Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring (9 page)

Chapter 12

John was sure he would be arrested leaving the operations headquarters, but no one bothered him. He had returned the KL-47 keylist to the safe and simply folded his copy, tucked it into his pants pocket, and walked right past the armed Marine guards. Still, he was unable to sleep when he got back to his room and, after four hours of fidgeting, dressed and drove to Washington.

“I was afraid someone had seen me. Maybe they were just waiting to arrest me in Washington at the front door of the Soviet embassy.”

John wasn’t really certain about how to approach the Soviets. Obviously, the most direct way was to march up to the embassy. But what then? Did he simply ring the doorbell and announce that he wanted to become a spy? Would the Soviets believe him or think his actions were a trick? And what if the FBI was watching?

As he drove, John decided to rely on an old Navy acronym: KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid. “The simpler it was, the less there was for me to screw up.” It became his golden rule for spying.

Just outside Washington, John looked up the address of the Soviet embassy in a telephone book. He drove into the city, parked the MG, hailed a cab, and gave the driver an address several numbers higher than the embassy so that he could get a good look at where he was going before he got out of the cab.

The embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is less than four blocks from the White House. The grandiose stone mansion in the 1100 block of Sixteenth Street Northwest had been built at the turn of the century by Mrs. George M. Pullman, widow of the railroad sleeping car magnate, but the grande dame never got around to occupying the rectangular, four-story structure. Instead, it became the embassy for the last czarist family, the House of Romanov.

By the mid-60s, it had become a forlorn place with pale gray wooden shutters that were always closed.

The taxi dropped John a block north of his destination. As he covered that block, his eyes darted from side to side, searching for the G-men he suspected of lying in wait. As he got closer, John saw a gold plaque by the front door of the embassy with the Cyrillic letters
CCCP
on it. Rather than walking to the huge wooden door, he continued on all the way to the corner of Sixteenth and L streets. He paused, turned around, and realized that he had just made his first mistake as a spy. He should have walked directly into the compound. “I was simply giving the FBI a second chance to see me.”

John hurried back toward the building, quickening his pace. “A car had just left the embassy and this big Russian was closing the iron gate behind it. The embassy had a fence around it. I slid through the gate, really startling this guy.”

John announced that he wanted to see the embassy’s “security manager.” The Russian at the gate didn’t seem to understand.

“Embassy security! Where’s the director?” John repeated, almost panicked.

This was taking too long. He didn’t want to be standing in front of the embassy any longer than necessary. But the Russian still didn’t react. John walked past him to the front door. He jerked it open and stepped inside, startling a young woman perched behind a tiny desk.

“I need to see the man in charge of your security,” John stammered, trying to sound in control of his emotions. He heard the front door open and close behind him. The gatekeeper was now standing between him and the door. The receptionist looked nervous, and after a few moments she disappeared behind a door at her right.

John had been so overwrought outside the embassy that he really hadn’t examined the man at the gate closely. Now he saw that he was a “perfect specimen of an iron curtain goon – direct from central casting.” The Russian stood well over six feet tall, had broad shoulders, and a prizefighter’s nose. The receptionist finally reappeared and motioned John into a small office where she pointed toward a wooden chair.

John sat and waited. After several minutes, a slender man in his late twenties entered the office.

“Why did you come here?” the man asked, his English betraying a Slavic accent.

John stood. “Are you with embassy security?” he asked.

“Why did you come here?” the man repeated calmly.

John suddenly realized that he and the slender Russian were not alone in the room. The goon had quietly joined them and was standing, once again, behind John.

“I am interested in pursuing the possibilities of selling classified United States government documents to the Soviet Union,” John said, repeating the lines he had practiced during the drive to Washington.

The embassy official showed absolutely no emotion.

“I want to sell you top secrets,” John repeated. “Valuable military information. I’ve brought along a sample.” John removed the KL-47 keylist from the front pocket of his jacket and handed it to his Russian inquisitor, who studied it cautiously. He turned and left the room.

“It suddenly hit me that I was no longer on U.S. soil,” John Walker told me later. “They could have killed me right there if they wanted to.”

The embassy official appeared distressed when he returned to the room. Marching over to John, the Russian demanded in an excited voice to know why the keylist wasn’t signed. John explained that NSA keylists always had a Letter of Promulgation on the back of them that identified them as NSA keylists, but sometimes the statements were signed and sometimes they weren’t. The missing signature didn’t mean anything, he said. It was just a sign of sloppiness.

