WALKERS SPY CASE DEFIES PARALLELS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000503980018-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: June 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503980018-1
ffa ikers
RICH UND TIr1ES-DISPATCH (\'A)
shy case
defies
1)riraldels
3 By Bill McKelway
and John
Times-Dispatch staff writers
NORFOLK - It is a tale of espi-
onage that with each day has tak-
en on ever-widening new scenari-
os, from revelations of
melodramatic derring-do and in-
trigue to alleged worldwide
breaches of security that some say
threaten the country's most secret
defense mechanisms.
"It is one of the most extraordi-
nary espionage cases I've ever
seen," one veteran law enforce-
ment officer was quoted as saying
by news agencies. "I'm not sure
that anybody can really predict
when it's going to end."
At the eye of this sudden storm
of concern is a bespectacled, tou-
peed Navy veteran from Norfolk
named John A. Walker Jr., 47, cur-
rently being held in a Baltimore
jail. Walker, an unflappable go-
getter whom his fondly wrote of as
JAWS, allegedly headed a spy net-
work that for almost two decades
may have fed the Soviet Union a
steady diet of top-secret informa-
tion.
"Walker passed information to
Soviet intelligence agents by using
'dead drops' in the Washington,
D.C. area, every three months or
so." a federal affidavit released by
the FBI alleged last week. During
his 2l-year Navy career, which
ended in 1976, Walker attained the
rank of chief warrant officer and
served as a communications spe-
cialist with a "top-secret-crypto"
clearance.
Since Walker's arrest at 3 a.m.
May 20 in a Rockville, Md., motel,
after which federal agents discov-
ered secret documents in his pos-
session showing recent ship move-
federal investigation has shown
that Walker's alleged network
penetrated the inner workings of
the Navy's most sophisticated
communications systems and
tracked the paths of some of its
most closely guarded warships.
In quick succession, federal
agents arrested and charged with
espionage Walker's 22-year-old
son, Michael, a seaman aboard the
aircraft carrier Nimitz; then
Walker's brother Arthur, 50, a re-
tired Navy lieutenant commander
and submarine expert from Vir-
ginia Beach, who later worked for
a Tidewater defense contractor
and allegedly has admitted his
role in the espionage operation:
and last week, Jerry Alfred
Whitworth, 45, a Davis, Calif.,
Navy veteran who once wrote to
John Walker that he had become
chief in charge of "tech control" at
the Alameda Naval Air station near
Oakland, Calif.
It was a position that placed him,
he said, at "the heart of naval com-
munications," according to a federal
affidavit filed last week in San
Francisco.
The defendants face maximum
sentences of life in prison if convict.
ed.
Fears about the extent of the al-
leged espionage effort have quickly
spread among top representatives of
the nation's intelligence community
and Congress.
"The numbers of people who have
clearances is too large and we are
going to cut that down," Secretary of
Defense Casper Weinberger told the
New York Times, echoing a growing
sentiment that the number of people
- about four million - in this coun-
try with access to classified military
information has become unmanage.
able.
"I think there are very serious
losses that went on over a long period
of time," Weinberger said of Walker's
alleged operation.
C-irector William Casey was
quota yesterday in U.S. News &
World Report as saying "these people
were in a msition to acquire and out
together a great deal of information
which we very much want to keep
away from the Soviets - information
which they could find very useful."
While John Walker's access to in-
formation-at first appeared to depend
on his son's ability to stow away box-
loads of secret documents from the
Nimitz, further investigation has
shown a relationship with Whitworth
that began in the early 1970s and was
worldwide in scope.
The federal affidavit filed in San
Francisco refers to documents recov-
ered from Walker's Norfolk home
that "indicate that Walker rendez-
voused with his Soviet contact" in
1977 in Hong Kong when Whitworth
was stationed on the carrier Constel-
lation there. Other documents, ac-
cording to the affidavit, show that
Walker met separately with
Whitworth and Soviet agents at
scheduled meetings in Vienna, Aus-
tria, and the Philippines
Whitworth, who has lived in a mo-
bile home park since.his retirement
from the Navy two years ago and is
unemployed, considered several new
job opportunities. In a note found in
Walker's home Whitworth allegedly
wrote. "I plan to make in known
to a larger filleaiblel of government
and civilian or anizations Just to see
what is out there, an ezamDIV. "
A CIA spokesman refused last
week to say whether any of the a -
ers or Whitworth had applied for
work rk with the agency.
Named a "Hometown Hero" a year
ago this month by a Norfolk televi-
sion station for his work in locating
missing children, in public John
Walker cultivated the image of a con-
servative zealot while directing tis
alleged espionage network with pa-
tient, detached control.
"I realize this doesn't fit in with
your advice and counseling over the
years," Whitworth wrote Walker
when the California man contemplat-
ed ending his "professional" relation-
ship with Walker, according to FBI
documents. "Your help has been re-
warding and I greatly appreciate all
that you've done for me in the past."
In a letter allegedly intended for
his Soviet contact, Walker wrote that
Whitworth "continues to be a puzzle."
"Hef is not happy, but is still not
ready to continue our'cooperation ...
