by John Barron
Other documents Morris saw sounded similar themes. The Soviets appreciated the geopolitical importance of maintaining China as an ally and the danger China would pose as an enemy. They had made every conceivable, reasonable effort to placate the Chinese. The Chinese had rebuffed, often arrogantly and rudely, their every overture.
From his private conversations in Moscow during March and April, Morris garnered more secrets. The “collective leadership” of the Soviet Union was falling apart, and each of its members was scheming to gain undisputed power for himself. The winner of this hidden power struggle almost certainly would be Brezhnev. Under his rule, the Soviet Union would probably seek a stable, nonconfrontational relationship with the United States while engaging in unremitting subversion and ideological warfare against the United States. It would do all it could to undermine the United States in Vietnam without risking war.
Not long after Morris and Eva came home in late April, the CIA termed the report embodying this information “the most significant piece of intelligence data ever supplied concerning the Soviet Union.”
As important as it was to know who was likely to rule the Soviet Union and what he was likely to do, to Freyman, the copious data about the Sino–Soviet split was in the long term more important, and he wondered whether its importance was being made clear to policymakers.
Headquarters had enjoined him, Boyle, and Morris from putting opinion or analysis into reports. “We are an investigative organization,” it said. That was true and, in Freyman’s mind, therein lay a potential problem. As an investigative organization, the FBI at the time had no analytical unit tasked with measuring and collating facts to deduce their underlying or overall meaning. And he was not sure who had seen what.
So Freyman asked Boyle to assemble copies of all SOLO reports pertaining to China dating back to 1958. From them and notes Boyle turned over, he wrote a history of the Sino–Soviet split which delineated a clear pattern of a progressively worsening relationship that had turned allies into enemies. Collectively, the authoritative, consistent reports Freyman cited showed why relations between the Soviet Union and China would not improve; why instead they would only become more envenomed.
Freyman submitted the history to Washington as a report rather than as an analysis and noted he had compiled it on his own time. Headquarters forthwith had an agent take a copy to the White House, which soon said, in effect: Now this is real intelligence; this is as outstanding as you can get; this is what we want.
Subsequently the FBI started asking Boyle, in consultation with Morris, to analyze or comment upon certain reports, developments, or issues. Jim Fox, on becoming Boyle’s supervisor, instructed him and Morris to analyze and comment whenever they wished without waiting for nods from headquarters. Thus, to the end Morris was simultaneously an analyst both for the FBI and the Politburo.
Shortly after, Freyman—out of his own initiative and sense of duty—did something original that yielded important, enduring benefits, he did something everyone thought was wrong. He retired from the FBI.
He was at the height of his powers; no one in the Chicago office was more esteemed or respected; and he loved his work. The operation he and Burlinson gave birth to more than a decade ago was generating such spectacular intelligence that the White House, State Department, and CIA clamored for more and more; as Boyle said, “the sensational became routine.” If Morris and Jack stayed alive, there was every reason to expect that future results would be even more spectacular. Morris was developing a close personal relationship with Brezhnev, who delighted in direct dealings with a fascinating man the Soviets had come to regard as one of their greatest agents. Morris also retained his longtime friendship with Suslov and Ponomarev, still two of the most knowledgeable and powerful men in the Soviet Union. If need be, he probably could speak directly to his old acquaintance, Yuri Andropov, chairman of the KGB. And he was the chief lieutenant and confidant of Gus Hall, who depended upon him and Jack for what he valued most—money.
After the fifteenth SOLO mission, Freyman and Boyle glimpsed a dazzling possibility that reached beyond collection of information. Jack had influenced the thinking of Ponomarev, persuading him to overrule the KGB; he had influenced Castro, inducing him to establish direct communications with the American party. If Jack could affect the decisions and actions of communist chieftains whom he did not know all that well, what might Morris do with Soviet leaders who were his friends?
Yet Freyman thought like a professional athlete who elects to stop playing before his abilities wane. It was not unusual for him and Boyle to work seventy hours a week, during which they sometimes had to make immediate decisions that were, literally, a matter of life and death. He feared that as he aged, he might not be able to constantly maintain the mental acuity and vigor SOLO demanded.
Then there was Boyle. Partially to put his adopted children in a happy environment, partially to be relatively near O’Hare Airport, Boyle bought a house not far from Freyman’s suburban home. The two often rode the commuter train together, and Freyman, ever the astute judge of people, came to understand Boyle probably better than anyone did other than Morris. Boyle could be unconventional, wild, ferocious. How many politically conservative Caucasians adopt black children and integrate them into an all-white neighborhood? How many FBI agents go to church to pray during their lunch hour? How many men volunteer to fly more than two hundred aerial combat missions, how many earn six decorations in ten months of unceasing combat? How many risk their careers by threatening superiors with fisticuffs? But SOLO itself was unconventional and wild, and it required ferocity. It was, after all, aimed at some of the most murderous thugs and despots in history. Boyle had won the intellectual respect of Morris, who treated him increasingly as a son; Eva doted on him; and he was completely consecrated to SOLO.
