Judge Rejects Use of Letters in Spy Trial

Prosecutors in the impending trial of accused Navy spy Jerry A. Whitworth were told Monday that they cannot introduce into evidence a series of anonymous letters about a spy ring sent last year to the FBI, unless they can link them directly to Whitworth.

The so-called RUS letters, U.S. District Judge John P. Vukasin Jr. said, “amount to a confession” and, if they were sent by Whitworth, there would probably be “no need for a trial.” However, he said, “I don’t see any indication the government has established the RUS letters were written by Whitworth.”

The ruling marked the first time in a series of evidentiary hearings in San Francisco that the judge has sided with defense attorneys, even tentatively, in their various moves to restrict the evidence that can be presented against their client.

Chief defense attorney James Larson said he was delighted by the ruling, but the head prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Atty. William Farmer, said the matter has only been postponed. He expects to show that the letters were from Whitworth through analysis of the handwriting style when the trial begins Feb. 10, he said.

The three letters involved were sent to the FBI’s San Francisco bureau between May and August, 1984, and were signed “RUS, Somewhere, U.S.A.” They were postmarked Sacramento, close to Davis, where Whitworth, 46, a retired Navy chief radioman, was then living.

In the first letter, RUS offered to cooperate with agents in exchange for immunity. Calling the spy ring he was willing to uncover a “significant espionage” network passing “top-secret cryptographic key lists for military communications” to the Soviet Union, the writer said the ring had been in existence for “more than 20 years” and involved at least three other individuals.

Government prosecutors have said this matches the description of the spy ring headed by John A. Walker Jr., who has pleaded guilty under an arrangement requiring him to testify against Whitworth.