Morris H. Childs (born Moishe Chilovsky; June 10, 1902 – June 5, 1991) was an American political activist and American Communist Party functionary who became a Soviet espionage agent (1929) and then a double agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (1952) until leaving both services by 1982. 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.
Early years Morris H. Childs was born Moishe Chilovsky on June 10, 1902, in Kiev, Russian Empire, to an ethnic Jewish family. The family spoke Russian in the home, not Ukrainian or Yiddish.John Barron, Operation SOLO: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing Co., 1996; pg. 22. Morris's father, Josef Chilovsky, engaged in revolutionary activities against the Tsarist regime, for which he was imprisoned and subsequently exiled to Siberia.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 18. 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 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.Clyde Tolson, "Background Data Regarding Development of CG 5824-S [Morris Childs] as FBI Informant and his Subsequent Advancement to National Leadership Position in Communist Party USA," memorandum to J. Edgar Hoover, March 12, 1959, pg. 1. Published in "FBI SOLO Files - March 1958 to August 1960." Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation, August 2011; part 10, pdf pg. 1350.
The family name was anglicized 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 Art Institute of Chicago. 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 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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 19. 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.Some sources wrongly report the date of Childs' party membership as 1919, based confusion over Childs' later (erroneous) claims of having been considered a "charter member" despite joining the Communist movement in 1921, rather than the foundation year of 1919. Childs' biographer, John Barron, should be regarded as definitive on his date of party membership — 1921. See: Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 19.
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 led by William Z. Foster, head of the party's trade union operations.Daily Worker, February 14, 1929, pg. 3. From the mid-1920s, Childs was a protégé 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 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".Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 20.
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.Lora Soroka and Xiuzhi Zhou, "Register of the Morris Childs Papers, 1938-1995," Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, 1999. 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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 23. 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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pp. 23-24. 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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 24.
Childs remained at the Lenin School until 1932. He remained a lifelong friend of Suslov, later a top expert in relations with foreign Communist Parties under Soviet leaders Joseph 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.Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix — Part IX: Communist Front Organizations, with Special Reference to the National Citizen Political Action Committee. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1944; pg. 766.
Childs was a candidate for public office for the Communist Party, running for US Congress in an Illinois at-large district in 1936.Communist Party of Illinois, Platform of the Communist Party, State of Illinois, for the Elections November, 1936. Chicago: Communist Party Election Committee, n.d. ; pg. 8. Childs was also a member of the CPUSA's governing Central Committee.
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 who in 1945, had published criticism of the policies of American CPUSA leader Earl Browder which ultimately led to Browder's ouster.David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From "SOLO" to Memphis. New York: WW Norton, 1981; pg. 35. 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) which used Childs's absence from the Daily Worker to engineer his ouster as editor. The Dennis group assented to this maneuver 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.
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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 25. 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 in Nazi Germany on behalf of the Comintern in 1933.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 26.
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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 28. 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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 42.
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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 43. 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 was 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.Barron, Operation SOLO, pg. 44. As Morris had been abandoned, fired from his job and left penniless, as well as stricken by a heart attack and seemingly near death, he had begun to question the Communist Party. 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