by Earley, Pete
“Oh, I’ll drive you downtown,” Rachel volunteered.
“No, no, I don’t want you to get involved,” Barbara said.
“Where do you want to go?”
“The FBI,” Barbara said. Rachel tried to act nonchalant.
“Why would you want to go there?” she asked.
“I’m going to turn John in, but I can’t say for what, only that he’s doing something illegal.”
Rachel pressed Barbara. “You’ve got to tell me. Is Michael going to be hurt by all this? What are you going to say?”
Barbara dodged the questions but finally blurted out her reason: “John’s a spy!”
Rachel faked shock. “Oh my God, no!” she said.
She called Michael immediately. “Michael, I’m here with your mother,” Rachel said. “She wants me to take her downtown. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
“Are you talking about a federal agency?”
“That’s right.” Rachel gave the telephone to Barbara, who had a brief exchange with her son. He was coming home immediately, he said. They needed to talk.
Barbara was drinking when Michael arrived. She was so upset that she was shaking, Michael recalled later.
“Listen, Mom, you don’t want to do what you’re thinking about,” Michael explained. “You don’t want to turn Dad in.”
Barbara disagreed.
“Mom, you don’t want to see Dad go to prison, do you?” Michael continued. “Do you really want to see him in prison?”
Barbara was undeterred.
“She was really pissed,” Michael told me. “She said she was sick and tired of him screwing her around. She had had enough.”
“Mom, listen,” Michael told Barbara. “This is more than you can handle. You are going to destroy this family if you do this. The entire family will be ruined.”
“That seemed to calm her down,” Michael said later. “I didn’t tell her that I was involved and I don’t think she thought, at that point, that I was.”
Rachel had gone to work, and when she got home that night, she demanded to know what Barbara had decided. Michael laughed off the incident.
“She’s got a drinking problem,” he said. “She does this every once in a while. It’s no big thing.”
“I can’t believe you,” Rachel responded. “She almost went to the FBI today. She could have turned him in and you too!”
Michael wasn’t in the mood to fight. He wanted to make love, but Rachel declined. She walked out onto the back porch of their apartment because Barbara was asleep on the couch in the living room. Michael followed her outside.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t want her here tonight,” Rachel said.
“She’s leaving on Sunday,” Michael said.
“Tell me that you’ll quit,” Rachel said. “Promise me.”
“I have,” Michael said, lying. “And I’m going to talk to my father tomorrow about Mom.”
The night before she left, Barbara made an Italian dinner for Michael, Rachel, Margaret, and some of Margaret’s friends. The meal required more than $50 worth of special ingredients that Rachel paid for with her tip money. The next morning, Michael drove Barbara to the airport. On the way home, he detoured to John’s house.
“I went over to my dad’s and I told him what had happened,” Michael recalled.
“Mike, we got a real problem here,” John said.
“Hey, we don’t have a problem,” Michael replied. “You have a problem.”
Recalling the conversation later, Michael said, “I told my dad that I worked for him. My part of the deal was to get the shit and he was supposed to take care of Mom.”
Michael’s assertiveness apparently surprised John.
“Mark is a problem too,” Michael told John, “and Mom is a problem. What are you going to do about them?”
“Look,” said John, “you’re the one who has to tell Mom that you are involved, ‘cause she ain’t gonna believe me.”
“No,” said Michael. “You tell her, because if I tell her, she might kill herself. You do the damn thing. It will kill her, Dad. It will kill her if I tell her.”
“I tried to tell Mike that Barbara wasn’t going to kill herself,” John told me later. “I said, ‘Listen, Mike, your mother isn’t going to kill herself. She is too fucking weak to do that. Now you’ve got to quit thinking about it and just tell her.’”
John reminded Michael that they could both be in trouble if Barbara talked to the FBI. “If she rats on me, they are going to be suspicious of you.” John promised to find out when Barbara planned to return to Norfolk and to arrange a meeting between her and Michael so he could tell her that he had joined the spy ring.
“It’s got to come from your lips,” John said.
Three weeks later, Michael was promoted from the recreational department aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz to the legal office on the carrier. He worked harder than ever to impress his superiors, particularly those in the operations administration department.
“I didn’t hate my dad at this point,” Michael told me later, “but I was just tired of his pressure and bullshit. He just kept pushing me to get that transfer.”
After Michael had worked for one month in the legal office, a job in the operations administration office became vacant and he was selected to fill it. He stole his first classified document from that office within the first week and delivered it to John. Soon he was stealing documents regularly by hiding them in the backpack he carried to work each day. He hated his uniform, so he kept a change of clothes in the backpack, and put them on after work. He hid the stolen documents in the bottom of the backpack under his uniform.
One afternoon, Rachel emptied Michael’s bag while collecting laundry. Inside were several documents with the word SECRET stamped on them. That night, Rachel confronted Michael. “You said you’d quit.”
“I can’t, we need the money,” Michael replied. “Sending you to school isn’t cheap.”
“Neither is surfing,” Rachel replied.