Certain that he was leaving Morris and Eva in caring and gifted hands, Freyman bade a cheerful farewell to all and never again involved himself in the operation that represented his greatest achievement. Boyle became, and for the duration of SOLO remained, the principal handler of Morris and Eva. Although he always answered to a supervisor, the Chicago SAC, and headquarters, he made most of the day-to-day operational decisions pertaining to Morris and Eva and drafted all of the reports incorporating the intelligence they supplied.
The secrets Morris gleaned from Brezhnev, Suslov, Ponomarev, and Politburo members during his next three missions to Moscow made Freyman look like a prophet. In October and November 1965, the Soviets convinced Morris with facts and figures that they were doing all they could to assist North Vietnam militarily and politically. Then they gave him a translation of a formal communication from the Chinese party and government to deliver to Hall:
Frankly speaking, we cannot trust you. We and other fraternal countries learned bitter lessons in the past from Khrushchev’s evil practice of control under the cover of aid. The tricks you are now playing on the Vietnam question are even less likely to work. China is not one of your provinces. We cannot accept your control. Nor will we help you to control others.
We have carefully observed your activities on the Vietnam question during the past few months. A series of facts compel us to conclude that you are pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the United States, attempting to strike a political bargain with U.S. imperialism and betray the Vietnamese people’s cause of liberation, and that you are practicing great-power chauvinism toward fraternal countries, attempting to gain military control over them and hitch them to your chariot of Soviet–U.S. collaboration for domination of the world. Your proposal for a summit meeting of Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union was an important step in your line of appeasement and great-power chauvinism. You intended to lure us into your trap through such a meeting so that you could obtain qualification to speak on behalf of Vietnam and China in your international maneuvers, strengthen your position for doing a political deal with U.S. imperialism, and build up your capital for deceiving the revolutionary people throughout the world…
You should immediately cease your overt and covert complicity with U.S. imperialism and stop your political dealings with the United States for a sell-out of the Vietnamese people; you should cease to coordinate with U.S. imperialism in plotting the swindle of “peace negotiations” and cease to undermine the revolutionary struggle of the Vietnamese people.
As Suslov pointed out, after railing on and accusing the Soviets of all sorts of treachery and perfidy, the Chinese in a sly gesture of contempt offered “Fraternal Greetings!” With a shrug of despair, he remarked, “It’s hopeless.”
In addition to documents, Morris brought back intelligence confided to him orally. The competition for supreme power continued among the “collective” leaders, and Brezhnev was still the probable winner. The Soviet economy was in shambles, a condition conveniently blamed on Khrushchev. Because of a shortage of hard currency, the Soviets could afford to give the American party only about $700,000 in 1966, whereas they had forked over more than $1,000,000 in 1965.
During the Twenty-third Party Congress in March and April of 1966, the Soviets briefed Morris in detail about the extent and nature of their military and material aid to North Vietnam, and their plans to enlist Western intellectuals in a propaganda campaign to force U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. They also gave him another baleful appraisal of their relations with China, which seemed to worsen by the month.
Together with Gus Hall, from August 7 to October 15, 1966, Morris toured Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, conferring with Anton Novotny, president of Czechoslovakia; Walter Ulbricht, boss of East Germany; and Brezhnev.
Brezhnev had triumphed in the competition to become the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union and was now unchallenged. The new leader also happened to like Morris very much and would be an important, though unwitting, source for SOLO intelligence in the future.
In his first meeting with Hall, Brezhnev was much more formal and reticent than when alone with Morris, and while he paid lavish tributes to the American party and Hall, he said little that could not have been read in Pravda. Suslov and Ponomarev did. They advised Morris that Brezhnev had triumphed in the competition to become the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union and that he now was unchallenged. Both appeared confident of their futures under his reign, and Suslov said Morris should be happy too because Brezhnev very much liked him.
In the judgment of Suslov and Ponomarev and, Morris gathered, the entire Soviet leadership, China constituted the most urgent and dangerous international problem confronting the Soviet Union. They believed more than ever that China was trying to drag the Soviet Union, Western Europe, and the United States into a nuclear holocaust from which it could stand aloof and after which it would emerge as the dominant power in the world. From Brezhnev on down, everyone in the Soviet oligarchy was truly fed up with the Chinese, or the “yellows,” in general and Mao in particular. Passages from Soviet reports and analyses Morris copied or noted suggested why:
The anti-Soviet campaign in China, which already was widespread, has flared up with new force. On August 20, 1966 the street on which the Soviet embassy is located was renamed “Struggle Against Revisionism.” Buildings, fences and roads all around were covered with anti-Soviet slogans in the most extreme language such as “Sweep out the revisionist dogs and devils” or “Revenge for everything when the time comes.” Posters hung near the embassy read, “When the time comes, we shall skin you, pull your guts out, burn your corpses, and scatter your ashes to the wind.”
