Author Description

Operation Solo is America's greatest spy story. For 17 years, Morris Childs, code named "Agent 58," provided the United States with the Kremlin's innermost secrets. Repeatedly risking his life, "Agent 58" made 51 clandestine missions into the Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe, and Cuba. Because Morris was in effect the second-ranking man in the U.S. Communist Party, he was treated like royalty by communist leaders worldwide. They never knew he was working for the FBI. Operation Solo ventures into the recesses of the Kremlin and the FBI. "Agent 58" was present at the 20th Party Congress in Moscow when Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to document and condemn the mass murders engineered by Josef Stalin. The secret speech was such a damning indictment of Soviet communism that it was intended only for the ears of the party oligarchy, but Morris Childs was able to obtain a copy for the FBI. Communism never fully recovered from the effects of the speech's publication by the U.S. State Department.. This operation - which the FBI officially considers the greatest in its history - forewarned the United States of Soviet intentions in Berlin, of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, of the details, from the inception, of the Sino-Soviet split, of Soviet subversion in Africa and Latin America, and much more. Through first-hand accounts, Operation Solo tells the story of the conflicts within the FBI and American intelligence about the operation and how the FBI, through extraordinary measures, managed to keep that operation hidden from everyone, including the CIA.