“I remember telling Rachel to get off my back,” Michael recalled later. “I said to her, ‘Rachel, don’t worry. I’ve got everything under control so just stop sweating it.’ ”
Chapter 58
Janet Fournier was working the complaint desk at the San Francisco FBI office on May 9, 1984, when the letter from “RUS” arrived. As an investigative assistant, Fournier was responsible for screening telephone calls and reviewing letters not addressed to specific agents. It was not glamorous work. Most of the time, she got stuck on the phone talking to disturbed callers who insisted on reporting their own murders. Fournier knew that most anonymous tips were worthless, but occasionally one paid off.
RUS sounded legitimate so Fournier hand carried the letter to the office’s foreign counterintelligence squad and showed it to Special Agent John Peterson. He was also impressed. RUS used words like keylists, tech manuals, and intelligence messages, terms that weren’t generally known outside the government. The spelling and punctuation of the letter were terrible, however, and that raised immediate questions. Was the writer trying to appear less intelligent than he was, or was he poorly educated?
Peterson put the letter in a plastic envelope to preserve possible fingerprints and sent it to the FBI’s laboratory in Washington. He also sent a copy of it for review to Dr. Murray Miron, a Syracuse University psychologist who was a consultant to the FBI in espionage cases.
As directed by RUS, Peterson placed an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times on May 21:
RUS considering your offer. Call weekdays 9:00 A.M. to 11 A.M. Telephone number (415) 626-2793, or write. Signed M.E., San Francisco.
The telephone number was a special line the FBI had installed on Peterson’s desk that enabled agents to trace an outside call instantaneously. But Jerry didn’t call. With his electronics background, he knew calls could be traced and a caller’s voice tape-recorded. Instead, he wrote another letter:
Dear Sir,
<
br /> I saw your note today and was encouraged, however, I’m not going to call for obvious reasons. I’ll admit that my most earnest desire is to talk to someone (like yourself) about my situation, but I feel that I’m unable to trust any kind of personal contact – phone included. Nor have I begun to look for an attorney. Where does that leave us or more specifically me?
I’ll be very open. It took me several months to finally write the first letter. Yes, I’m remorseful and I feel that to come forward and help break the espionage ring would compensate for my wrongdoing, consequently clearing my conscience.
But there are other emotions: the difficulty of ratting on a “friend”, and the potential of getting caught up in a legal mess (public disclosure of my involvement and a possible double-cross on immunity, assuming it was granted in the first place).
I would guess that you are conferring with higher authority and possibly other agencies. I’m wondering if my situation is really considered serious enough to warrant investigation and to give me due consideration (immunity & etc.)!
I’m going to begin looking for an attorney, which will be tricky from my view, to discuss my situation. And I will keep an eye on the LA Times, Monday editions, for any additional word/instructions from you.
It would certainly be nice for people in my predicament to have a means of confidential consultation with someone in a position of authority without the possibility of arrest.
My contact will be expecting more material from me in a few months, if I don’t I’m not sure what his response will be. I’m going to come clean with him at that time (assuming no deal is made with you) and tell him I’m finished with the “business”. And then get on with my life.
More info on him: he has been in “the business” for more than 20 years and plans to continue indefinitely. He thinks he has a good organization and has no real fear of being caught, less some coincidential [sic] misfortune; in that regard he feels safe also. I agree with his assessment.
Why haven’t I discussed my desire to come clean (with you) with my contact and/or possibly convince him to do the same? It would be sure folly – dangerous to my health.
One line in Jerry’s letter stuck out when Peterson and his superiors at the FBI office read it: RUS’s contact had been “in ‘the business’ for more than 20 years.”
The FBI responded with an ad in the June 4 edition of the Times:
RUS: Understand your concerns, but we can help. Must have dialogue with you or proxy, if you are serious. ME. SF.
Each day Peterson waited by the special telephone and searched the mail, but nothing happened. As usual, Jerry was vacillating. He didn’t know whether or not to turn in John. He wasn’t worried about John or anyone else in the spy ring. He was worried about himself. How could he nail John without incriminating himself?
Becoming impatient, the FBI placed another ad in the June 11 edition.
RUS: Considering your dilemma. Need to speak to you to see what I can do. This can be done anonymously. Just you and me at 10 A.M. June 21 at intersection of the street of my office and Hyde Street in my city. I’ll carry a newspaper in my left hand. We will only discuss your situation to provide you with guidance as to where you stand. No action will be taken against you whatsoever at this meeting. Respond if you cannot make it or if you want to change locations. I want to help you in your very trying situation, but I need facts to be able to assist you.
The offer was tempting.
The FBI promised it wouldn’t arrest the mysterious RUS. But Jerry had read the note closely and noticed the FBI’s caveat: “No action will be taken against you whatsoever at this meeting.”
Whom did the FBI think it was dealing with? Jerry correctly guessed what the FBI had planned. At ten A.M. Peterson waited at the designated corner as he had promised, but he wasn’t alone. Several FBI agents were hiding nearby. The FBI intended to follow him if he appeared, and after the meeting, nab him.
Once again, Jerry replied by letter:
Sir: I won’t be meeting you the 21st. A letter will follow in a week or two.
