Operation Solo

Home > Other > Operation Solo > Page 37
Operation Solo Page 37

by John Barron


  Operation TARPRO

  Operational conferences

  Order of the Red Banner

  Oswald, Lee Harvey

  Oswald, Lee Harvey, Mrs.

  Pakistan

  Paris Peace Accords

  Parliamentary delegation

  Participatory management

  Peace and disarmament campaign

  Pearl Harbor

  Peasants

  Peking, China: anti-Soviet demonstrations; Kissinger secret trip to

  Peking conference

  Penkovsky, Colonel Oleg

  Peoples’ Republic of China. See China

  Perlman, Molly

  Pershing missiles

  Picheau, George

  Politburo

  Political police. See OGPU

  Polonik, Mikhail

  Ponomarev, Boris; attempt to improve relations with American Jews; attitude toward China; attitude toward Nixon administration; Boyle’s knowledge of; briefing of Morris on China; on China as international threat; concern for security of operation; leak of activities supplied in American intelligence reports; meeting with Hall and Morris; meeting with Jack; meeting with members of Congress; meeting with Morris after Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; meeting with Morris after suspension of MORAT; message to Hall; opinion of Ford; preparation for Brezhnev’s trip to U.S.; reassessment of Ford-Brezhnev summit meeting; reception of Morris; response to Hall’s letter; response to Soviet-U.S. disarmament agreements; on Soviet attitudes toward China; Soviet involvement in Kennedy’s assassination; at state dinner honoring Ben Bella

  Presidential Medal of Freedom for Intelligence

  Propaganda campaigns

  Pushkin, Aleksandr

  Radio propaganda

  Radio transmissions: difficulties with; rubber doll signal

  Railways, underground communist line

  RCMP. See Royal Canadian Mounted Police

  Reader’s Digest

  Reagan, Ronald; attitude toward Soviets; meeting with Gorbachev

  Reed, John

  Religion

  Religious sects

  Revisionism

  Rezidencies

  Riesel, Victor

  Roberts, Wesley

  Romerstein, Herbert

  Roosevelt, Franklin D.

  Royal Canadian Mounted Police

  “Rubber duck”

  Ruckel, Raymond

  Ruling class

  Russian Orthodox Church

  Russian Revolution

  RYAN. See Operation RYAN

  Sadat, Anwar

  SALT. See Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

  San Francisco, California

  SASH. See Operation SASH

  Schlossberg, Sonny; illness of; marriage to Morris

  Science and technology

  Scott, Hugh

  SDI. See Strategic Defense Initiative

  Sea of Peace

  Secret documents

  Select Senate Committee on Intelligence Activities

  Semichastny, Vladimir

  Serov, General Ivan

  Sessions, William

  Seven-Day Arab-Israeli War

  Shanghai, China

  Shanghai Communiqué

  Shelepin, Aleksandr

  Sino-Soviet split

  “SK” radio transmission

  Smith, Howard K.

  Smith, Ivian C.

  Smith, Walter Bedell

  Smith Act; court ruling against prosecution of communists; passage of

  Socialized agriculture

  SOLO. See Operation SOLO

  South Korea

  Southern Christian Leadership Council

  Soviet-Chinese friendship monuments

  Soviet parliamentary delegation

  Soviet Union. See also International Department of the Central Committee; KGB; Operation MORAT; Politburo; Sino-Soviet split; specific Soviet leaders : as ally to U.S.; anti-Soviet campaign in China; arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald; attitude toward Nixon administration; attitude toward Reagan; build-up of paranoia; Correlation of Forces doctrine; delusions about U.S.-Chinese relations; deposition of Khrushchev; deterioration of relationship with China; differences with China over nuclear war; economic difficulties; economic disorder; fear of another Korean War; German invasion of; intelligence concerning U.S. and Chinese activity in Vietnam; invasion of Prague; Morris’ invitation to Moscow in 1958; Moscow conference of foreign ministers; negotiations with China; Order of the Red Banner award to Morris; payments to the U.S. Communist Party; poaching in American territorial waters; propaganda campaigns; purchase of American grain at below-market prices; reaction to election of Carter; reaction to election of Nixon; reaction to U.S.-Chinese negotiations; reasons for sustaining American Communist Party; secret documents; subsidies to the American Communist Party; Treaty of Alma Ata; Twentieth Communist Party Congress; Twenty-third Party Congress

