Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring (47 page)

Chapter 75

Arthur Walker’s court-appointed attorneys, Samuel H. Meekins, Jr., and J. Brian Donnelly, knew they didn’t have much of a defense. Their only hope for keeping Arthur out of prison depended on whether or not they could convince a federal judge to throw out Arthur’s incriminating statements to the FBI and his grand jury confession.

On July 12, Meekins tried to convince Judge J. Calvitt Clarke, Jr., during a court session closed to the public, that Arthur’s statements were taken illegally. A confession, in order to be admissible, must be “free and voluntary,” according to the U.S. Supreme Court, “and must not be extracted by any sort of threat or violence.”

Meekins claimed the government misled Arthur by suggesting that he wouldn’t be prosecuted if he helped the FBI buttress its case against John and if he, Arthur, could prove he didn’t give away anything valuable.

Meekins also suggested that Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Schatzow had tricked Arthur by telling him that his testimony before the grand jury would be sealed and couldn’t be used to prosecute him.

It was an easy defense for Meekins to argue because he believed it. Meekins had spent dozens of hours with Arthur at the Virginia Beach Correctional Center and had developed a genuine liking for him. He also had decided that Arthur was somewhat naive and easily manipulated.

Meekins did his best to undermine Agent Beverly Andress’s credibility. She was young and inexperienced – this was her first major investigation – Meekins pointed out. He also argued convincingly that the FBI had intentionally chosen not to tape record any of its interviews with Arthur so that only its version of those sessions could be presented in court.

Despite Meekins’s efforts, Judge Clarke ruled against Arthur’s motion. There was no evidence of government wrongdoing, he said.

Four days before Arthur was scheduled for trial, Meekins and Donnelly met to finalize their defense. There was none. Both men were former prosecutors and both agreed that a jury would convict Arthur based on his own statements. Regardless of what they did, Arthur was going to be found guilty of the first count filed against him – conspiracy to commit espionage – and it carried a potential life prison sentence.

Meekins and Donnelly met with Arthur and suggested that he try to cut a deal with the government. Why not offer to plead guilty, sparing the government the cost of a trial, and agree to testify against John, in return for a lesser sentence?

Arthur agreed.

The Justice Department would later act as if it never seriously considered any plea bargain offer with Arthur. In truth, it offered in early July to drop all of the charges against him except the conspiracy charge in return for his cooperation.

But that had been in July. Not August.

During the next four days, the government and Arthur’s attorneys talked round the clock trying to reach an agreement. They couldn’t.

And then, on August 5, one hour before Arthur’s trial was scheduled to begin, Meekins and Donnelly made a last-ditch offer. Arthur would plead guilty to conspiracy and nolo contendere to the other six counts. In effect, Judge Clarke could sentence Arthur as if he had pleaded guilty to all seven counts. There would be no point to proceeding with the trial. The government had won.

Much to Arthur’s shock, the Justice Department said no. The Reagan administration wanted full exposure.

“We were not going to give up the public’s right to see into an espionage case,” Stephen S. Trott, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, explained. “You don’t put a knife in your country’s back and come in and ask for some kind of deal.”

The government used Arthur’s trial to outline its case, not only against Arthur, but John. At times, Arthur seemed like a mere accessory as prosecutors talked about John’s role as ringleader.

During the third day, Arthur leaned over to Meekins, visibly upset.

“It’s that damn picture,” Arthur whispered, pointing to his left.

Earlier in the trial, federal prosecutors had introduced a large portrait of John Walker as evidence and during the lunch recess, someone had leaned the picture against the jury box so that it was now facing the defense table. Regardless of how Arthur sat, he had to look directly into his brother’s eyes.

Arthur’s attorneys didn’t call a single witness in his defense. It took Judge Clarke only fifteen minutes to find Arthur guilty of all seven counts filed against him.

Outside the courthouse, prosecutors admitted that the government never would have had a case against Arthur if he hadn’t voluntarily talked to FBI agents for thirty-five hours. Arthur Walker had literally talked himself into prison.

That night, Arthur was clearly shaken when he, Meekins, and I met together in the county jail. The folksy humor and blind optimism Arthur had shown on earlier nights was missing. At one point, he leaned close to the wire screen that separates prisoners and visitors.

“I’m no spy! I never intended to hurt my country. No way! No way!” he told us.

Arthur continued to complain. “There is no fairness anymore,” he said. “I mean, if you made a mistake and you were sorry and you tried to make up for it, everything would be okay in the end, right? Whatever happened to fair play? It just isn’t out there anymore, is it?”

