Walker’s Daughter Testifies That He Threatened to Kill Her Husband

The daughter of admitted spy John A. Walker Jr. testified Wednesday that he threatened to kill her estranged husband because the man knew that Walker was a spy.

Laura Walker Snyder’s disclosure came at the end of the day’s testimony in the espionage trial of Jerry A. Whitworth, 46, who is accused of passing Navy secrets to Walker for nine years until he retired from the Navy in 1983.

Snyder said she received the threatening phone call from her father in 1982, a month after she told her mother that she had revealed to her husband, Mark, that John Walker was a spy.

‘I Didn’t Care’

“He asked me how close I felt to my husband and how I would feel if he no longer existed. I said I didn’t care,” said Snyder, who is in the process of divorcing her husband.

There has been no disclosure that Walker actually attempted to murder his son-in-law. Nor was there elaboration by Snyder, who is expected to continue testifying today.

Snyder’s testimony followed that of Walker’s brother, Arthur.

Both said they they were in deep financial difficulty when John Walker tried to bring them into what authorities have called the most damaging spy ring against the United States discovered in 30 years.

Snyder said her father tried to recruit her several times starting in 1979, when she was in the Army and pregnant. He suggested that she have an abortion and remain in the military, but she refused, she said.

Snyder said she had financial problems because her husband owed “thousands of dollars” to a drug dealer, from whom he had taken marijuana to sell, only to smoke it himself.

Unlike Snyder, Arthur Walker, 51, agreed to pass classified documents to his brother. He was sentenced to life in prison last November following his espionage conviction for selling parts of two confidential Defense Department documents to his brother in 1981 and 1982.

Source of Difficulties

Arthur Walker testified that his financial difficulties stemmed from an auto parts business that he ran with his brother that failed and was $25,000 in debt in 1980. Arthur Walker, who was unemployed at the time, said he took a job in February, 1980, at his brother’s urging with a defense contractor, VSE Corp., near his home in Virginia Beach, Va.

Arthur Walker said his brother told him that he could make large amounts of money as a spy and cited as an example another ring member, whom John Walker called his “man on the West Coast.”

That was an apparent reference to Whitworth in Davis, Calif., who, in addition to espionage charges, faces tax charges for allegedly failing to report $332,000 in income from the espionage.

Arthur Walker was about to testify on what he believed the West Coast man’s first name to be, but he was stopped when Judge John P. Vukasin upheld a defense objection to the testimony.

Prosecutors sought to use Arthur Walker’s testimony to show that members of the spy ring realized that the secret documents they stole were going to the Soviet Union.

One of Whitworth’s defenses to the spy charges is that he did not know that the Soviet Union was buying the documents that he passed to John Walker. John Walker testified earlier in the trial that he never told Whitworth that the documents ended up in Soviet hands, but instead suggested that they went to allied countries or private intelligence agencies.

Soviet Union Suspected

Arthur Walker said, however, that he quickly concluded that the secrets went to the Soviets when his brother specified the type of classified documents he wanted--information related to military codes.

“It was an indication that it might not just be going to anybody. I initially thought Eastern Bloc countries,” Arthur Walker said.

“Is the Soviet Union among those countries?” Assistant U.S. Atty. Leida Schoggen asked.

“Yes,” Arthur Walker replied.

Under questioning by defense lawyer James Larson, Arthur Walker described himself as a reluctant member of the spy ring, but he said he never brought himself to tell his brother that he did not want to continue spying. Instead he simply avoided access to highly classified material, he said.

“I just knew it was wrong. That was my training, my Navy training,” said Arthur Walker, a lieutenant commander in the Navy when he retired in 1973 after 20 years’ service.

Arthur Walker received $12,000, he said, with all but $3,500 going to pay off his business debt. He showed some reluctance to explain where the rest of the money went, but he finally said he squandered it on drinks after work, a gas-powered barbecue grill and a toupee--which he no longer wears.