Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring (46 page)

ARTHUR:
It’s obvious, yes, sir.

Schatzow later acknowledged that his questions were designed to give the FBI a foolproof case against Arthur. Until Arthur appeared before the grand jury, the government did not have much of a case against him. Arthur’s admissions could not be used against him in court because the FBI could not confirm them.

The FBI, in fact, couldn’t even prove that a crime had been committed. No documents were missing from VSE’s files, and no one had seen Arthur do anything wrong. The only proof that he had done something came from his own mouth, and any attorney fresh out of law school would be able to knock down a confession that couldn’t be corroborated.

Testimony before a grand jury, however, doesn’t need corroboration to be admissible in court. It was one of those legal nuances that Arthur Walker didn’t recognize.

When Arthur volunteered to testify before the grand jury, however, Prosecutor Schatzow knew exactly what he was doing. He questioned Arthur skillfully and made certain Arthur admitted to each of the key elements necessary for the government to charge him with espionage.

Before he understood what had happened, Arthur had admitted that he (1) had stolen classified documents; (2) had delivered them to a foreign country or its representative; and (3) had done so while knowing fun well that they “would be used to the injury of the United States.”

Arthur’s statement before the grand jury was as valuable as Michael’s confession.

During the drive home from Baltimore on Wednesday, May 29, Rita turned to Arthur. “I think we’ve been duped,” she said. “I think the only reason they subpoenaed me was to get you to Baltimore so they could get you in before that grand jury. I think you’re really the person they wanted up there.”

The telephone was ringing when they got home. It was the FBI. They needed to stop by. Arthur opened the door a short time later. “Mr. Walker, you are under arrest.”

Rita watched the agents put Arthur into the back of a car after handcuffing him.

After they left, she went into the garage and found a sledgehammer. Then she walked into their backyard and found the grill that Arthur had admitted buying with money that John had paid him for spying.

She lifted the sledgehammer and began hitting the grill with it, over and over again, until her thin arms were too tired to lift it anymore.

She stood there, physically exhausted and emotionally drained, and she wept.

Chapter 73

Five hours after John was arrested, FBI agents John Peterson and Michael McElwee knocked on the door of Jerry Whitworth’s trailer in Davis, California, and told him that John had been accused of being a spy.

Peterson didn’t mince words. He told Jerry that the FBI believed he was John’s accomplice.

“That’s really heavy stuff,” Jerry replied. “Ah, I need a drink of water.”

The three men were sitting in the dining room of the trailer when Jerry stood, excused himself, and walked into the kitchen toward a bottled water dispenser. But when he reached it, he kept on going into his den. Alarmed, McElwee jumped up and followed him, entering the den just in time to see him remove a floppy disk from his IBM computer and hide it under the machine’s keyboard.

McElwee escorted Jerry back into the dining room and suggested that he refrain from leaving their presence again. Jerry agreed, and said that he wanted to explain his relationship with John.

Peterson stopped him. This was too important a case to screw up on some legal technicality. Before Jerry said anything about himself and Walker, Peterson wanted to make certain that he had been read his rights. During the next two hours, Jerry gave the two FBI agents a disjointed review of his Navy career. While he was truthful about checkable facts, such as his duty stations and access to classified material, Jerry lied about his friendship with John, saying he did not really like him and did not trust him.

When Jerry finished, McElwee showed him a copy of the first RUS letter and asked if he recognized it.

“He stared at the letter for what seemed like a long time,” McElwee recalled later, “about ninety seconds or so, and then he looked up and said he didn’t want to answer that question.”

Clearly unnerved, Jerry told the agents that he wanted to speak with an attorney.

“I felt like I was under a great deal of pressure,” Jerry complained later. “I felt like I was being bombarded psychologically.”

Peterson and McElwee were in a quandary when Jerry cut off the interview. They knew that if they left the trailer, Jerry would destroy whatever evidence might be there, but if they kept questioning him, they could jeopardize their case.