“You’re wrong, Art,” replied Meekins, trying to calm his client. “There is fair play for robbers and rapists and even murderers. The court can cut them some slack, but not you. This case got too big, Art, too many headlines, too much television. It got bigger than you, Arthur, bigger than you.”

And then, Arthur asked a question that bewildered both Meekins and me: “What’s the worst I can expect, Sam, from the judge? What do you think, maybe a two-year suspended sentence? I won’t have to go to prison, will I? I mean, come on, I didn’t pass anything that was really valuable to John. The judge has got to realize that.”

As incredible as it later seemed, Arthur’s questions appeared to be genuine. He seemed to honestly believe that Judge Clarke would sentence him to a short jail term and then suspend that.

Meekins avoided answering.

The next step was a presentence investigation, he explained. Arthur had to prepare for that. He had to think about what he was going to tell the court-appointed investigator who would come to analyze him.

After Arthur was taken away, Meekins and I left the jail and stepped into the cool night. Meekins paused beside his car in the parking lot as if to review one last moment of the day’s traumatic events. He needed to explain some things, he said. Like Arthur, he needed to talk.

He felt badly, he explained, because he had misjudged the government. Meekins had thought the Justice Department would go easy on Arthur if he cooperated. Instead, the government claimed Arthur was a veteran spy and alleged that he might have actually been the brains behind the spy ring. Meekins couldn’t believe it.

Where was the physical evidence – the money that Arthur would have made spying for John? he asked.

Meekins had spent hours talking to Rita in the modest kitchen of the Walkers’ home. He had seen their financial records and so had I. There was no hidden cash.

Where was the proof? The only confirmation that Arthur Walker was a spy came from Arthur’s own mouth. If Arthur had been smart enough to hide the fact that he was a skilled KGB spy, then why had he so stupidly confessed?

After several minutes of such conjecture, Meekins became quiet. He was tired. He would save his questions for later when he didn’t feel so emotional. He would dissect his decisions like a scientist slicing open a frog, but not now. Not tonight.

He was still emotionally raw. He wanted to go home to his wife and children. He wanted to have a few scotches to unwind.

But before he left there was still something that he had to say. Meekins felt queasy about what he had just witnessed in the jail.

“I really don’t believe, in my heart, that Arthur Walker truly understands what’s going to happen next,” Meekins explained. “I don’t think Arthur understands that he’s about to be sent to prison for the rest of his life.”

“Do you think Arthur Walker was a spy?” I asked.

Meekins didn’t answer quickly. A big man, with bright red hair, an instantaneous grin, and self-effacing laugh, Meekins had served in the Air Force in Vietnam during the bloody Tet Offensive and had lost several friends there. He had been decorated for gallantry. He had no sympathy for spies, but on that night, Meekins had sympathy for Arthur Walker.

“My feeling was this: if you define a spy as someone who intentionally set out to injure his country or to help a foreign power, then Arthur Walker isn’t a spy. I just don’t believe Arthur gave John those documents because he intended to hurt the United States,” Meekins said. “Arthur did it because he wanted to please his brother. He did it for John.”

Chapter 76

John wasn’t about to be represented by a public defender. He knew what they were: liberal, long-haired lawyers anxious to protect the poor.

“Screw ‘em!”

John wanted the best, some nationally known defense lawyer who, he believed, would take his case for free just to get his name in the newspaper.

But when John met Fred Warren Bennett on May 23 in the Baltimore City Jail, he changed his mind about public defenders. Bennett, a short feisty man with a carefully trimmed beard and moustache, gave John what he later described as an awe-inspiring pitch.

“What kind of attorney do you want representing you?” Bennett asked. “There are three things to consider. First, is he a criminal lawyer or some guy who does civil and tax work too? Is he any good? Does he get people off? Is he respected and feared by prosecutors?

“Second, is he familiar with the Baltimore courts? Does he know the prosecutor and the judges? Does he know how the game is played here?

“And last, can he put in the time and financial resources necessary for a big case like this?”

The Federal Public Defender’s office in Baltimore could do everything

John needed and do it better than anyone else, Bennett claimed. It had two full-time criminal investigators at its disposal, huge financial resources, sufficient time, and, best of all, it had Fred Warren Bennett.

At age forty-three, Bennett had spent nearly half his life practicing criminal law – always on the side of the defendant.

“I’m too liberal to prosecute,” he explained to me later. “I wouldn’t be comfortable getting up and asking for one day of jail time for anybody.”

