WALKER SPY TRIAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301920003-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: October 28, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM ABC World News Tonight STAT1oN WJLA TV
ABC Network
DATE October 28, 1985 7:00 PM cm,' Washington, DC
SUBJECT Walker Spy Trial
PETER JENNINGS: On Friday, we reported that a deal was
in the works for John Walker and his son to plead guilty of
passing military secrets to the Soviet Union. And it has
happened.
The bargain that was struck suggests that the former
naval officer who betrayed his country was, in the end, at least,
loyal to his son.
DENNIS TROUTE: John Walker was smiling as he left jail
this morning for his court appearance in Baltimore. In court,
Judge Alexander Harvey had the elder Walker step forward, flanked
by his two attorneys. Asked for his plea to a new conspiracy
charge and two other espionage counts, Walker responded in a
quiet voice "Guilty."
Under terms of the deal struck for his guilty plea, John
Walker gets a life term, though he's eligible for parole in ten
years. His son, Michael, also entering guilty pleas, gets a 25
year prison sentence, though he may be paroled in eight.
Defense attorney Fred Bennett insisted the elder
Walker's belated sense of responsibility for the son he coaxed
into the spy business made him come to terms with the government.
Revealing the evidence against both of them, U. S.
Attorney Michael Shwatoz furnished new details about the espion-
age ring. He said John Walker's former wife, Barbara, first
learned of it in 1968 when she discovered maps, photos and money
in his desk. Prosectors revealed that 22 year old Michael
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confessed to his role in the spy ring just after the case broke
in May.
In accepting the plea bargain, Judge Harvey noted that
he can change his mind and force them to stand trial any way if
John Walker breaks his promise to testify against other spies and
to help the government discover just how much damage he did.
Defense attorney Bennett insists that Walker's sense of
regret will keep the deal on course.
REPORTER: Has he said he's sorry?
FRED BENNETT: Yes, he has to me. Now I can't bring
him out here right now and have him, in front of everybody on
nationwide TV, say the same thing, because he's in the lock-up.
But he has told me that. Yes.
TROUTE: Perhaps sorrier still, Michael Walker's wife,
Rachel, and his sister, Margaret.
REPORTER: How do you feel today?
RACHEL WALKER: I think the best thing that's possible
was done under the circumstances.
TROUTE: Another real loser in this is Jerry Whitworth,
the other alleged Walker spy ring co-conspirator facing trial in
California next January.
What's been described as a circumstantial case against
him is strengthened greatly now by John Walker's agreement to
help the prosecution.
Dennis Troute, ABC News, at the Federal Courthouse in
Baltimore.
JENNINGS: So how much damage have the Walkers and other
American spies done to the United States recently, and what do
the Soviets really know about this country's military capability?
ABC's John Martin is on "Special Assignment."
JOHN MARTIN: Right now more Americans are facing trial
for espionage than at any time since World War II.
GENERAL RICHARD STILLWELL: From the standpoint of the
Soviet Union, there's a sellers' market on secrets.
MARTIN: Soviet intelligence has pulled together many
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pieces of the puzzle it faces in trying to understand American
military capabilities, from satellites to communications to
weapons. The Soviets have been successful in uncovering secrets
in two kinds of satellite technology -- photo reconnaissance and
electronic eavesdropping.
In 1975, Christopher Boyce sold the Soviets details of
the RYOLITE (?) satellite, which listens to phone conversations,
radar transmissions, radio signals and missile telemetry.
To this, Jeffrey Prime, an officer in British intelli-
gence, added crucial details.
JAMES BAMFORD: Boyce was able to give away the informa-
tion on the construction of the satellite, how it works, because
he worked for a contractor on that, TRW. Prime was able to give
away the information on what the targets were and what our
capabilities were in terms of eavesdropping.
MARTIN: Perhaps the most damaging loss in satellite
photo reconnaissnace was the sale to the Soviets of a manual for
the newest Keyhole satellite, KH-11, by a disgruntled former CIA
employee, William Campilas. The KH-11 photographs, similar to
these taken by an SR-71 reconnaissance plane, reveal what is
happening on earth in great detail. With the stolen manual, the
Soviet military could have learned now to conceal its movements
and installations.
WILLIAM COLBY: Those were telling the Soviets something
that presumably they didn't know as to our degree of access
through various of these techniques. And I'd say they were quite
damaging.
MARTIN: At the same time, the Soviets were piecing
together elements of another important part of American security,
military communications.
GENERAL STILLWELL: They want to read our mail, sir, or
read or electronic mail. It's been a target, a priority target
for them from the very beginning.
MARTIN: And they have succeeded. From the Pueblo,
captured off North Korea, they got a series of encrypting
machines used to send secret information back to the United
States. From Christopher Boyce and allegedly John Walker and
others, they got cryptographic keys to unscramble the codes and
with it an important glimpse at U. S. communications.
The Soviets have also gotten documents describing an
important array of American weapons. From William Bell, an
engineer at Hughes Aircraft, they reportedly got sensitive
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information on a series of radar systems for tanks, fighters and
the Stealth bomber.
GENERAL STILLWELL: That ranks as one of the more
spectacular losses that we've had in the past decade. No
question about it, again primarily with respect to your air-to-
air missile, the whole missilry. It permits them to devise
electronic countermeasures that may assist in defeating that
system.
MARTIN: The Soviets got another piece of the puzzle
when they learned about U. S. ballistic missile defenses and ICBM
survivability from documents they bought from James Harper, a
computer engineer.
Even so, for all Soviet espionage managed to learn, has
the balance of security been altered?
GENERAL STILLWELL: We are ahead technologically, sir.
But we want to maintain that lead. That lead is diminishing
because of the loss of our technology to them.
MARTIN: But a game so serious that intelligence
committees from both houses of Congress are now investigating the
latest series of espionage cases. Their principal goal is to
find ways of protecting American secrets from the kind of
exposure that has already damaged national security.
John Martin, ABC News, Washington.
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