The FBI waited, but nothing appeared. Meanwhile, Peterson received an evaluation by Miron of the first RUS letter:
This communication exhibits a number of characteristics which suggest that it should be considered to be highly credible. It is quite likely that anyone engaged in espionage would be expected ... to be psychopathic in character. Idealists who might try to aid or abet our enemies would be expected to eschew any money for themselves so as to better prove their ‘nobler’ intentions. The author of this letter exhibits the language of the psychopath. His passing reference to conscience is both glib and superficial. Even the protestation of remorse is mitigated by the notion that the author wishes to be free of what we can presume to be some pressures consequent of an earlier attempt to demur from further participation. The author’s psychopathic bent is further supported by his ending request that he be compensated for ‘interruption’ of his ‘livelihood.’ All of this is entirely believable.
Based upon the content and style of the author’s language, it is my judgment that he is a technically trained Caucasian male approximately between the ages of 30 to 45.
There are indications that the author is familiar with cryptography, codes and radio/computers apparatus. Although he is, in my judgment, clearly psychopathic, he can be expected to be sufficiently shrewd and wily to have avoided detection for other schemes in which he may be involved: i.e., he would not be expected to have a criminal record and have received relatively high fitness reports on the job.
On August 13, Peterson tried to flush RUS from hiding once again:
RUS: Haven’t heard from you, still want to meet. Propose meeting in Ensenada, Mexico, a neutral site. If you need travel funds, will furnish same at your choice of location in Silicon Valley or anywhere else. Please respond to the above.
Jerry responded with another letter:
Dear Sir:
I saw your note in todays [sic] LA Times. Since my last note to you I’ve done a lot of serious thinking and have pretty much come to the conclusion that it would be best to give up on the idea of aiding in the termination of the espionage ring previously discussed.
To think I could help you and not make my own involvement known to the public, I believe is naive. Nor have I contacted an attorney.
I have great difficulty in coming forth, particularly, since the chances of my past involvement ever being known is extremenely [sic] remote, as long as I remain silent.
Yes, I can still say I would prefer to get it off my chest, to come clean.
The above notwithstanding, I’ll think about a meeting in Ensenada. Funds are not the problem.
My contact is pressing for more material, but so far no real problems have occurred. I haven’t explicity [sic] told him, I’m no longer in the business.
By now the agents in the FBI office in San Francisco were convinced that RUS was legitimate. They believed he was a spy for the KGB and that, unless he was exaggerating, somewhere in the country, someone had been operating a spy ring for two decades.
It was chilling and frustrating. RUS had surfaced and then disappeared.
What the San Francisco FBI office didn’t know was that their counterparts in Norfolk had found another source by late 1984, and she wasn’t interested in rewards, immunity, or playing games by corresponding in newspaper advertisements.
Her name was Barbara Walker.
Chapter 59
In the fall of 1984, Marie Hammond’s relatives asked her and Laura to leave the farm outside Buffalo owned by Marie’s grandmother. One of the incidents that had sparked discontent involved Laura. Marie’s grandmother sometimes suffered from memory loss and disorientation, so one afternoon, when Marie went on an errand, she asked Laura to watch the old woman. “Laura spiked shut my grandmother’s bedroom door so she couldn’t get out of her room,” Marie said later. “I just about died. Laura said she had some things to do and didn’t have time to watch my grandmother so she
simply spiked my grandmother’s bedroom door shut.”
Marie rejoined her husband, who was still in the Army. Laura headed north to Buffalo and enrolled in a beauty school. It wasn’t long before she was broke and deeply depressed about Christopher.
“A guy literally took me in off the street,” Laura told me. “He had fallen in love with me and I let him know that I didn’t love him, but he wanted to do these things for me – help pay my rent and help with transportation – and he feigned being a Christian, so anyway, I moved in with him.”
That November, Laura decided to end her seventeen-month, self-imposed excommunication from her family by calling Barbara, who now lived near Cynthia in West Dennis, a town near Hyannis, Massachusetts. Laura and Barbara have given me different accounts of what was said during this conversation. Parts of their stories are also inconsistent with what they have testified to under oath.
When I spoke to Laura about the telephone call, she told me the same story that she had told other reporters after her father’s arrest. She always began by saying that she had called her mother on November 23, Barbara’s birthday.
“I said to her, ‘Happy Birthday,’ and then I apologized for not calling her sooner. I said, ‘Maybe now you know how I feel about Chris. Maybe now you understand what it is like not to know where your child is.’
“It was very important to me that my mother knew how sorry I was for what I had done. We didn’t say much else because we were in too much pain. She was in too much pain and so was I. We didn’t even talk about Christopher. I was too upset and we certainly didn’t talk about Mark.
“The next night, and I’ll never forget this, it was November 24, 1984, and I was blindly watching television when my mother telephoned and she said, ‘Laura, I turned your father in.’ This is the very next night. She had gotten off the phone with me on her birthday and called the FBI. There wasn’t any discussion about turning Dad in. She did this entirely on her own without telling me what she was going to do. She said, ‘Laura, I did this for you. I did this so you could get your son back.’ She said, ‘Will you cooperate with the FBI? Will you tell them everything?’