haydon@nevada.edu (04/14/90)
From: haydon@nevada.edu
Frontline showed a documentary on Apr 10 all about the Walker spy ring.
Most of the info in the show was from Walker and Whitworth (his main
accomplice), as well as various other officials and authors. What follows
is a brief synopsis of the Walker spy ring and the secrets they sold. If
anyone knows if the systems involved are still used or anything else about
them, I would like to hear about it, as well as many others, I'm sure.
** Please make sure any information you give out is declassified :-)
This article is long, so now is the time to bail out if you're not interested.
The Players
John Anthony Walker: Spy for 18 years. Total earnings around 1 million dollars.
He is now serving a life term.
Jerry Whitworth: Walker's best friend. Recruited in Sept 1974.
Spied for about 10 years before quitting. He is now
serving a life term plus 365 years. He will be eligible for
parole when he is 107 years old.
Arthur Walker: John Walker's brother. Gave low level documents once.
He is serving a life sentence.
Michael Walker: John Walker's son. Started spying in 1984.
He is currently serving 25 years as part of his father's plea
bargain.
The Story
John Walker joined the Navy in 1955. He served as a radioman
aboard a nuclear sub in the Atlantic. During this time, he took his savings
and opened up a bar. Shortly after it opened, he left for sea duty, leaving
his wife to take care of the bar. The bar soon ran into financial troubles.
Instead of walking away from the bar, he decided to start selling secrets
to earn the extra money he wanted. In Dec 1967, John Walker walked into
the Russian Embassy with a key list for the KL47, and old cipher machine.
This was intended to demonstrate to the Soviets that he had the security
clearance needed to deliver top secret material. He offered to sell secrets
dealing with U.S. submarine warfare, but the soviets were more interested
with his access to codes and cipher machines. At this time, he was stationed
at Norfolk, Va., working at the Communication Center for Submarine Forces in
the Atlantic.
He collected his material and delivered it every 6 months. In 18
years of spying, he made 30 successful drops. His major deliveries during
this time were key lists and tech manuals (schematics, etc) for the
KWR37 and KW7 machines. Walker claims that at the time, these two machines
accounted for 80 percent of the coded radio information. With the schematics
to these machines, the Soviets could built exact duplicates of these machines.
However, key lists were required to read the coded info. Eventually, the
Soviets would be reading the codes from these machines without the
key lists.
In 1969, his wife discovered his activities. In the interview, he
jokingly referred to the fact that he should have killed her then, but it
wasn't in his nature. Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to San Diego
to become an instructor at the radio school. His access to classified material
dropped off during this period, but he was not idle. He met Whitworth here
and spent about 1 year preparing Whitworth for recruitment.
His next tour of duty was on the supply ship USS Niagara Falls from
1971 to 1974. This was his most lucrative post. Walker claimed he had
access to the KWR37, KW7, KG14, and KY8. The KY8 is a tactical voice
scrambled radio used widely at the time in Vietnam by ground forces and
pilots. When John Walker delivered the information of this radio, the
Soviets said they were not interested, implying they were getting the info
from another source. They also showed a lack of interest for the KG14,
a subsystem of the KWR37. In 1972, John Walker came up for his 5 year security
update. Walker was afraid his wife had talked to her relatives and he feared
that the security check would uncover his activities. Rather than risk this,
he forged his clearance check by stealing the proper forms. The stamp he
needed to authenticate his form was obtained by tracing the imprint of the
stamp and taking the imprint to a place that made stamps. He just placed the
forgery in his record and no security check was requested for him.
In the summer of 1974, John Walker was transferred to Norfolk and
promoted to Staff Communications Officer for the Atlantic Surface Force
Commander. Again, his access to crytographic information was limited. To
make up for this, in Sept 1974, he confronted Whitworth about becoming a
spy for an unnamed "allied" nation, supposedly Israel. Whitworth agreed
to spy. To this day, Whitworth claims he never suspected that Russia was
receiving all this info.