My guess ... He is going to flop in the
stockbroker field and can probably
make a modest living in computer
sales. He has become accustomed to
the big spender lifestyle and I don't
believe he will adjust to living off his
wife's income. He-will attempt to re-
new cooperation within two years."
Walker joined the John Birch Soci-
ety in South Carolina in the mid-1960s
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503980018-1
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503980018-1
and befriended former Ku Klux Klan When Walker was transferred by
leader Bill Wilkinson, sharing, Wil- the Navy, he left management of the
kii,son said, a mutual dislike of Com- beer hall to others. About three years
munists. The two men were commu- ago, Miller said, the building became
nications specialists together aboard the meeting place for a Veterans of
the nuclear submarine Simon Boli- Foreign Wars post. "You might say
var. those fellows are a bit concerned
In 1979, according to former Walk- now," Miller said.
er associate Roberta K. Puma, Walk- The business also marked an early
er threw a party for Wilkinson when example of how Walker, according to
he visited Tidewater Virginia. former business partner Charles H.
"There were lots of law enforce- Smith, "always seemed to have plen-
ment people there," said Ms. Puma, ty of cash."
who said she once helped Walker Smith, a home improvement con-
"drop" classified documents near the tractor in-Virginia Beach, said that
Maryland location where he was ar- shortly before his retirement from
"
rested last montl>.
I remember a
friend of mine arguing the KKK cre-
do and tenets with Wilkinson."
As early as 1966, when Walker pur-
chased for $60,000 5 acres of land and
a frame building in the Charleston,
S.C., suburb of Ladson, he first estab-
lished himself as an enterprising busi-
nessman.
"He lived there in the back with his
wife and his two little daughters,"
recalled Edgar Craven, 78, who lives
beside the structure. "He turned it
into a beer hall. Called it the
Bamboo."
"It was definitely your basic red-
neck sort of joint," said Berkeley
County Police Chief G.J. Miller.
"White socks and Pabst Blue Ribbon."
the Navy in 1976, Walker "got ripped
off" for $10,000 when he invested in a
business called the Virginia Associa-
tion of Professional Salesmen Inc.
Smith and Walker later took over
the business and changed the name,
Smith said.'He said the organization,
which operated out of a prestigious
Norfolk professional office building,
offered $35 memberships to salespeo-
ple who would get special insurance
policies and reduced prices for vari-
ous services.
Smith said the business never made
any money, "but Johnny put at least
$50,000 into it," he said. The business
folded after the state questioned pro-
cedures the company used to fran-
chise similar organizations outside
Tidewater.
State records also show that Walk-
er and his brother Arthur started a
business selling car radios and elec-
tronic equipment in the late 1970s, but
a lawyer for the company said it fold-
ed because of financial problems.
Walker, meanwhile, began doing
security work for the Wackenhut
Corp. and in 1980 began to set up a
series of private detective agencies.
"The guy was full-throttle all the
way. He was a complete renegade,"
said Michael Bell, once a supervisor
of Walker's who now is associated
with a private detective agency in
Richmond.
Walker's detective agencies, which
boasted dozens of licensed investiga-
tors, concentrated on investigations
of insurance claims, divorce cases,
and missing children, and performed
"de-bugging" work for various corpo-
rate clients.
His operating methods inspired
comment. Walker disguised himself
at various times as a priest, a Boy
Scout leader, a bird watcher and a
representative of a fictitious televi-
2
lion cable company he called Cosmic
Cable.
Search warrants. Sled after his ar-
rest turned up a knife-ejecting walk-
ing stick, among other exotic weap-
ons, and thousands of dollars worth of
electronic surveillance equipment.
"He acted as though life's a game,"
said Shirley Kirkes, who took investi-
gative classes from Walker. "You pit
your intelligence against the other
fellow and see who wins. He told us
how to use disguises and said you had
to learn everything about the person
you were investigating.
"I admired him for his sort of plod-
ding, methodical ways, his intelli-
gence. I thought he was daring in a
way," she said.
Over the years, Walker bought
property in the Bahamas, in North
Carolina, and in Tidewater. Despite
his occasional business setbacks, he
owned a houseboat, a sailboat, a sin-
gle-engine airplane, and a home in
Norfolk whose value Walker listed in
a federal financial statement at
$70,000.
Last week, the Internal Revenue
Service seized the Virginia property
and filed liens against the South and
North Carolina properties. The gov-
ernment claims Walker owes more
than $250,000 in taxes dating back to
1979.
As the case against Walker builds,
federal investigators have been aided
by Walker's own meticulousness
Search warrants turned up detailed
records of correspondence with al-
leged accomplices and foreign agents
dating back to the mid-1960s.
But it was a soured marriage of 19
years, ending in 1976, that appears to
have fatally pierced what intelli-
gence experts say was perhaps the
most sophisticated spy network in
Navy history, one that the FBI says
was motivated by greed.
After years of concern over possi-
ble repercussions for the couple's four
children, Walker's former wife, Bar-
bara Crowley Walker, decided in No-
vember to disclose her knowledge of
the alleged espionage activities to
federal agents.
'lJohn] had a real knack for de-
stroying people who loved him and
using them," Mrs. Walker told the
Cape Cod Times last week. "I want
him punished. How can a father do
this? He used his own son. If what
they say is true, he's lucky he's in jail
because I would kill him."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000503980018-1