On August 28, 2014, inside the U.S. federal prison, a spy who had delivered a "catastrophic" blow to the U.S. Navy, John F. Kennedy, was killed in a U.S. federal prison. John A. Walker died.
The former U.S. Navy senior warrant officer was arrested by the FBI in 1985 and eventually sentenced to life in prison for espionage. If he hadn't died of illness, the spy who voluntarily "hired" the former Soviet Union would have been able to get parole in another year, starting in 2015, but he didn't wait for that day!
During the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the practice of installing spies on each other has long been no secret, such as those "well-known big spies" such as Aldridge Ames, known as the "CIA mole", Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg, known as the "spy couple", the most successful spy Polyakov and so on.
But Unlike these trained "professionals," John Walker's espionage job was all about being a "part-time" or "extra money" earner. It was such a junior officer in the U.S. Navy who continued to provide intelligence services to the Soviet Union for nearly 20 years during his service, exporting more than 1 million pieces of encrypted intelligence and passwords, information on the location of nuclear submarines, and even all the combat plans and troop deployment information he had access to during the Vietnam War, which was now underway.
According to caspar Weinberg, then U.S. Secretary of Defense, who concluded afterwards, the Soviet Navy was able to gain nearly equal power to the U.S. Navy in a short period of time during the Cold War, all thanks to John Walker's espionage intelligence. He provided Moscow with information including weapons and sensor data, naval tactics, surface ships, submarine training programs, combat readiness, and tactics.
The New York Times commented: "The spy network formed by Walker is one of the most destructive espionage activities in the history of the United States."
john k John A. Walker
Not only that, but if the Soviet spy who "lurked" in the U.S. Navy had not fallen out with his ex-wife, it is estimated that until now the FBI would not have been able to focus on such a seemingly inconspicuous but important low-level officer.
At the same time, this Mr. Walker not only "sold" himself to the Soviet KGB, but also "pulled his brother and son down the water", so that many books dedicated to Walker later gave the view that Walker's family can be called "007 house".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > so who is this John Walker? </h1>
Born in 1937, John Anthony Walker Jr was not a happy childhood, with his father doing nothing and his mother leaving early. Walker, who dropped out of high school, worked as a salesman, a movie receptionist, and occasionally involved in theft, running all day to make ends meet.
This life lasted until 1955, when Walker was again arrested for theft, and this time he had two choices: either to serve in prison or to serve in the military. Eventually, the cynical Playboy chose to enlist, and in late 1955 Walker joined the U.S. Navy as a radioman, serving on a destroyer and then on the aircraft carrier USS Forrest.
In the winter of 1957, Walker met Barbara Crowley, and soon after the two married, they gave birth to three daughters in three years, during which time Walker himself tried to open a bar, but owed a large foreign debt due to poor management.
John Walker of his youth
In 1960 he successfully passed the submarine school exam and was assigned to the Razorback (SS-394) submarine for Pacific deployment, and in July 1962 the submarine he served carried out the U.S. Navy's high-altitude nuclear test mission, and Walker, as a radioman, attracted the attention of fleet commanders with his efficiency and excellent reports.
In 1963 Walker was promoted to Chief Sergeant of the Radio Room with the rank of lieutenant. It was at this time that he began to come into contact with the submarine's cryptographic equipment, and before that Walker passed the psychological and background assessment of the reliability of the Navy personnel, that is, the soldier was granted this right after experiencing the "political examination".
After the U.S. Navy's Lafayette-class strategic nuclear submarine, the USS Simon Bolivar, was commissioned in 1965, Walker was appointed chief of the submarine's radio room.
Lafayette-class strategic nuclear submarine
Over the next decade, Walker served on six important warships or submarines, a position that had always been the position of chief of radio rooms with access to some of the Navy's top secrets, which facilitated his future betrayal of intelligence.
Although he had a smooth career, his private life was relatively bad. Traveling to sea for a long time made him doubt the loyalty of his wife Barbara, and in addition, walker invested in several businesses that did not make any profit, resulting in high debts, and in order to pay off the debt, he had worked part-time as a taxi driver before he engaged in espionage, but unfortunately it was a drop in the bucket for the high foreign debt!
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="18" > "self-nominated" naval spies</h1>
It is generally believed that Walker chose to be a spy in order to make money faster;
It has also been analyzed that Walker's contact with the Soviets was largely due to his dissatisfaction with the U.S. government at the time, and Walker believed that John F. Walker was the only one who had been in contact with the Soviets. F. Kennedy was assassinated by the big capitalists in order to continue the Cold War, and the warrant officer did not want to continue the Cold War;
But according to Walker's own confession after the arrest, he believed that the Soviet Union was not an opponent of the United States at all, that the Cold War was a complete "joke", and that the information he provided to the Soviet Union could be paid handsomely for himself on the one hand, and that the relationship between the two sides could be balanced on the other;
Of course, this is an afterthought, and more often people will always look at economic interests, not to mention that Walker is also saddled with a large amount of foreign debt.