The Russian appeared unconvinced. He asked John his name. The question caught John off guard. For some reason, he had assumed that he could sell military secrets to the Soviets without telling them his name. He quickly decided to lie. Several names zipped through his mind, but he worried that he might stumble if he picked a name that was too different from his own. He remembered KISS.

“James,” John said. “My name is James.”

“James what?”

“Harper,” said John.

Like Johnnie Walker, James Harper was the name of a brand of whiskey. It would be hard to forget. (An American named James Harper was arrested in 1985 and charged with espionage in a case unrelated to Walker’s.)

The Russian asked John for identification. “Is this necessary?” John protested. The Russian insisted. He had to see some sort of written identification. John opened his billfold and withdrew his military identification card. The Russian reached out for it, but John didn’t hand it to him. Instead, he held it up so the Russian could read it.

“John ... Anthony ... Walker ... Junior,” the Russian read aloud. “Thank you ... Mr. Harper.”

John’s face felt warm.

The Russian smiled and sat down behind the desk across from John.

He motioned John to sit. “Please,” the Russian said, “enough foolishness. We desire the document that you have brought. We want more such documents. We welcome you, friend. So please let me have your identification. “

John pushed his ID card across the desk. The Russian excused himself once again and left the room. Five minutes passed. Then ten. He figured the Russian was making a copy of his military identification card, but didn’t understand why it was taking so long.

John kept looking at the time. He was going to be late for the midnight watch. He should have allowed more time for the transaction. Howard Sparks, the watch officer John relieved, was going to be angry. Only a few weeks earlier, John’s car had broken down while he was driving back from Charleston to Norfolk. John had been more than an hour late and Sparks hadn’t been happy about it. John would be calling attention to himself by being late again.

When the Russian returned to the office, John complained, “I have to get back to work.” The Russian said it was necessary for them to proceed slowly.

“The hell it is,” John said. His sudden display of backbone caught the Russian off guard. The Soviet apologized, explaining that he and John still had to talk about several crucial things, such as security precautions, John’s access’ to other documents, future meetings, and, most important of all, John’s motivation.

“Is your coming here political or financially motivated?” he asked John.

“Purely financial. I need the money.”

The Russian nodded sympathetically. He began asking John questions about his lifestyle. Was he married? Did he have a drinking problem? Did he use drugs? The exchange reminded John of a job interview and he felt uncomfortable once again. This was taking too much time. John needed to get his payment for the KL-47 and get the hell out of there.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” John complained again, but the Russian continued with his questioning. “He reminded me of a salesman following a written script,” John said later.

At one point, the Russian asked John if he had ever read any writings by Karl Marx. Before John could answer, the embassy official began explaining the superiority of Marxism over capitalism.

John had had enough. “Look,” John said, interrupting the Russian, “here is what I had in mind.” John quickly offered to, in effect, sign a “lifetime contract.” He would supply the Russians with classified information, primarily NSA keylists, in return for a regular salary, “just like an employee.”

The Russian seemed stunned at the idea of paying a spy a weekly salary. How much did John expect to receive under such a system, he asked. The fee was negotiable, John said. Between $500 and $1,000 per week. John handed the Russian a copy of his duty schedule for the next month so that they could choose a date for their next meeting.

It would be better if there were no face-to-face meetings, the embassy official said. But John would have to meet with a KGB contact at least one more time to discuss dead drops, his salary request, and what kind of documents he could provide. The Russian told John to draw up a “shopping list” of classified information at his disposal. John should return in two weeks to a shopping center in Alexandria, Virginia, and stand outside the Zayre store there at precisely 2:00 P.M. He should carry a folded
Time
magazine under his right arm, the Russian said. He could enter the store and make a purchase if he wished or wait outside and window shop while he waited for the contact.

“A man will approach you and call you ‘Dear Friend,’ ” the Russian said.

John took a piece of paper out of his coat pocket and began writing down the instructions.

“You mustn’t do that,” the Russian said. “It isn’t safe.”

John continued to write. “I got a bad memory for some things,” he said.

The Russian left the room. When he returned, he handed John an envelope. It contained bills – all fifty-dollar bills.

