by Earley, Pete
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.”
Chapter 75
Arthur Walker’s court-appointed attorneys, Samuel H. Meekins, Jr., and J. Brian Donnelly, knew they didn’t have much of a defense. Their only hope for keeping Arthur out of prison depended on whether or not they could convince a federal judge to throw out Arthur’s incriminating statements to the FBI and his grand jury confession.
On July 12, Meekins tried to convince Judge J. Calvitt Clarke, Jr., during a court session closed to the public, that Arthur’s statements were taken illegally. A confession, in order to be admissible, must be “free and voluntary,” according to the U.S. Supreme Court, “and must not be extracted by any sort of threat or violence.”
Meekins claimed the government misled Arthur by suggesting that he wouldn’t be prosecuted if he helped the FBI buttress its case against John and if he, Arthur, could prove he didn’t give away anything valuable.
Meekins also suggested that Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Schatzow had tricked Arthur by telling him that his testimony before the grand jury would be sealed and couldn’t be used to prosecute him.
It was an easy defense for Meekins to argue because he believed it. Meekins had spent dozens of hours with Arthur at the Virginia Beach Correctional Center and had developed a genuine liking for him. He also had decided that Arthur was somewhat naive and easily manipulated.
Meek
ins did his best to undermine Agent Beverly Andress’s credibility. She was young and inexperienced – this was her first major investigation – Meekins pointed out. He also argued convincingly that the FBI had intentionally chosen not to tape record any of its interviews with Arthur so that only its version of those sessions could be presented in court.
Despite Meekins’s efforts, Judge Clarke ruled against Arthur’s motion. There was no evidence of government wrongdoing, he said.
Four days before Arthur was scheduled for trial, Meekins and Donnelly met to finalize their defense. There was none. Both men were former prosecutors and both agreed that a jury would convict Arthur based on his own statements. Regardless of what they did, Arthur was going to be found guilty of the first count filed against him – conspiracy to commit espionage – and it carried a potential life prison sentence.
Meekins and Donnelly met with Arthur and suggested that he try to cut a deal with the government. Why not offer to plead guilty, sparing the government the cost of a trial, and agree to testify against John, in return for a lesser sentence?
Arthur agreed.
The Justice Department would later act as if it never seriously considered any plea bargain offer with Arthur. In truth, it offered in early July to drop all of the charges against him except the conspiracy charge in return for his cooperation.
But that had been in July. Not August.
During the next four days, the government and Arthur’s attorneys talked round the clock trying to reach an agreement. They couldn’t.
And then, on August 5, one hour before Arthur’s trial was scheduled to begin, Meekins and Donnelly made a last-ditch offer. Arthur would plead guilty to conspiracy and nolo contendere to the other six counts. In effect, Judge Clarke could sentence Arthur as if he had pleaded guilty to all seven counts. There would be no point to proceeding with the trial. The government had won.
Much to Arthur’s shock, the Justice Department said no. The Reagan administration wanted full exposure.
“We were not going to give up the public’s right to see into an espionage case,” Stephen S. Trott, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, explained. “You don’t put a knife in your country’s back and come in and ask for some kind of deal.”
The government used Arthur’s trial to outline its case, not only against Arthur, but John. At times, Arthur seemed like a mere accessory as prosecutors talked about John’s role as ringleader.
During the third day, Arthur leaned over to Meekins, visibly upset.
“It’s that damn picture,” Arthur whispered, pointing to his left.
Earlier in the trial, federal prosecutors had introduced a large portrait of John Walker as evidence and during the lunch recess, someone had leaned the picture against the jury box so that it was now facing the defense table. Regardless of how Arthur sat, he had to look directly into his brother’s eyes.
Arthur’s attorneys didn’t call a single witness in his defense. It took Judge Clarke only fifteen minutes to find Arthur guilty of all seven counts filed against him.
Outside the courthouse, prosecutors admitted that the government never would have had a case against Arthur if he hadn’t voluntarily talked to FBI agents for thirty-five hours. Arthur Walker had literally talked himself into prison.
That night, Arthur was clearly shaken when he, Meekins, and I met together in the county jail. The folksy humor and blind optimism Arthur had shown on earlier nights was missing. At one point, he leaned close to the wire screen that separates prisoners and visitors.
“I’m no spy! I never intended to hurt my country. No way! No way!” he told us.
Arthur continued to complain. “There is no fairness anymore,” he said. “I mean, if you made a mistake and you were sorry and you tried to make up for it, everything would be okay in the end, right? Whatever happened to fair play? It just isn’t out there anymore, is it?”
“You’re wrong, Art,” replied Meekins, trying to calm his client. “There is fair play for robbers and rapists and even murderers. The court can cut them some slack, but not you. This case got too big, Art, too many headlines, too much television. It got bigger than you, Arthur, bigger than you.”
