Operation Solo Read Free Page B

night I telephoned Morris and simultaneously we said the same thing, “Did you watch television today?” Together we marveled at the convulsions revolutionizing the communist world.
    At Christmas, I received a card from Morris. With an unsteady hand, he wrote: “Our dreams of half a century are coming true in life—it is difficult to understand the speed and reality. We are glad we gave it a push.”
    Well, Jim Fox didn’t give it much of a push. Morris and Eva Childs surely did. Few Americans have given our nation what they have given.
    After the service, Fox and Boyle adjourned to a venerable Italian restaurant, settled into a booth, and over double martinis began reminiscing much like two generals reviewing an epic wartime campaign. Their conversation was disjointed, rambling from topic to topic. But in the anecdotes traded, they tried in one way or another to answer a basic question: How could we accomplish something so improbable for so long?
    Of course, Morris himself was a large part of the answer. Boyle told a story about Morris, Angela Davis, and ten thousand dollars, a story whose climax he never reported to headquarters.
    It began in 1970 during the trial of three convicts charged with murdering a guard at Soledad Prison in California. Someone smuggled weapons into the courtroom and a barrage of gunfire killed the presiding judge and three others. The FBI initiated a nationwide hunt for Angela Davis, a young communist and
college instructor accused of plotting to slip the weapons into court. The search continued for nearly two months until Morris learned from a party official exactly where Davis was hiding in New York.
    The FBI immediately arrested her and to protect Morris planted rumors attributing the capture to the acumen of field investigators and their supervisors. Headquarters felt guilty about crediting others for what Morris had done and proposed to compensate him with a cash bonus. To the Chicago official, it said: “Name any amount; we’ll pay it.” Boyle protested that Morris was not working for money and would resent being treated like a mercenary informant; he would most appreciate a brief letter from Director J. Edgar Hoover. Headquarters was adamant. By locating Angela Davis, Morris had saved the government millions of dollars that a continuing search would have cost, and he deserved a reward. 2
    The Chicago SAC (special agent-in-charge), Boyle, Morris, and Eva sat around a big desk in the back room of the cover office the FBI maintained for the operation. After congratulatory remarks, the SAC started laying $100 bills, one by one, on the desk. Morris glowered at Boyle, elbowed the cash away, and inched his chair to the right, further distancing himself from the money. Barely speaking, he joined Boyle in escorting the SAC through the suite to the door. When they returned to the back room, the money, $10,000 in all, was gone; Eva had pocketed it.
    Boyle and his wife had adopted six children, two of them black, through Catholic Charities of Chicago, and Morris knew that Boyle actively supported the charity. The next time Boyle came to the cover office, he saw on the desk in the back room an envelope addressed to him. Inside, he found a cashier’s check payable to Catholic Charities of Chicago in the amount of $10,000.
    The so-called CIA deal said still more about Morris’ disdain for money and his motivation. While the FBI kept the CIA ignorant of the source, it necessarily shared some of the intelligence Morris
provided, blandly prefacing reports with the phrase, “A source who has provided reliable information in the past advised…” However, CIA evaluation and subsequent verification of the often spectacular reports made clear that they emanated from someone with extraordinary access to communist rulers or maybe even a ruler himself.
    Ultimately, the CIA tried to buy the operation, or buy into it, without knowing exactly what it was buying. It