Operation Solo (39 page)

Eva and Morris came carrying presents she had selected and wrapped for Boyle's children, and they gathered in the back room. Morris as usual seated himself in the tall leatherbound chair behind the big desk, a chair reserved for the chairman, the captain, the boss. During one of the New York conferences, Morris remarked that everyone has “a little vanity,” and everyone recognized that by seizing the chair whose occupancy connoted command he was indulging his “little vanity,” something he did nowhere else.

Years later, reminiscing in her eighties, Eva offered insights about why Morris behaved differently in the back room. “I think he felt more at ease there than anywhere else. You have to understand that in Chicago we always were careful, just like in Moscow. Going to the office wasn't like going to the market or just anyplace. The FBI, they followed us to see if anybody else was following us. Morris told me they even followed Walt when he came to meet us there. Walt and Morris made the guards and cleaning ladies and handymen think we were retired professors and consultants. We gave them presents around Christmas and were nice to them, and they were on our side. The FBI checked the office to make sure nobody had hidden any bugs, so nobody could listen to us. Then there was Walt. You know, Walt always carried a gun, even on airplanes, and you better not fool around with Walt. If anybody barged in on us, well, that would have been just too bad for them. And if we wanted lunch or supper, we could just call one of the delicatessens and pretty soon it would be brought in. So we could just be ourselves and not be afraid and say whatever we wanted. Morris had a study at home and an office at his phony business but he thought of the back room as his real office.”

That late afternoon just before Christmas 1975, Morris from behind the desk assessed SOLO. Time and thought had dissipated the consternation and indignation he had felt in New York, and he was thinking ahead calmly, as Boyle had often observed him do.

He feared that disclosure of SOLO to Church and committee staff members portended the beginning of its end. The question
was, when and how would it end? Twenty-three years had passed since he met Carl Freyman and agreed to work with the FBI. During those years, there had been some “goofs,” leaks of fragmentary information that could have cost him and Jack their necks, but the Bureau had managed to keep SOLO itself secret from outsiders because everyone followed the rules. With a slight smile, he said, “Maybe Walt, Al, and John along the way now and then made up a few new rules of their own. But we followed the most basic rule: if you want to keep a secret, don't tell anybody.” Because the Bureau had to break that rule, SOLO no longer was really secret; experience proved that once a secret is let loose, it multiplies and spreads. Having been breached, the wall of security could not be repaired. The breach dramatically increased the dangers to him and Eva. He wondered if it would be rational to continue missions into the Soviet Union knowing that at any time while they were there the secret of SOLO might reach the press, the party, or the KGB.

Morris paused, perhaps hoping that Boyle would contradict him or present some secret or insight showing he was wrong. Boyle could do neither.

To Boyle, the United States in December 1975 seemed to have sunk to a post–World War II nadir. In the aftermath of the American debacle in Southeast Asia, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, Laotians, and South Vietnamese were being massacred or enslaved by communist conquerors. If friends of the United States were looking at its disarray with dismay, what might the Soviets be thinking and planning? Now more than ever the United States needed to read their minds through SOLO. Yet how much can you ask of an elderly man and woman? The air force, navy, and Marine Corps withdrew young pilots after they had survived a certain number of combat missions. The FBI had already sent Morris on forty-nine missions into enemy territory, and from 1962 on Eva accompanied him on most. You can only roll the dice so many times without losing, and there was no disputing Morris; events in Washington had worsened the odds.

Boyle said, “Morris, honestly I don't know what to tell you.”

“Thank you for your honesty, Walt.”

Stepping out of the office building, Boyle instinctively looked around and through a minor maelstrom of wind and sleet glimpsed the agent he had ordered to go home. The agent also had orders to cover Boyle and those were the orders he chose to obey. Boyle thought,
You can take the boy out of the Marine Corps, but you can't take the Marine Corps out of the boy
.

Boyle advised headquarters that Morris was engaged in an anguished debate with himself about whether to quit and thereby terminate the operation. If he were to attend the Twenty-fifth Party Congress, he would have to leave for Moscow no later than February 16, 1976. So he would decide before then.

Although Wannall was about to retire, he retained responsibility for SOLO, and he consulted Kelley about the dilemma that necessitated a fundamental policy decision. Kissinger, doubtless with the concurrence of the president, only recently had ordered SOLO continued, declaring it indispensable to formulation of foreign policy. Wannall believed the Church Committee would protect the secret, but he could not guarantee that to either Kelley or Morris. Undeniably, the dangers of continuing the operation had increased and Morris' new apprehensions were justified.

Kelley remarked, “Ray, as I said, you have the most interesting job in the FBI.”

On a dreary Sunday night, February 8, 1976, Wannall flew to Chicago to meet Morris and Boyle in the cover office early Monday to discuss the future of SOLO. They were joined by Section Chief Brannigan, Supervisor Houser, and Special Agent Ronald Fries, then working as Boyle's partner. Brannigan later recalled, “Ray and 58 did almost all the talking. The rest of us just sat there. It was like watching history being made.”

Instead of broaching the overriding issue that brought them together, Wannall began obliquely by giving Morris an insider's view of relations between the FBI and Congress. “There are two phases in this work: one is foreign, and one is domestic. They have pretty much left our foreign intelligence activities alone. I know on the domestic side we are going to have problems. You see, one of the problems is that some of those congressional staffers were in the student riots of a decade ago. When the streets were burning,
they were part of it. So they say, ‘How come you are investigating this stuff?' Not the [terrorist] bombings; they think we should be investigating that.”

Fearful of spreading panic, the FBI had not fully publicized the threat posed by terrorist bombings but they represented an increasing danger. “In 1973 there were twenty-four bombings; in 1974 there were forty-five; and in 1975 there were eighty-nine bombings. So they seem to be about doubling every year.”