  Spanish Civil War

  Speakeasy

  Special comrades. See KGB

  Special Source intelligence. See Operation SOLO

  Stalin, Josef; abolishment of Comintern; detention of Lovestone; Krushchev’s denunciation of; persecution of Jews; trust in Hitler

  Stalingrad

  Stalinists

  Stanford University

  Star Wars

  State and collective farms

  Steinbeck, Michael

  Stenogram

  Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

  Strategic Defense Initiative

  Struggle Against Revisionism

  The Struggle for Russia

  Sullivan, William K.; efforts to recruit Rosslyn Childs; failure to disseminate report on Soviet-Czechoslovakia relations

  Summers, Harry

  Summit conferences

  Suslov, Mikhail: attitude toward Nixon administration; Boyle’s knowledge of; briefing on communication between Brezhnev and Nixon; on China as international threat; meeting with Hall and Morris; as mentor to Morris; as negotiator with China; relations with China after deposition of Khrushchev; Soviet reaction to U.S.-Chinese negotiations; Soviet view of world affairs; on visit from Hugh Scott

  Switzerland

  Talanov, Nikolai

  TARPRO. See Operation TARPRO

  Ten Days That Shook the World

  Teng Hsiao-Ping

  Terrorist bombings

  Thatcher, Margaret

  Third World countries

  Timofeevich, Timmy

  “Tiny”

  Tito, Josip

  “TOPLEV” program

  Tower, John

  Transfer money. See Money transfers

  Treaty of Alma Ata

  Trotskyites

  Truman, Harry; application of the Smith Act

  Twentieth Communist Party Congress

  Twenty-First Communist Party Congress

  Twenty-Third Communist Party Congress

  Twenty-Fifth Communist Party Congress

  U Thant

  Ulbricht, Walter

  Ultra-nationalist faction

  Underground Squad

  Unestablished borderline

  United Communist Party of America

  United Mine Workers

  U.S. Congress: investigation of FBI; mandatory retirement of FBI agents; meeting with delegation of Soviet parliamentarians; passage of Smith Act

  U.S. Justice Department

  U.S. Secret Service

  U.S. Senate: demand for FBI files; Morris as communist candidate; Senate Intelligence Committee

  U.S. State Department: denial of visas to Soviets seeking to attend American Communist Party convention; importance of FBI documents on Sino-Soviet breach; publication of 1956 Krushchev speech

  U.S. Supreme Court

  USS Pueblo

  USSR. See Soviet Union

  Vallejo, Rene

  Venezuela

  Vietnam. See also North Vietnam: Soviet attitude toward

  “Vivian” mail drop

  Von Pong

  Wall Street Journal

>   Wang Chia Hsiang

  Wannall, Raymond; appointment as assistant director of FBI; decision to inform Ford and Kissinger of SOLO operations; exposure of SOLO to Senate Select Committee; investigation of Boyle allegedly impersonating an FBI agent; meeting to consider Morris’ and Eva’s trip to Twenty-Fifth Party Congress; meeting with Morris to congratulate on mission success; operational conference; Sullivan’s letter concerning Martin Luther King; testimony before Senate committee; visit to Morris’ and Eva’s penthouse

  Warren Commission

  Warsaw, Poland

  Washington, D.C.

  Watergate

  Weiner, William

  Westchester County, New York

  Wisconsin

  Wolfe, Bertram D.

  “Women in White” offices

  World Marxist Review

  World Trade Center

  Yekaterina (Morris Childs’ cook/nursemaid)

  Yeltsin, Boris

  Yezhov, Nikolai

  Young Communist League

  Zamoyski, L.P.

  Zhuravlev, Yuri

  1

  In the most guarded FBI files, Morris Childs was listed as CG-5824S*. Among themselves, FBI agents referred to him simply as “58.” CG meant Chicago; S meant security; and the asterisk meant that the source could never testify in court or be otherwise identified.

