John Anthony Walker

By 1984, he had recruited his older brother Arthur James Walker (August 5, 1934 – July 5, 2014), a retired lieutenant commander who served from 1953 until 1973 and then went to work at a military contractor, and his son Michael Lance Walker (born November 2, 1962), an active duty seaman since 1982.

John Anthony Walker Jr. (July 28, 1937 – August 28, 2014) was a United States Navy chief warrant officer and communications specialist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1985 and sentenced to life in prison.

Walker was born in Washington, D.C., on July 28, 1937, and attended high school in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

After dropping out of high school, Walker and a friend staged a series of burglaries on May 27, 1955.

Their loot included two tires, four quarts of oil, six cans of cleaner, and $3 in cash.

The pair evaded police during a high-speed chase, but were arrested two days later.

He was offered the option of jail or the military.

He enlisted in the Navy in 1955, and successfully advanced as a radioman to chief petty officer in eight years.

While stationed in Boston, Walker met and married Barbara Crowley, and they had four children together, three daughters and a son.

While stationed on the nuclear-powered Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) submarine USS Andrew Jackson (SSBN-619) in Charleston, South Carolina, Walker opened a bar, which failed to turn a profit and immediately plunged him into debt.

In 1965 Walker transferred to the newly built FBM, USS Simon Bolivar (SSBN-641), where he received a top secret crypto clearance to work in the submarine's communications spaces.

He and other members of the submarine's communications team were members of the John Birch Society, distributing literature about the organization to crew members and to friends ashore, where Walker attempted the playboy lifestyle.

John Walker was promoted to warrant officer in March 1967 and in April was assigned as a communications watch officer at the headquarters of COMSUBLANT in Norfolk, Virginia, where his responsibilities included "running the entire communications center for the submarine force...."

Walker began spying for the Soviets in late 1967, when, distraught over his financial difficulties, he walked into the old Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., sold a top-secret document (a radio cipher card) for several thousand dollars, and negotiated an ongoing salary of US$500 1967 to US$1000 1967 a week.

Soviet KGB general Boris Aleksandrovich Solomatin "played a key role in the handling of John Walker".

Walker justified his treachery by claiming that the first classified Navy communications data he sold to the Soviets had already been completely compromised when the North Koreans had captured the U.S. Navy communications surveillance ship, USS Pueblo (AGER-2).

Yet the Koreans captured Pueblo in late January 1968 – many weeks after Walker had betrayed the information.

In the spring of 1968 John Walker's wife discovered items in his desk at home causing her to suspect he was acting as a spy.

Walker continued spying, receiving an income of several thousand dollars per month for supplying classified information.

Walker used most of the money to pay off his delinquent debts and to move his family into better neighborhoods, but he also set aside some for future investment, such as turning around the fortunes of his money-losing bar by hiring a skilled bartender.

While Walker occasionally used the services of his wife, Barbara Walker, he anticipated the possibility of losing access due to reassignment.

Walker's chance to seek further assistance came in September 1969 when he became the deputy director of the radioman A and B schools at the Naval Training Center San Diego.

There, Walker befriended student Jerry Whitworth.

Walker was transferred from San Diego in December 1971 to become the communications officer aboard the supply ship USS Niagara Falls (AFS-3).

Whitworth, who would become a Navy senior chief petty officer/senior chief radioman, agreed to help Walker gain access to highly classified communications data in 1973; and served aboard Niagara Falls after Walker retired from the Navy.

Transfer to the staff of commander of the Amphibious Force, Atlantic Fleet had stopped Walker's access to the data the Soviets wanted; but he recruited Whitworth to keep the data flowing – softening the idea of espionage by telling him the data would go to Israel, an ally of the United States.

In 1976, Walker retired from the Navy in order to give up his security clearance, as he believed certain superior officers of his were too keen on investigating lapses in his records.

Walker and Barbara had also divorced.

However, Walker did not end his espionage, and began looking more aggressively among his children and family members for assistance (Walker was a private investigator during this time).

Prados added that North Korea subsequently shared information gleaned from the spy ship with the Soviets, enabling them to build replicas and gain access to the U.S. naval communications system, which continued until the system was completely revamped in the late 1980s.

It has emerged in recent years that North Korea acted alone and the incident actually harmed North Korea's relations with most of the Eastern Bloc.

Later, when Whitworth realized the data was going to the Soviets instead of Israel, he nonetheless continued supplying Walker with information, until Whitworth's retirement from the Navy in 1983.

In late 1985, Walker made a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, which required him to provide full details of his espionage activities and testify against his co-conspirator, former senior chief petty officer Jerry Whitworth.

In exchange, prosecutors agreed to a lesser sentence for Walker's son, former Seaman Michael Walker, who was also involved in the spy ring.

During his time as a Soviet spy, Walker helped the Soviets decipher more than one million encrypted naval messages, organizing a spy operation that The New York Times reported in 1987 "is sometimes described as the most damaging Soviet spy ring in history."

After Walker's arrest, Caspar Weinberger, President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, concluded that the Soviet Union made significant gains in naval warfare attributable to Walker's spying.

Weinberger stated that the information Walker gave Moscow allowed the Soviets "access to weapons and sensor data and naval tactics, terrorist threats, and surface, submarine, and airborne training, readiness and tactics."

Furthermore, a 2001 thesis presented at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College using information obtained from Soviet archives and from Oleg Kalugin, indicated that the Pueblo incident may have taken place because the Soviets wanted to study equipment described in documents supplied to them by Walker.

It has emerged in recent years that North Korea acted alone and the incident actually harmed North Korea's relations with most of the Eastern Bloc.

In the June 2010 issue of Naval History Magazine, John Prados, a senior fellow with the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., pointed out that after Walker introduced himself to Soviet officials, North Korean forces seized USS Pueblo in order to make better use of Walker's spying.