The elusive John. The Biggest Case of the Cold War

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By 1980 wife John Walker Barbara began to abuse alcohol regularly, feeling great fear for her children. She did not want her children to be involved in a spy network, and on this basis she constantly quarreled with her husband. When John involved Michael in espionage activities, Barbara decided to put an end to the espionage and save her only son. She tried several times to make contact with the Boston office of the FBI, but either hesitated or was too drunk to talk. In November 1984, she again turned to the same FBI office and, in a drunken state, admitted that her ex-husband was a Soviet spy. She did not know that Michael had become an active participant in the spy ring, and later admitted that she would not have exposed her existence if she had known that her son was involved in her activities.

The FBI did not investigate this case, as at first they took Barbara's testimony for the angry tirades of a drunken, bitter woman trying to "trap" her ex-husband. Since the Navy was interested in Barbara's confession, the Boston branch of the FBI assigned him to the office in Norfolk, Virginia. And from there, the materials of the interrogation of Walker's wife were transferred for investigation to the US Navy Investigative Service, now known as the US Navy Criminal Investigative Service (Naval Criminal Investigative Service). She, in turn, began to study the life of John Anthony, including sources of money for the purchase of luxury cars and 3 houses, if the warrant officer's pension was clearly not enough for this. John Walker, Jerry Whitworth, Arthur Walker, and Michael Walker were arrested in connection with an investigation by the US Naval Investigative Service. Michael was arrested aboard the ship when investigators found his box filled with copies of classified documents. Barbara Walker was not prosecuted for her role in exposing the spy ring. However, former KGB agent Viktor Cherkashin wrote in his book “Espionage Curator. Memoirs of a KGB officer” (eng.: Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB officer) that Walker was compromised by a “mole”, an employee of the Soviet residency in Washington, Lieutenant Colonel of the First Main Directorate of the KGB Valery Martynov (an FBI and CIA agent), who overheard the conversation of Moscow leaders foreign intelligence about John Anthony.

After his arrest, John Anthony tried to justify his treachery by claiming that the first secret US Navy radio ciphers he had sold had already been completely declassified when the North Koreans captured the USS Pueblo. True, the Pueblo was captured in January 1968, that is, a month after Walker handed over classified information to Soviet foreign intelligence. Moreover, a report presented in 2001 at the US Army Command and General Staff College (English: US Army Command and General Staff College), which used information obtained from Soviet archives and from KGB General Oleg Kalugin, points to that the incident with the Pueblo ship could have occurred due to the fact that Soviet foreign intelligence decided to study the equipment that was described in the documents handed over to it by John Anthony.

When John Anthony first started his espionage business, he was a cipher clerk at the operations headquarters of the commander of the US submarine fleet in the Atlantic region and must have been familiar with top-secret technologies such as the SOSUS system (US sonar anti-submarine system), which tracked the route of submarines through a network of submarine sound pickups (hydrophones). Thanks to Walker, the Soviet Union became aware that the US Navy was able to track the location of its submarines from the cavitation vacuum created by their propellers. After that, this lack of propellers for Soviet submarines was minimized. However, thanks to this event, in 1987 the fact of illegal deliveries of Toshiba CNC machine tools from the Norwegian company Kongsberg to the USSR was revealed, which just allowed the Soviet Union to improve its submarine fleet.

In addition, it is alleged that the actions of J. Walker led to the capture of the reconnaissance vessel "Pueblo". On February 5, 2013, intelligence historian Harold Keith Melton stated that “the Soviet Union had intercepted U.S. Navy encrypted communications before, but was unable to read them, but thanks to the radio ciphers received from Walker, the task of the Russians on deciphering American radio messages was half solved. And in order to finally break the ciphers, they needed the scramblers and decoders themselves. As a result, in early 1968, the North Korean navy seized the Pueblo ship and took it to the port of Wonsan (English: Wonsan), where they quickly dismantled the encryption and decryption equipment and sent it by plane to Moscow.

In 1990, New York Times journalist John James O'Connor (English: John James O'Connor) reported that, according to some intelligence experts, John Anthony had given the Soviet Union so much information about ciphers that was enough to significantly change the balance of power between the USSR and the USA. When asked during interrogation how he was able to gain access to such a large amount of classified information, he replied that "the security system of the KMart chain of retail stores is more reliable than in the US Navy."

According to a report submitted to the United States Office of National Counterintelligence (ONCIX) in 2002, Walker was one of a small number of spies who allegedly received more than $1 million in remuneration for his services, although the New York Times estimates that » His income was only 350 thousand dollars.

In addition, according to Theodore Shackleton, CIA chief of station in Saigon, Walker's spying on planned American B-52 bomber strikes could have contributed to a decrease in the effectiveness of the bombing, and, therefore, the entire US military campaign in Vietnam. .

In room 763 of the Ramada Inn on Montgomery Avenue in Rockville, Maryland, the telephone rings.

John Walker winces. He is awake. Despite the early morning, he did not close his eyes all night. Too many thoughts swirling around in his head. Too many things have gone wrong in the last few hours!

After a short pause, he picks up the phone: "What's the matter?"

"Mr. Johnson?" asks an excited voice.

"Yes, what do you need?"

“Sir, do you own the blue and white Ford Astrovan?”

“I'm sorry, sir, but some drunk hit your car in our hotel parking lot. I ask you to immediately go down to the hall to record the incident."

"Okay," John Walker replies, feigning calm, "I'll be right there."

But he is not calm at all. "Isn't this an old trick?" he asks himself as he puts on his trousers and slowly walks over to the window. Carefully, he pushes the curtain slightly aside. Everything is calm, at least outside. Too stupid, he thinks, I should have put the van in sight.

The events of the last few hours play in slow motion before his eyes as John Walker ties his high-top sneakers.

Fifteen hours ago, he left his home in Norfolk, Virginia, took Route 64 to Richmond, and then turned onto Route 95 towards Washington, federal district Colombia. After four hours of boredom, he finally reached the Capital Beltway, which crosses the Potomac River and leads straight into Maryland. From there, he continued on Route 270 towards Frederick for about 10 minutes, then exited "at Local Exit 5 Rockville." At the first crossroads after leaving the highway, he turned left, drove a kilometer along the local highway - and just before five o'clock in the evening, John E. Walker, aka John E. Johnson, filled out a form at the hotel and received a key to room 763.

As usual, when he stopped at the Ramada Inn in Rockville to hand over classified material to the KGB, John also scheduled three hours for this Sunday in May to rest before slowly dropping another piece of information into the dead drop in the evening. have dinner (a stack of salad and potatoes) and carefully study the description of the road to the "dead mailbox" of the Soviets.

At about eight o'clock in the evening he set off - strictly according to the instructions of the KGB. Every traffic light, every turn, every feature of the road, the exact distances, even the clever maneuvers by which John was able to break away from possible pursuers, were described in a KGB memo, which his Soviet leading officer placed right in his hand during their last meeting in January in Vienna. Russian paranoia did not arise from scratch: all the cars of the Soviet embassy in the United States are immediately identified by the FBI by license plates. In addition, Russian diplomats cannot travel more than 40 kilometers from Washington. In order for the exchange of spy goods for cash to take place with the least risk for the parties, the KGB thought out every step that John Walker had to take in advance to the smallest detail.

As usual, he first drove up to a pre-arranged power line tower in Montgomery County, against which someone had leaned a can of Seven Up lemonade, a sign that the Soviet contactee was ready for the exchange. Then Walker, for his part, threw the same can at another pre-determined mast - a signal to the KGB that the spy was also ready. Then, a sideways, endless zigzag ride to the "dead mailbox" - a thick, knotty oak tree, under which he hides his dark plastic bag with "hot goods". At the same time, a KGB spy from the Soviet embassy in Washington puts his bag with several thousand dollars in small bills somewhere else, about five kilometers away. The route and time for the return journey are so thought out by the KGB that John is taking his money, and the Russians are taking their material from the caches almost simultaneously.

But it was precisely this point in the process that broke down on May 16, 1985, for reasons completely incomprehensible to Walker. Moreover, after failing to find, as he had hoped, a plastic bag containing $200,000 in cash at 10 p.m., he returned to the place where he had left the “goods.” And then a terrible surprise: there is no “goods”!

“At that moment, I clearly understood: the game is over. Every minute I counted on the fact that FBI agents with pistols in their hands would rush at me from the bushes and arrest me. But nothing happened,” John Walker later recalled.

“Perhaps this is just some kind of misunderstanding with the Russians, because the story of the car accident is true,” he reassured himself. Five minutes after the strange phone call at half past four, he prepares to leave the hotel room. Suddenly, a thought flashes through his head: “Where to put the written instructions and the KGB photo for the exchange action last night?” If only FBI officers are spinning around in the hotel, arrest him and find a treacherous envelope, then his chances will be very bad - John Walker, hardened after eighteen years of working for Soviet intelligence, is sure of this. He decides to once again probe the situation in the corridor and look for a safe shelter.

Very slowly and carefully, pressing his left ear to the door of the room, Walker presses the doorknob. Revolver in hand, he opens the door. With the speed of lightning, his eyes search the corridor: not a single living soul is visible. He moves slowly towards the emergency exit. At the fire escape door, he stops and listens. No suspicious sounds. Looking out the door - emptiness. Walker wanders to his room to pick up the envelope. “I don’t know what came over me, but then I went from my room in a completely different direction - to the elevators. There was a Coca-Cola vending machine, and I wanted to hide this treacherous envelope behind it. I looked around the corner, as someone growled behind me: “Stop! FBI!" I turned around. Two agents stood in front of me, their weapons pointed straight at me. I immediately threw my revolver on the floor."

Bob Hunter and James Coluch, both FBI special agents responsible for the arrest, recall other details:

“We were waiting in a hallway that John couldn't see from his room,” explains Bob Hunter.

“About three thirty, we heard the phone call. Shortly thereafter, the door opened. If I now say that at that moment I was excited, it would be too soft to say. My heart was pounding out of my chest. In any case, we wanted to grab him from the elevator. So we had to wait until he turned the corner. Steps? Yes, but they were moving away from us. Jimmy looked at me questioningly, and I shrugged. None of us understood what John was going to do. Then the door lock quietly clicked - but again the spy was not visible. The nerves were on edge, the tension was unbearable: “What in the name of all that is holy is this guy doing?” To be so tense when you catch the most dangerous spy in the history of our country, and wait fifteen minutes? That's an eternity!

At a quarter to four, at last something began to move again. It all went quickly: John turned the corner, just about to hit the elevator button, when Jimmy and I emerged from hiding. We didn't have a chance to say anything. John instantly turned around and pointed his revolver right at me. It was a dangerous moment! I stood and thought: “Now press!” I could see the gleaming silver cartridges in the barrel of his revolver quite distinctly. All movements seemed to be in slow motion. For a couple of seconds we looked into each other's eyes, weapons at the ready. I never meant to shoot him.

My partner completed the drama. "Drop the gun!" he shouted at Walker. He reacted like he was in a trance. Then we rushed at John and pressed him against the wall to search him. At the same time, an envelope fell under my feet, a very important one, as it turned out later. The arrest on the seventh floor also had a comic twist at the end. John put his left hand to his forehead, as if lost in thought, a second later there was a smacking sound; and then, with an air of triumph, he handed us his wig. "Dear thing," he muttered, "would be too bad."

Immediately after the successful arrest by Hunter and Koluch, John Walker was escorted to room 771, which served as the FBI's base of operations. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say from now on can be taken to court against you." His rights, being read out by one of the dozen FBI agents suddenly gathered around him, sound to Walker like words from a distant, alien world. It takes a few minutes for the handcuffed superspy to gradually come to his senses.

"I won't say a word to you without my lawyer," he yells at a team of well-trained federal cops. "Okay," Team Chief Hunter replies, "first we'll go to Baltimore, to the operations center."

“I thanked all our guys who spent the whole evening of May 19 continuously watching John after he returned to the hotel, so that he didn’t notice it at all, for their work and let them go home - for a well-deserved day off. It was around 11 pm. Only five and a half hours later, at half past five, we went downstairs with the arrested person and wanted to leave the hotel. The scene that took place there will forever remain in my memory. All fifty police officers who took part in the hunt gathered in front of the front door, without saying a word, they wanted only one thing: "alive", so to speak, to see close to the most successful Russian spy on American soil. In this situation, I heard from John, who was completely untalkative until now, “My God, but I didn’t imagine. all these people. all because of me!”

My partner Jimmy Koluch reacted with a gesture that betrayed all his pride; then a police limousine pulled up. We sat in the back, putting Walker in the middle, and rushed forward. In the car, for the entire trip, for almost an hour, no one said a word, absolutely not one.”

Upon arrival in Baltimore, Special Agent Bob Hunter revealed to his “ward” what a valuable find the FBI had found at an old oak tree on Partnership Road, two hundred meters around the corner on Whites Ferry Road in Montgomery County: 129 secret and top secret documents from the American nuclear aircraft carrier Nimitz, undeveloped films and - especially fatally for John - a letter he wrote to the KGB in his own hand, where he insists on paying a million dollars as a bonus for his successful espionage activities in the service of a secret empire for almost twenty years.

