I was a registered Democrat for only about 5 years, about 50 years ago.
So what's that have to do with you displaying Socialist/Communist Ideologies daily.
The Navy's Biggest Betrayal
Twenty-five years ago the FBI finally shut off the biggest espionage leak in U.S. Navy history when it arrested former senior warrant officer John A. Walker.
By John Prados
June 2010
Naval History Magazine
Volume 24, Number 3
ARTICLE
To hear the United States' most notorious naval spy tell it, were it not for his ex-wife,
Barbara-the weak link his Soviet handlers had warned him about-his espionage might
have continued. As it was, however, John Walker's ferreting went on far too long.
A few more years and, had he been employed in a conventional job, he could have
retired on a pension. Indeed, he already enjoyed a U.S. Navy pension after retiring
in 1976 as a senior warrant officer.
The Navy, in which John Walker served for 20 years, was enormously damaged by his espionage.
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger concluded that the Soviet Union made significant
gains in naval warfare that were attributable to Walker's spying. His espionage provided
Moscow "access to weapons and sensor data and naval tactics, terrorist threats, and
surface, submarine, and airborne training, readiness and tactics," according to Weinberger.
A quarter-century after John Walker's arrest, it is illuminating to revisit the story of his naval
spy ring, both for what it reveals about espionage versus security and for how it highlights
he ambitions and frailties at the heart of spying.
Building a Naval Career
John Anthony Walker Jr. was born in 1937, the middle son of a Warner Brothers film
marketer and an Italian-American mother. Nicknamed "Smilin' Jack," he attended Catholic
school and became an altar boy; however, his childhood was traumatic. His father
descended into a hell of alcoholism and lost his job. Bankrupt, the family moved near
the boy's grandparents in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The entrepreneurial John Jr. secured
a paper route, sold home products door to door, and worked as a movie usher, and on
his 16th birthday bought a car with his savings.
In late 1955 Walker joined the Navy as a radioman and served on board a destroyer escort
before joining the crew of the aircraft carrier USS
Forrestal (CV-59). While on shore leave in
Boston during the winter of 1957, he met Barbara Crowley. They married soon afterward,
and children followed, three daughters by 1960. After qualifying at submarine school, Walker
was assigned to the
Razorback (SS-394) for a Pacific deployment. While serving in her, Walker,
then a petty officer, received his top secret cryptographic clearance and passed the
Personnel Reliability Program, a psychological evaluation to ensure that only the most reliable
personnel have access to nuclear weapons.
One bracing fall day in October 1967 Chief Warrant Officer Walker, then assigned as a watch
officer at Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force headquarters in Norfolk, decided to correct the
military balance-and balance his checkbook-by leaking top secret information to Moscow.
Taking the first step, he photocopied a document at headquarters and slipped the copy in
his pocket. The next day he hopped into his red 1964 MG sports car, drove to Washington,
walked into the Soviet Embassy, and asked to see security personnel.
Yakov Lukasevics, an internal security specialist at the embassy, had no idea what to do with
the American who came bearing documents and said he wanted to spy. The papers, however,
needed to be evaluated, and so he telephoned the KGB
rezident, or station chief,
Boris A. Solomatin. KGB
rezidenturas (stations) were wary of walk-ins, persons who
spontaneously offered their services. The Soviets even used the term "well-wishers" to
denote such persons. And the idea of an American striding right into the Soviet Embassy
in Washington, which was under constant FBI surveillance, immediately suggested a trap.
On the spot Solomatin decided to take a chance. For a KGB station chief personally to
meet a prospective agent was unprecedented, but Solomatin spent the next two hours
talking privately with Walker. The American favorably impressed him by saying nothing
about love for communism, which most phonies emphasized. This was strictly business.
Walker received a few thousand dollars cash as a down payment and was smuggled off
the embassy compound in a car. Thus began the Navy's most damaging spy case.
Later, while on training duty at San Diego, Walker had less access to top secret documents
and had to rely on a classified library. Smuggling out material meant getting it past multiple
checkpoints staffed by Marine guards. He also forged the papers required to show renewal
of his security clearance. This spy enjoyed amazingly good fortune.
thehill.com
