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PERSON FILE · 28 July 1937 – 28 August 2014

John Anthony Walker

US Navy communications warrant officer who sold cipher keys to the KGB from the late 1960s until 1985 and drew his friend, brother and son into the ring. He died in prison in 2014.

1937–2014

3 min read · 4 sources, 2 primary

"KMart has better security than the Navy," John Walker later said, explaining how easy it had been4. For about seventeen years he gave the KGB the keys to the US Navy's enciphered communications, and when his own access ran out he recruited people who still had it. Much of what is known about his espionage comes from his own testimony, given under a plea agreement that protected his son2,1.

Walker was born on 28 July 1937 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with what the US counterintelligence summary calls an unhappy childhood and alcoholic, separated parents. He left high school in the eleventh grade and, after a brush with the law for burglary, enlisted in the Navy on 25 October 19551,4.

He did well. In the first half of a 21-year career he rose from seaman to warrant officer and earned high school and college equivalency diplomas. He specialized in communications and held a top-secret cryptographic clearance; his posts included the communications center of the Atlantic submarine force in Norfolk and communications officer on the staffs of the Atlantic Fleet's amphibious and surface forces1,4.

Volunteer

Losses on private investments, by his own account, sent him to the Soviet embassy in Washington. The official US counterintelligence summary dates the visit to late 1968; most other accounts say late 19671,4,3. He was paid on the spot and went on to supply the daily key cards for Navy cipher machines and technical information on the machines, receiving in turn a device for reading the wiring of their rotors1. His former wife learned of the spying almost from the start, in 19682.

He retired in July 1976 as a chief warrant officer, opened a private investigation business, and turned recruiter. Jerry Whitworth, a Navy radioman, supplied cryptographic material from 1975 to 1983; his older brother Arthur passed two documents from a defense contractor in 1981–82; and from 1983 his son Michael, a seaman, took classified papers from his ships. He failed to recruit one of his daughters1,2. Walker serviced the KGB through dead drops in the Maryland and Virginia countryside and meetings abroad, including Vienna2. The ring's history is told separately.

Capture and plea

His former wife reported him to the FBI in November 19842. On 19 May 1985 FBI agents trailed him through Montgomery County, Maryland, recovered the bag of documents he left beside a utility pole for the KGB, and arrested him at a motel in the early hours of 20 May2,1. Walker was indicted with his son on 28 May 1985 in Baltimore1.

On 28 October 1985 he pleaded guilty. He agreed to give a full account of what he had passed and to testify against Whitworth; in exchange prosecutors capped his son's sentence1,4. On 6 November 1986 he was sentenced to two life terms plus ten years, to be served concurrently1. His testimony was the core of the government's case at Whitworth's trial2.

The KGB defector Vitaly Yurchenko said the KGB regarded Walker's as the most important operation in its history1. US officials judged it among the gravest breaches of military secrets in the nation's history3.

Death

Walker died on 28 August 2014 at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, aged 77, a year before he would have become eligible for parole3,4. His brother Arthur had died there the month before3.

Key dates

  1. 25 October 1955 Enlists in the US Navy.
  2. December 1967 Volunteers at the Soviet embassy in Washington (some official accounts say 1968).
  3. September 1974 Recruits his friend Jerry Whitworth in a San Diego restaurant.
  4. July 1976 Retires from the Navy as a chief warrant officer and keeps spying.
  5. 20 May 1985 Arrested by the FBI at a Maryland motel after a dead drop.
  6. 28 October 1985 Pleads guilty under an agreement covering his son.
  7. 6 November 1986 Sentenced to two life terms plus ten years.
  8. 28 August 2014 Dies in the federal prison medical center at Butner, North Carolina.

Sources

  1. Official history A Counterintelligence Reader, Volume III, Chapter 3: Decade of the Spy, US Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, via FAS.
  2. Court record United States v. Jerry Alfred Whitworth, 856 F.2d 1268 (9th Cir. 1988), US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, via Public.Resource.Org (1988-09-01).
  3. Other Former U.S. sailor who spied for Soviets dies in prison, Associated Press, via Portland Press Herald (2014-08-29).
  4. Wikipedia John Anthony Walker, Wikipedia.
  5. Wikipedia English Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking).

Elsewhere in the files

Read next

December 1967 – 20 May 1985 The Walker spy ring For seventeen years US Navy communications specialist John Walker sold cipher keys and secret messages to the KGB, later recruiting a friend, his brother and his son. The FBI arrested him in May 1985. 16 April – 25 November 1985 1985, the Year of the Spy In 1985 the FBI arrested a string of Americans spying for Moscow, Beijing and Israel, a KGB officer defected and re-defected, and the CIA lost almost every agent it had inside Soviet intelligence. Soviet Union · 1954–1991 KGB The Soviet Committee for State Security, 1954–1991: foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence, border troops and political police under one roof, from Khrushchev's reforms to the failed coup of August 1991. 1915–1970s Cipher machines From Hebern's rotor to Enigma, Purple, Lorenz and SIGABA, the electromechanical machines that carried the secrets of the Second World War, and the codebreakers who read most of them.