Monuments manifesting friendship between the Soviet and Chinese people have been defaced or smashed (for example, the monument to Aleksandr Pushkin in Shanghai, the Soviet–Chinese friendship monument in Shanghai, the summer house of Soviet–Chinese friendship in Hangchow, and others). Soviet citizens permanently residing in China have been subjected to bandit attacks, searches, beatings and humiliation…
The Soviet embassy was subjected to constant anti-Soviet demonstrations for over a fortnight. The loudspeakers blared around the clock, torturing Soviet citizens. The [Chinese] service staff quit the embassy, declaring they had gone on “strike.” Anti-Soviet demonstrations in Peking with their outrages continue until this day. This is why the USSR decided to recall families of Soviet representatives in the embassy, the trade representatives, the staff of economic advisers and the Tass office.
The Chinese did not ensure normal conditions for the departure of Soviet people. Acts of violence, humiliation and mockery were perpetrated against women and children. The most elementary norms of international law and human relations were violated…
[Chinese] Radio propaganda beamed to the USSR is becoming more intense. Almost every broadcast appeals to the “overthrow” of the Soviet leadership. Anti-Soviet literature is mailed to Soviet institutions and private persons. All sorts of ruses are used by the Chinese to avoid state organs of the USSR [the KGB]. Anti-Soviet brochures are placed between the pages or inside the covers of books, including books for children.
The Chinese embassy in Moscow has become a fount of anti-Soviet literature and rumors spread among Soviet people. The Soviet Foreign Ministry protests this illegal activity but the Chinese diplomats continue their provocative activities. Chinese students studying in the USSR and the citizens of the Chinese People’s Republic residing in our country, public figures and tourists are made vehicles of anti-Soviet propaganda.
In the foreign arena, the Chinese are conducting an unbridled anti-Soviet campaign aimed in one way or another at discrediting Soviet foreign policy. The Peking leadership endeavors to smear the Soviet support of the heroic Vietnamese people…
There are constant provocations on the Soviet–Chinese border. More than 450 violations of the border from the Chinese side were registered in 1966.
The most revealing and definitive document the Soviets allowed Morris to study, in this case for just one night, was a “Stenogram” filed by the KGB or Ministry of Foreign Affairs from Peking. Written in a professional and objective style, it reproduced the February 1966 conversation between Premier Kosygin and Chairman Mao. Reading it, Morris could imagine listening to what they said and see in their words the enormity of the chasm between the Soviets and Chinese. He knew that everyone on the little SOLO team, as Eva referred to their closest FBI conspirators, trusted and believed him. But he doubted that others would give credence to his version of the “Stenogram” unless they saw it verbatim. He had no camera, so he labored through the night copying it by hand. Nearly three decades later, some passages leap out from the copy he made for the FBI:
In Mao’s view, war strengthens people and tempers them and therefore war is nothing of which to be afraid… Mao said that although it was true that the raids [U.S. bombing of North Vietnam] were killing some people, he nevertheless feels that this experience strengthens the Vietnamese people… Kosygin then asked Mao if the People’s Republic of China would join the USSR in a coordinated plan of action to assist the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Mao replied that the Chinese did not have to worry about this. The people of North Vietnam can get their revolutionary experience by themselves. They need this experience… Mao then stated in a sarcastic manner that the USSR could deal with the West while the Chinese handled the East… Mao continued in a very crude and offensive manner showing none of the usual Oriental politeness. Mao stated that the Communist Party of China does not favor settlement of these problems [between China and the Soviet Union]… In Mao’s opinion, the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviet Communist Party have opposing viewpoints and the Chinese want to state these differences sharply… Mao said sarcastically, “We are dogmatists. We are war-like. We do not believe in disarmament. You get together and discuss general and total disarmament. Discuss your big illusions.”… Kosygin then asked Mao if he would agree to a meeting of Communist Parties to reduce frictions among them. Mao responded, “Maybe in a thousand years.”… Mao then began to talk in a very strange way. He expounded on how tough the Chinese are. He rambled on about how the Chinese walk around in zero w
eather without coats because they are tough. He explained this in a way indicating that he believes the Chinese are a “super race.” He went on like this in a very childish manner.
Brezhnev on September 26, 1966, gathered Hall, Morris, Suslov, and Ponomarev around a table in the Kremlin and spoke with relative candor about the Soviet economy before turning to the even more dolorous subject of China.
He began with agriculture:
You know about the differences and complexities of our agriculture [just as Morris secretly understood the Russian language, he understood Soviet jargon, in which the words complex or complicated often meant a real mess]. Our assets are that the rural areas are socialist. We have a broad variety of climates and soils in our country. We forced the growth of industry but did not take proportionate action in our agriculture. This is why we are now looking for solutions in agriculture. In an economic sense we need to make farming profitable and then introduce material incentives for our people engaged in agriculture. The problem of raising productivity is in part also related to the use of chemicals, insecticides, etc.… It is necessary to tell the full truth that for three years we had difficulties in agriculture. This was not only due to bad weather but also because of some mistakes. Today, there have been noticeable changes. There is stability and guarantees for the future of those engaged in agriculture… Maybe these things are not important to you in the United States but we have had real difficulties for three years. But in two years now we have made great changes. This change is reflected in a different attitude on the part of agricultural workers toward labor… There has been continuous democratization of collective farms. There has been an introduction of pensions for age and disability. Privileges are now given to the farmers that the workers already have. This has improved the mood of the peasantry, and we are getting millions of letters of thanks from the peasantry.