On May 11th, 1984, the San Francisco field office of the FBI received a letter from “RUS, Somewhere USA” that confessed to participation in a Soviet espionage ring for many years. After a few additional letters, contacts through the LA Times personals, and failed negotiations with the FBI, “RUS” went silent following his last letter on 8/17/1984.
The FBI tested the letters for anything identifiable, fingerprints, watermarks, indented writing, etc. A profile of RUS, the “unsub” (unknown perpetrator) was created. Despite an aggressive FBI investigation, they did not find RUS.
Six months later, on November 17, 1984, Barbara Joy Walker contacted the FBI in Boston about the suspected long-time espionage activities of her ex-husband John Anthony Walker, Jr. She had called several times previously but never stayed on the line long enough to connect. She turned him in because he repeatedly tried to recruit their daughter Laura, who was in Army communications. Laura refused to spy, her father threatened her husband’s life, and she complained to her mother who was also having difficulty collecting her alimony. Barbara Joy was unaware that her son was already collecting secrets for his father.
Because Barbara Joy’s was divorced and had problems with alcohol, the Boston FBI considered this a domestic problem and filed the report away with no action. Fortunately, during a quarterly check of inactive files a few months later, an FBI supervisor discovered and transferred the file to the Virginia FBI office where they opened an investigation. After interviewing Margaret Joy and her daughter Laura and finding them credible, the FBI began investigating John Walker and his associates. In her FBI interview, Margaret Joy recalled a close long-time friend of her ex, possibly named “Wentworth”. The Walker case file was coded ‘Wind Flyer’ because Walker was a licensed pilot. Taps were authorized on his phones and by March 1985, the case file on ‘RUS’ was added to the ‘Wind Flyer’ file. The FBI finally identified Jerry Whitworth as “RUS” Walker’s accomplice who confessed to espionage in letters received in San Francisco more than a year before.
Barbara Joy’s husband, John Anthony Walker Jr. enlisted in the Navy in 1955 at 18 to avoid a prison sentence for robberies. He seemed to do well in the Navy. Within 8 years he had cycled through a series of Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) submarines in communications and rose to Chief Petty Officer. He left the service to open a bar which failed and was left in considerable debt. He reupped and transferred to another submarine where he received a top-secret crypto clearance to work in the submarine’s communications spaces surrounded by active members of the NRA and the John Birch Society. John Walker continued to advance, becoming the deputy director of the Radioman A and B schools at the Naval Training Center San Diego for two years where he met Whitworth. Then he was the communications officer aboard the supply ship USS Niagara Falls until an assignment as a communications watch officer at the headquarters of COMSUBLANT in Norfolk, Virginia, where his responsibilities included “running the entire communications center for the submarine force….”
In 1967, still in debt, Walker’s espionage career was launched when he brazenly walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., with a radio-cypher card that allowed the Soviets to read encrypted naval messages. He sold it for $1000 and negotiated a monthly salary ranging from $500 to $1,000. During his time as an active spy, Walker provided the Soviets with naval cryptographic technology.
Walker divorced and retired in 1976, when he thought his superiors were getting suspicious of his activities. He opened a detective agency and aggressively sought substitute sources for his naval intelligence. In his divorce, John Walker sought and gained custody of his teenage son Michael Lance Walker and began to groom him for a career in Naval Intelligence espionage. John’s brother, Arthur Walker a submarine officer, owed John money after another business failed and was pressed into the espionage game.
Jerry Whitworth aka “RUS” was a student of Walker’s at the naval communications school since 1970. Whitworth funneled keys to naval cryptographic systems and US secure telephone systems from 1975 until he lost his taste for spying and retired in 1983.
In May 1985 the FBI overheard a call where Walker mentioned “an errand only he could perform.” They followed him on a circuitous route from his home in Norfolk to the DMV where he drove through parking lots, made U-turns and several fake “dead drops” in Virginia and Maryland. After driving past four times, Walker finally parked on Partnership Road in Poolesville (Waymark Code: WMM0H). He left a crumped bag of trash by a utility pole. The bag contained 124 pages of classified information stolen from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, where Walker’s son, Michael, was assigned.
The next day, on May 20th, John Walker was arrested. Two days later, on May 22, his son Michael Lance Walker was arrested. On May 29th, his brother Arthur Walker was arrested. On June 3rd, his friend Jerry Whitworth was arrested.
The three Walkers and Whitworth were found guilty. John Walker cooperated, revealing some information that he sold to the Soviets in exchange for leniency for his son. He was given a life sentence. Arthur Walker was sentenced to three life terms plus a $250,000 fine. The Walker brothers both died of health reasons in prison in 2014. Michael Lance Walker was sentenced to 25 years and paroled in 2000. Jerry Whitworth, John Walker’s friend who tried to turn himself in earlier, received the harshest sentence of 365 years and a $410,000 fine. Walker said he paid Whitworth $328,000 his 6-year spy activities. Walker himself may have been paid over a million dollars during almost 20 years. Arthur Walker claimed to make only $12,000.
The Walker spy trials were the top news. The case remains a significant example of espionage and betrayal within the U.S. military and intelligence community. Walker’s stolen intelligence may have had a significant impact on the Vietnam War. While on board the Niagara Falls, John Walker served in the Vietnam theater, and he is believed to have compromised the cipher setting for the entire theater. One 1972 dead drop required Walker to fly from Vietnam to the United States, make a brief cover visit home, and then rejoin his ship in Hong Kong. Walker’s Soviet handler maintained that the North Vietnamese benefited from the Walker intelligence. Observers claimed Moscow gave Hanoi data enabling North Vietnam to anticipate US B-52 strikes and naval air operations. The Walkers espionage also did massive damage to the US Navy’s submarine operations during the Cold War.
After the spy ring was uncovered, then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger concluded that the Soviet Union made significant gains in naval warfare that were directly attributable to Walker’s spying. His espionage provided Moscow “access to weapons and sensor data and naval tactics, terrorist threats, and surface, submarine, and airborne training, readiness and tactics”.