“It was a hard blow,” Walker later says, “I precisely planned my exit, the final exit from the game. Everything was prepared. I wanted to wash my tracks, go far, become, shall we say, invisible. I finally chose the country. No issuance. I will not reveal my cards to you, where I would like to hide. If I ever manage to get out of prison, then this old goal will still be attractive to me. One million, for me, maybe even half, would be useful to me. I was not at all afraid that the Russians would hunt me down.

The case was in good hands. Michael, my son, was great. He could easily replace me. That's how I saw it then: the family firm just gets a new manager.

I was absolutely sure. Unless by chance a tree falls on Michael's car during a trip to the "dead mailbox" or something else absurd happens, then there is no risk of exposure for him at all. How, pray tell, could the FBI get to him? Suppose: Barbara, my ex-wife, was a risk factor - but giving her own, beloved son to the wolves?

When she betrayed me in 1985, she had no idea that Michael had been "in business" with me for several years. In the most stupid way, my last shipment not only provided the FBI with indisputable evidence of the origin of the material (the naval base where Michael served), but also contained indications that allowed me to identify other more or less active members of my spy network: Jerry Whitworth and my brother Arthur Walker. Yes, it was beaten up, there was too much of our inside information that fell into the hands of the FBI - but who then seriously thought about the fact that it could fail at any moment? And in general: the Soviets have always wanted to know down to the smallest detail what each individual person is doing, whether there are problems, how reliable it is. Here they did not understand jokes; and I knew that at this point I always needed to be honest.”

In fact, from the contents of Walker's last delivery, at first only the tip of the iceberg was visible. classified information, which has accumulated during the Cold War since 1968. “We received,” says his former leading KGB officer and then deputy head of Soviet foreign intelligence, Major General Boris Alexandrovich Solomatin, “about a million top-secret American documents, primarily related to the US Navy, containing the most important strategic information. If you think that Mr. Walker received about a million dollars in royalties during the seventeen years he worked with us, then we paid about a dollar for each top secret document. From this point of view, John Walker was a cheap agent for the KGB.

Only later and gradually will the US Federal Bureau of Investigation get to the bottom of the full extent of the damage caused by John Walker and his spy network. Former Secretary of the Navy in the administration of President Ronald Reagan, John Lehman, summed up this preliminary summary: “This is undoubtedly the biggest, most severe and most prolonged betrayal national security U.S.A. By constantly supplying the KGB with top secret U.S. ciphers and codes, Walker allowed the Soviet Union to decipher our secret messages on an almost daily basis, thus learning about the strategic plans of the West, the technological state of weapons, plans for operational use, for example, in Vietnam, and about detailed facts. about the weaknesses of the enemy, for example, about the noise problems of Russian submarines.

The direct damage to the American taxpayer can be estimated today at no less than $50 billion. Indirect damage cannot be valued in terms of money at all. I am absolutely convinced that Walker's intelligence delayed the fall of the communist system by many years, because the huge strategic advantage that Moscow gained by being able to read our messages strengthened the stubborn Soviet military's illusions that they could still reverse that shift in the military balance. forces that turned in favor of the West with the onset of the Reagan era."

When John Walker is brought before the prison judge at 9 a.m. on May 20, 1985, he is in good spirits: “I never doubted for a minute,” he remarked to us nine years later, “that the official charge and sentence for espionage will not be discussed at all. For me it was only a matter of hours, in the worst case of several days, until the door of my cell was opened by the CIA. As a double agent for our own guys, I was too valuable."

But he was wrong. When the meeting with the prison judge ended half an hour later, John's beautiful dream was gone. He couldn't perceive it yet, but he already guessed: "Those bastards - they really want to crucify me."

On a warm autumn day in November 1993, we leave our hotel in downtown Atlanta for 10 km away from Federal Penitentiary, the largest and most secure prison in the US state of Georgia. "Level 6" is the highest category of US prisons considered to be escape-proof; John Walker's current address is a Level 5 "gladiators' prison" for the most dangerous criminals: murderers, drug dealers, gang leaders - and one super spy," as Cathy Tucker, the benevolent but "cool" assistant to the boss, tells us after greeting prisons.

Cathy wants to know what interests us about the imprisoned Walker.

This is a difficult crossword puzzle - with many questions from the anti-world of intelligence and treason, we answer. What led this man to sell his own soul, to shamelessly abuse his wife, family, friends, in the end, to do everything that was required of him to put not only the American nation, but the entire free world, in front of a mortal threat , because a potential adversary has long known the most secret secrets.

The Cold War and the superpower confrontation have come to an end. It's calming. But what do we know about the essence of the secret war that raged behind the scenes? What is already known about the labors and achievements of those few high-class people from darkness, whose quiet but sensational actions led to significant changes in the balance of power between blocks?

John Walker personifies a single, but nonetheless significant case. And in his country, he is now, as before, considered a historical anti-hero. His former employer, the US Navy, even now reacts nervously to the mention of his name: “John Walker? We don't want to hear about it! No comments, no cooperation!”

The American system works in strange and contradictory ways. If, as in this case, the path to the "victims" is blocked, then the access to the criminals is functioning.

“If Walker writes to the prison authorities that he is willing to speak with you, then you can, with the consent of the main prison department in Washington, be with him within 72 hours,” Cathy explains the procedure.

Our visit to Atlanta was preceded by a long correspondence with John Walker. He stated that he was ready to give an interview under three conditions:

1. detailed preliminary conversations about selected topics;

2. no humiliating performances for him, like handcuffs, etc.

3. no repetition of the "endless hateful tirades of the American government" against him.

"Okay," says Cathy, and gives us a seven-page questionnaire. “Read the statement of consent to our terms and conditions and sign it. Here is my direct phone in prison. Call the day after tomorrow."

Several more days passed before the exact date of the first meeting with John Walker was fixed: Thursday. In the morning haze, the frightening outlines of a huge central building of large hewn stones and a long facade of barred windows appear on the horizon. A few minutes later, the guard on duty presses a button that sets the massive steel gate in motion. Slowly, with a clang, the barred door opens. A camera in the corner on the ceiling is filming everything. Ten meters away from us, the next motorized steel prison gate blocks our way. They let us through only after presenting our passports and official registration. Then, a UV-readable stamp is imprinted on the back of the hand. No one can get out of here without him.

With a bang, a second lattice door opens. Another gate, already the third, Again the loud clang of the steel lock being opened. Here we are, standing in the main hallway of the prison, surrounded by grim ogling figures—life-sentenced, as Cathy explains. Unusual smell and very strange feeling. “Come in here through the door to the left. There's a visiting room."

The buzzer opens the lock. We are overwhelmed by the wave of loud sounds coming towards us. Everything is relatively relaxed here: children are running around, family members are sitting close to each other and talking, a muscular black man does not say anything at all, only tightly hugs his frail girlfriend. Sweets, hot coffee or cola are constantly bought from three vending machines - for permanent residents, a pleasant change from the usual standard prison assortment. It is strictly forbidden to give anything to them, but each visitor brings enough coins for little friends behind bars.

We are told to wait in one of the three mini-booths normally used only by lawyers and their clients. A real privilege: a more private sphere at "Level 5" cannot be expected.

The air in a room no larger than 6 square meters is unbearable, the oxygen content is zero. Walker enters twenty minutes later. He wears a khaki two-piece prison suit, wears glasses and is bald. There are no wigs in prison. His eyes are shining. He seemed to be fully focused. This person of dubious fame, a former KGB spy and private eye, inmate 22,449,037 of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary with two life sentences, at first glance seems likeable, at the second - ordinary: a real type of good accountant.

John is reserved, but not shy. He quickly gets down to business. "Give me a good reason why I should reveal my life to you," he demands in a low but determined tone. We prepared for this objection: “In all the articles you are characterized as an informer, a vile liar, a completely and in every way a bad person. Is this true? There is no thirst for revenge in Europe against a certain John Walker who betrayed his nation. The Cold War is over. We want to know how the secret war functioned behind it, truthfully, firsthand."

He interrupts: “I am not a traitor! My crime is called espionage. These are two very different things.” How, in his opinion, can one separate patriotism and loyalty to one's country from espionage. “I don’t have to be loyal to this America. Over the years, when I had access to the most secret material, it became more and more clear to me that what our government tells us about Soviet power and about the “threat to the world from communism” is pure fiction. The West, the USA, has always been ahead, there has never been a truly balanced strategic parity. On the contrary: under Ronald Reagan, our advantage increased even more, with the result that even the success of a preventive first strike by the United States against the Soviet Union became possible. And in this situation, we are constantly and even still being brainwashed, arguing that, they say, it was the Russians who were just waiting for the right moment to break through to the Rhine through the “lowlands of Fulda”. Utter nonsense! In all the time I've been providing information to the Soviets, there has never been a real danger. I was firmly convinced that the Cold War was necessary for the superpowers for other reasons: to keep under control the diverse and complex domestic political processes. But the "Great War"? It could never be, I knew that. In any case, as long as the Soviets always knew exactly what was going on on the other side. I think that thanks to my help, they could sleep a little more peacefully.”

This is how they correct the whole world and their own past, when there is time for it. And John Walker has plenty of time. But he's starting to trust us, which is good.

We have to trust him too, and not just for professional reasons. There remains a lot of mutual distrust. John Walker is not an altruist, he is a prudent person. But he has a great interest of his own in talking to us. The fact that this interest always revolves only around himself, his perception of reality, around his advantages, is slowly becoming clear.

Only John E. Walker is of any significance. Nothing more. He wants to take advantage of us. But for what? To get money? Money, which, as we shall soon discover, is always central to him, even in his current position? “Money solves all problems, money has given me the opportunity to lead a wonderful life for years. If I ever get out of here: my former employer owes me another million,” says John Walker.

The ball rolled. Now the question remains: what rules do we play by? The fact that there should be rules is clearly and without any misunderstanding made clear to us by John Walker during our second meeting. And also - who will formulate them: he, only he alone.

"If I'm talking, then I want the truth to be told," Walker directs the conversation to a decisive point. What truth does he mean, we ask. "My truth," is his lapidary reply.

He does not go into his pocket for a word, he speaks clearly and accurately. Now he no longer looks like a friendly accountant, but like a cold-blooded businessman. “But what about historical truth? we ask. Walker does not like that although his contribution should be at the center of the story, it should also include other things: testimonies of witnesses and citations from sources to give more objectivity to the description. historical processes.

At this point, the whole plan threatens to collapse. He doesn't want any contradictory remarks from "some sons of bitches running around pretending to be fucking experts."

His sudden profanity is amazing. As soon as we start talking about ideas and opinions that arouse his anger, that thoughtful choice of words, calculated by Walker to give us the best idea of ​​​​him, immediately disappears. You do not need to be a psychologist to immediately understand what quality lies behind this - spinelessness.

At some point, Walker names his price for agreeing to let others into his life story: his ex-wife Barbara, ex-boyfriend Jerry Whitworth, former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman and all the other "weaklings": it's money, he says. But it is even more important for him to learn from his former employers what they think of him and his business.

Hidden behind these bold demands is a system. Neither the KGB, nor his successor, nor the political or military leadership of Russia has yet officially spoken out on the Walker case, let alone acknowledge that a person under this name has ever received a salary from them. Walker speculates on the desire to benefit from the rapprochement between Russia and the West.

Even if the sinister KGB secret keepers are already looking at this case with less intensity than the FBI and US Navy do even today, nine years later, it would not only expose America's "paranoia" but, in the long run, would give a real chance after the end of the Cold War and, given the new political relations between Moscow and Washington, to reassess the Walker case. After all, according to Walker, he doesn't want to "be emptied out here in prison for the rest of his days." He calculates his options. He wants to appeal.

So that's why he needs us."

Everything is very simple: there is neither black nor white, there is neither right nor injustice, there is no moral or immoral behavior. What John Walker wants is "law." In its own way, it is even convincing. Is his imaginary strength hidden behind this? Show others that he knows exactly what he wants? The power that gave him such a malign influence over other people and made him a virtuoso of human manipulation? John Walker is a master of disguise. When he sees his advantage, he takes on the form that he needs to get what he wants. Now he's a sensible, cooperative, smiling accountant again.

Of course, he has no idea that we have been in contact with the KGB and its successors for a long time and we are entering into a “deal” proposed by him. Only if Walker's former lead officer tells us about him, and Walker's lawyer shows John proof of this, will he "split." The deal is clear: I give so that you give. The hand washes the hand.

At the end, John Walker says: “First comes cynicism, then greed for money, based on cynicism; and from there it is already a stone's throw to an illegal act. Who knows, if I worked in a bank, I wouldn't have robbed him."

We calmed down. The interview with Walker will take place. After all, we interviewed his former "curator" from the KGB a long time ago.

The story of Soviet spy John Walker begins in 1967, shortly before Christmas.

December 19, 1967 is a gloomy, cold and rainy day in Washington DC. All the way from Norfolk, Virginia, to D.C., Walker wondered what would be the most elegant way to get in touch with the Soviets. John Walker wants to betray his country for money. But how to arrange it? Around five o'clock in the evening, he stops at a telephone booth. It does not have a phone book. Walker dials the help desk. "Please, the address of the USSR Embassy."

"I'm sorry sir, but we only give phone numbers."

“The embassy is located somewhere on 16th street, lady, I only forgot the house number.”