“One thousand dollars,” the Russian said. He then placed a sheet of paper on the desk and asked John to sign it. John looked at it but balked because he couldn’t read Russian.

“What is this?” he asked. “A receipt, of course,” the Russian replied.

John signed it.

The Russian motioned John toward the hallway, where several men were waiting. One stepped forward and handed John a heavy, full-length coat and broad-brimmed hat. John put them on and was led to a side door of the embassy where a car was waiting. The men crowded around John, dwarfing him.

“Good-bye, dear friend,” the embassy official said.

The cluster of Russians moved quickly outside and pushed John into the center of the back seat. No one talked. The car raced down the alley that separates the embassy from
The Washington Post
building and pulled onto a main thoroughfare.

During the next half hour the car raced around northwest Washington, until it finally came to a sudden stop in a residential neighborhood. Within seconds, John was shoved out and stripped of the hat and coat. The embassy car sped away.

John was convinced that he would be arrested at any moment by the FBI, but after standing alone for several minutes on the sidewalk, he began to feel euphoric. He had done it! He removed the envelope from his jacket and fanned the bills.

“I knew I was about to make a lot of money,” he said later. “One hell of a lot of money.”

Chapter 13

Barbara couldn’t believe that John suddenly had enough cash to repay the $700 loan from the amusement company and buy Christmas presents for the family. John and Barbara both liked to buy lots of presents at Christmas. It was the only time of the year when they were extravagant. Even when they were first married and penniless; they had had department stores put purchases in layaway as early as June for Christmas. They would pay a little each week.

There hadn’t been many presents for Christmas last year because every cent had gone to renovating the bar. This year had been looking bleak too, until John arrived in Charleston with a billfold full of cash.

Barbara was suspicious and demanded an explanation. John lied. “I got a second job.” He said he had made extra cash working for a car rental agency, helping to move an excess of cars from Norfolk to Washington.

Barbara didn’t believe the story, but she didn’t press John for answers. Instead, she cooked a big Italian dinner, exactly as John wanted, and Arthur and Rita joined them. Temporarily detailed to Charleston once again, Arthur had driven home to Key West and brought Rita and the kids up to John’s for Christmas. Barbara felt awkward when Rita first arrived, but once she realized that Rita didn’t know about Arthur’s sexual encounter with her, she relaxed.

John was soon back in Norfolk and en route to Washington for his second meeting with the Russians. He was still bewildered by the fact that he hadn’t been arrested. The FBI must have seen his clumsy entrance at the Soviet embassy, he thought. Federal agents were probably searching through military records at the Pentagon at this very moment trying to match his face with a name. “I really believed that after I went into the embassy, I would be arrested within a few days,” John said, “and then I figured it was just a matter of weeks. It took me a long time to get over the feeling that someone was looking over my shoulder and about to arrest me.”

John had brought a small packet of classified information with him on this trip, along with the “shopping list” of classified documents that he could supply the Soviets. By now they would have had time to check the authenticity of the KL-47 keylist with their own cryptographic experts. Obviously, they would want John to supply them with the next month’s KL-47 keylist and, if possible, a technical manual that showed exactly how the machine was wired.

Because of his training as a cryptographic repairman, John knew that the keylist he had sold the Russians was actually only half of the solution that they needed to read the messages encrypted on the KL-47 machine. If the Russians were lucky, ingenious, and unrelenting, they might be able to break the KL-47 code and transcribe some messages, but it would be extremely difficult without access to an actual KL-47 machine. Compared to today’s computer designed and enhanced cryptographic machines, the KL-47 appears amateurish, but it still contained enough tricks to make unlocking its code formidable.

Like all cryptographic hardware, the technical details of the KL-47 machine are still classified, but it operates on a rather simple theory. The machine looks like an old-fashioned typewriter except that it has a large open bin on its top. This bin contains twelve rotors, or wheels, attached to a center core that can be removed from the bin. Each wheel rotates independently with the letters of the alphabet and numbers on its edge. To encrypt a message, the operator sets the twelve rotors to a series of predetermined locations. The rotors then act like the keys on a normal typewriter, except that they are misaligned.

