1. Morris H Childs was born Moishe Chilovsky on June 10,1902, in Kiev, Russian Empire, the son of an ethnic Jewish family.
34 Facts About Morris Childs
1. 2.
Morris Childs read extensively, favoring particularly works of literature and history, and took courses at the Art Institute of Chicago.
3.
Towards the end of the decade Morris 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.
4.
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.
5.
In 1929 Morris Childs was selected by the Communist Party USA to attend the elite International Lenin School in Moscow, a training school for professional revolutionaries.
6.
Early in 1930, Morris Childs was approached by an agent of the Soviet secret police, the OGPU, who had noted in Morris Childs' file that he had helped to successfully identify a police spy in the Communist organization of Chicago.
7.
The man asked Morris Childs to become an informer for the agency to help keep tabs on the ideological foibles of his Lenin School comrades.
8.
Morris Childs agreed with the request and thereafter provided periodic reports.
9.
Morris Childs 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.
10.
When he returned to the United States in 1933, a young Moscow-trained functionary on the rise, Morris Childs went to work for a Communist Party organization now headed by his old Chicago acquaintance, Earl Browder.
11.
Morris Childs was assigned the role of paid sub-district organizer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
12.
Morris Childs was moved to Illinois, where he served as State Secretary of the CPUSA for Illinois.
13.
Morris Childs was a candidate for public office for the Communist Party, running for US Congress in an Illinois at-large district in 1936.
14.
Morris Childs was a member of the CPUSA's governing Central Committee.
15.
Morris Childs remained a leading party worker in Illinois through 1945.
16.
In December 1945, Morris 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.
17.
In 1947 Morris 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.
18.
Morris 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.
19.
On Dennis's motion, Morris Childs was given an indefinite leave of absence as Daily Worker editor, replaced by Spanish Civil War veteran Johnny Gates.
20.
Morris Childs returned home to Chicago, smarting from his comrades' betrayal, and discontinued further party activities, citing reasons of health.
21.
In 1932 Browder tapped Jack Morris 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.
22.
Whereas Morris Childs 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.
23.
Morris Childs 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.
24.
Jack Morris 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.
25.
Now Morris Childs had been abandoned, fired from his job and left penniless, stricken by a heart attack and seemingly near death.
26.
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.
27.
Morris 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.
28.
In 1958, Morris 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.
29.
Morris Childs was one of two delegates to the 21st Congress of the CPSU, held in Moscow from January 27 to February 5,1959.
30.
Morris Childs remained on the FBI's payroll until his retirement in 1982.
31.
Morris Childs died June 5,1991, just five days short of his 89th birthday.
32.
In 1962 Morris was married to Eva Childs, who often took part in his frequent trips to Moscow and was herself an FBI informant.
33.
Morris Childs' papers are held by the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
34.
Additional material relating to Morris Childs is to be found in the John Barron papers, held by the Hoover Institution Archives.