Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring

FAMILY OF SPIES

by Pete Earley

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bantam hardcover edition / November 1988

Bantam paperback edition / July 1989

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1988 by Pete Earley, Inc.

Cover and book design by Evan Luzi

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Pete Earley. For information address: Pete Earley, Inc.

http://www.peteearley.com/

v1.1

Family of Spies

by Pete Earley

This book is based upon exclusive interviews with John Walker, Jr., Arthur Walker, Michael Walker, and Jerry Whitworth, members of the most damaging spy ring ever to operate in the history of the United States.

Prologue

Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan was overdue, and the crowd inside the SCOPE civic center in Norfolk, Virginia, became restless. One man in particular was impatient at the October 3, 1980, rally. He was a private detective who had volunteered to help provide additional protection for Reagan. The detective loathed delays. He was a meticulous man, a Navy veteran unaccustomed to the inexact schedules and last- minute changes that plague political campaigns.

The detective scanned the crowd as he waited in an aisle seat. From it, he could observe everyone in “his” row. If any of them interrupted Reagan’s speech with catcalls or menaced the Republican candidate, the detective would act quickly to help subdue him. He took the assignment seriously. Earlier, he had told his girlfriend that if someone threatened Reagan’s life, he would draw and fire the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver that he carried in a holster on his hip.

Reagan’s appearance at the back of the auditorium was greeted by screams and applause. Hundreds of hands reached out toward the candidate as he walked slowly down an aisle. The detective considered himself above political rally hysterics, but as Reagan approached, the detective impulsively stuck his hand into the aisle too and for a moment, it looked as if Reagan would touch it. But he didn’t.

Almost frantic, the detective pushed forward into the aisle and actually touched the back of Reagan’s jacket before being shoved aside by a Secret Service agent.

The detective stared at his hand with childlike awe. He had touched Reagan! He began to laugh loudly. He was the only person in the entire auditorium who understood the irony of this moment. It was his secret!

John Anthony Walker, Jr., a spy for the Soviet Union, had been so close to the next president of the United States that he had been able to brush Reagan’s jacket. And John had been armed the entire time. He could hardly wait to tell his KGB friend.

“Nobody that day,” John bragged later, “realized that a Russian spy had helped protect Ronald Reagan. I was simply the best!”

PART I

unmasked

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another

–
William Shakespeare
,
Hamlet (act 3, scene 1)

Chapter 1

The telephone in room 763 of the Ramada Inn in Rockville, Maryland, rang at 3:30 A.M. on May 20, 1985.

John Anthony Walker, Jr., lifted the receiver: “Yes?”

“This is the front desk!” an excited male voice announced. “There’s been an accident! Someone has hit your blue and white van in the parking lot! You’d better get down here quick!”

“Okay,” John replied coolly. “Be right down.”

John figured it was a trick. He had used the exact same ploy dozens of times himself while working on divorce cases as a private investigator. Obviously, someone wanted him out of his room. The only question was who?

John suspected the worst. He had driven to Maryland the day before, Sunday, May 19, from his home in Norfolk, Virginia, to deliver a package of stolen government secrets to an agent of the Soviet KGB. In return for betraying his country, John had expected to receive more than $200,000 in used $50 and $100 bills.

But something had gone wrong during the exchange, very wrong.

Sitting on the edge of the motel bed, John began thinking back, retracing his steps over the past fifteen hours in an attempt to uncover some clue as to who was waiting for him downstairs in the lobby. Last night’s meeting with the KGB had been arranged four months earlier, on January 19, when he had met his Soviet contact at a secret rendezvous in Vienna, a favorite meeting spot for the KGB and its spies. As they strolled past a window display of women’s exotic lingerie, John had slipped his handler a small bag filled with rolls of undeveloped photographs of U.S. naval secrets.

A few moments later, the Russian had handed John an envelope with detailed instructions for yesterday’s meeting. John had done his best to follow those instructions.

Leaving home shortly after noon, he had driven from Norfolk along Interstate 64 toward Richmond, where he had connected with I-95, the superhighway that feeds into the nation’s capital. For most of the trip, John had carefully observed the fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, but at least once each hour, he had slowed his new Ford minivan to twenty mph, then accelerated to seventy mph, checking his rearview mirror to see if anyone else was imitating him. He had read about this evasive driving technique, called dry cleaning, in a popular spy novel.

The drive proved uneventful. It was still too early in the year for the Sunday afternoon traffic snarls created by cranky, sunburned beach lovers crawling back to Washington from their weekend sojourns to the Atlantic Ocean.

John hated the four-hour trip to Washington. It bored him, and by the time he crossed the Potomac River to enter the Maryland suburbs north of Washington, he was anxious to check into the Ramada Inn and relax. But John had to make a test run first.