Whitworth's first delivery to Walker was when Whitworth was stationed
at Diego Garcia, an island listening post in the Indian Ocean. Here he
had access to lots of cryptographic data, but he claims that he never sold
any crypto. His next posting was on the USS Constellation from 1976 to 1978.
John Walker claims that Whitworth delivered data on the KWR37 and KW7 during
this time. In 1978, Whitworth was transferred to the USS Niagara Falls, where
he continued to deliver cryptographic data.
In 1976, John Walker left the Navy and started a detective agency
called Counterspy. Counterspy was featured on the t.v. show "P.M. Magazine"
complete with the 007 theme music. Eventually, John would bring his son
Michael into the business to teach him some of the tricks he would need to
know when he started spying. After Walker left the Navy, he made a total
of 10 trips to Vienna to deliver information. On one of these trips, Walker
was told not to bother with the new series of cipher machines. Walker concluded
that the Soviets were getting this information from another source, or that
the Soviets no longer needed key lists to read the coded transmissions.
In 1980, Whitworth was transferred to Alameda, where he worked on
installing a new (unnamed) cipher system. Also at this time, radiomen were no
longer given complete tech manuals on the cipher machines and the key lists,
which used to be in a book good for 30 days, were now contained in a canister
which could not be reloaded. This made it harder to get the key lists, but
it was just a minor problem. In 1983, while stationed on the Enterprise,
Whitworth decided to get out of the Navy and spy ring.
John decided that he had to replace Whitworth. He badgered his brother
Arthur until he gave John two low level secrets. The Soviets paid for these,
but told John not to bring them more stuff from this source. John started
trying to recruit his daughters, who turned down his suggestions, but did
not report his activities. However, Michael Walker had been working with his
father at Counterspy for some time now. John had been preparing him for a
career in the Navy which would give him access to the kind of information
John needed. When John suggested that Michael join the Navy and spy for him,
Michael, who was willing to do anything to please his father, agreed. In
1984, Michael was stationed on the Nimitz, where he started delivering
complete battle plans and parameters for various weapons systems.
On May 19, 1985, while making a drop, John Walker was finally
caught by the FBI.
John Walker was initially reluctant to tell the FBI any details,
but eventually he told all. The NSA, which is responsible for code making
and code breaking for the CIA, State Department, Treasury, Navy, Army, Air
Force, and Marine Corps, was stunned by the extent to which their codes
were compromised. Two anonymous NSA officials confirmed that the Soviets
were reading KWR37 info regularly, possibly without the key lists. Four
anonymous NSA sources confirmed that the KW7, the most widely used system,
was completely broken and could be read without key lists.
John Walker freely admits that in wartime the information he sold
could mean the difference between winning and losing. However, he claims
that no real harm was done since we were not at war with anyone. In the
interview, he said, "K-mart protects their toothpaste better than the Navy
protects their top secrets."
A recent Congressional report claimed that the lessons from the Walker
case still haven't been learned. There are approximately 1 trillion documents
labelled secret and approximately 4 million people with access to those
documents. There are not enough loyalty checks on people once they get
access to secret information, which is when they are of interest to foreign
powers looking to recruit spies.
It should be noted that the Navy declined to comment on this matter
when Frontline went to them. Most of this info is from John Walker, so
there may be a bit of exaggeration involved, but I believe the majority
is fairly accurate.
I find myself wondering how many men died in Vietnam because of
information Walker sold to the Russians, who could have sold it to North
Vietnam.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
James P. Willey haydon@arrakis.NEVADA.EDU
Makes one wish we had the death penalty for treason.
Disclaimer: I'm responsible for my employers opinions, not vice versa.
Kraneberg, an oldtime historian of [North] American technology, once said-
in the form of a First Law- "Technology is neither positive, negative,
nor neutral."
Indeed. It is all three.
And omnipresent.
(Robotech)