Jack Childs
Encyclopedia
Morris Childs was an American political activist and American Communist Party
functionary who became a secret operative on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
in the summer of 1952. Beginning in 1958, Childs acted as a secret courier on behalf of the American party, briefing Soviet
officials on political affairs in the American Party and carrying funds to support the American Communist movement from Moscow
to New York City
, reporting details all the while to his FBI handlers. Over the course of two decades of activity in this role, Childs played a major part in the transfer of more than $28 million in Soviet subsidies to the American movement. For his activity as a courier on behalf of the Soviet government, Childs was awarded the Order of the Red Banner
in 1975. His work as a spy for the American intelligence community was recognized in 1987 when Childs (together with his brother Jack) was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
by President Ronald Reagan
.
, Ukraine
(then part of the Russian empire
), the son of an ethnic Jewish family. The family spoke Russian
in the home, not Ukrainian
or Yiddish
. Morris's father, Josef Chilovsky engaged in revolutionary activities against the Tsarist
regime, for which he was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to Siberia
. Josef was able to flee Russia via the Black Sea
and he emigrated to the United States, landing in Galveston, Texas
in March 1910.
Josef Chilovsky moved to Chicago
, where he worked as a cobbler
and bootmaker. As soon as he his living situation was established and a small sum of money raised, Josef sent for his wife, Nechame Chilovsky, and their boys, including Moishe and Jakob. The family arrived at Ellis Island
in December 1911.
The family name
was Americanized from Chilovsky to "Childs" in Chicago. Morris, as Moishe was now known, attended a demanding Jewish school in the city and worked in his father's shoemaking shop and as a messenger in the Chicago financial district. Childs read extensively, favoring particularly works of literature and history, and took courses at the Chicago Institute of Art. There he was exposed to radical ideas among his peers, echoing the dissent which his father felt towards the autocracy in imperial Russia.
was a source of great inspiration to the entire Childs family, and news of its dramatic events were breathlessly followed over the next several years. Towards the end of the decade Childs joined a trade union
in order to get a job driving a milk delivery wagon, where he first made the acquaintance of members of the then-underground American Communist movement. The combination of his family's radical heritage, the exciting news from Russia, and the enthusiasm of his radical peers caused Morris Childs to become politically engaged, and he took the step of joining the United Communist Party of America in 1921.
During the bitter factional war within the American communist movement throughout the decade of the 1920s, Childs was a consistent supporter of the Chicago-based faction lead by William Z. Foster
, head of the party's trade union operations. From the middle-1920s onward Childs was a protegé and friend of the man who help bring the famous union organizer Foster into the Communist Party's orbit, Earl Browder
. When in 1928 the Communist International sent Browder was sent on a dangerous mission to China as a representative of the Communist International's trade union organizing section, the Profintern
, Browder left his prized library and papers with Childs, telling him before he left, "if I don't come back, they're yours."
In 1929 Childs was selected by the Communist Party USA
(CPUSA) to attend the elite International Lenin School
in Moscow, a training school for professional revolutionaries
. Early in 1930, Childs was approached by an agent of the Soviet secret police
, the OGPU, who had noted in Childs' file that he had helped to successfully identify a police spy in the Communist organization of Chicago. The man asked Childs to become an informer for the agency to help keep tabs on the ideological foibles of his Lenin School comrades. Childs agreed with the request and thereafter provided periodic reports. During his second year at the Lenin School, Childs made the personal acquaintance of a number of high-level Soviet officials who taught courses at the school, including exiled Finnish revolutionary leader Otto Kuusinen and a young ideology expert named Mikhail Suslov
.
Childs remained at the Lenin School until 1932. He remained a life-long friend of Suslov, later a top expert in relations with foreign Communist Parties under Soviet leaders Iosif Stalin
, Nikita Khrushchev
, and Leonid Brezhnev
.
When he returned to the United States in 1933, a young Moscow-trained functionary on the rise, Childs went to work for a Communist Party organization now headed by his old Chicago acquaintance, Earl Browder. Childs was assigned the role of paid sub-district organizer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
. Childs was subsequently moved to Illinois
, where he served as State Secretary of the CPUSA for Illinois.
Childs was a candidate for public office for the Communist Party, running for US Congress in an Illinois at-large district in 1936. Childs was also a member of the CPUSA's governing Central Committee. He remained a leading party worker in Illinois through 1945.
Morris Childs remained a leading party worker in Illinois through 1945. In December 1945, Childs was named editor of The Daily Worker, the official English-language newspaper of the Communist Party published in New York City and a member of the CPUSA's governing National Committee.
