U.S. Seeks to Prove Whitworth Knew Soviets Got Data
Federal prosecutors at the trial of accused spy Jerry Whitworth tried to show Wednesday that Whitworth knew that Soviet agents were buying secret documents he stole from the Navy during a nine-year period.
John A. Walker Jr., the admitted spy ring leader, testified that Whitworth obtained a year’s worth of secret messages during his tour on the aircraft carrier Enterprise in 1982 and 1983, some of which related to a sensitive mission off the Soviet Union’s Kamchatka Peninsula. Whitworth several times demanded more money for this material, Walker said.
Whitworth also asked Walker to find out how Christopher Boyce and others who spied for the Soviet Union had been caught, Walker told jurors in his third day of testimony.
The testimony under questioning by prosecutors appeared aimed at proving that Whitworth, 46, realized that Soviet agents were buying the documents that he is accused of stealing until his retirement from the Navy in 1983.
Important Issue
The issue has emerged as important, because although it is a crime to steal classified documents regardless to whom they are passed, prosecutors specifically charge that Whitworth knew that he was spying for the Soviet Union. Whitworth’s lawyers have suggested through their questions, however, that Whitworth thought Walker was selling secrets to the Israelis.
Walker has said several times from the witness stand that he remained vague when Whitworth asked him who bought the material or how he passed it on. Walker said he implied at various times that the market was Israel, another allied nation, the Jane’s Fighting Ships publication or underworld figures.
“It would have been a breach for me to tell him any of that,” Walker testified.
Walker, who pleaded guilty to espionage charges in October, said one shipment of microfilm taken of the Enterprise messages wound up unsettling his Soviet contacts. The pictures were out of focus, and the Soviet agents believed that Whitworth, who was asking Walker for more money, deliberately took them that way as a “trick, a game, blackmail,” Walker said.
‘Dangerous Time’
“You don’t get a good reaction when the film doesn’t come out,” Walker said, recalling the incident as a “very dangerous time, a very trying time.”
The Enterprise mission was viewed by the Navy as particularly sensitive, because its F-14 fighters flew into or near Soviet territory, according to previous witnesses. During these trips, the Navy for the first time observed Soviet military reactions to the Navy’s presence in the treacherous North Pacific waters, the witnesses said.
Whitworth and Walker later re-photographed the material, and Walker delivered some of it in 1984, he testified. The Soviets had not yet paid for that delivery by May, 1985, when he was arrested, Walker said.
Walker, 48, who could be sentenced to life in prison on his conviction, said he and Whitworth occasionally joked about security in their operation.
Selling Secrets
However, he said Whitworth was “overly concerned” and wanted to know how spies such as Boyce, who worked for the defense contractor TRW and was convicted of selling secrets to the Soviets in the 1970s, were discovered.
Walker said he did ask his Soviet contacts about the cases but was never certain that they told him the truth. Walker said he was convinced that his operation, which began in 1968, was invincible.
“I couldn’t see that the FBI was any threat at all,” Walker said in one of many flashes of cockiness.
Assistant U.S. Atty. William Buck Farmer, pausing momentarily and seemingly taken aback, noted that Walker’s arrest must have come as a surprise to him.
“Yes, but that took a snitch,” Walker shot back.
Walker’s ex-wife and daughter informed on him to the FBI in late 1984. That led to his arrest on May 20, 1985, and Whitworth’s on June 3.
Tax Charges
Whitworth, a retired Navy communications specialist, faces seven espionage charges, plus income tax evasion charges stemming from $332,000 in unreported income that he allegedly received from the Soviets.