For example, when the operator types A on his keyboard, a rotor on the KL-47 machine whirls around and prints a different letter – such as a K. To unscramble the message, all the person receiving it must know is the transpositions on the current keylist, for example, that K actually stands for letter A. The KL-47 machine, however, is more complicated than that. Each time the KL·47 operator types a letter, the machine chooses a different rotor to type the letter. As a result, the letter A might be printed as a K the first time and as an L the second time that it is typed. The word AGAIN would come out as KMLZP, even though the letter A is typed twice. The military further complicated the KL-47 machine by designing it so that only eight of its twelve rotors work at any given time.

The KL-47 keylist that John had sold the Soviets told them exactly how each rotor was aligned, but without a wiring diagram of the machine, the Soviets didn’t know the sequence of the rotors. John would have supplied that information if he had had access to the technical manual for the KL-47 machine, but he couldn’t find one.

He did have access, however, to the keylists and to technical manuals for at least four other types of cryptographic machines, devices used much more frequently than the KL-47. John had written the names of the machines on a sheet of paper for the KGB; the KWR-37 machine, KW-8 and KY-8 systems, and KG-14 machine were included. John also had written the word SOSUS on the notepaper to show the KGB he had access to much more than just cryptographic devices. He knew the location of key SOSUS hydrophones off the Soviet land mass, the Aleutian Islands, and Iceland. He also wrote down the acronym SlOP (Single Integrated Operations Plan), which referred to the nuclear battle plan he had seen while aboard the U.S.S.
Simon Bolivar
. John hadn’t seen a recent SlOP, but he could still recall several specifics about the document that the Russians might pay for.

The Russians had asked John to compile a list of Navy personnel at the message center, with a short biography of each sailor there. The KGB especially wanted to know about any of his co-workers’ weaknesses: married men with mistresses, drug addicts, alcoholics, homosexuals, officers in financial trouble. John had worked diligently and composed an elaborate report on his peers.

Since his meeting at the Soviet embassy, John had begun to pay conscientious attention to every message that crossed his desk, making copies of several dozen of the most interesting, including the precise location of ships and submarines operating in the Atlantic and specifics about each ship’s destination and mission. Some of the messages contained general information such as “rules for peacetime engagement” that told a ship’s crew how and when it could respond with gunfire if it came into contact with a Soviet vessel. John had also copied messages that Navy ships had filed when they sighted Russian ships and submarines. These messages would help the Russians to know when they had been observed by U.S. ships and when they had avoided detection.

Even though his shopping list contained a tantalizing collection of classified information, John wanted something more to astound the KGB and crystallize his importance in their minds. He had saved the best for last. At the bottom of his shopping list, John wrote, “Keylists and technical manuals for the KW-7, also known as Orestes.”

In the 1960s, the KW-7 was the most important cryptographic equipment in the United States, used by the Navy, Air Force, Marines, Army, and the CIA.

Intelligence experts divide information into two types: tactical, or “real time intelligence,” and strategic, or “long-term intelligence.”

Tactical information is generally less than six months old, usually involving specific information about an individual operation, such as the exact time and location of a bombing raid in North Vietnam. Strategic intelligence tends to be much more general. Once the Soviets had access to the keylist for the KW-7 machine, they would be only a step away from being able to read thousands of U.S. military messages, including some tactical information because the KW-7 was being used extensively in Vietnam. Selling the Russians the keylist for an antiquated KL-47 cryptographic machine would allow a peek through a keyhole at U.S. military secrets. Supplying the Russians with the KW-7 keylist was much more damaging, more like throwing open the entire door. The Soviets would still have only half the puzzle – the keylist – but John had access to technical manuals that could be used to reconstruct a KW-7 machine.

John understood the consequences of selling the Russians the keylist and the technical manuals for the KW-7. If the United States and the Soviet Union went to war, the Russians would be able to read Navy messages both tactical and strategic. John knew that giving the Russians access to the KW-7 cryptographic machine could cost American lives in Vietnam. If the Russians shared tactical intelligence gained through the KW-7 machine with the North Vietnamese, the lives of both U.S. pilots on bombing raids and of grunts engaged in ground combat would be jeopardized.

John considered the ramifications before he included the KW-7 machine on his shopping list, but in the end, he couldn’t think of any reason not to sell it. He had convinced himself that the United States and Soviet Union were never going to war and that the Russians wouldn’t share intelligence information with the North Vietnamese. The KW-7 was simply too valuable for the Russians to share with the Viet Congo Already John’s sense of his own importance as a figure in the cold war had grown to monstrous proportions.