Wannall disclosed highly classified details of how the FBI had prevented bombings by penetrating terrorist organizations. “There were three rented cars, packed with explosives and detonators, parked by an Israeli bank and the El Al warehouse in New York. Experts say that if they had gone off, each would have cleared an area a hundred yards around it. If one had exploded in the middle of downtown New York, it would have killed or injured hundreds, probably thousands of people.”

The candor and confidences had the desired effect—a relaxed rapport—and Morris lectured about the history of twentieth-century terrorism and the difference between anarchism and Marxism. “Of course, real Marxists approve of mass terror but not individual terrorism. The same was true of individual expropriation [robbery]. In 1917, they would shoot someone for this individual expropriation. Any real Marxist would fight against individual terrorism.” But there were always those individuals who would desert Marxist orthodoxy and try to “speed things up” by fostering “alienation” through indiscriminate bomb-throwing.

Then Morris on his own came to the point, just as Wannall, Kelley, and Boyle hoped. “But we are getting away from the problem of the day. I want to preface my statements by telling you that when I think of our operation, I never separate it from what is happening in the world at the moment. You said, without giving guarantees, that the committee will lay off the foreign aspects pretty much, but we will run into problems on the domestic side.”

Everyone had sense enough to say nothing as Morris proceeded to articulate and vent his anxieties and grievances; everyone was willing to listen until midnight if need be.

“The popular idea that the First Amendment can be used by the
press to steal confidential government documents” threatened SOLO. “We have a president [Gerald Ford] who was not elected and the power of the president has been eroded… I am not one of those who make fun of politicians; we have to have them in our system.” But some politicians were egotists who lusted for publicity. “Such individuals with political ambitions don't always put honor or loyalty above themselves… Be assured the Russians have people going over every line of testimony. I know that their people in this country see congressmen… There is the possibility that a politician who got some information will talk to another politician or to his wife and she will talk to another wife. So you can understand why we are disturbed… In New York, there was a statement about there being no guarantees. I understand that. We have our head in a noose, and we know it.”

Morris meandered through the history of SOLO and its successes and, almost pleading, tried to make all understand what he considered now at stake. “This trip or this congress is very important. Most of it will be open. The secret stuff the congress won't hear but I will. And I am experienced enough to analyze a speech and go beyond the words. In addition, when I am in that city [Moscow], I meet party leaders from all over the world, friends, and you get information from them you never could get elsewhere and facts the biggest experts couldn't deduce… Everybody is talking about the defeat of the communists in Portugal. Well, we knew a year ago that the Russians were trying to pull the Portuguese communists back. We knew the Soviets didn't care about a defeat in Portugal, that this is where they didn't want to take us on.”

Summing up the long soliloquy, Morris rambled a bit: “Within the next two or three days, pending a final decision, I have to move. Because if we decide that I am going or I should say we are going because Eva has been invited and she has been getting more calls about the trip than I have… because we must go on in the usual way just as if nothing has happened, although we know that some things have happened in the last two months…

“I have been talking a lot, but I want you to know what is in our minds and hearts. I don't expect a yes or no from you about whether we should make this trip.”

After some moments Wannall spoke slowly and obviously not from a script. “I don't know of any agent, myself included, who has had in the last twenty to twenty-five years the impact on our government's policies that you have had. I say that to tell you how valuable you have been not just to the FBI, but to the United States. There was no question that we were going to tell you everything that has happened, not just because of moral obligation. You have been a part of us; you are part of the family. I want you and your wife to make this decision knowing what all the facts are. Despite the value we put on this operation, we put a higher value on you…

“Next Sunday if you are not on that plane, you will still be FBI as far as we are concerned. No one could ask anybody to do as much for his country as you have done. Our concern is that you get over and get back, if you go. We know that you have gone beyond your physical endurance many times. But you are more valuable than any mission. I want to tell you that this is the greatest operation we ever have had. You are not only giving information; you are giving yourself. If anything happened to you, I would not be able to live with myself. If you decide not to go, we will still be working together; we still will be associates and friends. I cannot tell you to go or not to go. I have to be as honest and forthright with you as I can be.”

The disorganized response from Morris suggested to Boyle that the sentiment and sincerity of Wannall's spontaneous words affected him—maybe decisively: “I talked to my brother and we know that no one can make up our minds for us. There is no such thing here as taking a vacation or stopping temporarily. I should have been in the hospital many times but to those people you never talk about how you feel; that doesn't count… I am glad that you have come here today but I am kind of embarrassed and feel kind of bad that you had to come all the way out here. I raised it with my guy [Boyle]. If it were safe, I would have gone to Washington to see you but that would be the worst place for me today… I must tell you that I am sorry to see you leave [retire]…

“You know, in these discussions we cannot always solve every
problem; there is not always a neat solution. I don't want to make the situation worse by quitting. I still feel that unless our government agencies go berserk, there is a need for this operation. I am trying to anticipate the final outcome of the investigations and of things that might seem insane. But I know what our country needs.”

Morris then digressed and talked about dying. He recounted the adventures of an old Bolshevik friend, a classmate from the Lenin School, who had spied for the Comintern in China at a time when they chopped off the heads of spies, and later in Nazi Germany, where they did worse things to spies. His friend survived to die peacefully in anonymity. But that was how Morris hoped to die. That was not the way he would die in Moscow. Nor would Eva die in peace and dignity. The betrayed wives, quivering under the lash of their own betrayed husbands, would cry like banshees for a degrading death to prove their loyalty.

No one spoke. No one said,
Come on, Morris, that won't happen; they wouldn't do that to you or Eva
. Everyone knew that the Soviets had done just that myriad times and continued to do it, albeit on a lesser and more discreet scale, in the mid-1970s.