"Number one hundred," the woman replies curtly, and hangs up.

Walker parks his car in the nearest city parking lot, from where he continues his journey by taxi. On the street north of the Soviet embassy, ​​he asks the driver to stop, pays him off, and, under the protection of twilight, moves in the opposite direction.

Now only a hundred meters are left to the impressive embassy building built at the turn of the century. Not far from the target, US Navy officer John Walker suddenly stops and swerves to the side. Worried, he notices a plain office building across from the embassy. What if the FBI is already watching him? Not because he is already in his past life gave reason to believe that he would ever betray his country. No, the FBI simply registers everyone who enters or leaves the Soviet embassy.

Resolutely and with a quick step, he approaches the iron wrought-iron fence. The spy is lucky: the embassy car is just leaving the territory. The large sliding gates are open. The Russian guard looks a little dumbfounded as an unknown man quickly runs past him through the door. The door is only covered. Walker quickly addresses a female receptionist who is seated in the embassy hallway at a simple wooden desk. "Who's the chief of security here?" he almost screams. "I urgently want to talk to him."

“The easiest thing, of course, would be to just kick out the stranger right away,” retired Boris Solomatin, then the highest-ranking KGB officer in the embassy, ​​tells us in Moscow, “after all, how could it be guaranteed to determine whether this person was a “setup” Central Intelligence Agency infiltrated to eventually work as a double agent? Or that he wanted to get in touch for some other reason that would be beneficial to both him and us? In the Moscow center, no one would have reproached me if I had considered the risk too great at that moment.

But Solomatin, a seasoned foreign intelligence professional, rises to the challenge. "See more, hear more, know more" - according to this motto, supplemented by the words "with the flexible use of means" - this means, without doubts about the ethics of methods and according to its own standards, originally studied international law, the KGB chargé d'affaires in the United States decides thoroughly check out John Walker.

What methods will he use to do this? The most careful first. Boris Solomatin knows that the name "James Harper", which John Walker called himself, is not real. The Russian pretends to be a man who was not impressed by the appearance of a stranger: “I demanded to show me an identity card. Walker was very nervous, even when he tried to hide it. It seemed to him that everything was happening too slowly.

“I imagined how interested the Soviets would be in everything that I could supply them from the world of secret ciphers and the keys to them of our fleet. I told them what I had access to, and as an example I had a completely skeletal document from the National Security Agency (NSA). He had to convince the Russians and at the same time become my entrance ticket. In exchange for regular supplies, I wanted to receive a fixed monthly salary. I just didn’t understand how well my interlocutor understood this matter in order to correctly assess the dangerous value of the material. Walker recalls his first contact with the KGB.

What Walker could not know: the spearhead of Solomatin's intelligence work was directed precisely against the US Navy. In this area, Boris Alexandrovich had good professional knowledge. And with their help, he put Walker "on the grill"; he strenuously, completely at his own discretion, over the course of many hours of conversation, constantly raised the temperature in order to extract from the spy on his own initiative what could qualify John as a "reliable person", in the jargon of the special services: "a human source of information."

Today, the ex-spy agrees with this distrust of the Soviets: “To confess, that was the risk. Who will tell them that I am not pretending to be an important person or not an agent of the enemy? That evening, they couldn't be at all sure who they ended up running into - until the time when the material actually started to "flow" and they noticed that everything was justified.

Solomatin sees it differently: “I have thoroughly checked Walker's knowledge of the American navy. For a Soviet agent, I understood this quite well, and already in 1968 I was appointed by Yuri Andropov to the post of deputy head of foreign intelligence. My professional and psychological analysis of John Walker led me to a firm conclusion: no intelligence agency would risk using a professional cryptographer like Walker as a "setup". Already at the first check, he - with a sufficiently good level of knowledge from the other side - would have been exposed without any problems.

Success confirmed the correctness of Solomatin.

He could have refused to recruit Walker. Instead, he did the right thing - and benefited from it. Walker's case was a career success for this man, for whom taking advantage of other people's weaknesses was as important as it was for his spy pupil. Concepts like "loyalty", "reliability" and "honor" are constantly perverted by the craft of traitors - whether they act for ideological or material reasons. Both of them are very close to each other.

At the end of the evening conversation, Boris Solomatin put an envelope in the hand of his new "employee". “Thing”, a thousand dollars - was my first fee, John grins today and adds: “I acted on a principle that was perfectly justified in my entire subsequent career as a spy: K. I. S. S. (keep it simple stupid) - just do stupid things. Just don't draw attention to yourself. Likewise, I disappeared from the building."

But it wasn't that easy. Solomatin took him out in an embassy car. Every evening, exactly at the set time, regularly for outsiders, the embassy staff left the building. Due to the regularity of the process, the vigilance of the FBI spotters on the opposite side of the street was blunted. That night, one of the comrades had to spend the night in a bed at the embassy so that an excess of the usual number of diplomats leaving the embassy would not be recorded. So Walker managed to go unrecognized.

Exactly two weeks after a successful contact with the KGB, in front of a supermarket in Alexandria, Virginia, the first and only secret meeting between a spy and a leading officer on American soil takes place.

“The arrangement of this meeting was simple: the time and place were already agreed that night at the embassy. As a password, I had to keep the latest issue of Time magazine close at hand and walk around the entrance to the supermarket from exactly two in the afternoon. Russian did not keep himself waiting for a minute. He appeared as if from nothing behind me, quietly asked me, without turning around, to move to one of the sparsely populated corners of the shopping center. He then wanted to know if I had noticed anything unusual during my trip from Norfolk to the turnout point. I answered no. After about five minutes, he got down to business. This man knew exactly what he wanted: first of all, key lists and technical instructions for our KL 47, KY 8, KWR 37, KG 14, KWS 37 and KW 7 encryption machines. the table fall strategic or operational plans. With regular, that is, once every six months, deliveries, I was provided with a fee of four thousand dollars a month. In order to convey the material, a very detailed and very complex plan must be followed. It was about "dead mailboxes". Let's assume that the usual meeting took place in July - then it is clear: the next meeting is scheduled for January. But the exact date could not be foreseen for such a long time. Nevertheless, everything always worked out, there were no inconsistencies.

It all worked like this: always at the same intersection, behind a stop sign or on a street lamppost, I would chalk a predetermined letter, such as a capital R, to show that I was ready. Then the system was activated, providing an exchange for twenty-four hours. I assume that every morning one of the employees of the Soviet embassy was driving to work on the same road and noticed such markings. And if I needed to urgently speak personally to my lead officer, then we followed the same pattern. After "X" days we met somewhere in the world, but never again in the United States. And it always worked - guaranteed."

The KGB wishlist gives away a thorough knowledge of American encryption systems, including those developed by the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. Here, all the threads of the use and control of US cryptographic material, that is, ciphers and keys to them, are pulled together.

At the end of the sixties, the KW 7 cipher machine was especially common in America - in the Navy, in the Army, in the Air Force and even in the CIA. From a conversation with Walker, it becomes clear that he is lying or deliberately downplaying the consequences of his issuing lists of keys and operating instructions for KW 7 at that time. directly or indirectly read American secret messages, much less find out the future plans of the Navy.

In professional cryptanalyst jargon, this is called "Real-Time-Intelligence" ("intelligence in real time"). John's reasoning: “The proportion of hot stuff I've delivered has always been in the month of transmission. Using our example: If I made an exchange in January through a "dead mailbox", then the delivery contained all the information collected over the past six months. And only the decryption lists for January could still be useful to the Soviets to some extent. Basically, they could only read "backwards". It is completely out of the question that they would have been able to crawl through the communications of the American fleet already in the time following the month of transmission (January), reading information in “real time”. Hypothetical example: If we planned an attack on the Soviet Union for February, then Moscow would not be informed through the “dead mailbox” until next June, that is, it is already too late. Therefore, my material did not have any strategic significance at all, the significance was to a greater extent operational or psychological.

Boris Solomatin holds a completely opposite opinion. His words, above all, show how much he despises his then ward today: “Walker's statement does not surprise me; it is typical for such people. He wants to downplay his guilt. In fact, we were quite able to follow exactly the flow of information sent by the most common encryption machines. Take, for example, nuclear missile submarines, probably the most important strategic nuclear weapon for the United States. Thanks to Walker's information, we not only knew about their use; for nearly two decades we had precise knowledge of where they were located, where they would strike in an emergency, what kind of strategic planning lay behind it. In short: our eyes were open, if you understand. Walker's information was useful in another way as well. With her help, we learned that our submarines are too noisy, and therefore the enemy can easily determine their location at any time - a mortal threat in case of war. Therefore, the elimination of this shortcoming has become the highest priority task. Scientists, specialists, engineers have been working day and night to eliminate this "route determination" problem. By the way, successfully. I could give other similar examples."

What is worth more: Walker's statement or his leading officer? Two starting points help to ascertain the extent of the threat posed by the Soviet disclosure of America's code systems:

1. An idea of ​​how the encryption system works;

2. A reminder of the historical analogies of the deadly effect of knowledge gained by deciphering enemy codes.

The functional mechanism of the cipher machine is based on a simple underlying idea. Its user types on it, as on a simple typewriter, an ordinary text, which, by means of internal logic, immediately turns into an insane conglomerate of signs that are not related to each other in any way. This is done by what are called rotors, small wheels that rotate independently each time a key is pressed. Each individual of (depending on the type of machine) up to 12 rotors contains the complete alphabet and numbers. On the "output", the frequently occurring vowels or consonants never appear in the ciphertext in the same order of letters or numbers. This is taken care of by the electronic network of the encryption system. Thus, there are millions of encoding options that cannot be revealed without a “key”. The keys can be lists of letters / numbers, punched tape or punched cards that the recipient of messages needs to follow the initial setting of the encryption machine, without which, in turn, decryption is impossible. Typically, list keys are valid for twenty-four hours. That is, every day the system works with a new code.

What does the Soviets need to always be able to decipher American messages? For the KGB, this will not be a problem if Walker can deliver up-to-date lists of keys every time, that is, always only in the month of delivery, John's goods are "fresh". Aside from the time it takes to empty the "dead mailbox", this is somewhat more difficult for the Soviets. Therefore, they need: a) the cipher machine used by the Americans for coding (of the same type) and b) the order in which the rotors are turned on.

Both John Walker - indirectly - issued over and over again the KGB for almost a dozen encryption systems. Given the datasheet and instructions, the Soviets were able to copy the "Hardware" - the machine itself. But only "Software", software that allows you to determine the internal logic of the machine, leads to success.

Thanks to the KGB’s own development, the so-called rotor reader, which Boris Solomatin gives to his ward at the next meeting, Walker can record the connection and operation of the rotors, which Moscow cryptographers will eventually summarize into complete connection diagrams. When you have both "Hardware" and "Software" at your disposal, you no longer need keys to be able to read other people's encrypted messages. Then the entire US defensive concept is an open book.

Almost simultaneously with the entry of John Walker into the "intelligence service", at the end of January 1968, a real happy event occurs for the KGB. North Korea captures the US spy ship Pueblo, allegedly invading its territorial waters. It is packed with state of the art electronics. Among other things, the North Koreans get into the hands of one functioning copy of the KW 7 military cipher machine, the most widespread in those years, which they generously transfer to the “Big Brother”.

Together with the timely and regular supply of KW 7 key lists, Solomatin's "crypto deal" with Walker turns out to be a great success from the very beginning. It means Soviet access to decrypt more than a million top-secret messages over the course of eighteen years: it seems that the US opened a branch right on the Lubyanka!

What are the implications of a potential adversary's ability to break your encryption system when the "cold war" suddenly becomes a "hot war"?

A deadly example is the influence of Ultra on the course and outcome of World War II in Europe. "Ultra" is the code name for a massive deciphering operation of (mostly) German cipher systems like Enigma and Geheimschreiber ("Cryptographer") carried out by English cryptographers at Bletchley Park near London.

We interviewed the last living witnesses. Sir Harry Hinsley, the leading brain of codebreakers, summed up the significance of Ultra's success: “Thanks to Ultra, the Allies have won every decisive U-boat battle in the Atlantic. Other decisive turning points for the course of the war were: Rommel's defeat in North Africa, Hitler's air battle for England, but, above all, Operation Overlord, the Allied landings in Normandy. Every time the German Wehrmacht, Navy or the Air Force sent encrypted information, we also read it - with the best result at about 80 characters per hour. The time between the interception of a German message, its decoding, translation and further dispatch to our generals and admirals from the middle of 1944 was only 32 minutes. This efficiency in deciphering enemy codes provided the Allies with invaluable strategic advantages. The smallest thing was that we not only won the war, but also reduced its total duration - by my conservative calculations - by no less than three years.

Looking back at the Cold War, Sir Harry says: “The analogies are indisputable! The specific conditions under which America and Russia waged their Cold War correspond almost exactly, although nominally at peace, to those on the cryptographic front that would have been present in the event of a real war. If we measure the "success" of John Walker's spying for the KGB by this yardstick, then it is true to say: the consequences for strategic parity were enormous, the advantage for the Russians undeniable - in an emergency - a deadly lesson!

