got them out of a tougher conspiracy charge that carried the death penalty. In return, the Sobles were being “cooperative” and were reportedly “talking their heads off” about the inner working of their spy network. As a direct result of the secret Soble testimony, which the grand jury had been listening to since January, Jane and George were indicted on five counts of spying. Bench warrants had been issued for their arrest.
A total of thirty-eight “overt acts” of espionage were listed in the indictment. The Post story summarized the five main accusations against the Zlatovskis:
• That the wife passed to Soviet agents a “report on Indonesia” based on information obtained while employed in the OSS.
• That “information relating to the national defense of the United States” was given to “a representative of the intelligence service of the U.S.S.R.”
• That Mrs. Zlatovski turned over information “concerning the personnel and operations of intelligence units of the U.S.A., including biographical data on American intelligence agents.
• That George Zlatovski transmitted to Soviet agents “the names of certain persons who had fled to Austria” from satellite states.
• That in December 1949, both defendants traveled to Austria “to obtain compromising information regarding the personal lives, specifically, the sexual and drinking habits, of the personnel assigned and attached to American installations in Austria.”
The last part of
the story read like something straight out of Hitchcock, with all the cloak-and-dagger characters and international rendezvous of a noir thriller. According to the indictment, Jane and George, when not taking orders from Soble, did jobs for the “mysterious Boris Morros,” as the Times called him, a Russian-born Hollywood producer who was secretly working as a double agent. Morros, who was sixty-two, had reportedly been forced to work as a front man and courier for Soviet intelligence in an effort to protect his aged parents and in 1947 went to the FBI and offered his services as a counter-espionage agent. Morros testified that Jane, code-named “Slang,” was an active agent, handing off her valuable reports to him for delivery to Soviet representatives. George, code-named “Rector,” was not as useful, mostly gathering information on refugees, and was once ordered by Soble to go to Yugoslavia to observe conditions and make a report on what he found for the Soviet secret police. Morros, who claimed the Soviets had given him money for monthly payments to the Zlatovski “team” between December 1949 and October 1950, operated as the go-between and detailed meetings among himself, the Sobles, and the Zlatovskis in New York, Washington, Vienna, Paris, Zürich, and Lausanne. The Times story ended with a glum image of Jane barricaded in her Left Bank apartment, declining to comment: “I can’t tell you anything, you will have to speak to my lawyer.”
The later editions of the newspapers carried a new set of banner headlines—FRANCE GRANTS ASYLUM—and included quotes from George. He declared the charges to be false and ridiculous, telling the Washington Evening Star, “The French have given us political asylum. We are their guests. We can say nothing which would embarrass our hosts.” The story went on to quote a Foreign Ministry official denying asylum had been granted, saying the issue was still being discussed. George, who was photographed peering out of the doorway of his apartment on rue Mazarine, was described as “dark and youthful,” with his brown hair in a neat crew cut. He wore a pale, thin silk robe open to the waist and a pair of straw slippers. The walls of the living room, just visible behind him, were hung with vivid abstract paintings, which he explained had been done by his wife before “her health broke over this business.” Jane was nowhere to be seen. When asked to respond to their many questions, George told them angrily, “You people have already made up everything you want to, so why should I say anything more?” adding, as he closed the door, his voice barely audible over the barking of the couple’s poodle, “I am sorry to be rude, but I wish you would leave me alone.” When asked by another reporter about the grand jury indictment, he said tersely, “They’ve been reading too many stories of junior G-men.”
Julia and Paul were stunned by what they were reading. It was impossible to take it all in. If there was any truth to the charges, Jane and George were villains of the first order. Not only had they been conspiring against their country for years, but their treasonous services to Moscow were supposedly motivated by their long-hidden personal animus for America and everything it stood for. It was the same McCarthy madness, being replayed with tragic familiarity. Or was it? The implications left them almost speechless with fear and horror.
Over the next few days, everything they knew about Jane was played out in the pages of the newspapers in lurid fashion, from her beginnings as a wealthy, convent-educated socialite to her drift into San Francisco’s “avant-garde” art scene and eventual indoctrination into New York’s “parlor pink” Communist circles. The conservative papers like the Washington Post and Times-Herald and Chicago Daily Tribune were merciless and gave every fact a sinister twist. The stories explained that Jane had been a target of the FBI as far back as the early 1940s, when she had worked for the Board of Economic Warfare, which had been revealed in many congressional investigations as “a haven” for Communists. She then “shifted her base of operations” to the OSS, “also exposed in later years as Communist-ridden.” Jane reportedly delivered her OSS report on Indonesia to her “Red spymasters” in 1949, and then she and her husband began shuttling back and forth between Vienna and Zürich, “providing a flow of secret information to the Russians on American personnel in Western Europe.”