After graduating from American University in 1966, Bennett spent twelve years in private practice, often taking criminal cases that no one else would touch. Even his wife frequently tired of Fred Bennett’s penchant for defending the dregs of society, particularly after one sensational rape-murder case when a neighbor said that she hoped Fred Bennett “fried” along with his client in the electric chair.

But Bennett never questioned his own motives, and he met anyone who criticized him with the coolness of an attorney with justice on his side.

Most of the time Bennett was able to convince his critics that everyone deserved a fair trial and the best attorney possible. The fact that he taught Sunday school at a Lutheran church and slept well at night attested to his own satisfaction with his reasoning.

In 1978, Bennett moved into public defender work in a crime-infested suburban county of Washington, D.C. His office oversaw five thousand cases per year, and he handled the most sensational of them. Often he became so emotionally involved in the cases that it threatened his health. Once he sobbed openly in court after a client was convicted during an emotional trial.

Later, he took over the Federal Public Defenders Office.

John was impressed by Bennett’s enthusiasm and obvious salesmanship, but that wasn’t the deciding factor.

“Fred believed me when I told him something,” John explained later. “I liked that.”

Bennett quickly realized the case against John was persuasive. Wolfinger and Hunter had done a masterful job. So Bennett approached John about negotiating a guilty plea. He explained his plan in nautical terms.

“We are on a sinking ship,” he told John. “So are Arthur, Michael, and Jerry Whitworth. Whoever gets off the ship first and gets to the U.S. Attorney is going to get the best deal. Whoever is left on the ship after a deal is cut gets screwed and sinks.”

The trick, Bennett explained, is knowing when to jump ship.

“If we appear too eager,” he said, “then we aren’t going to get as good a deal as if we hang in there for a while and file motions, threaten to litigate, and make them come to us. But we’ve got to be careful not to overdo it or we’ll be the ones who go down.”

The only person that John really had to worry about, Bennett added, was Jerry Whitworth.

Arthur didn’t have much to offer in exchange for a deal and Michael already had confessed. But Jerry had provided John documents for ten years and the government was anxious to know how much harm those classified secrets had done.

Bennett put in a telephone call to Whitworth’s two attorneys and talked openly to them about plea negotiations. Both sides agreed to keep each other informed about such dealings.

With John’s approval, Bennett launched a two-prong defense. Publicly, Bennett attacked the government’s case full force. Unlike Arthur’s attorneys, Bennett’s posture was to make life as difficult as possible for federal prosecutors.

But behind the scenes, Bennett worked hard at trying to cut a deal for John.

“I knew I was down the toilet,” John recalled. “The press and politicians were responsible for that. It was going to be impossible for me to get a fair trial with all the leaks by the Navy and fucking politicians calling me the worst spy in history. So Fred suggested we adopt what he called a ‘slow guilty plea.’ We were going to drive them insane by appealing everything for the next ten years. Obviously, I’d refuse to testify or talk about what I had given to the Soviets or about the tradecraft that we used unless a deal was cut.”

John knew he was headed to prison for life, but he also knew that the parole board and prison system operate under mandatory guidelines that could make it possible for him to be paroled, no matter how unpopular he was, if he played his cards right. He also wanted to do something to help Michael.

“I didn’t want Michael behind bars all of his life,” he said. “Michael had to be the first one out and later I could join him.”

So John agreed with Bennett about negotiating and on July 2, they held their first secret meeting with the government.

“We had agreed to a very limited debriefing of John to show his bona fide credibility,” Bennett recalled. The government was anxious to find out the identities of John’s fellow spies because some questions had been raised about the appearance of the letter A in John’s notes.

During the four-hour debriefing session, John insisted that only Arthur, Jerry, and Michael had provided classified information to him. Gary Walker, he said, hadn’t passed anything, and the letter A meant nothing. It was just another code name for Whitworth.

When asked to describe the kinds of documents that he had stolen, John announced glibly, “If I had access to it, color it gone.”

But John became nervous when he was asked how he started as a spy.

“John started telling us this wild and totally ridiculous story,” Hunter recalled later, “about how he went down to apply for a job at a Yellow Cab Company in Norfolk and met these two mysterious characters, and it was so awful, I felt funny writing this stuff down. It was just total nonsense. “

John was given a polygraph test after the briefing.

The machine indicated that John had been deceptive in two areas. He had lied about the number of persons helping him spy and about how he got started.

The lie detector results alarmed Bennett. The government was not going to be interested in plea bargaining if John intended to lie. He quickly huddled with his client in the corner.

