The Peculiar Truth about the FBI’s Kremlin Spy

• 1987: President Reagan wanted to bestow a Medal of Honor in the White House. The FBI Director said no. Revealing the recipient’s identity would have gotten the man killed. Instead, the medal was awarded in a private ceremony at FBI Headquarters.

• The man was known as Agent 58. For decades, he spied for the US from inside the Kremlin. His secret mission was called Operation Solo.

• No one in the Soviet Union suspected him of being a spy. None of the Presidents from Eisenhower through Carter knew Agent 58’s identity. Only eleven people in the FBI even knew of Operation Solo.

• Agent 58 wasn’t a dashing, debonair James Bond or Jack Ryan character. He wasn’t swarthy, tall, dark, and handsome.

• He was an unhealthy, little old Jewish man from Chicago.

• His name was Morris Childs.

• He provided the US with invaluable information for decades from within the Soviet Union, mostly from their many visits to the Kremlin at the height of the Cold War.

• How did Childs get such access? The Russians invited him.

• At age 9, Morris Childs’ family emigrated to the US from Kiev. At 19, he joined America’s Communist Party (CPUSA). Morris was appointed to the Lenin School in Moscow where he studied for three years. Upon returning to the US, he served in various CPUSA roles for the next 15 years.

• He ran for Congress from Illinois on the Communist Party ticket in 1936 and failed ignominiously.

• 1946: Morris was tapped as editor of The Daily Worker, the American Communist newspaper.

• One year later, he was the first CPUSA representative to visit Moscow to regain relations which had been lost during WWII. The Soviets suggested that the CPUSA take a militant political stance in the US. Morris disagreed. That contributed to his firing from The Daily Worker.

• 1952: He suffered a major heart attack. The CPUSA wouldn’t help with his medical bills. Morris became disillusioned with the party. He was penniless and going through a divorce.

• The FBI saw an opportunity to flip Morris. They offered to pay for his medical treatments in exchange for him spying on the CPUSA.

• He agreed. The FBI paid Morris surreptitiously, and he gradually climbed the ranks of the CPUSA.

• International spying is usually the domain of the CIA, so initially Morris only provided information within the US. That changed in 1959 when he was sent to the 21st Soviet Communist Party Congress.

• Morris made an impression on Nikita Khrushchev at that event, and from that point forward he was routinely welcomed to Moscow as an American Communist Party leader.

• Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, Morris brought the Bureau a wealth of intelligence.

• The FBI constantly scrambled to keep other US spy agencies from learning about him. They wanted their asset all to themselves. They issued Morris fake IDs and passports and kept the circle of knowledge small.

• The secrets got even more difficult to hide after Morris remarried.

• Eva Lieb was a former CPUSA member. After they married, Morris confessed to her that he was a spy. Rather than shying away, Eva joined him. Though initially dismayed, the FBI saw no alternative.

• Together, the elderly Jewish couple from Chicago frequently traveled to the Soviet Union as American spies.

• The information they brought back over the years proved invaluable. After Nixon’s election, Soviets feared nuclear war was imminent. Morris’ intelligence helped deter those fears. He also reported that Soviet nuclear stockpiles weren’t as large as believed. He saw open political corruption within the Kremlin and Politburo.

• The Soviets also relied on Morris for US information. To his surprise, they never read American newspapers, so he recited Washington Post reports but made them sound like clandestine intelligence. They fell for it every time.

• At the end of Morris and Eva’s final trip, they were escorted to the Kremlin for unknown reasons. They worried that their cover was blown and they might face execution.

• Instead, they arrived to a surprise birthday party in Morris’ honor.

• With his health failing, Morris and the FBI ended Operation Solo in 1977. Ten years later, he quietly received his Medal of Honor.

• Morris and Eva lived long enough to see the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. They both had a role in bringing them down.

  ALSO:

• I briefly acquired the film rights to John Barron’s 1997 book Operation Solo: The FBI’s Man in the Kremlin with the hope of producing a film starring my friend Robin Williams. Although Robin enjoyed my screenplay adaptation, nothing ever became of the project.