As the summer weeks passed, Jane and George remained front-page news. Adding to the sensational nature of the stories was the fact that the Sobles had been interviewed about their connection to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been found guilty of being KGB spies and were the first civilians ever executed for espionage in the United States. Jack and Myra Soble both denied knowing the Rosenbergs as well as many of the Russian members of the ring. The prosecutors theorized that the Sobles and the Zlatovskis were probably part of a small cell that did not interact with the others. The newspapers also seized on the connection to another infamous case of espionage: that of the admitted Russian spy Elizabeth Bentley, who had turned against her Moscow superiors and in July 1948 enthralled congressional investigators by spilling the secrets of her work as a courier for spy rings in New York and Washington. Her testimony had helped to convict Alger Hiss and expose Jack Soble. Jane promised to be another “blond spy queen,” and every new development in the case was played out like the latest steamy chapter in a long-running summer fiction serial.
The country was again in the grips of spy fever, and the papers worried breathlessly about whether or not Jane and George would be extradited to the United States to stand trial for their crimes against their country. Before their fate was decided, the United States would have to formally request extradition for the pair in accordance with French administrative and legal procedures. Typically, the French Ministry of Justice would order the couple’s arrest. The case would then be submitted to the Chambre des Mises en Accusation, the French equivalent of a grand jury, which would hear all the facts and have three to four weeks to reach a decision. The prospects did not look good, however, as the Franco-American extradition treaty of 1911 did not cover the crime of espionage and specifically barred extradition on political charges. French officials had further raised doubts by explaining that the United States would have to prove that the Zlatovskis had engaged in “criminal activity” before France would agree to send them back to stand trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney General William F. Tompkins, in charge of internal security, was flying to Paris to press for their return. He insisted that his staff was exploring every possible loophole and cited a promising lead concerning a 1927 extradition statute. The French authorities were conducting their own investigation to determine whether or not they should prosecute the couple. Some papers speculated that the extradition could become an international incident, with the U.S. government having to bring North Atlantic Treaty Organization pressure to bear to pry the accused pair loose.
Inevitably, the House Un-American Activities Committee got in on the act, expressing outrage that a spy had been allowed to slip through the FBI’s fingers. Representative Francis E. Walter of Pennsylvania, the chairman of HUAC, told a throng of reporters in Washington that the courts had put Dulles in “an untenable position,” and said the situation pointed to the “loose passport practices which are spearheaded by court decisions.” He called on the House to “pass remedial legislation.” Other right-wing senators weighed in, with Roman Hruska, Republican of Nebraska, insisting that Jane’s escape to France illustrated the dangers of the liberals’ campaign against security safeguards in government. “A Communist suspect who has been indicted for espionage was able to move about Europe for two additional years on an American passport and is now outside the jurisdiction of the United States,” Hruska said. “I hope that the French government will extradite the Zlatovskis and that there will be an early trial so that the details of current Soviet espionage can be made known to the American people.”
Meanwhile, Boris Morros was basking in all the publicity, apparently relishing his role as the daring double agent. Morros, who made his first public bow at a news conference in Washington on August 12, turned out to be a balding, roly-poly former musician, whose ostensible claim to fame was having composed “The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.”* A suav
e Slavic charmer, Morros liked to brag about his days as a child prodigy in Russia and claimed to have arrived in the United States at age sixteen, when he was already conducting the Russian Imperial Symphony. He boasted of having scored the music for over four hundred films and claimed that, as musical director for Paramount Pictures, he persuaded the great Leopold Stokowski to make his first motion picture. He then turned producer, making the 1939 Laurel and Hardy comedy The Flying Deuces, the 1942 romantic comedy Tales of Manhattan with Rita Hayworth and Henry Fonda, and the 1947 musical bomb Carnegie Hall.
According to Morros, the Russians pressured him into becoming a spy in 1945, and so he disappeared from Hollywood and spent twelve years posing as a millionaire Russian spy and recruiting important, well-to-do Americans to steal secrets for the Kremlin. What the Russians did not know, however, was that he was actually serving as a U.S. counterspy and feeding them only secret documents “approved” by the FBI. He claimed he had done so at great risk to his own life and at great expense to his career. Fooling everyone—including his wife, family members, and friends—for all those years “didn’t come easy,” Morros boasted in a lengthy prepared statement that was released to the press. “I hated everything they stood for and when I had to express myself to high Russian officials and the American spies employed by them in terms of supporting their vicious ideology I really had to do a more realistic acting job than any of the players whom I ever directed in Hollywood.”
Morros supplied the newspapers with a wealth of colorful anecdotes about his thrilling escapades and close shaves. (Bureau agents, apparently bemused by his braggadocio, referred to him as their “special special agent.”) He claimed to have gotten to know Jane extremely well and said she had always accepted him at face value, except one night in Paris, when she had been drinking heavily and leaned across the restaurant table and said, “Boris, somehow I don’t believe you’re a Communist.” Another Russian agent, “a prominent American woman,” also became suspicious of him and confided her doubts to the second secretary of the Russian Embassy in Washington. Subsequently, while in Munich, the FBI sent Morros a one-word coded wire—CINERAMA—alerting him that he had been compromised and his life was in danger. Morros managed to charm the Russians into believing that the American woman who had squealed on him was merely jealous. He had a narrow escape, hastening to take a plane to New York, where his grand jury testimony indicting the Sobles effectively ended his run as a counterespionage agent. The government paid for his services, but Morros did not disclose the sum. He stated that with his undercover work now over, he was hoping to resume his movie career.
A Covert Affair Page 33