Spy Trial for Ex-Navy Man Begins Today

Jerry A. Whitworth, the retired Navy chief radioman accused of receiving $332,000 from the Soviet Union for turning over secret military code and message information, goes on trial in San Francisco today, with his alleged American spymaster set to testify against him.

The spymaster, John A. Walker Jr., pleaded guilty last October and drew two concurrent life terms, with parole possible in 10 years, in a plea bargain with the government. The agreement required Walker to detail exactly what information had been given to the Soviets and to testify against Whitworth. Walker and Whitworth became friends when they were Navy instructors.

Walker, his son and his brother, both of whom also have been convicted for their roles in the spy ring, as well as possibly other members of the Walker family privy to Whitworth’s alleged involvement, are at the heart of the government’s case against the 46-year-old Whitworth. They are not scheduled to testify until several weeks into the trial, expected to last for two to three months.

Passed Information

According to the indictment, Whitworth directly passed information only to John Walker, who then passed it on to Soviet operatives. The prosecution’s pre-trial papers have even suggested that Whitworth may not have known for some time that the information was going to the Soviets.

Whitworth, who left the Navy in 1983 and was living with his wife in a trailer in Davis, Calif., when he was arrested last June, has steadfastly maintained that he was only a friend of Walker, not a co-conspirator in the spy ring.

The indictment charges that Whitworth and Walker met at the now-defunct Boom Trenchard’s Flight Path Restaurant in San Diego between July and December, 1974, to form a partnership under which Whitworth would steal the information from the ships and installations in which he served and Walker would be responsible for seeing that the Soviets got it. According to the alleged agreement, the two men would split the profits 50-50.

Subsequently, the indictment alleges, Walker journeyed to rendezvous with Whitworth at such far-flung sites as Hong Kong and Manila, as well as in Alameda, Calif., to pick up the information he had taken from ships and Navy bases about codes, radio networks and communications equipment.

As a part of Walker’s plea bargain, Michael Walker, his son, who pleaded guilty to five charges, was sentenced to 25 years; he will be eligible for parole in eight years and four months. Arthur Walker, John’s brother, who was convicted of seven charges in another trial, was sentenced to life, with possibility of parole in 10 years.

Most Serious Spy Operation

When the case broke last May, government prosecutors called it the most serious spy operation uncovered by U.S. authorities since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed as spies in 1954 for having sold atomic secrets to the Soviets.

And in December, when the latest indictment was handed down against Whitworth, carrying the possibility of four life terms, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, Joseph P. Russoniello, said it was “one of the most serious breaches of security we’ve experienced since World War II.”

But beyond some generalized statements that the Navy’s worldwide communication systems may have been compromised, little has been said about the nature of the alleged losses, and the Walker-Whitworth spy case has lost some of its luster while several other alleged spies for the Soviet Union, China and even Israel have been arrested in recent months.

Among the other charges Whitworth faces is one that he failed to pay taxes on the $332,000 that he allegedly received for spying, and prosecutors have indicated they will present evidence relating to how he secreted the money in multiple bank accounts, some abroad.

Defense attorneys James Larson and Tony Tamburello, on the other hand, have stressed in preliminary hearings that the unemployed Whitworth was hardly living in an opulent style in Davis when he was arrested.

RUS Letters

Another issue which is expected to surface as early as today in a motions hearing called by U.S. District Judge John P. Vukasin, the trial judge, involves the so-called RUS letters, a series of three letters about a spy ring sent to the FBI in 1984 that matched, in some of their details, the alleged Walker spy ring. The letters were signed “RUS, Somewhere, U.S.A.” but were postmarked Sacramento, close to Whitworth’s home. Nothing ever came of the writer’s suggestion that he might be willing to meet with the FBI to provide details in exchange for an offer of immunity.

Vukasin tentatively ruled in December that the letters could not be used in the trial because, he said, he didn’t see any indication the government had established they were written by Whitworth. He said that if they were, they would “amount to a confession” and there would probably be “no need for a trial.”

However, the judge indicated he might be willing to reconsider his ruling if the government were able to show, through handwriting analysis, or some other means, that there was a reasonable chance they came from the defendant. The chief government prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Atty. William Farmer, said in papers submitted to Vukasin Friday that “no reasonable juror could doubt (Whitworth’s) authorship of the letters.”