One day in October 1967, Warrant Officer Walker, who had been appointed head of the Communications Headquarters of the Submarine Force of the Atlantic Fleet, made a bold decision so that the numbers in his "checkbook" would no longer be negative, and he copied a key document at the Communications Headquarters and went straight to the Soviet Embassy in Washington!
After Finding the relevant person in charge, Walker said that he was willing to exchange the intelligence of the US military for remuneration and hoped to "cooperate" for a long time!
In the face of such a "great gift," the people of the Soviet Embassy were obviously not fully prepared, because they could not judge whether the "spy" officer who was automatically sent to the door was "sincerely surrendering" or whether the Americans had resorted to a "plan to get away with it."
Yakov Lukasevics, who was in charge of the embassy's internal security, called the KGB's station chief in Washington, D.C., Boris Alexandrovich Solomatin, directly and asked what to do with the matter.
Lukasevich said to Solomatin: "Here I have come a "blessing man" (code word), who walked directly from the street into our embassy.
The documents walked with him were then transferred to Solomating, who coincidentally was also a "lord" of great concern for the Navy, as he grew up in the black Sea port of Odessa.
Boris Alexandrovich Solomating
At the same time, walker's copy of the document also revealed a key information, that is, the password settings of the US Navy KL-47 encryption machine next month. Before that, the Soviets had obtained relevant information from other spies, but the specific content was not mastered, and the list of file keys provided by the naval soldier was basically the same as the format obtained earlier, which showed that Walker was taking "real things"!
KL-47 encryption machine
After the documents were identified, Solomatin personally received the U.S. Navy warrant officer, and a senior KGB officer met directly with an active U.S. non-commissioned officer, an unprecedented event in history.
During the two-hour secret conversation, Solomating was very satisfied with the US Navy warrant officer, because he never expressed any praise for the Soviet Union, nor did he have the most whitewashed words, the purpose was very simple and "rough", just to make money!
According to Solomatin's past experience, the general "liar" routine is to first praise the Soviet Union, and then show a strong sense of belonging to the Soviet Union, most of such people have received professional training. But Walker was completely different, he only wanted to make money, so the two sides finally reached a "cooperation intention", this time Walker received a "reward" of $500, and agreed that Walker would receive a "salary" of $1,000 for every top-secret document he provided.
Don't underestimate this 1,000 US dollars, 1,000 US dollars in the late 60s is equivalent to about 7700 US dollars now, about 40,000 yuan, quite impressive!
Thus, John Walker began his career as a "spy", and Solomating paid special attention to the "sincere" non-staff member. He deliberately appointed his deputy Oleg Kalukin as Walker's liaison, and naval spy Yuri Linkov as the intelligence receiver to cooperate with his actions.
Oleg Kaludin
In order to be able to find a suitable intelligence "trading place", Kalugain spent several weeks searching for hidden "dead ends" in Washington City, and after the two sides agreed that after Walker put the intelligence in the location designated by Kalugain, Linkov would put the dollar and the next intelligence needs that the Soviet Union wanted to obtain in another position, without contact with each other, so as to avoid being discovered by the FBI.
For the first few years, Walker provided the Soviets with a list of keys for the KW-7, KL-47 rotor machines in use by the U.S. military at the time, and other key cryptographic materials that allowed the Soviets to easily crack the encrypted communications of the U.S. military.
Then Walker's intelligence began to become rich, from battle orders, war plans to technical manuals, etc., as long as he had access to the intelligence, the warrant officer was almost not stingy, all packaged and sold.
Since a steady income, Walker's debts have been paid off, his family has moved to a more upscale home, and his bar business has improved a little bit because of the high salary of a good bartender. But it also aroused his wife's suspicions, but at first it was only suspicion.
In 1969 Walker was transferred to the Naval Training Center of San Diego, where he met his student, Jerry Whitworth. Because of his appearance and Walker's "brainwashing", Whitworth was eventually developed into his own downline.
Gemery Whitworth
In 1971, Walker left the training center to become the communications director of a supply ship, at this time he was not far from retirement, in order to be able to keep this "part-time job", Walker recommended Whitworth to become a naval radioman, and with the cooperation of the two, the U.S. Navy intelligence was continuously sent to the Soviet Union.
