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

13 The Army’s John Walker

1 3 141 The Army’s John Walker CLYDE CONRAD If war had broken out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the West would have faced certain defeat. NATO would have quickly been forced to choose between capitulation or the use of nuclear weapons on German territory. CHIEF JUDGE FERDINAND SCHUTH delivering the verdict in the Clyde Conrad case, quoted by Herrington, Traitors among Us, 388 Clyde Conrad is perhaps one of the most unheralded spies in American history. A slew of books are devoted to Benedict Arnold, Julius Rosenberg, John Walker, Aldrich Ames, and Robert Hanssen, but not a single one to Clyde Conrad.1 Yet, as the judge’s comments quoted above indicate, Conrad was one of the most damaging spies of the Cold War. For fourteen years, he directed the largest spy ring since the heyday of Soviet espionage in the 1930s and 1940s. Unlike the networks of those years, almost all the spies in his network were US military personnel with direct access to classified information. By the time the ring was neutralized, eleven members had been arrested, of whom nine were then current or retired members of the US Army.2 Conrad himself was one of only five American spies who earned more than $1 million for their treachery. During his career as a spy, he betrayed NATO’s war plans to the Hungarian service, which in turn passed them on The Decade of the Spy: Other Spies of the 1980s 142 to the Soviet Union. If war had erupted between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Europe, the Soviet bloc would have gone into combat armed with knowledge of its enemy’s tactical nuclear capabilities, deployment of armor and aircraft, location of its missile sites, oil supply pipelines, and ammunition dumps. Thanks to Conrad, the Soviets had as much insight into the US Army as John Walker had given them into the US Navy. Aside from Walker, Conrad was the most damaging spy in a long line of enlisted US military personnel who conspired with the Soviet bloc. Born in 1947, he was among the first of the postwar baby boomers to spy for the Soviet bloc and spent almost his entire adult life in the US Army. He was in his late teens when he enlisted, just as the Vietnam conflict began to escalate . He served a tour in Vietnam but spent most of his career in Germany, mainly in the army’s Eighth Infantry Division. His military record was excellent. As an administrative specialist, he was dubbed by his colleagues “Mr. Plans” not only because he safeguarded the military’s war plans for Europe but also because he wrote some of them. He was the quintessential support officer. He was fully conversant about any detail involving his unit and served so many years in Germany that he could cut through both army and German bureaucracy to relieve his superiors of any troublesome problems. Like John Walker, he was rewarded for his efforts by glowing performance reports. According to one superior, Conrad was “an absolutely outstanding NCO [noncommissioned officer], . . . an administrative genius, . . . leads by examples, inspires his subordinates and successfully trains them.”3 His stellar performance record prompted his commanders to ensure that he remained in Germany, where his institutional knowledge could best serve the army. Conrad’s intimate knowledge of European defense plans enabled him to choose the most vital information to sell to the Hungarians. His long service in Germany also meant that he had contacts with a broad spectrum of fellow enlisted men whom he could spot and recruit to expand his spy network . Moreover, Conrad, who was to lure some of these colleagues into espionage, was himself recruited by another spy in the US Army. In the mid-1970s, Conrad had worked for Zoltan Szabo, a senior army noncommissioned officer of Hungarian descent. Szabo’s parents had fled Hungary for the United States after the bloody uprising of 1956. After a scrape with the law, Szabo, like John Walker, opted for military service and The Army’s John Walker 143 joined the US Army in 1959. Over the course of a twenty-year career, Szabo served in Vietnam, where he won a silver star for bravery in combat, and had several assignments in Germany. His file was checkered with a number ofreprimandsforpettyviolations,buthisgrossestviolationremainedhidden until long after his retirement. On a vacation to visit the land of his...