In 1947 Childs, who, having attended the Lenin School was a fluent speaker of Russian, traveled to Moscow on an unspecified mission for the Communist Party, stopping off in France
during the return trip to have a conversation with Jacques Duclos
, the French Communist Party leader whose 1945 published criticism of the policies of American leader Earl Browder
had ultimately lead to his ouster. Childs, a supporter of a majority faction headed by Eugene Dennis
was a target of a hardline minority group which included William Z. Foster
, Robert Thompson
, and Benjamin Davis
, used the Daily Worker editor's absence to engineer an ouster, which the Dennis group assented to in an attempt to calm troubled waters with the minority.
Childs was surprised with the fait accompli at the June 27, 1947 plenary meeting of the National Committee, at which he was forced to resign the editorial post, ostensibly due to the heart ailment which plagued him. Exacerbating the situation, Childs was not even informed of Dennis's decision that he was to be removed until the matter was brought up at the meeting. On Dennis's motion, Childs was given an indefinite leave of absence as Daily Worker editor, replaced by Spanish Civil War
veteran Johnny Gates
. Childs returned home to Chicago, smarting from his comrades' betrayal, and discontinued further party activities, citing reasons of health.
Whereas Morris had been trained for work as a top party functionary and excelled in Moscow, Jack's training was more specialized and he was not a top student. He nevertheless proved himself courageous and useful as a courier transporting money to the Communist Party of Germany
in Nazi Germany
on behalf of the Comintern in 1933.
Upon his return to the United States Jack was put to work at the side of Earl Browder at party headquarters in New York City, acting as chauffeur, personal assistant, and bodyguard. This proximity to Browder was a blessing when the "man from Kansas" was General Secretary of the CPUSA but became a curse in 1945 when Browder was removed from his leadership position and expelled from the party, ostensibly for his "revisionism
." As a so-called "Browderite," Childs also lost his party job, instead making use of his former radio training to open a small electrical and painting supply store in New York City.
Jack Childs dropped out of the Communist Party in 1947 and spent his time and money taking care of his physically ailing brother as best he was able. HIs sudden lack of party activity generated a routine September exploratory visit by two Special Agents of the FBI in an effort to gauge his level of disaffection and to see whether he might be a willing source of information about the top levels of the Communist Party.
Jack has happy to lend assistance to the FBI, declaring to them that he "never really believed any of that communist bullshit" and that he had been active in the Communist Party merely for the sake of his brother, who had been a true believer and a figure of authority. Now Morris had been abandoned, fired from his job and left penniless, stricken by a heart attack and seemingly near death. He had begun to question everything. When his FBI interlocutors intimated to Jack Childs their desire to infiltrate the top level of the Communist Party with an informant, Jack had a potential solution, declaring "Morris is your ticket to the top."
, managing to restore him physically.
Over the next several years — a period during which the Communist Party was forced into retreat by the combined forces of government action
and the public antipathy that was part and parcel of the Second Red Scare — the Childs brothers worked themselves back into the good graces of top party leaders.
The oblique communications between the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union
and the United States forced upon the Americans by the Smith Act
proved inefficient and ineffectual and in 1956 the FBI learned that a move was planned to reestablish direct ties between Moscow and New York.
Childs was picked as the secret FBI informant with the greatest likelihood of being named by the CPUSA's leadership as liaison between the Soviet and American Communist Parties. The FBI did their best to steer their informant towards this sensitive new position. This effort was rewarded in July 1957, when CP leader Eugene Dennis told Childs to begin making preparations to covertly travel to Moscow as the representative of the Secretariat of the CPUSA.
In 1958, Childs made the first of what would ultimately be 52 secret trips to Moscow on behalf of the Communist Party USA, bringing information on affairs in the turbulent American party and making arrangements for the delivery of cash for its support from the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
.
Childs was one of two delegates to the 21st Congress of the CPSU, held in Moscow from January 27 to February 5, 1959. Joining Childs in the Soviet Union as an official representative of the American Communist Party was James E. Jackson, Jr., husband of Esther Cooper Jackson
.
The CPSU held Childs in great esteem. In 1975, in honor of his 75th birthday, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev hosted a banquet in Childs' honor at the Kremlin
, where he quietly presented him with a medal, the Order of the Red Banner
, for the services which performed conducting funds on behalf of the CPSU's international department.