In a rather unusual move, Peterson asked for permission to use Jerry’s telephone to call his boss for instructions, and while he was talking to him, McElwee asked Jerry if he would consent to a search of his trailer.

“What if I say no?” Jerry asked.

Then, McElwee explained, the agents would get a search warrant. It seemed futile, so Jerry agreed.

As soon as Jerry signed the proper waiver of rights form, McElwee rushed to the den and confiscated the floppy disk that Jerry had tried to hide earlier. It contained a letter that Jerry had been writing to John when the FBI agents appeared at his door. In it, Jerry was asking John for permission to rejoin the spy ring.

The FBI put Jerry under round-the-clock surveillance, but despite its best investigative efforts, there still was only circumstantial evidence that Jerry had once spied. The FBI had the floppy disk, John’s incriminating note, and the letters that Jerry had written to him, but the Justice Department needed to be able to prove that Jerry had given John a classified document if it was to authorize Jerry’s arrest.

One week passed and then another.

Back in Norfolk, Wolfinger and Hunter began to worry. The arrest of John, Michael, and Arthur had been international news. Congress had reacted by passing legislation in the House of Representatives to make espionage during peacetime a crime punishable by death; and the Pentagon threatened to recall John and Arthur to active duty in the Navy because the military still had the necessary authority to execute spies.

But the biggest hoopla centered on the search for other members of John Walker’s spy ring. After Arthur was arrested, the Justice Department disclosed that one of the items found during the FBI search of John’s house was the small card that John had filled out while walking in Vienna with his KGB handler. It contained the letter designations for each member of the spy ring, and it didn’t take the media long to realize that someone with the code name D was still on the loose.

Several times a day, Wolfinger received telephone calls from reporters with questions about D, and some of the callers were getting close to discovering Jerry Whitworth’s identity.

“I could just see a television crew showing up outside Jerry’s trailer to do an interview,” Wolfinger recalled. “I was afraid such a fiasco would blow our case against him.”

The Washington headquarters of the FBI contributed to the media hunt by disclosing that D was a “California man.” It was not the only mistake that the Washington FBI made while trying to win accolades for its handling of the probe. FBI Assistant Director Bill Baker claimed that agents had “patiently watched [John Walker] for six months” and had intentionally waited to catch him in the act of passing documents.

To say the least, those most familiar with the case registered surprise at Baker’s misstatements. Eventually, his comments to the press became so irksome to John Walker’s attorneys that they asked a federal judge to cite Baker for contempt of court.

Wolfinger, meanwhile, was trying to put together a case against Jerry Whitworth based on documents seized at John’s house. It wasn’t easy and on June 1, when a reporter called and told Wolfinger that he knew that D’s first name was Jerry and that he lived in the San Francisco area, Wolfinger recognized that time was quickly running out.

“We had to do something and fast.”

Wolfinger decided to play a long shot. One of the 150 boxes of documents seized from John’s house and business had contained an envelope with John’s handwriting on it. Wolfinger wanted to know what the scribbles meant because they looked as if John had been referring to secret documents and some sort of advanced radio message system.

So he telephoned Washington and arranged for several experts in cryptology from the National Security Agency to fly to Norfolk and examine the envelope that same day.

What Wolfinger didn’t learn until later was that John had used the envelope as a note pad when he debriefed Jerry about the documents that he had stolen from the U.S.S.
Enterprise
. One of the NSA officials immediately recognized John’s hieroglyphics and told Wolfinger that the writing on the envelope contained information that was so sensitive that the envelope itself should be classified as a secret document to prevent the information from being disclosed.

Wolfinger next rushed the envelope to John C. Saunders, a fingerprint expert at FBI headquarters, who spent most of Sunday examining it. At two A.M., Saunders awakened Wolfinger at his home.

The envelope contained two sets of fingerprints, Saunders reported. One set belonged to John Walker and the other matched Jerry Whitworth’s prints!

In effect, John Walker had given the FBI exactly what it had been looking for to arrest Jerry – proof that Jerry Whitworth had passed classified information to John Walker.