Even though his Soviet handler had warned him against driving anywhere close to the location of their meeting prior to the agreed-upon time, John turned his van off the highway and drove toward Poolesville, a rural hamlet northwest of Washington. The locations that the KGB chose for exchanges were always remote areas and John, fearful of getting lost at night, had made it a practice to arrive several hours before the scheduled time to familiarize himself with the region. He drove quickly along the blacktop roads, picking out key sights – a small bridge, an elementary school, a grocery store – that would help him keep his bearings later that night.

Once he felt comfortable with the course, he turned east and drove to the Ramada Inn in Rockville. As he pulled into the parking lot, John was confident that he hadn’t been followed. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There was no reason to worry, he told himself, trying to settle the butterflies that always struck before a meet. This exchange would go as smoothly as the thirty other drops he had made in the Maryland and Virginia countryside during his eighteen years as a spy for the Russians. There was no reason to think otherwise.

John checked into his room, washed his face, and ate a steak dinner in the hotel restaurant. Refreshed, he returned to his van and drove toward Poolesville. It was near here, a few miles from the banks of the Potomac River, amid the rocky hills and tiny creeks, that John had been instructed to deliver his package of stolen secrets to a KGB agent. Such exchanges were the most hazardous part of his job as a spy. While the Russians felt safe walking the narrow streets of Vienna with John, any personal contact with him inside the United States was considered extremely dangerous. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, under Ronald Reagan, had been taking a much harder look at espionage than it had in the past.

For national security reasons, the FBI never reveals its counter-espionage techniques. Even on the witness stand, FBI agents refuse to admit whether the agency photographs visitors to the Soviet embassy in Washington. But John’s KGB handler had told him the practice was routine both in Washington and outside Soviet diplomatic posts in New York and San Francisco. He had also complained to John about other FBI practices. All telephone calls to and from the Soviet embassy in Washington are bugged, he claimed. Soviets who work in the United States are required to use diplomatic license plates on all their motor vehicles, tags issued by the State Department and coded each year with letters that identify the nationality of the motorist, making it easy for police and FBI to track them. Travel is also restricted. A Soviet stationed in Washington can’t travel more than twenty-five miles from the embassy without special permission. While the State Department claims these restrictions were adopted only after travel by U.S. diplomats was curtailed in the Soviet Union, John’s handler saw it differently. “Your government is very devious,” he told John. “It forces us into action and then twists the truth. We were very courteous to your diplomats, but they took advantage, so we restricted them, and then your government said we were unfair and imposed restrictions. It was something they wanted all along, we think. There is always a hidden motive and secret purpose with your government.”

To avoid detection by the FBI, the KGB choreographed every step of its meetings with John. After his initial contact with the Russians – when he walked into the Soviet embassy in Washington in late 1967 and offered to sell Navy secrets for cash – there was only one other face-to-face meeting in this country, a rendezvous two weeks later with a KGB agent in a shopping center. Thereafter, the Russians told him, they would meet in person only in Europe. Dead drops would be employed for all U.S. exchanges to minimize risk. Over the years John had performed so many dead drops that he had become an old hand. “You are the most experienced, the very best,” his KGB handler once volunteered, massaging John’s ego.

“Goddamn right!” John had replied.

John had begun his portion of yesterday’s dead drop – just as the KGB instructions required – by turning onto a narrow road that meandered through a sparsely populated area. He altered his speed to check for tails, just as he had done earlier during his drive from Norfolk.

The Russians had placed an empty 7-Up can upright on the right edge of the road at a predetermined spot, an unobtrusive signal to John that his KGB contact was in the area and ready to make the exchange. The next move was up to him. Five miles later, he stopped to put a 7-Up can upright beside the road to signal that he was ready. He then continued on to the drop point, where he left his bundle of classified documents near a utility pole and a tree with a “No Hunting” sign nailed on it. John had prepared 129 stolen naval secrets for the KGB. The eight-by-ten-inch copies of classified documents were wrapped in a white plastic trash bag to protect them from rain. Even the Soviets couldn’t control the weather. He had hidden the bundle in the bottom of a brown paper grocery bag filled with an empty Diet Coke bottle, a used container of rubbing alcohol, an old box of Q-Tips, and a soap wrapper. At the same time that John was dropping off this package, the KGB was supposed to be dropping off a package of cash for him at a spot a few miles away. The Russians would also wrap john’s bills in plastic and hide them in a grocery bag filled with trash.

Up to this point the drop had gone smoothly, but when John reached the Soviet drop point, he couldn’t find the bag of cash. Worse, when he went back to his drop point to retrieve his bag of Navy secrets, it too had disappeared. He had checked both drop points several times during the night, conducting a methodical search through the weeds, bushes, and tall grass. Shortly before midnight, he had given up and returned to the motel.

