Spying Was Just Like a Business, Walker Says

As John A. Walker Jr. saw it, political beliefs had nothing do with espionage.

Spying was business.

The balding and bespectacled Walker, who admits running what prosecutors have called the most damaging spy ring unearthed in the United States in more than three decades, referred to the classified documents he sold to the Soviet Union as “products.” His efforts to recruit friends and relatives into his ring were “sales pitches.”

In a 17th-floor federal courtroom here over the last two weeks, a portrait of the spy-as-businessman has emerged as Walker, 48, testified as the star prosecution witness against his alleged minion in espionage, Jerry A. Whitworth, 46.

In his first detailed public account of his 17 years as a spy, Walker appeared remorseless about selling the Navy’s most sensitive secrets--its codes--to the Soviets. In fact, he appeared to be proud of his prowess of a spy. He seemed bitter about only one thing: that he was caught, turned in by a “snitch”--his ex-wife, Barbara.

Pried Open Desk

She discovered his illicit activity six months after it began in 1968, Walker testified, by using a screwdriver to pry open his desk and finding Soviet-supplied directions for making one of what would be dozens of “drops” of classified documents.

Barbara Walker, who is expected to begin testifying when Whitworth’s trial resumes today, did not telephone the FBI about Walker’s activities until November, 1984. That led to Walker’s arrest last May 20. Soon after, Walker’s brother, his son and Whitworth also were in custody.

At times Walker seemed bored on the witness stand. Other times he amused himself with wry comments, often about family members. He only hinted that he felt bad that his son, Michael, 25, and brother, Arthur, 51, are serving prison terms of 25 years and life respectively because he recruited them into what he called his “perfectly safe” espionage ring.

Nor did he show any emotion as he implicated Whitworth, the man once described as Walker’s best friend. Walker rarely glanced at Whitworth as he derided his Navy buddy as “wishy-washy” about his career as a spy but fond of the life style he affected with his espionage earnings.

Appears Drawn

Whitworth, who met his accuser in 1970 when they were instructors at the Navy school for radiomen in San Diego, looked on impassively through most of the testimony. Appearing drawn from weight loss since his arrest last June, he occasionally shook his head and whispered to his lawyers.

Whitworth is charged with espionage as well as tax evasion stemming from the $332,000 the government alleges he received from Walker and the Soviets for the secrets he stole.

Walker is the only witness directly linking Whitworth to spying. Assistant U.S. Atty. William (Buck) Farmer told jurors in his opening statement seven weeks ago that the case would turn on whether they believe Walker’s story or decided to “reject it out of hand because he is a traitor.”

Defense lawyers portrayed him not only as a traitor, but also as an habitual liar, a racist who joined the Ku Klux Klan and as someone capable of murder.

Walker wore the same gray suit and blue striped tie every day in court. He fidgeted with a pencil while Farmer questioned him, and sometimes doodled on a note pad during cross examination by defense attorney James Larson.

He used mundane terms that belied the gravity of his work. For example, describing how he recruited his son Michael into the spy ring, Walker never used the word “espionage.” Rather it was, “Michael began cooperating.” Likewise, his Soviet contacts never used the word “spy,” he said. Walker was merely “cooperating.”

But Walker suggested that his businessman’s view of his work may not have set well with his Soviets handlers, whom he met 11 times in Vienna, once in Casablanca, Morocco, and once at an Arlington, Va., department store.

Agents who debriefed him in the yearly meetings would always find time to lecture him about Soviet ideology.

“I would simply listen,” Walker said.

He freely admitted lying readily throughout his life, a point Larson hopes that jurors will consider when they decide whether Walker told the truth when he said that Whitworth supplied secrets between 1975, when Walker allegedly recruited him, until 1983, when Whitworth quit the Navy.

To underscore Walker’s penchant for lying, Larson questioned him about a letter he wrote to his fiance after his arrest in which he boasted of having a television set and radio in his prison cell, access to a well-stocked library and of having had sex with a jail librarian.

‘Jails Are Horrible’

“Jails are horrible,” Walker replied in one of the few instances when he raised his voice. “I’m just trying to make her feel better about my condition.”

Larson also tried to show that Walker had a menacing side, suggesting that he had coerced Whitworth. Larson opened a cardboard box and removed four walking canes that were seized from Walker’s home in Norfolk, Va.

One cane concealed a gun. Others hid a blackjack, a two-foot-long dagger and a vial. Larson contended that the vial held poison. Walker, seeming bemused, said it was for liquor.

Walker was glib as he recalled enlisting his brother, Arthur, and trying to recruit his daughter, Laura, and half-brother, Gary. He extended the offers because he was “good hearted” and simply hoped to help them out of the financial “pits.”

They, of course, realized that he would receive a “commission,” he said.

Walker did show some concern for his family last October when he pleaded guilty to espionage charges, agreed to testify against Whitworth and to allow U.S. intelligence agents to debrief him. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to not seek life imprisonment for Michael, who is serving 25 years in prison.

Walker is to be sentenced to life in prison, and, although he will be eligible for parole in 10 years, he said he expects to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Prosecutors did not charge him with tax evasion for failing to report $700,000 he made from spying, but the Internal Revenue Service seized his possessions.

A high school dropout, Walker enlisted in the Navy in 1955 after a brush with juvenile authorities. He became expert in communications and a low-level officer.

Walker said he began spying while working at the naval center in Norfolk, one of the Navy’s four communication hubs and the one responsible for ships and submarines in the Atlantic.

There, he had access to top-secret keys--like computer cards or tape--used to spell out codes in use on a given day in the Atlantic. Later, he had similar access while stationed on the supply ship Niagara Falls, which provided coding material for other ships in the Pacific.

As Walker told it, he used his Soviet-supplied miniature camera and the Navy’s own Xerox machines to reproduce “nearly 100%” of the cryptographic keys used for a given month.

“Anybody could have done it,” he said.

He said he knew that the Soviets could use the material to learn about ship movements, plans for future maneuvers and U.S. intelligence about Soviet ships during parts of the Vietnam War and in subsequent years.

Walker testified that after his own retirement from the Navy in 1976, Whitworth became the main supplier of the keys and technical diagrams.

The defense has not contested that Whitworth supplied secrets to Walker, but has maintained that he did not know that it went to the Soviets. Walker said he never told Whitworth the actual buyer, but that “common sense” suggested the answer. No other country would be sophisticated enough to figure out the codes, he said.

Attorney’s Explanation

Larson argued that Whitworth quit the ring when he learned that the Soviets were the recipients.

Letters from Whitworth to Walker, submitted into evidence, often included long, introspective passages. In one, written toward the end of their partnership, Whitworth noted that he was thinking about entering computer sales, or going to college. Whitworth wrote: “I realize this doesn’t fit in with your advice and counseling over the years.

“Your help has been rewarding and I greatly appreciate all that you’ve done for me in the past,” he continued. “But there’s been something missing. I can’t specifically say what it was, but I believe it relates to the psychological benefits one gains from autonomous decision making.”

Walker testified that he did not read some of what Whitworth sent. His letters to Whitworth were short, a few sentences about the detective agency he founded after his Navy retirement and about his love life, along with veiled questions asking if Whitworth had any secrets to sell.

When Whitworth told Walker he was quitting, he “suggested that I find someone with lower labor costs,” Walker said.

Soon after, “I tried to terminate communications with him as much as possible,” Walker said, noting that he saw no reason to stay in touch once the business relationship was over.