Some defense attorneys might consider it shaky evidence at best, but Wolfinger thought it would be enough to convince the Justice Department to authorize Jerry’s arrest, and that would keep the media from interfering with the case.

The Justice Department agreed. The next morning, it issued a warrant.

The last major player in the spy ring had been unmasked.

Chapter 74

Laura Walker was fixing dinner with Marie Hammond when she heard NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw announce John Walker had been arrested. “Oh my God!” she shrieked.

Laura had moved in with the Hammonds in early May. “She was depressed again and having money problems,” Marie recalled, “so my husband and I went down to Buffalo and got her.”

At the time, Bill and Marie were living in Canton, a small New York town near the Canadian border. After Laura arrived, Marie took her to the Christian Fellowship Center, where they sang, prayed, danced, and spoke in tongues. That seemed to cheer up Laura.

“She told me that she had called the FBI and turned in her father,” Marie Hammond told me later. “Laura told me about the lie detector tests the FBI had given her.”

After the FBI captured John, Laura was called before the grand jury and dozens of reporters began arriving in Canton.

“Laura,” Marie exclaimed, “you’ve got to get a lawyer!”

“But I’m broke,” Laura said. “How am I going to get a lawyer?”

“Let’s call Pat,” Marie said. “He’ll know what to do.”

Once again, the two women turned to television evangelist and 700 Club founder M.G. (Pat) Robertson for help. Marie dialed the long-distance prayer line for the Virginia Beach-based headquarters. It took her eight calls before she finally reached someone who promised to tell Robertson that Laura Walker wanted to talk to him.

A producer for the television evangelist called back a short time later and asked if Laura would be willing to fly to CBN (the Christian Broadcasting Network) and grant
The 700 Club
an exclusive interview.

Yes, Laura replied, if Pat Robertson promised to help her. Within a few hours, Laura, Marie, and Marie’s two sons, Jonathan, twelve, and Billy, eight, were on their way to CBN.

“Laura was upset because one of the stewardesses had recognized her,” Marie recalled. “She had a brother on the U.S.S.
Nimitz
with Michael and she told Laura, ‘I hope they tear your brother to pieces and feed him to the sharks.’ ”

Laura and the Hammonds received an impressive guided tour of CBN’s two hundred-acre tract. “It was so exciting to see it in person,” Marie recalled. “I told Laura, ‘See, the Lord is working. He’s keeping His promise to you. You are going to get Christopher back.’ ”

The televised interview was done in private, not before a studio audience, as usual. The tapes of the interview were then rushed to Los Angeles, where Pat Robertson was staying. Marie made certain that the show’s producers understood that it was a 700 Club counselor who had started the chain of events that led to John’s arrest by speaking in tongues to her over the telephone.

After Laura’s interview, Marie demanded to know what CBN was going to do to help Laura. “She needs legal advice,” Marie explained. The two women were taken to see Guy C. Evans, Jr., one of three corporate lawyers at CBN.

Evans had been on the telephone all morning trying to check Laura’s story.

“The truth was that Pat [Robertson] didn’t think Laura was the real Laura Walker. He thought she was a ringer because her story was just too slick,” Guy Evans recalled, “so he instructed us to hold up the tapes until he could see them personally and then he still wasn’t convinced.”

Evans believed Laura and her story about Mark Snyder. He had already verified that her Social Security number had been issued to Laura Walker. But he still needed more proof. During the next two and a half hours, he quizzed Laura about her religious values and life. During their conversation, Laura told Evans that she had seen Mark Snyder when he appeared before the grand jury in Baltimore but she still didn’t know where he lived.

Evans suggested that Laura call the U.S. Attorney’s office and ask for Mark’s address. “I dialed the number for the office in Baltimore and asked for the attorney, and then handed the telephone to Laura,” Evans told me. “I listened to her end of the conversation and was further convinced that Laura was genuine.”

