Trial Opens in Navy Spy Case : Arthur Walker Said He Got Paid, Papers Show

The first trial in the Walker family spy case opened Monday with the release of court records that showed that Arthur J. Walker had confessed to both FBI agents and a federal grand jury that he had accepted $12,000 for passing Navy secrets to the Soviet Union through his brother, John.

The documents also quoted Arthur Walker, 50, as saying that he was recruited in 1980 by his brother, the alleged mastermind of the spy ring, to steal classified material from a Navy contractor.

Walker has pleaded not guilty to charges that he took classified documents from the files of VSE Corp., a Chesapeake, Va., defense firm where he had worked as an engineer since 1980.

On the first day of testimony, Walker--a wiry, bespectacled for mer Navy lieutenant commander--waived his right to a jury trial, prompting U.S. District Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr., who now will decide his guilt or innocence, to remove an order suppressing the grand jury transcript and summaries of interviews of Walker by the FBI last May.

The documents were submitted by the government last month to refute a defense contention that the confessions were not made voluntarily.

According to the documents, Walker painted a picture of his brother, a 47-year-old former Navy chief warrant officer, as a man who “started out bad” as a juvenile delinquent and sank lower in adulthood.

Financial Problems

In 1967 or 1968, he said, John Walker was having financial problems with a bar he owned in Charleston, S.C., as well as marital problems with his wife, Barbara, from whom he later was divorced.

“Probably one of the things she was unhappy about was that John told her she could sleep with people in order to raise money to pay for the bar,” the FBI summaries quoted Walker as saying.

Walker said his brother first approached him about spying in January, 1980, when the two men were sitting in a pickup truck outside a waffle restaurant in the Norfolk area, lamenting their financial situations after a business they owned jointly had failed.

“I have friends who will pay for classified information,” Arthur Walker reportedly quoted John Walker as suggesting. Arthur further told an FBI agent that his brother identified those “friends” as “Russians” and suggested that he get a job at a place where he would have “access to classified information.”

‘Confidential’ Material

Walker told authorities that he twice turned over to his brother material from VSE’s files, classified as “confidential,” that outlined technical and mechanical problems on board naval vessels.

Moreover, according to the FBI summaries, Arthur said John had twice given him cash payments of $6,000 each, some of which he described as his “happy hour money” to buy items such as a gas grill and a new hairpiece.

But as prosecutors began calling FBI agents and Walker’s co-workers to the stand, defense attorneys sought to punch a hole in government contentions that some of the material Walker allegedly passed was sensitive and damaging to national security. One document they disclosed allegedly showed that some of the same material Walker reportedly gave to his brother also was shipped by VSE to the Navy via United Parcel Service.

Pressured Him

Walker told the FBI that his brother coached him on how to use a camera to photograph documents surreptitiously and frequently pressured him to bring documents with a more sensitive security classification.

“Art, I bring something to them, I may be the 80th guy with the same damn thing,” Walker told the FBI that John said once. “If it’s old equipment, it’s not worth the effort.”

Walker faces a possible life sentence if convicted in the trial, which prosecutors expect to last three to four days.

John Walker and his 22-year-old son, Michael Lance, a sailor who had been stationed on the aircraft carrier Nimitz, are scheduled to stand trial Oct. 28 in Baltimore. Trial for Jerry A. Whitworth, 45, of Davis, Calif., a friend of John Walker’s also implicated by the government, is set for Aug. 26.