The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

61. The FCD communication to Ponomarev of October 20, 1980 was numbered 2192-A/OV. The basic subsidy paid to Kashtan in the late 1970s was 150,000 US dollars, paid in two annual installments, with some supplements. By the 1980s the CPC had a membership of only about 4,000, and was thus receiving a subsidy of about $40 dollars per member. Subsidies were also paid to the Canada-USSR and Quebec-USSR Societies, and to the Severny Sosed (“Northern Neighbour”) journal. In addition, subsidies were sometimes channeled through the CPC to the Haitian Communists, and perhaps other Parties. vol. 8, ch. 13.

62. Haynes and Klehr, “‘Moscow Gold,’ Confirmed at Last?” pp. 281-4; L. Dobbs, Down with Big Brother, p. 414. Mitrokhin’s notes provide numerous examples of “Moscow gold,” especially during the 1970s, but no figures for the total subsidies received by any Communist Party.

63. Barron, Operation Solo, ch. 4; the aliases of Morris Childs (born Chilovsky) are given in vol. 6, ch. 12. (On Child’s earlier career in the CPUSA, see Klehr, Haynes and Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism, pp. 257-71.) Barron’s account is based on interviews and other material from Childs, his wife Eva and FBI agents concerned with his case. Operation Solo somewhat exaggerates the importance of the intelligence he supplied to the FBI after his trips to Moscow (see Draper, “Our Man in Moscow,” New York Review of Books (May 9, 1996)). Mitrokhin’s notes from KGB files, however, largely corroborate, as well as making important additions to, Barron’s account of Childs’s role in channeling Soviet funds to the CPUSA. Mitrokhin, unlike Barron, rarely gives annual totals for the Soviet subsidies. But those he provides are compatible with, though not identical to, Barron’s figures. According to the KGB files noted by Mitrokhin, the “allocations” to the CPUSA were 1.7 million dollars in both 1975 and 1976 (vol. 6, ch. 12). Barron gives figures of 1,792,676 dollars for 1975 and 1,997,651 dollars for 1976 (Operation Solo, appendix B); one possible explanation for the discrepancies is that, as sometimes happened, additional allocations were made in the course of the year.

64. vol. 6, ch. 12.

65. vol. 6, ch. 12.

66. The instructor’s congratulations were reported by Friedman to the FBI. Barron, Operation Solo, pp. 144-5.

67. vol. 6, ch. 12.

68. Barron, Operation Solo, pp. 144-5. Mitrokhin’s notes and Barron’s book neatly complement each other. Mitrokhin summarizes the account of Friedman’s career in KGB files (vol. 6, ch. 12); Barron describes his career as known to the FBI, though he omits his real name and identifies him only by his FBI codename, CLIP.

69. vol. 6, ch. 12.

70. Barron, Operation Solo, pp. 156-7.

71. vol. 6, ch. 12.

72. Barron, Operation Solo, ch. 3.

73. vol. 6, ch. 12.

74. Barron, Operation Solo, ch. 3; Draper, “Our Man in Moscow,” New York Review of Books (May 9, 1996)

75. Barron, Operation Solo, p. 263.

76. vol. 6, ch. 12. Instead of Jackson, Dobrynin asked Hall to bring with him to meetings at the embassy Arnold Johnson, director of the CPUSA Information and Lecture Bureau, once improbably eulogized by Lee Harvey Oswald as “the Lenin of our country” (Posner, Case Closed, p. 149).

77. DeLoach, Hoover’s FBI, pp. 213-14; Barron, Operation Solo, pp. 262-3. FBI reports to the White House said that Levison had been identified as a secret CPUSA member by “an informant who has furnished reliable information in the past as a secret member of the Communist Party,” presumably Jack Childs. Friedly and Gallen, Martin Luther King, pp. 124, 136-7.

78. Garrow, FBI and Martin Luther King Jr., ch. 1; Friedly and Gallen, Martin Luther King, pp. 23-8.

79. Barron, Operation Solo, p. 263; DeLoach, Hoover’s FBI, p. 214; Friedly and Gallen, Martin Luther King, pp. 25-6, 133-5. Though he denied current membership of the CPUSA, O’Dell resigned from King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1962. Mitrokhin’s notes contain no specific reference to O’Dell but reveal that the magazine Freedomways, with which he became actively involved after leaving the SCLC, had been founded with active Soviet support, continued to receive secret Soviet subsidies and was “close” to the CPUSA. vol. 6, ch. 12.

80. Barron, Operation Solo, pp. 265-6.

81. DeLoach, Hoover’s FBI, p. 214-15; Friedly and Gallen, Martin Luther King, pp. 36-43.

82. vol. 6, ch. 12.

83. vol. 6, app. 1, part 34.