A Case of Spy Vs. Spy

Back in the early 1970s, Navy Communications Watch Officer John Walker took a hard look at his best friend Jerry Whitworth and, as he later testified, sized him up as "a possible recruit in the spying business." After more than a decade in the Navy, Walker wanted to retire from the service and was searching for someone who could feed him the kind of inside information that he had been selling to his Soviet contacts at monthly fees ranging from less than $2,000 to $4,000. For three years, said Walker, he spent a great deal of time trying to "subtly explore Whitworth's attitude toward espionage." In 1974, at a bar in San Diego, Walker finally persuaded his buddy, who had recently left his Navy communications job, to re-enlist and supplement his pay by handing over decoding information and top-secret cables. "I envisioned a plan where I would work as a go-between between a new recruit and the Soviets," said Walker during Whitworth's long-running espionage trial in San Francisco. His testimony amounted to an object lesson in what friendship should not be.

Spy Master Walker, 48, claims that he never revealed to Whitworth the identity of the high-paying buyer. He hinted instead that their information might be going to a private defense firm, the Mafia or a U.S. ally like Israel. But near the end of their decade-long "business" relationship, Walker testified, Whitworth became edgy, fearful of getting caught by the FBI. "I found myself in the middle of Mr. Whitworth's wishy-washiness," Walker recalled on the witness stand. "I couldn't see the FBI as any threat at all." Whitworth's trepidation, it turned out, was entirely justified. Last spring Walker was arrested by FBI agents. Two weeks later, Whitworth, now 46, turned himself in.

The Walker ring, which the U.S. Government has called the most damaging spy enterprise in 30 years, was exposed by John Walker's former wife Barbara. John Walker, who is expected to serve a life sentence, agreed to testify against Whitworth in exchange for leniency for his son Michael, 23, a Navy seaman also recruited by Walker who is now serving 25 years for espionage.

Doodling as he was questioned, occasionally smiling coyly, Ringleader Walker described a venal world made glamorous by the trappings of a cheap thriller: the miniature Minox camera for photographing documents, the clandestine drops in suburban Virginia, the rendezvous with Soviet agents in Vienna and Casablanca. "Do not squander your money," Walker said his Soviet contacts told him. "Don't buy a Mercedes."

Defense attorneys have argued that by making Walker its star witness, the prosecution is "using the shark to catch the minnow." Whitworth's defense may rest on Walker's testimony that the master spy never informed his friend that the stolen secrets were destined for the Soviets. In his final testimony, however, Walker said that "common sense" should have told Whitworth just who the buyer was.