REAL-LIFE SPY THRILLERS PRODUCE A COURTHOUSE STAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504210024-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: October 31, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504210024-7TAT
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WASHINGTON POST
31 October 1985
Real-Life Spy Thrillers .Produce a
Courthouse Star
By Ruth Marcus
Washington Past Staff Writer
BALTIMORE, Oct. 30-Thirteen months
ago, the only thing Michael Schatzow knew
about espionage was what he gleaned from
spy nove Is.
Today, -the 36-year-old federal prosecutor,
whose junior high school hero was James
Bond, has three real-life espionage convic-
tions to his credit: Soviet s Ries John Anthony
Walker Jr. and his son, Michael Lance a k-
er, who pleaded guy ty in lederal court here
Mon ay; and Navy intelligence analyst Sam-
uelLoring Morison, convicted earlier this
Month or leaking three spy satellite photo-
r p s to a British magazine.
Schatzow, who said a always wanted to
work on an espionage case," spent long hours
closeted with intelligence experts to prepare
or the Walker an orison trials.
it really is incredible ... what you get
confirmed in terms of all the spy novels that
you've read," he said in an interview today.
A District native and graduate of the Uni-
versity of Chicago Law School, Schatzow has
become something of a star in the halls of the
federal courthouse here.
"Hey, how are you, I saw you on TV," said
a grand juror. "Don't take any crap from 'em,
Mike," offered a passing lawyer. He was al-
luding to Schatzow's typically acerbic retort
to criticism of the Walker plea agreement by,
Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr., in which
Schatzow said: "This is the kind of crap that
makes those of us out in the field happy not to
be in Washington."
Schatzow, who has a reputation as a thor-
ough and aggressive prosecutor, began his
legal career defending the accused instead of
trying to put them in jail.
His boss in the federal public defender's
office here was Charles G. Bernstein, who
went head-to-head against his former assist-
ant as Michael Walker's defense lawyer.
Bernstein said he hired Schatzow in 1975
because "I wanted a younger, more liberal
type'... He'd come in and say things like,
'Chuck, I got a bank robber today for sentenc-
ing, and I'm going to tell the judge: The only
thing worse than robbing a bank, your honor,
is owning one.' "
Schatzow freely agrees that his politics
have shifted somewhat over the years. "I was
one of those guys who believed the redistrib-
ution of wealth was a great thing as long as I
could keep driving my MG-and yes, my hair
was considerably longer," he said, passing a
hand over short brown curls with a light dust-
ing of gray.
Schatzow went from demonstrating against
the Vietnam War in college to the Morison
trial, the first case accusing an individual of
espionage for giving national defense docu-
ments to the press since Daniel Ellsberg was
charged with leaking the Pentagon Papers.
But he said he did not "go over to the enemy,"
as Bernstein terms it, because he tired of de-
fending the guilty.
"That part of it never bothered me," he
said. Instead, he said, he decided after rep-
resenting a codefendant in the Marvin Man-
del political corruption trial that he wanted to
try more complicated cases than the run-of-
the-mill bank robberies and narcotics charges
that were the staples of the public
defender's office.
The cases that interested him,
Schatzow said, were those "where
the issue was not whether you had
the right person in the courtroom,
but whether what the person had
done was a crime."
From that perspective, the Mor-
ison case, which marked the first
espionage conviction for leaking
documents to the press, was much
more of a challenge than the essen-
tially cut-and-dried case against the
Walkers.
Schatzow's familiarity with the
espionage laws as a result of the
Morison case-and a lucky hallway
encounter-landed him the case
that resulted in invitations to ap-
pear on network news shows and a
flood of telephone messages that he
has given up trying to answer.
He was walking into work May
20, the morning of John Walker's
arrest, when he bumped into fellow
prosecutor Robert N. McDonald.
McDonald told him, "You're just
the person I was looking for."
Schatzow headed to McDonald's
office and met with weary FBI
agents who had been up all night,
first following Walker, then arrest-
ing him.
The full impact of the case didn't
dawn on him immmediately, he
said. "I knew it was important ...
but the first thing [ think that really
brought it home to me was when
they exercised the search warrant
on the manila envelope that John
Walker had dropped when he was
arrestedi and we saw the drop in-
structions" for leaving the package
of classified documents.
Gontmupd
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504210024-7
In January, Schatzow, a Balti-
more resident who now earns about
$68,000, is leaving the U.S. attor-
ney's office to join a law firm. A
name partner at the firm is Arnold
M. Weiner, Mandel's defense law-
yer in the trial that spurred Schat-
zow to become a prosecutor.
"We can't wait till he comes
over," Weiner said. At the Mandel
trial, he said, Schatzow was "brand
new but he was terrific."
Last night, Schatzow, the father
of a 13-month-old daughter, Mag-
gie, and a 31/2-year-old son, Adam,
had a chance to do some nonwork
reading for the first time in months.
His choice: "The Hunt for Red Oc-
tober," a spy thriller recommended
by one of John Walker's lawyers.
MICHAEL SCHATZOW
... James Bond was his hero
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504210024-7