Childs undertook his last mission to Moscow in 1977. Over the course of his two decades as a courier, Childs was instrumental in helping with the transfer of over $28 million from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the Communist Party of the USA to help fund its activities. Each and every transaction was painstakingly reported by Childs to his FBI handlers, along with information about affairs in the Soviet and American communist parties, as well as inside information about the international communist movement.
Childs remained on the FBI's payroll until his retirement in 1982. Owing to the sensitivity and critical importance of his mission only a very small group inside the FBI knew of Childs' identity and the Bureau further minimized the size by keeping four agents in the Chicago and New York field offices solely on Operation SOLO for 13 years or more — with Special Agent Walter Boyle putting in a full 20 years on the Childs case. Never before or since in the FBI's history has it kept agents on a single case for such a protracted period.
In honor of their services rendered to the United States government as secret FBI informers, in 1987 Morris and Jack Childs were each awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
by President Ronald Reagan
, with Jack's award coming posthumously.
In 1962 Morris was married to Eva Childs, who often took part in his frequent trips to Moscow and was herself an FBI informant.
The story of Soviet money transferred under FBI observation was fictionalized in Baynard Kendrick
's 1959 novel, Hot Red Money.
Morris Childs' papers are held by the Hoover Institution
Archives at Stanford University
in Palo Alto, California
. Additional material relating to Morris Childs is to be found in the John Barron
papers, also held by the Hoover Institution Archives. Barron, a former editor at Readers' Digest magazine, was the author of a book on Operation SOLO which was published in 1996 and accumulated copious materials on the post-World War II
CPUSA during the course of his research.
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
functionary who became a secret operative on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
in the summer of 1952. Beginning in 1958, Childs acted as a secret courier on behalf of the American party, briefing Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
officials on political affairs in the American Party and carrying funds to support the American Communist movement from Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, reporting details all the while to his FBI handlers. Over the course of two decades of activity in this role, Childs played a major part in the transfer of more than $28 million in Soviet subsidies to the American movement. For his activity as a courier on behalf of the Soviet government, Childs was awarded the Order of the Red Banner
Order of the Red Banner
The Soviet government of Russia established the Order of the Red Banner , a military decoration, on September 16, 1918 during the Russian Civil War...
in 1975. His work as a spy for the American intelligence community was recognized in 1987 when Childs (together with his brother Jack) was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
by President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
.
Early years
Morris Childs was born Moishe Chilovsky on June 10, 1902, in KievKiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
(then part of the Russian empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
), the son of an ethnic Jewish family. The family spoke Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
in the home, not Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
or Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
. Morris's father, Josef Chilovsky engaged in revolutionary activities against the Tsarist
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
regime, for which he was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. Josef was able to flee Russia via the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
and he emigrated to the United States, landing in Galveston, Texas
Galveston, Texas
Galveston is a coastal city located on Galveston Island in the U.S. state of Texas. , the city had a total population of 47,743 within an area of...
in March 1910.
Josef Chilovsky moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, where he worked as a cobbler
Cobbler
Cobbler may refer to:* A shoemaker who repairs shoes, rather than manufacturing them .** Cobbler apron, a type of apron that covers both the front and back of the body...
and bootmaker. As soon as he his living situation was established and a small sum of money raised, Josef sent for his wife, Nechame Chilovsky, and their boys, including Moishe and Jakob. The family arrived at Ellis Island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
in December 1911.
The family name
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...
was Americanized from Chilovsky to "Childs" in Chicago. Morris, as Moishe was now known, attended a demanding Jewish school in the city and worked in his father's shoemaking shop and as a messenger in the Chicago financial district. Childs read extensively, favoring particularly works of literature and history, and took courses at the Chicago Institute of Art. There he was exposed to radical ideas among his peers, echoing the dissent which his father felt towards the autocracy in imperial Russia.
Communist Party career
The Russian Revolution of 1917Russian Revolution of 1917
The Russian Revolution is the collective term for a series of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which destroyed the Tsarist autocracy and led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The Tsar was deposed and replaced by a provisional government in the first revolution of February 1917...
was a source of great inspiration to the entire Childs family, and news of its dramatic events were breathlessly followed over the next several years. Towards the end of the decade Childs joined a trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
in order to get a job driving a milk delivery wagon, where he first made the acquaintance of members of the then-underground American Communist movement. The combination of his family's radical heritage, the exciting news from Russia, and the enthusiasm of his radical peers caused Morris Childs to become politically engaged, and he took the step of joining the United Communist Party of America in 1921.
