For more than 30 years the broad outlines of one of the FBIâ??s most successful counterintelligence operations have been widely known. Exposed by historian David Garrow in his 1981 book The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. and elaborated by journalist John Barron in his 1996 book, Operation Solo: The FBIâ??s Man in the Kremlin, â??Operation Soloâ? involved two brothers, Morris and Jack Childs, who reported to the FBI while serving as the Communist Party of the United Statesâ?? (CPUSA) main couriers to the Soviet Union. Recruited in the early 1950s, the Childs brothers had become disillusioned with communism; over the years they gave American intelligence an insiderâ??s view of Communist plans, thinking, and priorities.
Morris Childs was by far the more significant figure. A member of the CPUSA since 1921, onetime head of the Chicago party and editor of the Daily Worker, Morris had drifted away from the organization after losing a power struggle in the late 1940s and because of serious heart problems he developed soon after. Persuaded by the bureau to reestablish his ties to a party reeling from defections, government prosecutions, and severe financial shortfalls, he managed to persuade Eugene Dennis, leader of the CPUSA, to allow him to establish connections with Moscow to ask for money. By June 1957 he was head of the CPUSAâ??s Foreign Affairs Committee, the partyâ??s â??ambassadorâ? to the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, and later Cuba. Gus Hall, who became the partyâ??s general secretary in the 1960s, referred to Morris Childs as his â??secretary of state.â?
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