Since mid-1968, dollars have been flowing into Walker's house. John is no longer satisfied with the environment in which he lives. Although a leading KGB officer warns him all the time not to spend so conspicuously large amounts of money, John cannot resist the temptation.

First, the Walker family moves to the prestigious and expensive "Algonquin House" in Norfolk - the area where doctors, lawyers, bankers and the mayor live. This is the world in which Walker's dreams must come true. These include a chic new yacht, to which, as in a soap opera, a young mistress is soon added. Walker's monthly salary as duty liaison officer on the staff of the Commander of the US Navy Atlantic Fleet is $800. The additional income of a KGB spy is four thousand dollars a month.

His wife Barbara wonders what is the basis of her husband's sudden transformation into a spender. John lies to her: he has found a second job. Barbara - temporarily - accepts this explanation. In the end, she should not be angry because the eternal shortage of money in the house has ended.

“To be honest, I liked it at first. John was generous, and more money allowed me to purchase a comfortable home for the family. Finally there were no financial problems! In addition, family life is tasteful. Our common family dinner with children often lasted two hours or more - well, yes, you know; with everything that was supposed to be: popcorn, brandy, delicious chocolates, ”even today, Walker’s ex-wife Barbara is happy to talk in an interview about the good days of family life together. But the imaginary idyll quickly ends.

When John, again without his wife and children, but with work colleagues, a sufficient amount of alcohol and young girls, goes on a long walk on a yacht, Barbara Walker finds an unknown unclosed metal box in a drawer in her husband's office.

“I rummaged through strange papers, photographs of country roads and trees, with handwritten inscriptions and clearly drawn arrows; there was a map, two thousand dollars in cash, and above it all a letter on which was printed in large letters "Destroy!" . I then thought: “Barbara, you have spent the past ten years as the wife of a Navy officer whose job is not to sell, but to protect your country. This man is a spy! There was no longer any doubt for me. It instantly became clear to me where he was getting good money from. But despite this, it was still a few days before I told John about it. This happened during a quarrel, which he, as usual, provoked himself. I was sitting on the couch in the room, he was standing in the hallway when I said, “John, I know exactly who you are. You are a traitor, you are selling our country!” Do you know how he reacted? He has hit me! The evening ended for me with two bruises under my eye.

“Yes,” John Walker admits 26 years later, “in essence, it was. But then I thought that it was completely out of the question that she could bring problems. After all, we had kids."

“Children and my husband: my whole life revolved around them! This was the most important thing for me! And,” continues Barbara, “so that everything does not fall apart completely, for some time I was even ready to become John's accomplice. I wanted to feel his trust, and he mine. So I offered to accompany him on one trip to Washington to the "dead mailbox."

This moment comes at the end of July 1968. Barbara personally drives her husband and KGB spy to the next "dead drop" in Montgomery County: the Ramada Inn in Rockville, pull off the road, put in a Seven Up can, fill a "dead mailbox" with a stuffed plastic bag , pick up the money - Barbara takes this exchange process in her heart, how everything goes without a hitch, so good that John will take her with him again next time in six months.

“After that, we sat in the same boat with her. She was no better or worse than her spying husband,” Walker comments today. His goal was to make a criminal out of Barbara, so that if necessary he had a means to blackmail her!

Meanwhile, Barbara is too frustrated and mentally exhausted to seriously do anything against John's treason: Mrs. Walker indulges in alcohol - and excessively. John Walker remarks succinctly: “I had no problem with that. Certainly not emotionally. Marriage was already at zero - broken. I saw it quite soberly: as long as Barbara did not have to work, she was provided for, her house was cleaned for her, and she could continue to drink, there was no danger to me. Did she have any reason to complain about me? I'm sure not. Whenever I moved to a new duty station, I took my family with me. As long as there was enough money."

Money, family: again and again, Barbara and John, in their inimitable style, return in conversation to this main center of rotation of their ruined existence. They both draw the same conclusion: "Money corrupts." Of course, each of them means the other.

And in 1969, the one-man spy business, Walker, is booming. He does not waste his thoughts on the possibility of one day getting caught red-handed. He claims, “I'll tell you, the supermarket is better at protecting its toothpaste than the US Navy is guarding its secrets. It's a fact that accessing confidential goods is as easy as child's play. K. I. S. S. - keep it simple stupid - just stupid. Other than the most common copiers that belonged to the Navy, I didn't need any auxiliary means - except perhaps a German Minox mini-camera and a KGB-designed "rotor reader". I was cynical, even arrogant. Instead of returning to my office at night under some pretext and secretly stealing material, I did it openly, in front of everyone. Sometimes I just took top secret documents home with me so I could copy them safely. Nobody searched me, nobody thought about me. The public associates with the craft of espionage usually performances from James Bond films: shooting pens, miniature transmitters in pencils and other nonsense. Everything is done wrong. There is nothing similar. The simpler and more straightforward, the more reliable. That's what it sounds like Golden Rule and the Russians too.”

At the end of 1969, John Walker was transferred to the position of Chief of Education at the Naval Signal School in San Diego, California. Instantly, the KGB cuts John's salary in half. For two thousand dollars less a month - this was a strong stab in the back for John Walker. The Dolce Vita is expensive, as his then-twenty-year-old girlfriend, Jenny Thomas, confirms: “John always took me to the finest restaurants, wore the most expensive suits, bought mostly first-class air tickets for our long Sunday trips, and was generally very extravagant. . This man had excellent endurance. He could easily stay awake until four in the morning, dancing, drinking, having fun - even with others.

And what especially stuck in my memory: his ability to influence people in such a way that they do what he wanted from them. One day I asked John, “Where do you actually get all this money from?” His answer fooled me. He's a mafia member, he said. What I also liked about him as a young girl, besides the freedom to do whatever came into my head, was that John knew what he wanted. His outlook on life seemed perfectly clear and distinct. He had a high opinion of himself. And this, of course, had an impact on the young officers, who more and more often went with us on a yacht trip. They looked to John as a mentor - and he liked that."

But for a long time John could not bear the reduction of his additional income. For the first time, he decided to take another partner into his spy business.

As has already happened in Norfolk, Walker also invites colleagues to San Diego for boat trips "Dirty Old Man" ("Dirty Old Man") - those people who are delighted with him and whom he can manipulate. John especially tries around the instructor from his group, two years younger than John, Jerry A. Whitworth.

Jerry and John are diametrically opposed characters. This is our first impression when we meet Whitworth in March 1994, after endless pre-trial and arrangements with him at the High-Level Prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. Jerry regards himself as an intellectual, strictly distancing himself from Walker's profanity.

Walker gives the impression of a balanced, self-confident person. But soon, in our conversation, that feature of his essence becomes clear, which twenty-four years ago turned out to be a real find for the master of manipulation Walker: Whitworth needs friendship!

The intimacy of many of his statements is almost painful. That is why it took so long to get through to him; therefore, he did not want to tell anyone about historical events yet: he must feel real trust before he can open up. Then he overcomes his fear of being honest. First of all, it is difficult for him to be frank. He seems introverted, honest and easily vulnerable. An unscrupulous character like Walker could easily take advantage of this vulnerable person who needed to lean against someone's shoulder.

"Honestly," Whitworth recalls, "when I first met Walker (he never calls him by his first name!), I thought, 'Real asshole!' He was very arrogant with other people. But we had a common hobby: sailing. Soon he invited me to become a permanent member of the crew of his yacht. While sailing, we often and for a long time talked about everything in the world, exchanged ideas. Walker got to know me better this way, and looking back, I think he deliberately promoted our friendship and even then had plans for me as a candidate for his future espionage operations. After all, one day he asked me, out of the blue, “Jerry, would you do, if it was rewarded, something illegal that you could be put in jail for?”

I had no idea what he was getting at. He then cited Easy Rider, a then-cult film starring Peter Fonda and Denis Hopper, as an example. There it was, if you remember, about a big adventure, about freedom on a Harley Davidson, a free lifestyle and marijuana, with the help of which both solved all their financial problems. Walker was trying to measure my "criminal energy". I replied "crazy business" or something like that, but what I meant was "life style"; in Muldrow, Oklahoma, where I was from, it was very different.”

Walker's willingness today to reminisce about his friendship with Jerry Whitworth is not over the top. He only comments, "I knew what I needed to know."

In the summer of 1971, John Walker decides to transfer to a more "productive" job. The reasons for this are his wife Barbara and his beloved money.

“I had no fear that my ex-wife would betray me - as long as there was enough money to support her. When it was running, there were no problems. But then “impoverishment” threatened me. This was a potential danger, because Barbara could become an uncontrollable risk factor for me. Besides, I wanted to move away, away from my family.”

An attempt to transfer to the USS Niagara Falls in Oakland off San Francisco in the fall of 1971 finds support from the fleet command. Over the next nine months, while the ship undergoes modernization in its native harbor before being sent to Vietnam, the last remnants of the family harmony in the Walker house disappear.

From a conversation with his daughter Laura, it turns out: “He could not have deceived me and my brothers and sisters. He didn't want that. But I think that developing relationships with their parents is not the task of children. The impetus for this must come from the parents themselves. Then the children will learn to develop their right attitude. But such intentions or any impulses never came from my father. He was not interested in me, my brothers and sisters, too. We would like to have a loving, sympathetic father of the family. And even when my mother now claims that early years with him were happy for her - I can not see anything good in this. To me, he has always been a bad person. Not because I hate him, I say so. But I know that in my heart I would never give up the desire that he personified for me the type of father that I then so dreamed of. There are times when I hope how great it would be if he was here. But it never was and never will be. Unlike children who lost their parents to their deaths, my father, John Walker, is alive. But despite this, he seemed to be dead. This is not enough: my children, that is, his grandchildren, never had and never will have a grandfather. It's all terrible. It's tearing me apart."

In October 1971, the Niagara Falls goes to sea. Its goal is Southeast Asia, the operational area of ​​operations is the coast of Vietnam, and its task is to supply American warships on the high seas. John as "systems keeper" classified materials"responsible for all cryptographic machines and lists of keys on board - and there are a lot of them on Niagara Falls; enough to operate for almost a year away from their native port. This job is a dream job for a KGB spy.

Regular deliveries to the Soviets of deciphering keys for the American war in Vietnam not only bring John Walker's fee back to the previous level in a short time, but also allows Moscow, first of all, to decipher operational plans for the bombing and movement of US troops in the Vietnamese theater of operations in a timely manner in the first place. Question: how much information ended up on the desks of North Vietnamese generals?

John F. Lehman, former US Secretary of the Navy, is convinced: “Walker's treachery undoubtedly cost the lives of American pilots, because the Soviets could inform Hanoi in advance of the time and purpose of the upcoming bombing. The Viet Cong could easily move anti-aircraft missiles to the right positions in this way. ”

Walker's lead officer Boris Solomatin disputes Lehman's argument. For the sake of mere military-tactical successes of a second-rate ally, Moscow would never risk passing on information supplied by Walker to others. Then the Americans would be too easy to find a “weak spot” and take them out of the game, and then overnight Walker would become completely useless for Moscow.

Could Hanoi use Big Brother's knowledge without putting the KGB at risk of losing his source?

The Soviets acted in a similar way in the specific case of the Vietnam War. Russian reconnaissance ships disguised as fishing trawlers stalked American aircraft carriers step by step in international waters off the coast of Vietnam so they could follow the operations of the American fleet. How Moscow obtained information for Hanoi seemed obvious. Disguise in any case was provided!

The KGB was absolutely pleased with the success of their super spy. For the authorities, John always finds an explanation so that behind the front lines, in Bangkok or Hong Kong, at exactly the right time to transfer hot goods to his leading officer. After the return of the Niagara Falls on April 13, 1973 to the home port of Oakland, the Moscow center expresses its gratitude: twenty-five thousand US dollars - a bonus that allows you to maintain John's good mood. Walker has long been indispensable to the KGB.

Despite successful espionage on the principle of "keep it simple stupid", John's "side job" in the second half of 1973 is in danger. There will be a mandatory FBI security review every five years. John has only one chance: to make a false inspection report in advance.

Here he shows incredible impudence: “It’s almost too simple to describe: you need to fill out a normal pink form and send with the FBI “no objections” postmark to your own military unit. The trick is to get the form first and then order the stamp from the stationery store. This does not arouse suspicion at all, because the military uses abbreviations and marks that are completely incomprehensible to civilians, such as BI (background investigation) - “data verification”, “successful / unsuccessful” - “satisfactory / unsatisfactory”. I drew an exact stamp and had it made from a small shop in Auckland. This lasted 24 hours, then I stamped the pink form, put a bird next to the word "satisfactory", and put the sheet in my personal file. The total cost of the operation is one dollar twenty-nine cents."

In the summer of 1974, John Pacific Fleet transferred back to Norfolk. But his work at the headquarters of the Atlantic Fleet is not suitable for treason. The boring years have passed. Barbara Walker confronts her husband with a new problem: she has filed for divorce. John is considering resigning from the Navy, but does not want to leave his lucrative business connections with the KGB. But what to do next?

Becoming a dealer instead of spying yourself is John Walker's next goal! To do this, he needs to recruit an employee - smart enough, but who can be manipulated - such as Jerry A. Whitworth. John invests $600 on a first class flight to San Diego to revive an "old friendship". The meeting is scheduled at Boom Trenchard`s - a pub right at the Lindberg airport. First, John lets Jerry talk about sailing, high politics, and Jerry's new area of ​​interest, Israel.