And then, Arthur asked a question that bewildered both Meekins and me: “What’s the worst I can expect, Sam, from the judge? What do you think, maybe a two-year suspended sentence? I won’t have to go to prison, will I? I mean, come on, I didn’t pass anything that was really valuable to John. The judge has got to realize that.”
As incredible as it later seemed, Arthur’s questions appeared to be genuine. He seemed to honestly believe that Judge Clarke would sentence him to a short jail term and then suspend that.
Meekins avoided answering.
The next step was a presentence investigation, he explained. Arthur had to prepare for that. He had to think about what he was going to tell the court-appointed investigator who would come to analyze him.
After Arthur was taken away, Meekins and I left the jail and stepped into the cool night. Meekins paused beside his car in the parking lot as if to review one last moment of the day’s traumatic events. He needed to explain some things, he said. Like Arthur, he needed to talk.
He felt badly, he explained, because he had misjudged the government. Meekins had thought the Justice Department would go easy on Arthur if he cooperated. Instead, the government claimed Arthur was a veteran spy and alleged that he might have actually been the brains behind the spy ring. Meekins couldn’t believe it.
Where was the physical evidence – the money that Arthur would have made spying for John? he asked.
Meekins had spent hours talking to Rita in the modest kitchen of the Walkers’ home. He had seen their financial records and so had I. There was no hidden cash.
Where was the proof? The only confirmation that Arthur Walker was a spy came from Arthur’s own mouth. If Arthur had been smart enough to hide the fact that he was a skilled KGB spy, then why had he so stupidly confessed?
After several minutes of such conjecture, Meekins became quiet. He was tired. He would save his questions for later when he didn’t feel so emotional. He would dissect his decisions like a scientist slicing open a frog, but not now. Not tonight.
He was still emotionally raw. He wanted to go home to his wife and children. He wanted to have a few scotches to unwind.
But before he left there was still something that he had to say. Meekins felt queasy about what he had just witnessed in the jail.
“I really don’t believe, in my heart, that Arthur Walker truly understands what’s going to happen next,” Meekins explained. “I don’t think Arthur understands that he’s about to be sent to prison for the rest of his life.”
“Do you think Arthur Walker was a spy?” I asked.
Meekins didn’t answer quickly. A big man, with bright red hair, an instantaneous grin, and self-effacing laugh, Meekins had served in the Air Force in Vietnam during the bloody Tet Offensive and had lost several friends there. He had been decorated for gallantry. He had no sympathy for spies, but on that night, Meekins had sympathy for Arthur Walker.
“My feeling was this: if you define a spy as someone who intentionally set out to injure his country or to help a foreign power, then Arthur Walker isn’t a spy. I just don’t believe Arthur gave John those documents because he intended to hurt the United States,” Meekins said. “Arthur did it because he wanted to please his brother. He did it for John.”
Chapter 76
John wasn’t about to be represented by a public defender. He knew what they were: liberal, long-haired lawyers anxious to protect the poor.
“Screw ‘em!”
John wanted the best, some nationally known defense lawyer who, he believed, would take his case for free just to get his name in the newspaper.
But when John met Fred Warren Bennett on May 23 in the Baltimore City Jail, he changed his mind about public defenders. Bennett, a short feisty man with a carefully trimmed beard and moustache, gave John what he
later described as an awe-inspiring pitch.
“What kind of attorney do you want representing you?” Bennett asked. “There are three things to consider. First, is he a criminal lawyer or some guy who does civil and tax work too? Is he any good? Does he get people off? Is he respected and feared by prosecutors?
“Second, is he familiar with the Baltimore courts? Does he know the prosecutor and the judges? Does he know how the game is played here?
“And last, can he put in the time and financial resources necessary for a big case like this?”
The Federal Public Defender’s office in Baltimore could do everything
John needed and do it better than anyone else, Bennett claimed. It had two full-time criminal investigators at its disposal, huge financial resources, sufficient time, and, best of all, it had Fred Warren Bennett.
At age forty-three, Bennett had spent nearly half his life practicing criminal law – always on the side of the defendant.
“I’m too liberal to prosecute,” he explained to me later. “I wouldn’t be comfortable getting up and asking for one day of jail time for anybody.”
After graduating from American University in 1966, Bennett spent twelve years in private practice, often taking criminal cases that no one else would touch. Even his wife frequently tired of Fred Bennett’s penchant for defending the dregs of society, particularly after one sensational rape-murder case when a neighbor said that she hoped Fred Bennett “fried” along with his client in the electric chair.
But Bennett never questioned his own motives, and he met anyone who criticized him with the coolness of an attorney with justice on his side.
Most of the time Bennett was able to convince his critics that everyone deserved a fair trial and the best attorney possible. The fact that he taught Sunday school at a Lutheran church and slept well at night attested to his own satisfaction with his reasoning.