Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring by Pete Earley Page B

“Everyone aboard a submarine talked about these things,” he insisted. “It was always in a joking way, such as ‘Hey, I’ll bet the Reds would pay a bundle for this,’ but it was standard conversation in the radio room.”
    In interviews with me, John’s shipmates denied such conversation ever took place. Any mention, even in jest, of selling classified information to the Russians would have been seen as suspect behavior and probable cause for investigation, they claimed. But John insisted that the value of classified material was a frequent topic and that the Navy unwittingly encouraged such speculation because it bombarded submarine crews with warnings about techniques the Soviets used to discover Navy secrets.
    “The Navy was paranoid about nuclear submarines and it stressed the importance of keeping information secure. Naturally that made you wonder: ‘How much would this stuff be worth?’ “
    While John was a radio operator on board the U.S.S. Andrew Jackson , he underwent his first and only “background investigation,” conducted by a naval investigator named Milo A. Bauerly. There was little reason at the time for Bauerly to be suspicious of John. During his nine years in the Navy, John had earned seven promotions, each on schedule. His commanding officers called him “bright, energetic, and enthusiastic.” His neighbors and friends assured Bauerly that John didn’t have a drinking or drug problem. He appeared to be happily married, was not in any financial trouble, was not a homosexual, and had no known contact or friendship with foreigners.
    Bauerly knew about John’s criminal record as a teenager – the matter was serious enough to make him read the sealed juvenile court records in the Scranton courthouse. But participation in a single bungled burglary of a clothing store seemed insignificant when compared to his pristine Navy record. John was not the first case Bauerly had seen of a troubled teenager straightened out by the Navy. Based on Bauerly’s findings, the Navy granted John a clearance on December 29, 1964, to work with top secret and cryptographic materials.
    John developed a reputation as a clown aboard the Jackson . During one cruise, be mixed several spoonfuls of peanut butter with other ingredients and beat the concoction into a mixing bowl until it had the same texture as human excrement. Having formed the peanut butter into a coil, he placed it on a piece of paper on an ensign’s desk. Needless to say, the officer was horrified when he discovered the substance.
    “What the hell is this?” he demanded. John stuck his finger in the peanut butter and then pressed it to his lips. “Tastes like shit, sir!” he replied calmly.
    When the Jackson moved from San Diego to Charleston, John and Barbara began to live a little higher on the hog. “We bought this little bar and two or three barstools, and we really stocked up the bar well,” John said. “It was the first time that we could afford to buy expensive liquor, and when I came home at night, Barbara would be waiting with a drink and we would both have one before dinner, just like we saw on television and in the movies. I drank scotch and Barbara drank gin and tonic, and Margaret [age eight] was big enough that we even had her mixing them for us.”
    John was on a ninety-day rotation at the time, which meant that after three months at sea, he spent three months at home. After each cruise, John came back armed with bottles of cheap, tax-free liquor. The Navy limited the number of bottles a sailor could bring home, but John paid nondrinkers to buy him their allotments. “I think all of us had a drinking problem during those years,” said Donald Clevenger, a crewmate of John’s and a friend of the family in the mid-1960s.
    “Our life-styles were built around parties and booze. There always seemed to be a group of people at Johnny’s house, a special gang. Usually they were radio people from the boat ...”
    In August 1965, one