After several cups of coffee and a casual exchange of thoughts, John finally gets down to business with purpose. "Walker sounded me out great," Whitworth describes the situation from his perspective.

"Jerry, I want to offer you something." Walker shrouded everything in secrecy: he is now taking a big risk, he is counting on our friendship, he must trust me - and then he suddenly said: "I work for Israel, and I ask you to work with me." I spontaneously agreed because it seemed attractive to me. If he had said that his customers were Russians, I certainly would not have agreed to the deal that was made in the bar that evening: at most six years as a supplier for the Mossad, through Walker. Nothing more. From my then belfry, it had nothing to do with high treason. The fact that, in the end, it came down to her, still upsets me very much. But twenty years ago, this was not at all clear to me. You have to trust me here."

When it comes to recruiting Jerry Whitworth, John can't help but smile smugly. "Yes," he confirms. “I needed to somehow sweeten his pill. Israel was interested in Jerry. I knew it."

Immediately the dealer boasts: “I will give you something. The hardest thing for a spy is not the craft of espionage itself, but the recruitment of a new agent - a very risky undertaking, the most difficult job on Earth. And why? Because you can’t be sure what the person you approach with such an offer will do. Maybe everything. They can set a trap for you, they can arrest you and, under pressure, turn you into a double agent. The risk is very complex. That's why the Soviets were furious when I told them about my recruitment of Whitworth. In the eyes of the KGB, this was an unforgivable mistake. The first phase, the so-called "spotting" - "observation" and even the second phase - "assessing" - "assessment", "tip" I could well carry out myself. But recruiting - for my lead officer, of course, it was already too much! He was already nervous with each of my new assignments, because he thought that it was staged by the CIA, allegedly exposing and "re-recruiting" me. Only after the material was running normally again, and all shipments through the caches were functioning smoothly, did the KGB calm down a bit.

Boris Solomatin sums up Walker's arbitrariness so dryly: “I must admit that it was problematic to control Agent Walker. In principle, we had very few opportunities to directly influence him. This often led to difficulties, expressed at times in the complete uncontrollability of this person for us. And during our personal meetings, he always knew how to create the impression that everything was in the best order. Only during litigation Things came up against Walker that we were completely unaware of. We really didn't know much about what was going on in and around him."

This is an amazing confession. After all, it proves that the supposedly omniscient KGB can only do the same as others. John Walker, of course, was a particularly skilled dealer - and this is shown first of all by his recruitment of his new partner, Jerry Whitworth.

At the end of a pleasant evening over coffee at Boom Trenchard's, Walker turns the conversation to what he is most interested in, besides actually recruiting Jerry: what access does he have to classified materials that their mutual friends in Israel - ciphers and keys. John already knows that Jerry is a radio communications specialist in the US Navy, but he cannot accurately imagine what role various NSA encryption systems play in his work.

With these keywords, John signals Jerry for his technical talk, and then goes out of his way to make the best of it. In any case, from Jerry's outpourings, he captures the most important thing: Whitworth is in a key position in the comprehensive replacement of military communications systems that the Pentagon is again conducting. Her magic word is digital satellite communications.

All existing encryption systems should be upgraded accordingly. The purpose of the event is to prevent the enemy from intercepting high-frequency signals and at the same time determining where they were sent from. In times of conflict, this provides an invaluable advantage, because it seems to solve the location problem - except in the event that the specification of a newly developed technology falls into the hands of a potential adversary.

Walker takes a deep breath. It instantly becomes clear to him what a gold mine he has found in the face of Jerry Whitworth. A good old friend will guarantee many years of high-quality supplies to the Soviets - and first-class pay for them, John rejoices. He promises Jerry a $1,000 a month "advance" - with the prospect of a substantial raise if the "snorkeling trip" is successful.

This is the password Jerry must always use when he has cryptographic material; and in case Whitworth urgently needs to speak with Walker, they agree on the password "Mara". "Mara" is the name of one of their mutual acquaintances in the early 70s in San Diego. Jerry should just call John from a pay phone and ask, "Have you heard anything about Mara lately?" John will say "Yes" and get a pay phone number from Jerry so that in a few minutes, for security reasons, he can call Jerry back from another pay phone. In this way, safe places and dates were assigned for the transfer of hot material to Jerry in any corner of the Earth. Jerry, however, is not surprised that Israel could use such classified material. At this time, Israel is in a desperate situation, it is pressed with its back against the wall, surrounded by a hostile Arab world. The Six Day War only took place six years ago, the Yom Kippur War last fall. The state of the Jews will only have a chance of survival if it can maintain its technological advantage. Well, isn't this a humane act - to the best of your ability to help a small and needy Israel? Especially if the act pays well?

The Pacific island of Diego Garcia provided an opportunity to test Jerry's spy gift. Here, the US Navy has built a state-of-the-art military satellite communications hub, equipped with the latest technological developments in American encryption technology.

After three months in the service of "Israel" John suddenly receives a letter from Jerry. Deviating somewhat from the accepted form of the password, Jerry writes: "John, scuba diving is great!"

During one year of service on Diego Garcia, Whitworth worked very successfully. The flow of very valuable secret information about wiring diagrams, instructions and lists of keys for encryption machines is not interrupted even when Jerry is transferred to the USS Constellation in June 1976. For the next two years, Jerry delivers a mass of top secret materials, which gives the KGB another reason to reward John for "excellent work."

In the late seventies, Boris Alexandrovich Solomatin informs his ward Walker that in the Soviet Union he will be awarded the rank of Admiral of the Navy. Of course, John is of no use with such a title, but this confirms that over ten years of service to the secret KGB empire, he has become indispensable to her. Immediately he demands an increase in bonuses, of which, although John gives most of it to his "personal agent" Jerry, he still keeps for himself - in addition to half of Jerry's monthly salary from the KGB in the amount of four thousand dollars - at least a third: usually between three and five thousand dollars.

Shortly after Jerry's first successes in "snorkeling," Walker can afford to retire from the Navy. The dealer chooses an almost perfect cover for himself: he becomes a private detective. He cynically calls his firm "Counter-Spy" - "Counterintelligence".

Only at times does John interrupt his activities as an undercover investigator or "bug-catcher" on the executive floors of well-known Norfolk enterprises in order to get material from Whitworth during "snorkeling excursions" in Hong Kong, Bangkok or anywhere else in the world or to talk every six months with his leading KGB officer, having received from him direct instructions from Soviet employers.

Since 1978, for security reasons, the KGB has transferred all personal contacts with Walker to the Austrian capital Vienna. According to the instructions, John needs to fly to Italy first and then travel by train from Milan to Vienna. Once there, Walker must carefully follow the instructions of the "Vienna trial" scheduled by the minute in order to make contact with the KGB.

“Come at 18.15 to the Komet Kuechen store at the corner of Schönbrunner Strasse and Rückergasse. For easy identification, carry your camera bag on your right shoulder and hold a paper bag in your left hand. Stand for about 2 minutes between 6:15 p.m. and 6:17 p.m. near the shop window, walking slowly back and forth. Then go back to the Rückergasse lane, walk past the Fernseh-Kratky columns, stop at the last shop window.

During the thirty-five minute walk that follows, a detailed description of the KGB route leads Walker in an endless zigzag through the streets and lanes of Vienna's Second District. Finally, the American spy ends up where the Soviet lead officer is supposed to meet him:

“Between 6:55 p.m. and 6:58 p.m., take an interest in the windows of the BAZALA Internationale Kleidung menswear store at the corner of Maidunger Hauptstraße and Füchselhofgasse. You will be approached there or somewhere along the way.

John hates the Vienna trial - especially in winter. During a walk with the “curator” lasting from an hour to an hour and a half, the same topics are discussed all the time: first, the KGB intelligence agent (although he has long known that it is useless) tries to “enlighten ideologically” John and convince him of the superiority of the communist social system ; "nonsense and damn lies!" , as John comments today, shaking his head at the memory of "the dog-cold that this guy was dragging me around with him."

After praising the benefits of socialism, the Russian leading officer finally comes to the important point: he wants to know everything about the current life circumstances of John and Jerry, their financial or family difficulties, the possibilities of access to a very specific classified material, for which the Chekist always has a “list shopping." John Walker at such meetings is interested in only one thing: money. How? When? For what? Solomatin's evasive answers regularly annoy Walker:

“I made sure that the business continued to run smoothly, so I wanted to see good money - and always, please. In the end, the KGB would not have lost anything in this whole affair, not to mention the fact that they would somehow risk it.

In 1979, Walker reached the zenith of his espionage career. Thanks to his "employee" Jerry Whitworth, John's KGB supplies are getting bigger - as is the payment to the team of traitors. In July 1979, two hundred thousand dollars lie in a "dead mailbox".

But Good times don't last too long. After being transferred to the Naval Equipment Center in Oakland, California, Jerry Whitworth says he plans to retire from military service soon. “Without making a fuss, I wanted to slowly get out of the game. My 'framework agreement' with Walker already provided for cooperation for a period of no more than six years,” Whitworth comments today on his decision and adds: “I had problems in my marriage. That's why I wanted to leave the Navy so I could spend more time with my wife. The very thought of divorce would hurt me. But then the question arose: what to live on? What job to look for? In the end, I withdrew my resignation."

Sure, marriage is "holy" for Jerry, but there's another more important reason behind his decision not to leave the Navy: John Walker these days is opening Jerry's eyes to who he's really been spying for all these years - Soviet Union. At the same time, he has the strongest effect on Whitworth. psychological pressure:

"Damn it, you brainless, do you really think they'll just let you 'jump'? You are in their hands, just like me. Think of that guy in England who was killed by the KGB with an umbrella.”

Jerry immediately understands who and what Walker means: “The Bulgarians killed with a deadly poison one double agent in their ranks because he worked for British intelligence. Walker used examples like this to illustrate the misfortune that I supposedly would bring on both of us and our families. For a while, this made an impression on me. And always, as soon as I began to hesitate, he tried to hold me firmly with gentle pressure. Then he moved on to more crude methods. During our last meeting in 1984, he was no longer gentle - Walker openly threatened me!

As always, when it comes to money, John loses all his good manners - but not the instinct of self-preservation for taking the necessary measures in a crisis. Walker sees only one way out of his dilemma with his supplier Jerry Whitworth: John must increase the staff of the lucrative "supplementary business" industry.

“All of a sudden, he became very interested in everything that happened in my life, especially my intention to enlist in the army,” recalls John's daughter Laura. At first I didn't understand why. I thought, "Finally, you mean something to your father." But with John Walker, nothing happens without a second thought! And soon he approaches her with his real intentions: "You can make money if you supply me with some secret things." He did not mention that they would have been intended for the Russians. He only said "for one foreign country", and that "everyone does it and there is nothing special about it."

When Laura refuses, John wastes no time turning to his brother Arthur. Art Walker works for VSE Corporation, which supplies US Navy ships with essential equipment. He is familiar with the laws against espionage, and before being hired by the VSE, he was trained accordingly and thoroughly tested for his reliability as a carrier of "confidential" information.

John Walker takes aim with confidence. into Arthur's weak spot in order to recruit him and make him pliable to the wishes of the KGB. He reproaches his brother for how carelessly he squandered money in 1979 and lost all prospects for the success of the Walker Enterprises, a family business they both manage. After all, it was John's money, and Art couldn't handle it. Therefore, he owes "a little" to his brother.

Arthur has a bad feeling about the whole thing, but he doesn't want to make John angry. So he steals two documents marked "confidential". This is too little for John - why be surprised! At the end of 1981, he exerts strong psychological pressure on Arthur to put "something more substantial." But how? Arthur's job doesn't give him access to top secret material!

Out of necessity, John Walker has to, after the failure with Laura and Arthur, intensively woo his son Michael. Purposefully, he prepares a spy out of him.

In 1982, Michael Walker enlisted in the US Navy. Already two years later, having risen through the ranks, in 1984 he finds himself just where he can be useful to Papa John - in the operational planning department of the Nimitz nuclear aircraft carrier - a real gold mine for a young KGB spy with a mass of secret and top secret materials about latest systems weapons of the Western military bloc, about spy satellites and detailed operational plans in case of war. Remembering this time, Michael is sure that his father "promoted" him not only in order to maintain his connections with the KGB, but also "regularly cheated" in everything related to the financial benefit from him as John Walker's supplier. Michael is still offended:

“My father promised me five thousand dollars a month. In my entire spy career, so short for me and so long for others, I received only one thousand dollars. This needs to be considered in terms of time. I will have to serve at least twenty-five years behind bars, so for each day in prison I received less than 25 cents. That's the joke!"

Even after more than nine years in prison, Papa John shows no remorse when he hears this argument from his son: “The job of a spy fed the man who did it. My son could replace me. That's how I imagined it then. I invested most of my money in real estate. My plan was - and I've already done something in this direction - to finally calculate the proceeds. I wanted to run away, out of sight completely.”

At this advanced stage in our interview with Walker Sr., even that no longer surprises us: the deal with the Soviets as the "legitimate" legacy of the "Walker spy dynasty." The dealer dreamed about it. After all, everything was so easy!