  2

  A jury acquitted Davis of the charges against her. Testimony from Morris might have interested a jury. However, Morris could not testify nor could information he provided be introduced as evidence.

  3

  Later recapitulating their conversation, Fox said, “We were not drinking to get drunk. We kept delaying lunch because we did not want the moment to end. We doubted it ever would come again.”

  4

  Author’s Note: Many former American intelligence officers, CIA and FBI, among them some of my best friends, to this day cannot speak of the late Senator Church except with contempt. They condemn him as a left-wing ideologue who, in their opinion, irreparably damaged American intelligence for partisan political purposes. His actions pertaining to SOLO speak for themselves.

  5

  Among them were Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Yuri Andropov, rulers of the Soviet Union; Mikhail Suslov, head of the Ideological Department of the Soviet Central Committee; Boris Ponomarev, head of the International Department of the Soviet Central Committee; Otto Kuusinen, a theorist and early member of the Communist International (Comintern); Mao Tse Tung and Chou En Lai, rulers of China; Ho Chi Minh, ruler of Vietnam; Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, rulers of East Germany; Josip Tito, ruler of Yugoslavia; Fidel Castro, ruler of Cuba; and Palmiro Togliatti, head of the Italian Communist Party.

  6

  The American intelligence community has long believed that the CIA obtained the speech from the Israelis. That well may be. But according to unequivocal statements made to the author by FBI Agents Donald E. Moore, Walter Boyle, William Brannigan, and John O’Toole, the FBI procured the first copy available to the U.S. government. Branigan and O’Toole are dead; Moore and Boyle are not.

  7

  Historian Bertam D. Wolfe, who Morris also knew in the party, summed up the import of the speech thusly:

  The speech is perhaps the most important document ever to have come from the communist movement… It is the most revealing indictment of communism ever to have been made by a communist, the most damning indictment of the Soviet system ever to have been made by a Soviet leader.

  There is about it a nightmare quality, felt alike by those who believe in communism and those who do not. To see one of the chief creators of the atmosphere of terror and of the monstrous cult of the living God calmly reporting to a Congress of those who were all terrorized agents of the terror and votaries of the cult; to hear the confidences as to what went on behind the scenes, torture, false confessions, judicial murder, perfidious destruction of the bodies and souls and very names of devoted comrades and intimates; to see the Reporter expects absolution and forgiveness and even continuance in absolute power because at long last he has revealed some of the guilty secrets in which he shared; to note the broad, self-satisfied smile which deprives the fearful avowals of any value of repentance; to catch in the flood of words only a sua culpa and not one syllable of mea culpa or a nostra culpa; to sense how much greater crimes have been committed against a helpless people by this little band whose deeds against each other are in part being recited; to think that men who are capable of doing such things to each other and tolerating, sanctioning, and applauding such actions, have managed to vest themselves of absolute power over belief and action, over manners and morals, over life and death and the good name of the dead, over industry and agriculture and politics and communication and expression and culture; and then to hear that the system which spawned these monstrous things is still the best in the world, and that the surviving members of this band are still in their collective wisdom infallible and in their collective power unlimited—who can read this recital without a sense of horror and revulsion?

  8

  Other Chinese leaders with whom Morris conferred included Hsuing Fu, Li Chi Hsin, Tang Ming-Chao, Lin Tang, Yu Chi-Ying, Li Shen Nin, Kang Sheng, Tent Hsia Ping, Hsu Bing, and Lili Ning Yi Ti.

  9

  Over the years, Morris took many documents out of the Soviet Union. Some were originals entrusted to him for delivery to Hall. Others were illicitly made copies. Interviewed nearly a quarter of a century later, he could not remember with certainty whether those he brought out in December 1960 were originals or copies.

  10

  One of Boyle’s brothers became a physician, another an architect, and the third a university professor. His sister became a nun and teacher, continuing the traditions of Sister Catherine Pierre.

  11

  During the background investigation, Eva told a disguised investigator, “In the 1920s, most of us girls went to college to catch a good husband. I wanted a husband and a degree. In those days, degrees meant something.”

