A “Forrest Gump” Type Moment in Naval Intelligence; Summer 1985

I have had the mixed fortune to have been in close proximity in real time to several significant events in historical intelligence operations. One of these, which I can discuss, involved what is referred to as the Johnny Walker Spy Ring in the mid 1980’s.

In the latter part of May 1985, for my annual two weeks Naval Reserve training, I was attending a Reserve Foreign Counterintelligence Course at the then Naval Investigative Service Headquarters, Suitland, Maryland. This was preparatory to my taking command of NISRO 2794, a reserve intelligence unit which provided direct support to the Naval Investigative Service Regional Office, San Diego, California. The curriculum included both classroom lectures, as well as field exercises. One of those exercises involved mobile and foot surveillance. The reader will probably not be surprised that one of the best locations to “lose a tail” in the Washington, D.C. area, was and is Washington National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport). This fact being conditional upon current real time accurate knowledge of the status of the perpetual road repairs being conducted in the immediate area.

The following photograph is the complex that housed the Naval Investigative Service Headquarters, in Suitland, Maryland in the summer of 1985.

But the main element of this article focuses on the coincident timing of our course, and the breaking of one of the most infamous, if not the most infamous and damaging, cases of espionage in the annuals of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Naval Investigative Service and Naval Intelligence history. It is truly a pathetic chronicle on the then contemporary status of security within the United States Navy. It is no mere coincidence that shortly after the Walker case that the entire structure of physical and electronic security protocol/procedures underwent a comprehensive review/revision, and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) was established, with a revised mission and scope of operations.

John Anthony Walker, Jr. had risen to the rank of Chief Warrant Officer, and for eighteen years commencing in October 1967, had spied for the then Soviet Union. During the span of his nefarious activities, Oleg Kalugin, who fled from the Soviet Union, and the First Directorate of the KGB, was one of his chief handlers, as was MajGen Boris Aleksandrovich Solomatin (KGB Chief of Station, Soviet Embassy, Washington, D.C.

Of critical and massive compromise were cable traffic, photographs, and some key lists for five cryptographic systems, the KW-7, KY-8, KG-14, KWR-37 and KL-47, and this was the tip of the iceberg. Then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger concluded that the Soviet Union had made significant gains in naval warfare that were directly attributable to Walker’s treachery, including “access to weapons and sensor data and naval tactics, terrorist threats, and surface, submarine, and airborne training, readiness and tactics”. Walker’s son Michael alone copied more than 1,500 documents for the KGB while serving as a yeoman in USS Nimitz (CVN-68), including material on weapon systems, nuclear weapons control, command procedures, hostile identification and stealth methods, and contingency target lists. Over the span of his espionage additional documentation encompassed operational orders, war plans, technical manuals, and intelligence digests. The KGB further devised and furnished Walker with an electronic device that could read the KL-47’s rotor wiring and gave him a miniature Minox camera. All of this damage assessment excludes the further probability of United States Air Force B-52 operational plans and schedules during the Vietnam conflict having been conveyed by the KGB to the North Vietnamese government, in near real time (This element however, has never been confirmed; see interview with Boris Solomatin below).

The following two photographs show John Walker using the Minox camera provided by his KGB handlers, and the briefcase containing the KL-47 rotor reader.

Certainly as serious as the compromise of our cryptographic systems, was the irreparable damage Walker did in revealing highly advanced United States Navy submarine technology achievements. This author can personally substantiate the severity of that loss, having worked at General Dynamics/Electric Boat on the 616/626/628/640 Class SSB(N)s in my civilian career as a weapons systems engineer/threat analyst, as well as in Naval Intelligence specializing in antisubmarine warfare against the Soviet Submarine Force. These included crucial secrets about techniques for quieting our submarines, such as acoustically isolating/cushioning main propulsion and electrical generation equipment to prevent sound vibrations resonating through the hull. As a direct result of Walker's espionage the Soviet Navy also learned of the deficiency in the design of their submarine propellers resulting in detectable noise levels resulting from cavitation. Through this knowledge they obtained a significant design improvement with the combined acquisition of computer aided design (Toshiba Heavy Industries) and precision large scale machining (Kongsberg Fabrik). Literally billions of dollars, and hundreds of man/years in research and development, to say nothing of both the strategic and tactical advantage in submarine and ant-submarine warfare had been lost.     