During the bitter factional war within the American communist movement throughout the decade of the 1920s, Childs was a consistent supporter of the Chicago-based faction lead by William Z. Foster
William Z. Foster
William Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Marxist politician, whose career included a lengthy stint as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA...
, head of the party's trade union operations. From the middle-1920s onward Childs was a protegé and friend of the man who help bring the famous union organizer Foster into the Communist Party's orbit, Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
. When in 1928 the Communist International sent Browder was sent on a dangerous mission to China as a representative of the Communist International's trade union organizing section, the Profintern
Profintern
The Red International of Labor Unions , commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Communist International with the aim of coordinating Communist activities within trade unions...
, Browder left his prized library and papers with Childs, telling him before he left, "if I don't come back, they're yours."
In 1929 Childs was selected by the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
(CPUSA) to attend the elite International Lenin School
International Lenin School
Situated in Moscow and shrouded in secrecy, the International Lenin School was founded in 1926 as an instrument for the "Bolshevisation" of the Communist International and its national sections, following the resolutions of the fifth Congress of the Comintern. Between 1926 and 1938 the school...
in Moscow, a training school for professional revolutionaries
Professional Revolutionary
Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman is a documentary about the life of Saul Wellman.-Summary:“I want things to change, where the playing field is leveled,” Wellman says, “where equality emerges as a reality...where the horrible things about inequality are...
. Early in 1930, Childs was approached by an agent of the Soviet secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
, the OGPU, who had noted in Childs' file that he had helped to successfully identify a police spy in the Communist organization of Chicago. The man asked Childs to become an informer for the agency to help keep tabs on the ideological foibles of his Lenin School comrades. Childs agreed with the request and thereafter provided periodic reports. During his second year at the Lenin School, Childs made the personal acquaintance of a number of high-level Soviet officials who taught courses at the school, including exiled Finnish revolutionary leader Otto Kuusinen and a young ideology expert named Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as unofficial Chief Ideologue of the Party until his death in 1982. Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the separation of power...
.
Childs remained at the Lenin School until 1932. He remained a life-long friend of Suslov, later a top expert in relations with foreign Communist Parties under Soviet leaders Iosif Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
, and Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
.
When he returned to the United States in 1933, a young Moscow-trained functionary on the rise, Childs went to work for a Communist Party organization now headed by his old Chicago acquaintance, Earl Browder. Childs was assigned the role of paid sub-district organizer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 28th most populous city in the United States and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the...
. Childs was subsequently moved to Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, where he served as State Secretary of the CPUSA for Illinois.
Childs was a candidate for public office for the Communist Party, running for US Congress in an Illinois at-large district in 1936. Childs was also a member of the CPUSA's governing Central Committee. He remained a leading party worker in Illinois through 1945.
Morris Childs remained a leading party worker in Illinois through 1945. In December 1945, Childs was named editor of The Daily Worker, the official English-language newspaper of the Communist Party published in New York City and a member of the CPUSA's governing National Committee.
In 1947 Childs, who, having attended the Lenin School was a fluent speaker of Russian, traveled to Moscow on an unspecified mission for the Communist Party, stopping off in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
during the return trip to have a conversation with Jacques Duclos
Jacques Duclos
Jacques Duclos was a French Communist politician who played a key role in French politics from 1926, when he entered the French National Assembly after defeating Paul Reynaud, until 1969, when he won a substantial portion of the vote in the presidential elections.During World War I, Duclos fought...
, the French Communist Party leader whose 1945 published criticism of the policies of American leader Earl Browder
Earl Browder
Earl Russell Browder was an American communist and General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1934 to 1945. He was expelled from the party in 1946.- Early years :...
had ultimately lead to his ouster. Childs, a supporter of a majority faction headed by Eugene Dennis
Eugene Dennis
Francis Xavier Waldron , best known by the pseudonym Eugene Dennis was an American communist politician and union organizer, best remembered as the long-time leader of the Communist Party USA and as named party in Dennis v...
was a target of a hardline minority group which included William Z. Foster
William Z. Foster
William Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Marxist politician, whose career included a lengthy stint as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA...
, Robert Thompson
Robert G. Thompson
Robert George Thompson was born on June 21, 1915 in Grants Pass, Oregon, Thompson fought on the side of the Spanish Republicans in the Civil War in Spain, attaining the rank of battalion commander with the all-American volunteer Abraham Lincoln Brigade.Following the Spanish Civil War Thompson saw...