Back in room 763, John thought at first that he had been discovered by the FBI, but he was confused because no one had tried to arrest him or keep him from leaving the Poolesville area. Maybe the Russians had simply screwed up, he thought, and left his money in the wrong spot. It had happened twice before.

The telephone call at 3:30 A.M. only added to his confusion. “I figured it was the FBI on the phone. Who else could it have been? It certainly wasn’t the Russians,” John recalled later. But the cockamamy story about his van being hit was too lame. “I just couldn’t believe that anyone in law enforcement could be so dumb as to use that story about someone hitting my van. It just didn’t make any sense. The FBI had to have known I was a private detective and had used the same trick a thousand times myself. It was just so incredibly obvious that I began to think, ‘Hey, it might just be true. Maybe some drunk had hit my van.’”

Now, perched on the edge of the motel bed, John remained befuddled. His thoughts jumped back and forth. One moment, he was certain that he was about to be arrested by the FBI and then, just as quickly, he would decide the foul-up at the drop site and the mysterious telephone call to his motel room were merely coincidence. He was, after all, “the best.” Besides, the dead drop had taken place on a Sunday night and he and his handler had laughed several times about how the “FBI doesn’t work on weekends.”

John walked to the window and peeked outside. He could see the motel parking lot, but not his van, which was parked around a corner. The fact that he didn’t see a dozen police cars outside with their blue and red lights flashing gave him a bit more hope. Time was running out, though. If the FBI had unmasked him, it would be only a matter of minutes before federal agents came bursting through the door. The first thing he had to do was to destroy the envelope that the KGB had given him in Vienna. It contained hand-drawn maps of the dead drop route, an explanation of his every move, and black-and-white photographs of the drop points. There was only one problem. If he burned the instructions, he wouldn’t be able to use them again, and the Soviets had told him that if a drop was ever aborted, both sides should simply try the exchange again exactly one week later. If he destroyed the instructions, he wouldn’t be able to find the drop site the following Sunday and get his $200,000 payment – money he desperately needed.

Greed and ego quickly overruled caution. John scanned the room for a place to hide the envelope. There weren’t many choices. Room 763 was standard motel fare: a double bed, a night table, two chairs, a small table with a smoked-glass ash tray, a dresser, mirror, and combination radio-television. Better to hide the envelope outside his room. Then, if it were found, the FBI couldn’t prove that it belonged to him. John had noticed an ice machine next to the elevator bank when he first arrived. He could toss the instructions behind the machine and retrieve them later. But first he had to get to the machine, and that meant opening the door to his motel room and walking down the hallway and around a corner. John was petrified, hut he had no choice. He had to leave his room.

Tucking the envelope under the pillow on the bed for temporary safekeeping, he slipped his .38 caliber revolver from its hip holster. HI didn’t know who was on the other side of the door and if it was some kid waiting to rob me, I was going to waste him.” He unfastened the chain lock and then, his hands shaking a bit and his lips dry, he jerked open the door. No one was there.

John stepped into the corridor, holding his handgun in front of him. The hallway was empty. Walking toward the elevator bank, he suddenly stopped near the exit stairway and placed his ear on the metal fire door. It was cold. He heard nothing from the other side. He twisted the doorknob and slowly pushed open the door. The stairwell was empty. His confidence renewed by his explorations, John dashed back to his room to retrieve the envelope. With his pistol in one hand and the envelope in the other, he returned to the hallway and raced toward the elevator bank and the ice machine around the corner.

“Stop! FBI!”

John spun to his right. Two FBI agents wearing bullet-proof vests had jumped out from a hallway opposite the elevators. Their blue-steel revolvers were pointed directly at John’s heart.

What happened next is disputed. John says he immediately surrendered, dropping both gun and envelope instantaneously. But FBI agents Robert Hunter and James L. Kolouch described the arrest far more dramatically in sworn court testimony.

“Shortly after 3:30 A.M.,” Hunter testified, “we heard John Walker’s motel door open and dose, and we heard footsteps. And I heard another door open and dose, and footsteps again, and the door open and dose again, which meant he came out and opened the door to the stairwell, obviously checking to see if anyone was there, and then returned to his room. We wanted to confront him by the elevator, not in the stairway, so we waited.

“We waited what seemed like a long period of time. It was quite exciting at that point, and a few minutes later, in fact approximately three-forty-five A.M., his door opened again, and I heard footsteps, and he quickly came around the corner and punched the elevator button with his left hand. As he punched the elevator button, agent Kolouch and I came out of our hiding spot in the hallway and he heard us as we moved and he immediately turned, a weapon in his hand.