  12

  Mostovets referred to KGB officer Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko who, without ever knowing it, indirectly affected SOLO.

  Soon after Nosenko arrived in the United States, influential CIA officers decided that he was a false defector purposely sent to spread disinformation, just as they decided that multiple reports of Sino–Soviet enmity were manifestations of a great disinformation scheme. The CIA, without any legal authority, built a little jail at one of its Virginia installations and locked him there in solitary confinement. For nearly twenty months, the CIA psychologically tortured him while trying to extract a confession, which it completely failed to do. Ultimately, the CIA exonerated Nosenko, made such restitution as it could, and for many years employed him as a consultant.

  The FBI from the first judged Nosenko to be a bona fide defector and so told the CIA. There were several reasons. The leads he provided enabled the FBI and other Western counterintelligence services to unearth spies. Nosenko worked in the North American section of the KGB Second Chief Directorate charged with counterintelligence and recruitment of foreigners inside the Soviet Union. He reported that through homosexual entrapment the KGB had recruited a Canadian ambassador in Moscow. During interrogation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the ambassador confessed and died of a heart attack.

  In Moscow, Nosenko had reviewed the KGB file on Oswald and observed the panic at KGB headquarters caused by Oswald’s arrest. His accounts of Oswald’s stay in the Soviet Union and of Soviet reaction to the Kennedy assassination coincided with what Morris had reported months earlier. So the FBI knew that Nosenko told the truth about perhaps the most important subject of which he had knowledge. Because of the secrecy shrouding SOLO, the FBI did not share these details with the CIA. It simply said he was legitimate.

  Released from captivity and officially rehabilitated, Nosenko married a beautiful woman whom he met while she played the organ at a Washington restaurant. She became the organist of the Met
hodist church in a lovely Southern town, and he became chairman of its board of stewards. Townspeople asked him to run for mayor, which he declined to do because the Soviets had sentenced him to death in absentia. In 1974, he received American citizenship. Before the naturalization ceremony, the presiding judge, in a departure from custom, announced that no photographs of the ceremony would be permitted. Afterward Nosenko, stood on the courthouse steps with his wife, removed a tiny American flag from under his coat lapel, and pinned it on the front.

  13

  An incident that occurred in Washington in early August 1969 illustrates that the Soviets really meant what they said.

  KGB officer Boris Davidov, second secretary at the Soviet embassy, invited an American specialist in Sino–Soviet affairs to lunch and put to him a chilling question the Soviets at the time could not ask officially.

  Referring to armed clashes along the Soviet–Chinese border, Davidov said, “The situation is very serious. In fact, it is so serious that my government may be forced to take much stronger action.”

  “What kind of action do you envisage?” the American asked. “A preemptive strike?”

  Davidov answered deliberately, “Yes. A preemptive strike is being contemplated, and the use of nuclear weapons is not excluded.” Then he put to him the question the Politburo through the KGB had sent him to relay, “What would be the attitude of the United States government if we made such a strike?”

  The Soviets knew that the American would report the conversation to the White House, and within hours he did. SOLO intelligence fully and continuously informed President Nixon of the status of Soviet–Chinese relations, and Nixon recognized that an answer of any kind could be construed by the Chinese as evidence that the United States was conspiring against them. Thus he ordered that no response whatsoever be made to Davidov’s inquiry or any other like it.

  14

  Author’s Note: The book was KGB: The Secret Works of Soviet Secret Agents, written by me. A European intelligence service identified to me Chuchukin as a premier example of an excellent KGB officer plying his subversive trade out of the United Nations headquarters in New York, and another foreign security service confirmed that Chuchukin indeed was an excellent KGB officer. Neither of these services knew what Chuchukin was really doing in New York and, of course, neither did I. Professional researchers, tasked with documenting or verifying the manuscript, queried original sources. Because the FBI had supplied no information about Chuchukin, they did not ask the FBI for corroboration of the references to him. Thus, the FBI had no forewarning of the exposure of Chuchukin and no chance to ask that he not be exposed.

 

‹ Prev