ESPIONAGE: Charming Counterspy

All his life, roly-poly Boris Mihailovich Morros, 62, has been a suave Slav charmer with a St. Petersburg touch to his accent. As he tells it, when he was 16 and already conducting the Russian Imperial Symphony, the charmed Rasputin pressed gifts upon him. At 42, as a Hollywood musical director, he persuaded Leopold Stokowski to make his first motion picture (The Big Broadcast of 1937). Even the U.S. Government capitulated to his charm. During Boris’ twelve-year stint as an undercover man keeping tabs on Soviet spies, bemused FBI men referred to him as their “special special agent.” Last week, with the Soble spy ring (TIME, Aug. 19) cracked as a result of his information, and Boris Morros’ counterspy career over at last, the Justice Department allowed its departing “special special agent” a hail-and-farewell press conference.

As Special Special Agent Morros unfolded details of his espionage career, it was Soviet Embassy Second Secretary Vassili Zubilin who first asked him to become a Soviet spy in 1943. From then on real life and reel life were sometimes indistinguishable. There were tales of a coded message in which the word Cinerama really meant “You are in danger. Come home at once.” There were hairbreadth escapes; i.e., one day in Moscow while Morros was in conference with Soviet Spy Chief Lavrenty P. Beria, an incoming message accused him of disloyalty. Boris charmed the Russians into believing that the American woman who had squealed on him was merely jealous.

Last week before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Boris Morros identified the woman. She was, said he, Martha Dodd Stern, the Communist-minded daughter of William E. Dodd, onetime (1933-37) U.S. Ambassador to Germany in the Roosevelt Administration. The U.S. already knew a lot about the activities of Martha Stern and her wealthy husband Alfred, who had been hiding out in Mexico and dodging extradition and indictment as members of Jack Soble’s spy network. But last week it learned more. The Sterns had flown from Mexico City on a Dutch airliner, were said to be leaving Holland and heading East.

Last week Boris Morros was also on the move. He was back in his beloved show business as a man no longer suspect. Friends who once crossed Hollywood-and-Vine to avoid the man they despised as a flagrant fellow traveler were proud to talk to him again. Boris, who estimates he lost $2,000,000 in possible earnings by becoming a counterspy, was busy with plans for the future. He had already charmed 18 Nobel Prizewinners into recounting their life stories to him, hoped to turn the stories into a series of television films.