In October 1981, ignoring John Walker's threats, Jerry Whitworth finally retired from the fleet. In this, the chief of a successful spy network sees confirmation of his gloomy forebodings. John is furious. But what can he do now?

As we know today, the KGB's reaction to Jerry's exit from the game was not at all what John had feared. “He (Whitworth) was always intelligent enough to properly carry out his assignments and always carefully prepared for it. We regretted his departure, but accepted it with understanding." - says Boris Solomatin. The wording chosen by John's lead officer is more like a letter of recommendation from an employer to an honored employee of the company after his dismissal of his own free will than the second oldest profession in the world. Only Boris Alexandrovich refrained from the usual phrase at the end: “In his future career, we wish him all the best!”

Jerry's plans for the future in early 1984 included more than just debit/credit balance sheet. He wants to make sure that his transition to a completely new segment of life will no longer be threatened. After sending several anonymous letters, Whitworth is trying to make a deal with the KGB - in exchange for release from prison sentence, report the betrayal of a super spy! Jerry emphatically emphasizes his motive as he sits today in a prison cell in Leavenworth, Kansas:

“This should have stopped! Walker sucked in more and more people. It was already insane!”

After a short pause, Whitworth adds: "I did not want to risk a wonderful life - my life!"

Jerry's indignation sounds unconvincing, in contrast to the remorse that is clearly felt in his words. In general, it seems that he is the only member of the spy network who, behind bars, seriously thinks about his life and the consequences of his actions:

“There is no doubt that I have abused trust in the worst possible way. And I would have deserved the most severe punishment if I had known everything from the beginning. But I didn't know! In the end, I had to cut contact with the FBI again.

They didn't want to tackle the core of the problem at all. but they just wanted to fool me and, damn it, apply their paragraphs of laws.

Walker's spy network went bust for a different, more understandable reason. November 17, 1984 Barbara Walker calls the help desk. She wants to know if there is an FBI office somewhere near her home near Boston, Massachusetts. "Hinnis," is the answer. Five minutes later, she telephones FBI agent Walter Price. Price immediately notices that the woman on the other end of the line is completely drunk. The story about her husband, allegedly a KGB spy, sounds fantastic. However, Price agrees to visit Barbara.

Two weeks after the call to the FBI, she finally gets her meeting with a federal cop. After a two-hour interview with Barbara, he is still not sure of anything. How can he measure how much truth there is in the testimony of a divorced wife and an obvious alcoholic who wants to frame her ex-husband under the ax for having fun with young women? Information about espionage activities her ex-husband does not seem solid to Agent Price. Result: "Information does not justify further effort." This is the conclusion Walter Price makes after his brief report, which ends up in the internal "zero file" - the "collection of fairy tales" of the FBI in Boston.

Throughout December 1984 and the first two weeks of January of the following year, Barbara is not disturbed by anyone in the FBI. During this time, Laura called her mother in Buffalo to wish her a happy birthday. Since then, Barbara's daughter also knows about the FBI visit:

"I only informed the federal police because Laura's husband Mark had kidnapped her son," explains Barbara Walker.

“Then it was about parental rights for little Chris. Mark knew about John's espionage activities and blackmailed Laura into leaving Chris with him. This was the main reason for my decision to betray John. Once he was neutralized, Laura could get back her son, whom we did not know about him or where he was.

For Laura Walker, her continued ignorance of the fate of her son Chris was finally a reason to call Barbara again in mid-January.

“I wanted to know what came out of my mother's contact with Mr. Price,” Laura comments today, “I was fine with any means to get my son back, I would never sacrifice him for a father!”

Laura promises her mother, for her part, to talk to an FBI agent in order to give more credibility to Barbara's testimony. And indeed, after that, Price once again writes a report, copies of which this time are even sent to Washington and Norfolk. While the paper in the huge building of the FBI "J. The Edgar Hoover Building in the Federal Capital doesn't interest a single human soul, the FBI's deputy section chief in Norfolk, Virginia, sees the Walker case quite differently. This is Special Agent Bob Hunter.

"My first thought was, 'I'd also take a drink for courage before I made the call that I knew would completely change my life.' And Barbara knew that too, before she picked up the phone to brief the local FBI office."

Bob Hunter discusses this issue with his immediate supervisor, Joseph Wolfinger. Both agree that this case should be thoroughly investigated. They don't have to make up excuses for this: John Walker lives in the area they are in charge of.

In early March 1985, Bob Hunter contacts Walter Price at Hinnis. He wants to convince Barbara Walker to take a polygraph test. In addition, Hunter asks for the support of his colleagues in Buffalo. They must find out the veracity of Laura Walker and her willingness to cooperate with the authorities.

Within fourteen days, the Norfolk Special Agent receives two positive responses. Barbara passed the polygraph test, and Laura also declared her willingness to cooperate. Hunter prepares the next move. He personally wants to ask Laura to call her father on the phone and drop the “bait” because “by the beginning of the investigation, I was hoping and even silently praying that John Walker was still an active spy.”

This is the biggest unknown in Bob Hunter's equation. If there is any chance at all of unmasking the sinister spy, it is only by catching him red-handed. March 15, 1985 Laura calls her father at home in Norfolk. She does her job superbly. Laura talks about her problems and troubles, the constant lack of money at home - and her intention to return to military service. John's reaction gives Hunter his first clue. After 15 minutes of insignificant conversation, in which Walker constantly scolds his daughter in the most cruel way, because she allegedly left him to his fate, his voice suddenly changes completely, becomes calm, almost fatherly. Walker is trying to determine the branch of service and the position that she will be interested in in the army.

When Laura says she's also thinking about trying to get a CIA job at Langley but doesn't know if she'll pass the lie detector test, John cuts her off with Hunter's definitive statement: "You could really get in trouble there."

Bob Hunter understands, of course, that he has not yet obtained any evidence against Walker that is suitable for trial, but he has received starting points that justify the installation of "bugs" in John's office and house. On April 12, 1985, the Norfolk Court gives its permission.

After almost a month of waiting in an ambush on May 16, 1985, decisive evidence arrives. “John Walker,” Hunter tells us today, “his mother called from Scranton, Pennsylvania this evening. And she said, "Johnny, your Aunt Amelia paid the bills," which meant she was dead. John's mother told her son that she was expecting him at the funeral the following Saturday.

And John? What did he answer? "Mom, I'm sorry, but I won't be able to come, I have something important to do."

What could be so important to refuse to go to the funeral of his beloved aunt, who raised him for many years as a child, and whom he greatly respected? Because of this, I pointed all my antennas at him and came to the conclusion that next weekend we should implement our plan of action, code-named "Windflyer" - "Flying with the wind."

Operation Windflyer begins in the early hours of May 18, 1985. His strategy involves the capture of John at the time of the crime, and for this, if necessary, follow him to Washington. In total, almost a hundred police officers are involved in the operation.

Saturday ends for them in complete disappointment. All John did on May 18 was mow the lawn and spend a few pleasant hours on his new dacha boat. Hunter: “It didn't sound like James Bond at all. It was nervous tension and boredom, and my guys soon began to scoff at what, they say, all this magic is needed with surveillance from helicopters and surveillance on the ground.

I just remarked dryly: “I want to see you all at the posts on Sunday, at exactly seven in the morning.” The guys were “delighted”, believe me!”

On May 19, 1985, Hunter's team in the early morning again in full force was placed in position. With the suspect still out of sight until 10 o'clock, Bob Hunter decides to make a quick run to a McDonald's near John's house for a cup of coffee. “When I entered there and turned to the right, it was like a thunderbolt struck me!” - Bob happily writes down in the minutes, “who do I see there with a cup of coffee and a morning newspaper? John Anthony Walker! I couldn’t understand it in any way and just thought: “What the hell is going on here?”

I immediately turned on my heels and took the liberty of first reminding some gentlemen that we are professionals and should take some pride in our assignments! So we went back to our positions and waited. And they waited. I promised my people that if Walker didn't stir before one o'clock, we'd close our entire shop and rest in the afternoon. Fortunately, at 12.10, that is, fifty minutes before the deadline, John left the house, got into a minibus and left his area. ”

Actually, Walker got down to business too early that day. The filling of the "dead mailbox" ("dead drop") is provided only after dark. But since John didn't plan anything for the afternoon anyway, he leaves too early to take a nap at his destination.

In an interview, Bob Hunter can't hide the excitement that overwhelms him even today as he recalls the hunt for the agent at the time: “We first followed John quietly from Norfolk to Richmond. He drove surprisingly difficult, as if he specifically wanted to find out if there was a “tail” behind him. Therefore, my team of pursuers in eight cars was at a great distance from him. Only our man on the plane never lost sight of Walker. I asked him: “Are we going to have fun in the end?” And he said, "Not yet," because there was still the possibility that John, going around Richmond, would turn in a different direction than Washington.

At about a quarter to three, my colleague in a twin-engine Cessna got in touch again: "Bob, now we're going to have some fun!" This is where Operation Windflyer really kicked off. John's Ford Astrovan was now speeding down Highway 95 toward the District of Columbia. At that moment, it was absolutely clear to me that Walker was indeed moving towards a “dead mailbox”. Things were starting to take an exciting turn!”

The moment of concentration for Hunter and his men comes at exactly five minutes to five. When John Walker reaches the city limits of Washington, a group of pursuers from Virginia must transfer operational surveillance to the federal police of the capital of the United States.

The changing of the guard in the air and on the ground leads to disaster for the detectives. John sank into the ground - just disappeared from sight. On a highway in Montgomery County, in a wooded area, a plan to catch Walker in the act of spying for the KGB is interrupted for a while.

Bob Hunter even today gets goosebumps when he thinks about this event: “I was one of the leaders of the operation, and the guys from the Washington branch of the FBI took out all their anger on me. It was stupid of me not to install a mini-transmitter on John's car, it was all my fault. They called me a "loser" and God knows what else they poured over my head. At the same time, everyone knew very well that Walker was an electronics specialist, and attaching a “tracking device” (radio beacon) to him would be too risky.

Head down, I was sitting in the central office, mood dropped to zero, gloomy looks all around, cold antipathy everywhere - and then, what a divine fate, we suddenly hear an excited voice from a plane that, at our order, circled over the area where we lost sight of John: “He's here again! We're on his tail!" A stone has fallen from my soul!”

The observer in the Cessna that evening transmitted another, last and delightful message. At nine o'clock, a few minutes before nightfall would have made aerial observation impossible, he reports that John Walker has stopped by a huge tree on Partnership Road.

“As soon as John left, of course, I immediately sent our search parties to see if he had left anything there. Exactly at half past nine on the same evening came the saving information: “Yes! We found the package!

Mission accomplished! Mission accomplished! And that was the very first time in FBI history that we caught a spy red-handed!”

When Walker re-enters the Ramada Inn in Rockville after the failed exchange, Hunter receives a warrant from the District Attorney for his arrest.

On the evening of May 21, 1985, all members of the spy network were taken: John's son Michael, John's brother Arthur, John's friend Jerry Whitworth. John Walker recruited them all, used them, and in the end betrayed them.

American justice quickly dealt with the most successful and most damaging spy ring in US history.

Jerry Whitworth was sentenced to 365 years in prison; release - not earlier than after 107 years of "imprisonment".

Arthur Walker received three life sentences and a quarter-million-dollar fine.

Michael Walker sentenced to two terms of twenty-five years and three terms of ten years; early release - not earlier than after serving sixteen years in prison.

John Anthony Walker received two life sentences and another hundred years to boot. He still hopes he will be released early for good behavior. After all, he, in the end, still needs to settle "some little thing."

This high-profile story began in the early autumn evening of 1967, when a man somehow slipped sideways, uncertainly, through the gate of the Soviet embassy in Washington. Opening the massive door of the diplomatic mission, he addressed the duty officer in English:

I want to meet with the diplomat who is in charge of your security.

An embassy guard immediately appeared behind the visitor and looked expectantly at the duty officer. The guest was then taken to a small room next to the entrance and told to wait.

What is the purpose of your visit to us? - Smiling, the embassy official who entered asked him.

If you are from the security service, then I will answer this question, - the guest said, obviously nervous.

But still? - I'd like to offer you a deal. Money in exchange for materials that your government might be interested in.

The diplomat remained impassive.

This is very valuable information of a military nature, - the unexpected visitor continued with pressure. - I brought with me the codes from the cipher machine.

He quickly took out of his pocket and handed the Russian a small piece of paper with some numbers.

Sit here, I'll be back soon, - the diplomat answered, taking the sheet with him.

Fifteen minutes later, he really came back, accompanied by a gloomy man who was clearly a big shot here. This boss immediately asked the dealer in secrets what his name was.

James, he replied. — James Harper.

Let's say, - answered the Russian. - Do you have some kind of identity document with you? After some hesitation, the American took out his wallet and took out his military ID.

John Anthony Walker, Jr., read the Russian aloud. And he added with a sneer: - Thank you, Mr. Harper.

Thus began the spy story that caused the greatest damage to US military potential during the Cold War. It lasted almost eighteen years, and the most different people on both sides of the ocean.