“I decided,” John told me during one of our first interviews together, “that if I was going to be a spy, and I clearly was going to be one, then I would be the best damn spy there ever was, and that meant giving them everything. And that’s exactly what I did.”

John met his Russian contact outside the Zayre store in Alexandria as scheduled. He was looking in a display window when a voice behind him said, “Hello, dear friend. Please do not turn around, but walk with me.”

John did as he was told. From an occasional glimpse, John knew the man was about six feet one, had dark brown hair, wore glasses, and was dean shaven. This KGB agent had a dear, pleasant voice that reminded John of his father. In his thirties, John guessed, but didn’t wear a wedding band. Only one rather obvious mannerism betrayed the fact that he was not an American. The Russian was holding his cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger. Americans hold cigarettes between their first two fingers.

“How did you get here?” the Russian asked. “I drove my car from Norfolk as instructed,” John replied. “Did anything unusual happen?”

“No,” said John, who was uncertain what the Russian meant.

The Russian asked John if he had seen any cars more than once during his trip, which might mean that they had been trailing him.

“No, I don’t believe I was followed,” John answered.

During the next ten minutes, John and the Russian walked through a neighborhood near the shopping center. The Russian spoke slowly and calmly about John’s new career as a spy. The KGB would pay him a salary of $4,000 a month in return for cryptographic information like the KL-47 keylist. He’d get extra money if he obtained specific items that the Russians needed, but he would never receive less than $2,000 each month as long as he had access to cryptographic materials.

John quickly agreed to the terms and the Russian turned to security. John should never telephone the Soviet embassy. He should tell no one, including his wife, that he had become a spy. He should be extremely careful with his money and not spend it lavishly by buying a new car, fancy clothes, or a new house. Copying documents was risky. John would be given a Minox camera to photograph them. He could steal them, photograph them, and return them. This procedure was much safer than trying to use a photocopy machine.

The KGB agent described how a dead drop was performed and gave John some pointers on how to detect whether he was being followed. “If you are on foot, get into a taxi but only go a short distance – two or three blocks perhaps – and then get out. Watch behind you this entire time and see if anyone does the same.” John could also lose someone who was following him in a car by walking up a one-way street against traffic.

As they spoke, John realized the Russian seemed to be following a carefully crafted script, just as the embassy employee had. As the lecture on security drew to a dose, the Russian asked John if he had access to a technical manual for the KL-47 machine. John told the KGB agent that the operations headquarters in Norfolk didn’t have one. In that case, the agent explained, John would be given a hand-held device invented by the KGB specifically to read the internal wiring of the KL-47 machine. He would receive it and a Minox miniature camera in the next dead drop. John should hide the “rotor reader” because it would be a dead giveaway to anyone who knew anything about cryptology.

“What about the pill?” John asked. The Russian didn’t understand what pill John was talking about. “Aren’t you going to give me some sort of pill that I can take if I’m arrested so I can commit suicide?” John asked.

The Russian appeared confused. “No, we don’t do that,” he responded.

The Russian asked John to give him the keylist for the KL-47 machine and any other material he had brought with him.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to bring it out here,” John replied. “Where is it?” the KGB agent asked.

“I put it in a locker at National Airport,” John said. The Russian stopped walking. He warned John that lockers were routinely checked and he suggested that John get the documents immediately. “I will contact you there,” he said, turning briskly and walking away.

John hurried to the airport. He had hidden the documents because he hadn’t wanted to carry them to the shopping center, fearing that the FBI would be waiting there to arrest him.

The main terminal was crowded as usual. John stopped short of the lockers and surveyed the crowd. A man in a two-piece gray suit standing near the lockers was reading a newspaper. A woman sat nearby knitting. John wondered if they were watching for him. He didn’t move for several minutes. Then a woman with two youngsters came up and embraced the man with the newspaper and they all left. John decided he was being paranoid. Opening his locker quickly, he grabbed the package of documents and rushed out through the glass doors. A few feet later he heard the Russian’s voice behind him.

“Hello, friend,” he said. “Let’s walk into that parking lot.” A car pulled up beside them as they neared the parking lot entrance, and the KGB agent took John’s package and handed it through an open window to a man inside the car, which sped away.