SpyTalk

It's not every day that a traitor writes a memoir.  

Kim Philby, the notorious Soviet agent in the senior ranks of the British secret service, did. But that was from the safety of his Moscow apartment. 

John Walker ranks himself above Philby, not to mention American turncoats Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen and Jonathan Pollard, in a new memoir, "My Life as a Spy."

And he may be right. A chief warrant officer in the Navy, in 1968 Walker began selling the Russians communications codes that allowed Moscow to track U.S. warships, including nuclear submarines. Eventually, he dragged his wife, brother, son and best friend into the scheme.

Walker was arrested in 1985, the so-called "Year of the Spy," and is serving a life sentence at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, in Springfield, Mo.

Why did he do it?

"I cannot classify myself as a visionary or idealist, but just a simple citizen who became angry by the government lies," he writes.

"I did conclude that the US system of government was broken, so I felt justified in breaking some rules in order to help save it.... Why did I feel responsible or qualified to end the pattern of perpetual war? I cannot answer my own questions. But then, my insane stunt seemed to have worked. By the admission of both the US and the USSR, I provided the most extensive intelligence ever to the Soviets.

"With my material in hand, the Soviet government eventually realized the US planned no attack upon them, so my actions have contributed greatly to the Soviet Union's decision to end the Cold War."   

Or so he says.

I figured my friend Pete Earley would be in a good position to evaluate Walker's claims. A former reporter at The Washington Post, Earley is the author of "Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring,"  the definitive work on the case, which became a New York Times bestseller and much-watched TV miniseries.

Here's what he had to say.
 

"If nothing else, John Walker Jr. is consistent.

"More than 20 years ago when I interviewed him, he argued that Time magazine and other U.S. media regularly revealed top secrets and damaged our nation's security, so why should he be blamed for damage he did by selling the KGB classified information for nearly eighteen years?

"After making the same tired excuse of, "We were not at war with the Soviet Union" and the "Cold War is a game played by politicians and generals," Walker explains that he simply decided to cash in and do what anyone with any sense was doing.

"He takes delight in bragging how "K-Mart had better security than the U.S. Navy," and proudly describes how his policy of K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid - enabled him to steal the keylists and schematics for every major code machine used by the U.S. military and deliver them to our enemies during the height of the Cold War.

"Just as he did in his jail house interviews with me, he blames his alcoholic and emotionally distraught wife, Barbara, for driving him into the KGB arms, and claims that he was simply trying to help out his hapless brother, Arthur, his hollow best friend, Jerry Whitworth, and his own dim-witted son, Michael, by drawing them into what became our nation's most damaging spy ring.

"In a mean-spirited final chapter, he claims his brother Arthur would have gone free if he had not cowed to his wife and had insisted that they sell their house to pay for a better defense team, concluding that Arthur has only himself to blame.

"The only new revelations in this autobiography are a sympathetic portrait that he attempts to draw of himself by claiming his life would have been markedly different - though nevertheless just as exciting - if he had married better.

"He also drops names, such as the great Soviet Cold Warrior, Gen. Boris Solomatin, and former KGB great and Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov.

"Walker makes it sound as if they sought him out personally for advice when, in fact, during our interviews, he chuckled when I asked him if he knew any of his KGB handlers, explaining that he had no idea who they were and stating that one didn't ask for resumes when committing treason. At the time, he had no idea who Andropov was and, in his own words, he explained that he did not see himself as an intelligence source, but simply as a thief. 

"'Look, I don't know why people make such a big deal of me committing espionage,'" he told me. "'If I had worked in a bank, I would have stolen money. If I had access to drugs, I would have sold them.'"

Earley says Walker thinks he did us a favor.

"In what has to be the most revealing rationalization of all, Walker explains that his treachery actually did the U.S. a huge favor. By sharing vital military secrets with the KGB, Walker argues that the Kremlin realized just how badly it was losing the arms race and how pitiful Soviet forces would be if challenged by the U.S. It was one of the key reasons, he insists, the Cold War ended."

"My Life as a Spy" was published to little notice on Oct. 28.