PRICELESS GOODS

The duty officer of the Atlantic Fleet headquarters, John Walker, really wanted to become rich. So, to have a villa, a yacht, a private jet, so that beautiful girls hang themselves around his neck, and weekends can be spent in the Bahamas. On reflection, he realized that, alas, there is no other way to fulfill his dream, except for one - to sell military secrets to the Russians.

Fortunately, John possessed this product in abundance. In his service, he had access to many of the most secret documents. The device of encryption machines and keys to them. Strategic plans of the fleet in case of the beginning of the third world war. The location of underwater microphones with which the States stuffed all approaches to their coast, fearing enemy submarines. Codes for launching missiles with nuclear warheads. Weaknesses of spy satellites. And many other things that, as he believed, might be of interest to Soviet intelligence.

And John wasn't wrong. From the very beginning, he said to himself: “Since you have embarked on this path, you must follow it to the end. You have to become the best spy in history."

And after all became! With the help of this guy, Moscow received and deciphered more than a million (!) Of the most secret documents regarding the military power of the United States.

Thanks to him, our submarines could secretly enter almost New York harbor. Our admirals read the orders of the American command almost before the commanders of their aircraft carriers. And all these miracles continued, as I said, for nearly eighteen years.

LIVE BEAUTIFULLY

After that first visit to the Embassy, ​​Walker only once met with KGB officers on US soil. In Moscow, they immediately realized what a valuable source they had acquired, and therefore everything was done to protect it as much as possible. Personally, Yuri Andropov ordered to strictly limit the circle of people who knew about the existence of the agent. It was decided that all meetings with him would take place on the territory of third countries, and the transfer of materials (from Walker) and money to him (from the KGB) would be carried out exclusively through hiding places.

Quickly getting a taste of it, Walker, like a true businessman, decided that the business needed to be expanded, for which he soon attracted his friend Jerry Whitworth, who served on the west coast in San Diego, to steal the secrets. At the same time, he, however, resorted to a trick, explaining to his friend that the documents would be transferred to the allies of the Americans - the Israelis.

The agent's cynicism knew no bounds. When one day he needed to transport a large consignment of dollars from Europe to the States, handed by a KGB liaison, John used his own mother.

“Who would have thought to search a nice old lady at the airport,” he later explained. When his wife Barbara, who was a heavy drinker, found out what her husband was doing and threatened to report him to the FBI, John, during a meeting with a contact in Vienna, told him:

Can you kill her? However, the KGB officer did not react to this proposal, and Walker concluded that he himself would have to solve the problem of Barbara.

All his dreams came true: a plane, a yacht, girls, a holiday in the Bahamas... For some reason, it didn’t seem strange to the vaunted American counterintelligence all these years that a junior naval officer behaves as if he were an oil sheikh or a Wall Street banker.

MULTI-MOVE PROFESSIONALS

Thanks to Walker and his materials, several commanders of Soviet submarines became Heroes of the Soviet Union, although they did not know about the existence of a spy who influenced their fates. The "Gold Star" was also awarded by a secret decree to foreign intelligence officer G., who for many years secretly met with the agent in different cities of the world. The same gloomy Chekist who headed the Washington residency in the fall of 1967 was also awarded the high award and the rank of general. Moreover, KGB chief Yuri Andropov was so delighted with this operation that he made the resident, after his return to Moscow, deputy head of foreign intelligence (then the First Main Directorate of the KGB). The name of this man is Boris Solomatin, and I have repeatedly had the opportunity to talk with him.

Once I asked Boris Alexandrovich if he didn’t take risks then, at the first meeting with Walker, because the American could well turn out to be an enemy “setup”, that is, a specially “mishandled Cossack” to lead Soviet intelligence by the nose.

In the history of the Cold War, there were more than enough such cases, and games with fake agents were actively used by both the Americans and ours.

Yes, the general agreed, the risk was great. It happened, and we fell on such layouts and pulled dummies for years. I myself, when I was on my first business trip as an ordinary operational officer in India, had one Englishman in touch, who, as it turned out later, was a classic “setup”. Or another example: the Americans fooled the GRU for more than twenty years, giving military intelligence officers their agent.

Likhachev, the son of General Chernyakhovsky, worked with him. He married the daughter of the director of the famous car factory, took her last name. Received awards and titles for communication with a "valuable source".

Here is how it was. Our naval attache's assistant was playing volleyball with the Americans. Once he comes out after playing in the park and sees a military man in uniform on a bench. Sitting down next to him, he spoke. The guy turned out to be a sergeant, he served in some kind of defense organization. Contact was established between them. But our man did not know that the sergeant reported his new Russian friend to counterintelligence almost from the first days.

They evaluated the information professionally and decided to start a combination.

The sergeant had some distant relation to the development of chemical weapons, and the Americans played this card. At that time, we also worked on this problem and had a passionate desire to know how far and in what direction the enemy had advanced. Therefore, our military bought immediately. The FBI made sure that the sergeant got access to secret developments, they began to give him real information on nerve gas to transmit.

That is, what, gave out their own secrets? Played against yourself? - Eh, no. Just the opposite. The Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other departments were connected to this combination.

And here's what they came up with. States long time conducted research on this nerve gas, trying to increase its combat effectiveness. However, at some point they realized that the path they were following was a dead end.

And then a buyer from the GRU appears. And the Americans decide to sell their rotten goods to us. That is, to drag us into this dead end. In the course of this operation, the Americans solved two problems: neutralizing a number of operatives from the Washington GRU station and weakening the defense power of the Soviet Union.

Now, as I understand it, that sergeant lives comfortably on the money that our military intelligence officers generously gave him for "secret information."

Everyone was very afraid of such options. How did many residents think? Well, I'll sit quietly, without any special feats, well, they'll scold me for that and that's it. And if I make a mistake on the "setup", then my career is over. Therefore, they did not take risks, did not take responsibility.

Don't you think it's strange that when this most valuable KGB agent in the States was under direct threat of exposure - I mean the story with Barbara - that Walker's warning was essentially ignored? Why? Are the interests of national security not above the life of one person? In my opinion, the Americans do not stand on ceremony in such cases? - Killing a person is too serious a thing, both from the point of view of morality and taking into account the possible consequences. What if Walker had burned down anyway and the whole story came out? In what light would our intelligence, our entire state, look then? Such actions are poorly perceived by public opinion.

WEAK LINK NAMED BARBARA

How did John Walker "pierce"? According to the official version, Barbara, who was very angry at John, who by that time had parted with her and was completely mired in the abyss of debauchery, handed him over.

Boris Solomatin believed that the failure was the result of Walker's immoderate spending, which sooner or later should have aroused the suspicion of the FBI. A private jet, a yacht, luxurious feasts ... Be that as it may, and in May 1985, counterintelligence, after several months of secret development of an agent, began the final phase of Operation Bat. It was decided to take John during the hiding operation, and at the same time arrest his KGB contact. However, our officer managed to slip out of the trap. Walker, on the other hand, was the largest manhunt in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Almost a hundred operatives, several dozen vehicles, including twenty trucks (for camouflage) and even a special aircraft, took part in it. As a result, John was arrested first, and then all other members of his agent network.

None of them locked up. John and Arthur were sentenced: the first to two life terms plus a hundred years in addition, the second to three life terms and a fine of a quarter of a million dollars. Jerry received 365 years in prison.

Michael - 80 years old with the ability to ask for clemency after 16 years.

I asked General Solomatin if they had any chance of getting out? - I'm afraid not, - answered Boris Alexandrovich. - I do not know of a single case where the President of the United States - and only he can pardon a person convicted of such crimes - reduced the term of a person sentenced for espionage, or pardoned him. Not a single case! Even when the Jewish lobby is turned on, and in the States it can do a lot. They got one US citizen there for spying for Israel. Received a life sentence. To release him, everyone tensed up - both top officials in Tel Aviv and forces overseas. Useless.

five years ago (and our conversation took place in 2003 -"VM" ) I received a letter from Walker's attorney asking me to take action to alleviate the plight of "this unfortunate man." Alas, I disappointed him.

And he attributed that in Russia in the 1990s, many people who spied for the United States were not only amnestied, but also got the opportunity to go to America, where they live in peace on the money of the CIA. Why doesn't your president take a step back? What else could I say to him?

World history can be represented as a history of intelligence services, their confrontation, recruitment and exposure of the main actors. It's interesting and instructive. Today we want to recall high-profile cases of espionage against the United States.

1 John Walker

John Walker can be considered the most effective Soviet intelligence agent in the United States. For 17 years, he transmitted secret encryption codes to the US Navy, Air Force, CIA and US Army. Walker's recruitment took place in 1967. At the same time, the American KL-7 cipher machine, which was used by all US services to encrypt messages, ended up in the hands of the KGB. According to journalist Pete Early, who wrote a book about Walker, the recruitment of an American cipher clerk was "like if the US Navy opened a branch of its communications center right in the middle of Red Square." In all the years until John Walker was declassified, the US military and intelligence forces found themselves in a stalemate. Wherever secret exercises were held, organized according to all the rules of secrecy, Soviet observers always turned out to be nearby. Walker handed over tables of keys to encryption codes daily, but involved his family in his intelligence network, which ruined him. He ended up in the dock thanks to the testimony of his ex-wife Barbara. He was sentenced to life imprisonment

. 2 Clayton Lowtree

The recruitment story of Clayton Lowtree is a spy classic. He began to cooperate with Soviet intelligence because of a woman, the secretary of the American embassy in Moscow, Violetta Sein. He was a simple marine with access to the CIA encryption room, she was a simple secretary, an employee of the KGB. All in all, a classic. Falling in love with Violetta, Lawntree began to give the KGB information about the embassy and the names of its employees, who were CIA agents. There are, however, specific details in the fate of Lowtree. He is an Indian by origin, in his youth he considered Adolf Hitler his idol, he is not indifferent to drinking. In general, he is an emotionally unstable personality type, prone to adventurism, which means he is an ideal candidate for recruitment. After serving 9 years in prison, Lawntree was released in 1996. His mother believes that Kleiten was "a victim of Ronald Reagan's Cold War."

3 The Rosenbergs

The Rosenberg case can be considered the main espionage scandal of the 20th century. His death sentence was the only case of capital punishment for intelligence officers during the entire Cold War. The Rosenbergs were caught and sentenced in 1953. They were accused of transferring information about the American nuclear bomb to the USSR. US Army Sergeant David Greenglass gave Rosenberg the blueprints nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki and a report on his work at the nuclear center at Los Alamos. Events developed according to the classical scenario. In February 1950, the physicist Klaus Fuchs was caught in England, he betrayed the CIA liaison Harry Gold, he told American intelligence about David Greenglass, and Greenglass had already betrayed the Rosenbergs. Unlike other members of the chain of agents, the Rosenbergs did not admit to the charges and insisted that their arrest was an anti-communist and anti-Semitic campaign. The same, though unsuccessfully, was repeated by Soviet propaganda. In the course of an extensive program to protect the Rosenbergs, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and even Pope Pius XII stood up for them. But all this turned out to be useless. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death in the electric chair.

4 Aldrich Ames

Spying on the USSR and Russia by Aldrich Hazen Ames can be called the biggest failure of the CIA throughout the relationship between our country and the United States. Ames was not an ordinary American intelligence officer. He was nothing less than the head of the counterintelligence department of the CIA. At the same time, he worked for the KGB and the FSB for almost 10 years, passing on the most important information. His work led to the fact that all the efforts of the CIA for undercover work in our country and recruitment ended in a fiasco. Ames's case may be taken to be indicative of what ruined his own greed and extravagance. It is clear that Russian intelligence did not skimp on bonuses for such a valuable employee. During his espionage, he received at least $4 million. According to the official version, suspicions arose against him just because of the large expenses for personal purposes. Ames also "blundered" on the fact that he transmitted the information he obtained in large parts. This caused a mass capture of agents, which exposed the "spy wholesaler". In 1994, Ames was caught and found guilty of treason. He is currently serving a life sentence. According to the unofficial version - Ames passed the "mole".

5 Jonathan Pollard

The story of Jonathan Pollard is unique in that he would be accused of spying for a country friendly to the United States - Israel, but at the same time serving a life sentence in an American prison. In such cases, the maximum sentence is seven years, but the Pollard case is particularly significant, and still remains a problematic area in US-Israel relations. Pollard is accused of handing over copies of about 1,800 classified papers to Israel between May 1984 and November 1985. In total, according to the prosecution, he stole more than 1 million secret documents. According to a petition by Pollard's attorney Nizzan Dorshan-Leitner, these were documents that dealt with information about Soviet anti-aircraft missile systems, data on the level of noise produced by ships and submarines, data on Libyan port facilities, a possible electronic war between Iraq and Iran, information about the construction in Syria, a plant for the production of nerve gas. Largely due to the information obtained by Pollard, in October 1985, the Israeli Air Force attacked the bases and headquarters of the PLO in Tunisia. The most grievous point of Pollard's accusations is that his work led to the discovery and death of US intelligence agents in the countries of the Eastern Bloc. Despite a powerful lobbying program launched in Israel, the US does not make concessions on the release of the spy. Seven US defense secretaries wrote letters urging that Jonathan's sentence not be commuted. In 1993, US Secretary of Defense Les Aspin reported that Pollard was trying to harm the United States even while in prison. Allegedly, by that time he had tried 14 times to disclose secret information in his letters to freedom.

