American Spies: Espionage against the United States from the Cold War to the Present

8 Evil Spy for the Evil Empire

8 93 Evil Spy for the Evil Empire JOHN WALKER All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Opening line of LEO TOLSTOY’S Anna Karenina, 17 The unhappy family of John Walker was unhappy because he was evil incarnate. He was an abusive, philandering husband; a neglectful father; a cold, manipulative son; and an exploiting brother. He had no redeeming qualities except one. John Walker was an exceptional spy. During eighteen years of spying for the Soviet Union, Walker betrayed secrets so vital that they cost American lives in Vietnam and would have jeopardized national defense in the event of war with the USSR. During those eighteen years, he also ruined his dysfunctional family. His wife became an alcoholic and carried on a ten-year romance with his brother. His brother and son were lured by Walker into his espionage ring and imprisoned as a result. His son was a drug user. One of his daughters spent time in juvenile detention, and the other two were frequent runaways in their youth. Asahusband,WalkerhabituallycheatedonhiswifeBarbaraandbragged of his sexual exploits to his male pals. When a tavern he bought lost money, he tried to force Barbara into prostitution to support their family. When she discovered that Walker was a spy and protested, he beat her to a pulp. When The Decade of the Spy: Soviet Spies of the 1980s 94 the couple got divorced, he paid a pittance in alimony and child support and left her and their children in abject poverty. When he feared that his exwife might betray his spying out of spite, he asked the Soviets to kill her. After his arrest, he said “I should have killed Barbara.”1 As a son, Walker took his mother along on a trip to Europe where, unbeknownst to her, he met with his Soviet spymasters and received thousands of dollars for US secrets. When they returned to the United States, Walker convinced his mother to carry a concealed money belt strapped to her waist without telling her what the contents were. The cash in the belt far exceeded the amount that American citizens were allowed to bring in under law. Walker made his own mother an unwitting accomplice to his crime and exposed her to possible arrest.2 As a father, Walker convinced his impressionable son Michael to join the US Navy and recruited him as a spy. Michael was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison as a result. Walker also tried to persuade his daughter Laura to remain in the army and spy with him. When she balked because she was pregnant, Walker told her to get an abortion, apparently needing another source more than a grandchild. As a sibling, Walker also recruited his brother, Art, into the ring. As a result Art Walker was sentenced to life imprisonment. Benedict Arnold and Julius Rosenberg were spies, but they loved and cared for their wives and children. John Walker cared for no one but himself . At his sentencing, the disgusted judge remarked: “I look in vain for some redeeming aspect of your character. One is seized with the overwhelming feeling of revulsion that a human being could be as unprincipled as you.”3 Walker ended up in that courtroom because of the wife he had abused for years. As Chapman Pincher noted in his study of espionage, “Probably the most hazardous complication . . . for the traitor who fears exposure is the danger of a woman scorned.”4 At his very first meeting with the KGB, its Washington chief, Boris Solomatin, advised Walker that, “if your wife finds out, she will be the weak link in the chain.”5 His warning turned out to be prophetic. Barbara Walker’s knowledge of her husband’s espionage gnawed at her for sixteen years. She had reached for the phone in the past to tell the authorities but was too afraid of her husband to do it. Finally, in November Evil Spy for the Evil Empire 95 1984 she contacted the FBI and, her voice slurred from the vodka she constantly drank, revealed John Walker’s treason. The FBI was initially skeptical that her story was only the drunken ramblings of a bitter ex-wife, but experienced counterintelligence agents recognized her tales of retrieving dead drops with her husband as more than fantasy. They became convinced when Walker’s daughter, Laura, corroborated her mother’s...