by Earley, Pete
Hunter lifted Arthur from his chair and pushed him out of the door.
At eight-thirty A.M. the next morning, Arthur reported to the FBI office on his own without an appointment.
“I want to clear my name,” he told the agents.
“That polygraph was driving me crazy,” Arthur explained later. “I had to pass that damn polygraph.”
During the next five hours, Arthur told how he was recruited by John, how much he was paid, and what documents he had passed. Agent Andress listened carefully and then asked Arthur a question that shocked him.
“Have you ever slept with Barbara?”
“No,” Arthur immediately responded. Later, Arthur explained, “I was embarrassed to admit to a woman that I had slept with my brother’s wife, but a few minutes later one of the male agents asked me and I said, ‘Hey, I’m not an angel. Yeah, I did it, but only once.’ ”
The fact that the FBI knew about Barbara was the most terrifying discovery of all for Arthur.
“The impact hit me. This is the FBI. They really do know all and see all,” he said. “They had checked me out. I figured that they even knew if I had peed in the alley as a kid. It finally hit me that I had said too much. I had done myself in.”
That night, Arthur and Rita sat down and made eight pages of notes about everything Arthur knew or had given to John. The next morning, May 24, Arthur once again came to the FBI office voluntarily to make a statement. The interview lasted more than five hours, and this time Agent Andress asked him about his girlfriend, Sheila, and other sexual relationships that Arthur allegedly had with other women.
“Who told you about that?” he asked, bewildered.
“Arthur,” an agent replied, “we know more about you than you know about yourself.”
Arthur gave the FBI a long and thorough statement that afternoon and after Hunter read it, he was convinced that during Arthur’s thirty-five hours of interviews, he had “confessed bit by bit.”
The Justice Department disagreed.
Arthur’s admissions were not corroborated and some of his statements were contradictory. More importantly, Arthur insisted throughout the interviews that he didn’t believe the documents that he had passed really had harmed the government.
The next morning was a Saturday and when Arthur awoke and went into the kitchen, he found Rita crying at the breakfast table. The FBI had been questioning her and she felt the interrogations were demeaning.
“I haven’t done anything,” she said, “but I still feel guilty.”
“Rita, you didn’t do anything,” Arthur said. “I’m the one they’re after.”
“But you’re my husband,” she replied.
After a few minutes, Arthur said, “Rita, there’s something I got to tell you and you’re not going to like hearing it.”
Arthur figured that sooner or later the FBI would tell Rita about his sexual act with Barbara. It was better, he decided, that it came from him. In the next few minutes, Arthur admitted infidelity with both Barbara and Sheila.
“I’m sorry I did it,” he said when he had finished. “But I did.”
Then Arthur began to cry. Rita was in shock.
“I had been upset that morning,” Rita recalled later, “because, and I got to be honest, because my personal conviction was that anyone who was a spy should be hanged and killed. I felt that strong about it. But when the person is your husband, the man you have been married to for twenty-nine years and you cared about and who was the father of your children, it is a different situation, and I was in a funky mood and he helped me snap out of it. I had assumed that he had told me everything at that point and then he says, ‘Rita, there’s more,’ and I looked at him and he told me about the women. I was blown away emotionally. That was it. How could he have done that? How could he have done that to me and the children? It was too much.”
Rita began to cry, too. Within five days her entire life had been turned upside down.
A grand jury was meeting in Baltimore on May 28, a Tuesday, to review evidence against John and Michael. Rita had been caned as a witness, but Arthur hadn’t.
Arthur told the FBI that he would drive Rita to Baltimore if that was okay because she was afraid of driving on major highways. He let her out a block away from the courthouse and drove back to the motel. The phone was ringing when he got there.
“Art, come get me,” Rita said. She was crying. “They don’t want me.”
“I had broken down,” Rita recalled. “They asked me some simple questions about how long I had been married and then said, ‘Well, we don’t need you this morning.”
Arthur raced back to the courthouse and went inside without drawing any attention from the media. As he waited outside the U.S. Attorney’s office while someone fetched Rita, he was approached by Hunter and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Schatzow. They took him into a conference room and asked if he wanted to volunteer to appear before the grand jury.
“Okay,” he said.
Later that afternoon, Arthur answered a series of carefully worded questions posed by Schatzow before the grand jury.
SCHATZOW: Since 1980, have you had occasion to provide your brother, John Walker, with documents, which contained classified information?
ARTHUR: Yes,sir.
SCHATZOW: Approximately how many occasions have you done it?
ARTHUR: I believe I have previously stated two occasions of classified information, perhaps three. I don’t remember off hand what we have been going over...
SCHATZOW: At the time you gave those documents to your brother, you knew that he was going to give them to somebody else for money, is that right?
ARTHUR: Yes, sir. I knew they were, there was certainly the possibility that they were going to be passed on, yes, sir.
SCHATZOW: And you knew also that the somebody was a foreign government, isn’t that correct?
ARTHUR: Yes, sir.
SCHATZOW: And you assumed that to be the Soviets?
ARTHUR: My assumption, I don’t remember him ever mentioning them specifically, but my assumption was he certainly was going to somebody who wanted to buy information about the U.S.
SCHATZOW: You knew the reason that these people were buying information about the United States was to either hurt the United States or to help that foreign country, isn’t that right?
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.
T
he 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.’ ”