Walker retired from the Navy in 1976, but by this time he had realized that Whitworth was no longer fit for the task of "stealing" intelligence, because his student was grumpy and greedy, and had used the same intelligence to "blackmail" the Soviets many times. The Soviet Union on the other side was also angry that Walker had recruited a "downline" for stealth, so in 1983 Walker "pulled down" his son Michael Lance Walker, who served on the aircraft carrier NIMitz. In the years that followed, Michael provided Walker with about 1,500 top-secret naval documents, including information on the carrier's weapons system, nuclear weapons control parameters, command procedures, friend or foe identification systems, and stealth methods.
Not only that, but because of the lucrative pay, Walker's brother Arthur L. Walker joined in, sending messages such as the ship's maintenance records and the ship's damage control manual.
Of course, Walker's recruitment didn't work every time, and he was rejected when recruiting his daughter!
Walker was paid a total of about $1 million for selling intelligence before his arrest in 1985, and Solomating, who recruited Walker, was promoted to deputy director of the KGB's intelligence bureau in 1968 and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="45" > how much influence did Walker's intelligence have on the Soviet Union? </h1>
First of all, the U.S. Navy's cryptographic communications were basically controlled by the Soviet Union;
Second, the U.S. Navy's underwater eavesdropping system was cracked, and Walker's intelligence made the Soviet Navy realize that the cavitation of the propellers of its submarines was used by the United States to locate submarines. So the Soviet shipyard made a special effort in this regard, and finally relied on the milling machine provided by Toshiba in Japan to completely solve a similar problem, which also triggered a world-famous "Toshiba Incident";
Toshiba executives apologized for the milling machine incident
Third, walker's intelligence to the Soviet Union about the Vietnam War was likely to have indirectly reduced the effect of the large U.S. bombing efforts there;
Of course, these are only a few, and many of them remain declassified, but it is certain that Walker's intelligence has undoubtedly played a huge role in improving the Soviet Navy.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="50" > the "fall" of the Walker family</h1>
The fall of the spy is still somewhat legendary, and the key person who reported him was Walker's ex-wife Barbara Crowley.
Had it not been for the mother, who loves to drink and worries about her children, who called the FBI four times to report it, Walker might not have been noticed by the U.S. authorities for the rest of her life.
Walker and Barbara divorced in 1976, and she began to drink heavily after barbara had suspected her husband in her early years, and when he failed in recruiting her daughter, the mother became increasingly worried about her child's future. So she decided to expose Walker's espionage to the authorities, but the "drunken" lady was so drunk before every phone call that the FBI received was either vague or snoring, unable to describe the specific events, and the staff did not pay attention to the information they provided.
The only sober report was that when FBI personnel came to question her, Barbara drank a large glass of vodka before being questioned, and then told some of the specifics. However, the case-handling personnel will still be suspicious of the information they provided, and the report will be directly archived and processed after returning, and will no longer be ignored.
It wasn't until an FBI supervisor discovered the "vodka-laden" report a month later during a routine inspection of archived documents and forwarded it to superiors. With the intervention of the FBI and the Naval Bureau of Investigation, the case gradually became clear.
On May 20, 1985, John Walker was arrested by agents inside a motel, and his son was arrested on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. In the end, Walker was sentenced to life in prison, his son was sentenced to 25 years, and Whitworth was sentenced to 365 years in prison and fined $410,000.
Many observers believe walker's espionage created the U.S. Navy's most damaging security breach during the Cold War. Director of Naval Intelligence William H. Major General O. Studman declared that the court could not make any judgment to make up for its "unprecedented damage and betrayal."
Oleg Kalukin, a KGB official who originally managed Walker, wrote that he was "the most spectacular espionage case I've ever handled in the United States to date."
Nearly a decade after Walker's arrest, writer Pete Earley interviewed Boris Solomatin in Moscow, where he offered a more nuanced perspective. Solomartin declined to compare the Walker spy case to that of Aldridge Ames, a former CIA counterintelligence officer, noting that agents' exploits must be judged on the content of the information they provide.
Aldridge Ames
Ames provided names to Soviets who spied for the United States, thus influencing the spy war between the KGB and the CIA, and Ames's information was used to identify traitors, which was a one-time incident. But Walker not only provided us with ongoing intelligence, but also helped us understand and study the actual ideas of the U.S. military over time, and John Walker has been the main source of intelligence for the Soviet Navy's submarine missile forces. The KGB spy guru also noted that Walker helped the two superpowers avoid nuclear war by letting Moscow know the real intentions of the United States.