Laura spoke with Michael Schatzow. “I told him that Mark had given me his telephone number and his address when I saw him at the grand jury. It’s true that he had given me his phone number, but not his address. I said to Schatzow, ‘I’ve misplaced Mark’s address.’ I lied. It was a lie, but I did it anyway. I had to have that address and Schatzow gave it to me. I was so excited.”

“Listen,” Evans said, “the law says that where no one has filed any petition for divorce, then the court has rendered no decree about custody, then either parent can claim custody. In other words, Laura, you can do exactly what Mark did. You can go steal your child back.”

Evans called his secretary.

“I need a car for these two ladies, something nice, and also some cash, say five hundred dollars each.” After he finished talking on the telephone, he turned to Laura and Marie.

“Now,” Evans said, “go get your child.”

It was dark by the time that Laura and Marie arrived in the Washington suburb where Mark lived. The next morning, they drove into his apartment complex.

Marie sent her son, Jonathan, to telephone Mark’s apartment. “I wanted to wake up everyone in the house and get them moving,” she recalled. “I told Jonathan not to ask for Chris but to stay on the phone long enough that whoever answered wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep.”

A short time later, a small boy came out on an apartment balcony. It had been three years since Laura had seen Christopher and she wasn’t certain it was her son until she saw Mark come out and get him. At about the same time, she saw two boys playing on the lawn in front of the apartments.

“I tried to manipulate the situation,” Laura Walker said. “I told Jonathan to go tell one of those boys to knock on Chris’s door and tell him to come out and play. But the boys wouldn’t do it, and then a voice spoke within me. It wasn’t from the heavens, like you see on television, but it was clear as a bell. It said, ‘Christopher is going to come out and play,’ and I said, ‘Marie, I know what is going to happen. Chris is going to see those boys and come out to play,’ and sure enough, Chris comes out with a toy in his hand.”

Laura and Marie moved quickly. Jonathan took Christopher’s hand and led him to the car. Laura opened the door.

“Hi, Chris,” she said. “I am your mother.”

“He looked at me bewildered and he didn’t know what to do,” Laura Walker recalled later, “so I picked him up, he put his arms around me, he looked at me and started to cry, and I got in the car and said to Marie, ‘Go!’ I won’t deny it, it was traumatic. He kept saying that he wanted his daddy, but I felt it was the right thing to do and I knew that in the long run it would be for the best even though he cried for the next twenty miles.”

Mark Snyder was looking out the window of his third floor apartment when he saw Christopher being taken.

“I ran down the stairs and ran outside, but he was gone, and I asked the kids standing there what had happened, who had taken Christopher, and they said that some woman had said she was Christopher’s mommy,” he recalled. “I hoped it was her and not some nut, but I was still furious. I called the police. It wasn’t fair. I had taken care of him all those years and she didn’t give a damn and then she had him.”

In Virginia Beach, CBN flew Laura and Marie and their children to Los Angeles to meet Pat Robertson. “When he met Laura and saw that she had gotten Christopher back, he was convinced we had the real thing,” Guy Evans, Jr., recalled.

The next day, Robertson introduced Laura and Christopher to his viewers on
The 700 Club
and recalled how a 700 Club counselor had given Laura a message from God. The network televised the first half of its interview with Laura. It was the first televised interview with a member of the Walker family, and it received worldwide attention.

Laura described her father as “arrogant, self-centered, and egotistical,” but she ended the interview on an upbeat note by saying that she hoped John would turn to Jesus for forgiveness.

CBN flew Laura and Marie back to Virginia Beach, where the religious organization set Laura up in an apartment and gave her a job.

“It was all God’s doing,” Laura said afterward. “He had kept His promise and returned my son to me. I never dreamed He would do it in such a dramatic way, by having my mother turn in my dad and then leading me to take Christopher, but He did it.”

John Walker, Jr., watched Laura’s interviews on CBN from jail.

“Laura needed a crutch,” he told me later, “and that phony Pat Robertson gave her one.

“She couldn’t just say, ‘My dad was a fucking spy so I turned him in.’ She had to claim it was for Christopher and that God had made her do it. She was so silly I couldn’t believe it. She was a Nazi cunt.”