In my personal opinion, regardless of having pleaded guilty to several counts of espionage, due to the severity of the crimes Walker truly deserved to be executed. He died of natural causes in federal prison in 2014 at 77 years of age. I'm being relatively kind compared to the pronouncements of then Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, who was livid over the agreement Secretary Weinberger had struck. He stated that he would have applied one of the penalties for treason from the days of the American Revolution. As Lehman quoted it was:

     "That you...be hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead, but that you be taken down again, and whilst you are yet alive, your bowels be taken out and burnt before your face, and that afterwards your head be severed from body and your body divided into four quarters....And may God Almighty have mercy on your soul." 

A map and instructions for a dead drop provided by Walker to his KGB handlers.

 It is of interest that in a contemporary unclassified booklet published by the Naval Investigative Service Command entitled ESPIONAGE, Walker was innocuously listed along with a series of cases which included Jonathan Jay Pollard, Samuel Loring Morison, and Clayton John Lonetree.

   

At that precise point in time Walker's son Michael (a member of the spy ring) was arrested, we were conducting the “hound and hare” surveillance exercises, previously referred to, throughout the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. It is a virtual certainty that the KGB Chief of Station (Rezidentura, it may still have been MajGen Boris Aleksandrovich Solomatin, but more likely his successor), observing these “Keystone Cops” semi-professional efforts, was convinced they were intended as decoys to that which the FBI, NIS, and other intelligence assets had deployed in the area, and were all over any of his personnel who happened to be a foot in the area. It above my pay grade and even the clearances I held at the time, to either confirm or deny, those actual activities. However, I’m sure we “lengthened his day”, and I personally take great satisfaction in having been part of that effort. Interested readers may want to refer to; https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1995/04/23/interview-with-the-spy-master/991047ec-d445-4fae-a3d5-944c4093bb0c/?utm_term=.dd47398d9141

Simultaneous with our classes and exercises was the arrest in the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) of Michael Lance Walker (Walker’s son). Nimitz was at that time on a port call in Haifa, Israel. The NIS agent afloat was directed to transfer young Walker directly into the custody of additional NIS agents waiting pier-side. By that point in time NIS had already instituted the Special Agent Afloat Program. There was a NIS Special Agent embarked in all the Navy’s aircraft carriers, each serving a one year tour of duty. I do not know who the agent was in the Nimitz at the time.

Our classroom was down a very long hallway from the office of the then NIS Assistant Director for Counter-Intelligence S/A Victor J. Palmucci. Director Palmucci, being a retired navy captain, and of Italian-American ancestry, had a “Take Charge” type of personality. While obviously a "slight" exaggeration, it seemed at the time and to this day, that he did not really need his STU-II series secure telephone to convey his direct verbal instructions to the NIS agents waiting in Haifa. And that was one of my “Forrest Gump” moments. Subsequently for this, and other cases in a long and distinguished career, Victor Palmucci was awarded this nation's highest civilian award for intelligence service, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal.

If interested, readers can find more details on the John Walker Spy Case at; https://news.usni.org/2014/09/02/john-walker-spy-ring-u-s-navys-biggest-betrayal

A further instructive video on the Walker Spy Ring, specifically produced as a training film by the U.S. Navy, albeit now somewhat dated (1989) can be seen at; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8_cN9o7LT4 (cut and paste to view).

Another very interesting perspective on the Walker/KGB probable compromise of the KW-7 Cryptographic Communications System may be found in; An Analysis of the Systematic Security Weaknesses of the U.S. Navy Fleet Broadcasting System, 1967-1974, as Exploited by CWO John Walker, a thesis in partial fulfillment of a master’s degree by, MAJ Laura J. Heath, USA, Fort Levenworth, Kansas, 2005; http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a436930.pdf#page=1&zoom=1000,28,411

Subsequently our reserve NIS unit in San Diego provided a wide variety of support to the NIS Regional Office, San Diego, including counter-terrorism education and training to individual ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. At the time the regional office was under the command of CAPT John Duncan, with S/A Winston “Winn” Kuehl as SAC (Special Agent in Charge). In some respects it was very challenging as John Duncan was highly allergic to cigarette smoke, and Winn Kuehl was an inveterate chain smoker. But that is another story.