, and Benjamin Davis
Benjamin J. Davis
Benjamin J. "Ben" Davis , was an African-American lawyer and communist who was elected to the city council of New York City, representing Harlem, in 1943...
, used the Daily Worker editor's absence to engineer an ouster, which the Dennis group assented to in an attempt to calm troubled waters with the minority.
Childs was surprised with the fait accompli at the June 27, 1947 plenary meeting of the National Committee, at which he was forced to resign the editorial post, ostensibly due to the heart ailment which plagued him. Exacerbating the situation, Childs was not even informed of Dennis's decision that he was to be removed until the matter was brought up at the meeting. On Dennis's motion, Childs was given an indefinite leave of absence as Daily Worker editor, replaced by Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
veteran Johnny Gates
John Gates
John "Johnny" Gates, born Solomon Regenstreif was a prominent American Communist journalist, best remembered as one of the individuals spearheading a failed attempt at liberalization of the Communist Party USA in 1957.-Early years:...
. Childs returned home to Chicago, smarting from his comrades' betrayal, and discontinued further party activities, citing reasons of health.
Jack Childs
Morris's younger brother Jakob "Jack" Childs, was also a Communist. He, too, benefited from General Secretary Earl Browder's patronage, with Browder seeing to Jack's appointment as the business manager of the Young Communist League in New York City in 1931. In 1932 Browder tapped Jack Childs to attend the Lenin school to be trained as a communications expert, since the Comintern now sought those holding American passports because of their versatility.Whereas Morris had been trained for work as a top party functionary and excelled in Moscow, Jack's training was more specialized and he was not a top student. He nevertheless proved himself courageous and useful as a courier transporting money to the Communist Party of Germany
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
on behalf of the Comintern in 1933.
Upon his return to the United States Jack was put to work at the side of Earl Browder at party headquarters in New York City, acting as chauffeur, personal assistant, and bodyguard. This proximity to Browder was a blessing when the "man from Kansas" was General Secretary of the CPUSA but became a curse in 1945 when Browder was removed from his leadership position and expelled from the party, ostensibly for his "revisionism
Revisionism
Revisionism may refer to:*Historical revisionism, the critical re-examination of presumed historical facts and existing historiography** The "revisionists" school of thought in Soviet and Communist studies, as opposed to the Cold War "traditionalists" school....
." As a so-called "Browderite," Childs also lost his party job, instead making use of his former radio training to open a small electrical and painting supply store in New York City.
Jack Childs dropped out of the Communist Party in 1947 and spent his time and money taking care of his physically ailing brother as best he was able. HIs sudden lack of party activity generated a routine September exploratory visit by two Special Agents of the FBI in an effort to gauge his level of disaffection and to see whether he might be a willing source of information about the top levels of the Communist Party.
Jack has happy to lend assistance to the FBI, declaring to them that he "never really believed any of that communist bullshit" and that he had been active in the Communist Party merely for the sake of his brother, who had been a true believer and a figure of authority. Now Morris had been abandoned, fired from his job and left penniless, stricken by a heart attack and seemingly near death. He had begun to question everything. When his FBI interlocutors intimated to Jack Childs their desire to infiltrate the top level of the Communist Party with an informant, Jack had a potential solution, declaring "Morris is your ticket to the top."
Courier and informer
One day in April 1952, Special Agent Carl Freyman of the Chicago office of the FBI made a successful appeal to Morris Childs to go to work as a secret government informant. Acting on its own authority, the Chicago office undertook to pay for Morris's treatment at the Mayo ClinicMayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a not-for-profit medical practice and medical research group specializing in treating difficult patients . Patients are referred to Mayo Clinic from across the U.S. and the world, and it is known for innovative and effective treatments. Mayo Clinic is known for being at the top of...
, managing to restore him physically.
Over the next several years — a period during which the Communist Party was forced into retreat by the combined forces of government action
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
and the public antipathy that was part and parcel of the Second Red Scare — the Childs brothers worked themselves back into the good graces of top party leaders.
The oblique communications between the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the United States forced upon the Americans by the Smith Act
Smith Act
The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 is a United States federal statute that set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of the U.S...
proved inefficient and ineffectual and in 1956 the FBI learned that a move was planned to reestablish direct ties between Moscow and New York.
Childs was picked as the secret FBI informant with the greatest likelihood of being named by the CPUSA's leadership as liaison between the Soviet and American Communist Parties. The FBI did their best to steer their informant towards this sensitive new position. This effort was rewarded in July 1957, when CP leader Eugene Dennis told Childs to begin making preparations to covertly travel to Moscow as the representative of the Secretariat of the CPUSA.