“What the hell happened?”

“I once strapped a money belt on my mother when we were in Europe,” John said, explaining why the machine had indicated John was deceptive when asked about his spying partners.

“How about the other?”

“I lied about that, Fred, ‘cause I got started by walking into the Soviet embassy,” John explained. “How can I tell them that without blowing our defense?”

“At that point,” Fred Bennett recalled later, “John hadn’t even told me about the Soviet embassy. That was one piece of information he hadn’t been candid with me on. He had told me the story about the cab company.”

Bennett returned to the bargaining table.

“Okay,” Bennett said, “my client assures me that there are no other people involved. John had trouble with the polygraph machine because of some guilt feelings about his mother and a money belt and that’s all there is to that. There is no A.

“Secondly, my client can’t go into how he got started as a spy because it would reveal the cornerstone of our defense.”

Bennett thought he had been convincing, but as he surveyed the faces in the room, he had a sinking feeling. “The debriefing had turned into a fiasco,” he recalled. “Here we were trying to show how credible John was and he blew the polygraph.”

The government held another debriefing session with John shortly before Arthur’s trial in August. This time, federal prosecutors wanted to talk about Jerry Whitworth. John had plenty to say.

“I never would have squealed on Jerry,” John told me later. “I would have simply adopted a policy of hanging tough and telling the government, ‘Fuck you!’ But when Fred showed me the RUS letters, I was really pissed. Jerry had tried to sell me out, so as far as I was concerned, all promises were off.”

John was convincing, Hunter recalled, when he described Jerry’s participation as a spy. He made it clear that if the government gave him a chance, he could provide more than enough rope to hang Jerry.

Still, the government held back.

John had followed Arthur’s trial in the newspapers and on television and had been furious with the outcome. He later bitterly accused the government of using Arthur to get to him. “I knew exactly what they were doing,” John said. “That trial was a demonstration put on for my benefit. It was like they took Art in a room and tied him to a chair and beat him with rubber hoses and then said to me, ‘See, you motherfucker, see what we did to your brother. Now just watch what we’re going to do to your son.’ I hated those bastards for what they did to Art.”

The trial scared John. If the government could convince a federal judge that Arthur, who had never met with any Russians, was guilty, then how hard would it be to convict John?

Bennett made one more effort to cut a deal. He spoke with several persons in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baltimore. He was told that John’s case was simply too political for a plea bargain. No one at the Justice Department was willing to negotiate a deal because of the heat they’d get from the press, Pentagon, and Congress.

On September 4, Bennett received an angry telephone call from James Larson, one of Whitworth’s two attorneys. Larson had just learned from the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Francisco that John Walker had been cooperating with the government by squealing on Jerry Whitworth. Larson was furious because he thought Bennett and he had agreed to advise each other before either entered into plea negotiations.

Why had the government told Whitworth’s attorneys about the debriefings?

Obviously, the Justice Department was playing an old game. It was telling Jerry that John had talked in the hope that Jerry would offer to testify against John.

After he received Larson’s call, Bennett decided there wasn’t much chance of a plea bargain and he began preparing for John’s trial in late October. But for the first time in his career, Bennett was stumped.

“Finally I decided that we would concede everything during my opening statement and then say, ‘So what?’ We were going to argue that the FBI couldn’t prove John was meeting the Soviets. It wasn’t much, but it was all we had.”

What Bennett didn’t know was that the Justice Department was also worried about John’s trial. The problem was Jerry Whitworth. Jerry was claiming he was innocent and refusing to cooperate. He seemed to think he could beat the charges against him, and several Justice Department attorneys regretfully agreed. There was simply not enough evidence to convict Whitworth – unless John Walker testified against him. John was the only person who could prove that Jerry had spied.

The only person who wasn’t distressed before his approaching trial was John.

“I was really getting excited about it,” he told me later. “I wanted to see fucking Barbara’s lying face and Laura’s fucking lying face. I know I am bad, and I know what I did, but these bitches didn’t have to lie about me and Art to the FBI, the way they had, you know, adding a bunch of stuff to their stories that didn’t happen.”

John was beginning to enjoy the notoriety. A national magazine sent him a letter naming him one of the ten top newsmakers of 1985. Every major television network and news program had requested an interview.

Five days before John’s trial, the government contacted Bennett. If John would testify against Jerry, a deal would be cut to help Michael.

John quickly agreed.

“I told Fred that he had timed it perfectly,” John recalled. “We weren’t going to be the ones that sank with the ship.”