Sailor Suspected as Spy Returns to U.S., Is Immediately Arrested

Seaman Michael Lance Walker, the younger partner in an accused father-son spy team, was flown back to the United States on Saturday and arrested by FBI agents on charges that he helped pass secrets to the Soviet Union.

The agents were waiting with handcuffs when the 22-year-old Walker, wearing a white shirt and blue pants, walked down the stairs of a twin-engine C-9 Nightingale at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at mid-afternoon.

The agents identified themselves, informed him of the espionage charges against him, fastened shackles around his waist and wrists and escorted him to an Air Force police car.

Military personnel and the press--the only persons in the area when Walker’s plane landed--were kept at a distance of about 200 feet as the sailor was escorted away and FBI agents unloaded several large plastic bags from the plane.

Walker is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate in Baltimore on Tuesday morning, the federal prosecutor’s office said.

He had been stationed on the nuclear-powered carrier Nimitz in the Mediterranean and was taken off the vessel while it was anchored at Haifa, Israel. The plane with Walker aboard flew in from Spain on Saturday.

Officials on the Nimitz said that they could not provide information on Walker’s departure.

Walker’s father, John Anthony Walker Jr., 47, the suspected leader of the spy ring that allegedly included his son, was being held in the Baltimore jail. The father, who retired as a chief warrant officer in 1976, is accused of spying for the Soviet Union for at least 15 years, including much of his 20-year career in the Navy.