Forgive me if this sounds harsh, but perhaps one of the most dangerous snakes that ever served in the U.S. military is no more:
Retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer John A. Walker Jr. died Thursday at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Medical Center in Butner. The cause of death was not immediately released. He was 77 and had been imprisoned for nearly 29 years in one of the longest lasting legacies of the Cold War.
For those not familiar, Walker, head of the infamous Walker Spy Ring, began selling top secret U.S./NATO data that he was privy to while a navy crypto guy and ship’s CMS custodian. This included everything from codes and ciphers, to electronic data, to the ins and outs of the SOSSUS net that was used to track the Soviet Union’s submarines– long thought to be the ace in the hole for NATO fleets if the balloon ever went up on WWIII.
It was never about ideology. Walker was not a communist. He was not enamored with the People’s Republic. He just wanted cash and over a nearly twenty year period Moscow gave him nearly a million bucks to be the Navy’s Judas.
Walker started tricking for the Russkis in 1967 during the Vietnam war and when he retired in 1976 he talked his son, brother, and friends into picking up where he left off. Walker then ran a detective agency in Virginia that specialized in counter-surveillance, using those skills to help keep the ring one step ahead of prison. Finally in 1985, the ring was rolled up (only because his ex-wife dropped a dime to the FBI) and the information that was spilled at the (partial) debriefing was epic.
Essentially the Soviets could read the military mail of the US Navy to a large degree for nearly two decades. Had World War Three erupted in that time period, his treachery could have cost thousands of lives and put the West at a strategic disadvantage.
It is believed by some that the real reason the North Koreans seized the USS Pueblo in 1968 was so that the Soviets could use its machines to help process the data they were being fed by their loyal helper Walker. With the Pueblo‘s KL-7 “Adonis” cipher machine, KW-37 “Jason” cipher system, and Walker’s data cards, know how, manuals to fix them and keep them running and tender help, the Reds were in business as these machines were still being used as late as the 1990s.
In 1990, The New York Times journalist John J. O’Connor reported, “It’s been estimated by some intelligence experts that Mr. Walker provided enough code-data information to alter significantly the balance of power between Russia and the United States”
Walker’s son walked after serving 15 years as he was a low-level player in the ring. Walker’s brother, former LTCDR Arthur Walker died earlier this year in prison while serving three life sentences, leaving Walker’s family friend, Ex- Navy Chief Petty Officer Jerry A. Whitworth, still serving his 365 year sentence at United States Penitentiary, Atwater.
Pueblo is still imprisoned in the DPRK for that matter.