# 6 (15) June 2003

SCOUTS

JOHNNY WALKER AND HIS FAMILY CONTRACT

For seventeen years, an American officer faithfully served Soviet intelligence

In October 1967, a short man unexpectedly squeezed through the gates of the USSR Embassy in Washington on Sixteenth Street, which were open to the exit of the car. Worried, he demanded an urgent meeting with the head of security. Then no one could have thought that on that day the KGB would win its most resounding victory, and John Walker would begin a seventeen-year career as the most effective agent of Soviet intelligence in the United States.

VICTIMS OF A DIFFICULT CHILDHOOD
At John Walker it was not an easy life. His father had once worked at the famous Warner Bros. studio and was making good money. But in 1944, he had a severe accident and was forced to pay colossal medical bills, as well as make amends for the damage done to another person. Walker Sr. lost his former job and plunged his family into extreme poverty. As a result, he drank bitter and began to throw his fists at his wife and children. It got to the point that ten-year-old Johnny planned in cold blood to kill his father, but, fortunately, failed to carry out his plan.
I must say, studying at the school of Walker Jr. was not particularly inspiring. Dreaming of making good money in order to escape from the provincial town of Scranton, he either sold the local newspaper or sold tickets to the theater. At one time, Johnny even worked as a disc jockey for a nightly program on city radio. And then he just started stealing in stores. In the end, while attempting a big robbery, he fell into the hands of the police. The court sentenced him to prison, but granted a reprieve. Taking advantage of this, Johnny, wanting to "hang" from prison, in 1955 signed up as a volunteer in the US Navy.
A clumsy young man with glasses was assigned to the school of radio operators for the submarine fleet. Johnny successfully completed it, but due to poor eyesight, he was sent to serve not on a submarine, but on an old, old destroyer. He felt like a real sailor, in 1957 he married Barbara Crowley, and by 1960 there were three daughters in their family. Walker carried out his service regularly, was in good standing with his superiors and became a junior officer. He first served on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal and then at a submarine base in South Carolina. In three years, he was promoted five times, but the salary of a junior officer was no longer enough for the needs of a rapidly growing family.
In 1960, the US Navy lowered the requirements for the eyesight of sailors, and John was lucky: he was sent to a school for submariners for sixteen weeks, and soon he began to sail one of the newest submarines of that period. The life of the Walkers was slowly getting better. They rented a house in California, bought a TV, started going to restaurants and movies. But even then there was discord in the family. Barbara turned out to be terribly lazy, sitting around the clock uncombed in front of the TV, running both the house and herself. She drank more and more. In 1962 their son was born. To spite John, who had long dreamed of John Walker Jr., the mother named the child Michael.

“Yes, Russians would pay a lot of money for such a paper!” - Looking through another top secret document, the officers joked. And then John Walker decided to offer his services to Russian intelligence

Meanwhile, more and more military secrets were revealed to John. In 1964, nuclear submarine radio operator Andrew Jackson, with an impeccable record and seven promotions in nine years, gained access to top secret and encrypted documents. And in 1965 he became the commander of the radio room on the nuclear submarine "Simon Bolivar".
“Yes, Russians would pay a lot of money for such a paper!” - looking through the next secret document, the officers joked, puffing out their cheeks from the realization of their own significance. Employees of the US Naval Communications Center in the Atlantic (Norfolk), where since April 1967 Walker was listed as a duty officer, also joked. And then John decided to offer his services to Russian intelligence.

SUPERMOLE
And in October 1967, John Walker arrived in Washington, found the address of the USSR embassy in the telephone directory and, practically without hiding, came there and directly stated that he wanted to sell a valuable military information. To confirm the seriousness of his intentions, he showed a previously copied table of keys for a month to an encryption machine widely used by the US Navy. The document was marked “Top Secret. Special Category.
From such a proposal any scout would be dizzy: is it a joke to get the opportunity to read the most secret messages of the enemy! The Soviet agent who received Walker turned out to be a high-class professional. Convinced of the adequacy of the unexpected visitor and the special value of the documents brought, he resolutely seized the initiative from the sailor. Walker expected to sell the materials anonymously and on his own terms. But they immediately demanded a military identity card from him, found out the details of his life and service, specified the details of the next meeting, gave him a thousand dollars (that was a lot of money!) And took a receipt. Everything was done very quickly, as Walker was in a hurry to return to his duty station so as not to arouse suspicion. John was taken out of the embassy to the prepared car, having previously put on a coat and a wide-brimmed hat, no longer through the main entrance. Tall employees of the embassy covered him from all sides. The new agent was allowed to leave the car only when the escorts were convinced that there was no surveillance.

In 1985, experts estimated that as a result of the work of John Walker and his group, Soviet specialists managed to decipher more than a million (!) American messages.

Thus began the work of John Walker for Soviet intelligence. The agent was paid four thousand dollars a month (service in the US Navy brought him $725). But the information was worth it. In the first six months of cooperation with the KGB, Walker handed over schemes for cipher machines and keys to ciphers. With them, the KGB could easily read all messages not only from the US Navy, but also from the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the State Department, and even the CIA and the FBI: the technique was the same everywhere. Looking ahead, say that in 1985, experts estimated that as a result of the work of John Walker and his group, Soviet specialists were able to decipher more than a million American messages. For seventeen years, our cryptologists were able not only to read encrypted US documents, but also to study the main directions of the development of encryption business in America. Almost all the efforts of the US National Security Agency and the huge funds spent on improving ciphers and equipment turned out to be in vain, since everything became known to the Soviet special services.
Walker was cherished like the apple of an eye, communication was kept through hiding places. John revealed to our intelligence the location of underwater microphones installed along the coast of the USSR, as well as in the areas of the Aleutian Islands and Iceland to track Soviet ships and submarines. He copied all the secret documents that passed through the headquarters of the commander of the US submarine fleet.

In his zeal, Walker even offered to arrange for the KGB to arrange for a million dollars to delay the order to launch nuclear missiles towards the USSR.

The liaison officer on duty in Norfolk was responsible for transcribing and transmitting Washington's orders to launch nuclear missiles. During the exercises, none of the officers of the Navy knew until the last moment what kind of launch would be, training or combat. In his zeal, Walker even offered to arrange for the KGB to arrange for a million dollars to delay the order to launch nuclear missiles. “Not a single submarine of the Atlantic Fleet will launch a single missile against the USSR,” he assured. But since the USSR was not going to fight or lose such a valuable agent, Walker's proposal was not approved.
Along with instructions on "safety precautions" and assignments, he received a Minox camera from the KGB for photographing documents. The best thing to hide is what is in plain sight. He kept a folder with copies intended for transfer to the KGB in a file cabinet. "If someone accidentally bumped into her, they would think that she was lying in her place." Walker took out the footage in a case along with a regular camera and films. No one thought to check them.
In 1971, John was assigned to the support ship Niagara Falls off the coast of Vietnam. On the ship, he was responsible (do not believe it!) "for the safety of secret materials, for all code keys and encryption machines." Not even the captain of the Niagara had such unrestricted access to classified material. In the same place, John photographed the cipher tables used by American troops in Vietnam. That's how Theodor Sheckley, a CIA resident in Saigon from 1968 to 1973, described the situation at the time: “The Vietnamese usually knew in advance about the B-52 raids. Even when, due to bad weather, the planes left for alternate targets, the Vietnamese already knew which targets would be hit. This reduced the effectiveness of strikes, since the enemy had time to prepare for them. We haven't been able to figure out what's going on."

"Absolutely loyal, very proud of himself and his service in the Navy, fiercely defending its principles and traditions." From the characteristics of John Walker, given to him by the command of the ship "Niagara Falls"

And the official characterization of the culprit of all these events, written by the leadership of the Niagara Falls ship, reported: “Absolutely loyal, very proud of himself and his service in the Navy, fiercely defending its principles and traditions.” For all seventeen years of John Walker's cooperation with Soviet intelligence, he never fell under the suspicion of the FBI and passed all special checks.

WEAK LINK
However, the Walker family was in turmoil. With the first thousand dollars received from the KGB, John bought a bar. The institution did not bring income, but served as an excellent explanation of where the money came from in the family for a new big house, a luxury car, and a passion for yachts. For some time, John was even able to organize family life: his wife met him from work at the threshold of a well-groomed house, served him a newspaper and a cocktail. But the idyll was short-lived. Barbara continued to drink.
Other problems arose. In 1971, John, returning from a Vietnamese business trip, landed on a staff job, which meant losing access to most classified materials. In addition, in 1976 I had to divorce my completely degraded wife. Barbara had known for a long time what her husband was doing. At the very beginning of Walker's spy career, she took materials from caches. Increasingly, getting drunk to the point of reese, Barbara threatened her husband with a call to the FBI. After the divorce, John had no choice but to resign from the Navy. He hinted to his KGB handlers that the problem with his ex-wife should be solved radically, forcing this woman to shut up forever. But Russian patrons cautiously kept silent...

NEPOTISM
The revelation was still far away. Before leaving the Navy, Walker prepared a replacement for himself: he suggested that the KGB bring his former subordinate to work. Jerry Whitworth, US Navy Specialist in Satellite Communications. He was not distinguished by firmness of character, but respected John and constantly needed money. Then the Pentagon was just deploying a satellite communications system. For the KGB, the new agent turned out to be very useful. rear admiral William Studeman subsequently stated that "Jerry Whitworth's abuse endangered the foundation of all US national security."
Already in 1975, Walker convinced a friend of the "complete safety" of collecting classified materials "for Israel" and gave him the first money and a camera. And in March 1976, Whitworth, who, ironically, also became the “keeper of secret materials” (at the US Navy base in Diego Garcia), brought John the keys to three encryption systems and hundreds of copies of secret documents. In the same 1976, Whitworth was assigned first to the aircraft carrier Constellation, and then to the Enterprise. Until his discharge from the US Navy in 1983, Whitworth, through Walker, gave the KGB every secret he could find out.
And John, meanwhile, put the spy business on a family contract. His elder brother Arthur Walker got a job in one of the ship repair firms, which carried out orders from the US Navy, and, according to his position, repaired the electronic equipment of warships. In 1980, John gradually persuaded his brother to bring materials of some value. So the KGB got drawings of amphibious landing ships, information about one of the most important ships of the US Pacific Fleet, the Blue Ridge, which housed the headquarters of the fleet commander, and many other materials.

John Walker's son Michael, having been assigned to the Nimitz aircraft carrier, literally gutted the ship in just a year. He handed over 1,500 top secret documents to the KGB.

By 1983, he had grown to serve in the Navy and the son of a spy Michael Walker. After boot camp, he was assigned to the USS America. Michael long ago learned from his drunken mother about his father's connection with Russian intelligence. Believing in complete safety, the father explained to his son the tasks and principles of espionage work. Michael was agile. He brought the first documents in a couple of weeks and was terribly pleased when his father handed him several thousand dollars. And after moving to the operations department of the aircraft carrier Nimitz, Walker Jr. opened up such opportunities that it is difficult for an agent to even dream of.
The department received all secret documents, Michael accepted them and handed them over to the officers of the department. Worked-out documents prepared for burning were also stored there. Michael decided that he could "gut this ship". He managed to do it in just a year. Michael kept a large box of materials destined for the KGB in a cubbyhole under his bunk. He passed through his father to the KGB great amount top secret documents, instructions and diagrams. Some of them determined the procedure and principles for the use of the US Navy nuclear weapons, contained the characteristics and performance data of weapons, a list of targets for surface ships and submarines, camouflage methods, and much more. In total, more than one and a half thousand documents marked "Top Secret".
The FBI arrested John Walker only in 1985. And this was not the result of the painstaking work of the agency's detectives. It is interesting to list what the FBI found in the cache for the transfer of the KGB:
– study of technical problems of the Tomahawk cruise missile;
- diagrams of missile defense systems on the battleship "Nimitz";
- codes for launching nuclear missiles;
– analytical data on the possibility of disabling US spy satellites.
In total - 129 documents.
The operation to arrest the FBI was mediocre. As a result of the agent's mistake, John's handler from the KGB slipped away. And the arrest itself could have taken place several years earlier. For a very long time, the FBI could not believe the embittered Barbara, who several times stated on the phone that her ex-husband was spying on the USSR. Walker was “snitched” by his daughter Laura Walker, reporting that her father also tried to involve her and her husband in espionage work.
And if the FBI detained Michael right on the aircraft carrier with a box of documents under the bed, then they practically could not bring any charges against Arthur Walker. However, he himself confessed to helping his brother. It was not difficult for Jerry Whitworth to get away from punishment. The FBI agents who came to him did not have a warrant, and if he had not voluntarily (!) agreed to a search, then he would have had quite enough time to destroy the main evidence.
So, a whole network of agents of the Soviet special services in the United States was exposed. Their activities will go down in the history of intelligence as an example of an excellent operation that gave the keys to the most important thing - secret information. And its significance went far beyond the military framework, since it was also a high-level industrial espionage. The data obtained by the Walkers on the latest technical developments of the United States at that time allowed our country to save impressive funds. It's a shame that our intelligence agencies could not prevent the failure of the Walkers, due to the presence of too weak a link - a drunken, chatty Barbara.

Sergey Ozerov