In 1958, Childs made the first of what would ultimately be 52 secret trips to Moscow on behalf of the Communist Party USA, bringing information on affairs in the turbulent American party and making arrangements for the delivery of cash for its support from the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
.
Childs was one of two delegates to the 21st Congress of the CPSU, held in Moscow from January 27 to February 5, 1959. Joining Childs in the Soviet Union as an official representative of the American Communist Party was James E. Jackson, Jr., husband of Esther Cooper Jackson
Esther Cooper Jackson
Esther Cooper Jackson is an African American civil rights activist, former social worker and, along with Shirley Graham Du Bois, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edward Strong, and Louis E. Burnham, was one of the founding editors of the magazine Freedomways, a theoretical, political and literary journal...
.
The CPSU held Childs in great esteem. In 1975, in honor of his 75th birthday, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev hosted a banquet in Childs' honor at the Kremlin
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
, where he quietly presented him with a medal, the Order of the Red Banner
Order of the Red Banner
The Soviet government of Russia established the Order of the Red Banner , a military decoration, on September 16, 1918 during the Russian Civil War...
, for the services which performed conducting funds on behalf of the CPSU's international department.
Childs undertook his last mission to Moscow in 1977. Over the course of his two decades as a courier, Childs was instrumental in helping with the transfer of over $28 million from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the Communist Party of the USA to help fund its activities. Each and every transaction was painstakingly reported by Childs to his FBI handlers, along with information about affairs in the Soviet and American communist parties, as well as inside information about the international communist movement.
Childs remained on the FBI's payroll until his retirement in 1982. Owing to the sensitivity and critical importance of his mission only a very small group inside the FBI knew of Childs' identity and the Bureau further minimized the size by keeping four agents in the Chicago and New York field offices solely on Operation SOLO for 13 years or more — with Special Agent Walter Boyle putting in a full 20 years on the Childs case. Never before or since in the FBI's history has it kept agents on a single case for such a protracted period.
In honor of their services rendered to the United States government as secret FBI informers, in 1987 Morris and Jack Childs were each awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
by President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
, with Jack's award coming posthumously.
Death and legacy
Morris Childs died June 5, 1991, just five days short of his 89th birthday.In 1962 Morris was married to Eva Childs, who often took part in his frequent trips to Moscow and was herself an FBI informant.
The story of Soviet money transferred under FBI observation was fictionalized in Baynard Kendrick
Baynard Kendrick
Baynard Hardwick Kendrick wrote whodunit mystery novels about Duncan Maclain, a blind private investigator who worked with his two German shepherds and his household of assistants to solve murder mysteries. The novels were the basis for two films starring Edward Arnold, Eyes in the Night and The...
's 1959 novel, Hot Red Money.
Morris Childs' papers are held by the Hoover Institution
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....
Archives at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
. Additional material relating to Morris Childs is to be found in the John Barron
John Barron (journalist)
John Daniel Barron was a conservative American journalist and investigative writer. He is best remembered as the author of several books dealing with specifics of Soviet espionage.-Early years:...
papers, also held by the Hoover Institution Archives. Barron, a former editor at Readers' Digest magazine, was the author of a book on Operation SOLO which was published in 1996 and accumulated copious materials on the post-World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
CPUSA during the course of his research.
Operation SOLO files
- "FBI SOLO Files - March 1958 to August 1960." Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation, August 2011. —Very large file.
- F.J. Baumgardner, "Baumgardner Memorandum of 19 June 1958." Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation, August 2011. —Memo summarizing genesis of Operation SOLO.
Further reading
- John Barron, Operation SOLO: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1996.
- David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From "SOLO" to Memphis. New York: WW Norton, 1981.
- Harvey KlehrHarvey KlehrHarvey E. Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America ....
, John Earl HaynesJohn Earl HaynesJohn Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress...
, and Ron Radosh, Childs at Play: The FBI’s Cold War Triumph," The Weekly Standard, vol. 16, no. 47 (Sept. 5, 2011). - Baynard Kendrick, Hot Red Money, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959.
- "Going SOLO: Communist Agent Tells All." Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation, August 2, 2011.
External links
- Operation SOLO website, www.fbi.gov/ —Contains SOLO files in 35 small parts.
- Lora Soroka and Xiuzhi Zhou, "Register of the Morris Childs Papers, 1938-1995," Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, 1999.
- "Register of the John Barron Papers, 1927-1996," Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, 1999.