Topics of Interest

On August 28, 1986, a federal judge sentenced Jerry Whitworth to 365 years in prison for espionage. During the preceding year, news reports jolted the American public with revelations about the Walker family spy ring. John Walker, brother Arthur, son Michael, and Whitworth, all former Navy men, had at various times over two decades sold the Soviet KGB keys to the U.S. Navy's encrypted communications. Barron, author of The KGB Today and MiG Pilot , details the torturous investigation, painstaking prosecution, and probable damage of perhaps the most serious breach of modern American military security.

Spying in the United States began during the Revolutionary War, with George Washington as the first director of American intelligence and Benedict Arnold as the first turncoat. The history of American espionage is full of intrigue, failures and triumphs--and motives honorable and corrupt. Several notorious spies became household names--Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, the Walkers, the Rosenbergs--and were the subjects of major motion pictures and television series. Many others have received less attention. This book summarizes hundreds of cases of espionage for and against U.S. interests and offers suggestions for further reading. Milestones in the history of American counterintelligence are noted. Charts describe the motivations of traitors, American targets of foreign intelligence services and American traitors and their foreign handlers. A former member of the U.S. intelligence community, the author discusses trends in intelligence gathering and what the future may hold. An annotated bibliography is provided, written by Hayden Peake, curator of the Historical Intelligence Collection of the Central Intelligence Agency.

John A. Walker Jr. was a Chief Warrant Officer and communications specialist for the US Navy. In 1985, he was arrested for selling classified secrets to the Soviet Union. Upon his arrest it was revealed that he had been acting as a spy from 1968 to 1985 and that his son, brother, ex-wife, and an acquaintance had also participated in the espionage ring. Altogether, their actions constituted one of the most serious security breaches in US history. In 1990, the New York Times stated, "Mr. Walker provided enough code-data information to alter significantly the balance of power between Russia and the United States." What motivated a career naval officer to become a spy during the height of the Cold War? Over the years, statements by Walker have been reported in various books, newspapers, and other media outlets, but Walker has never told his own story--till now.

Within the intelligence community, Bob Hunter is known as the agent who caught master spy John Walker and brought an end to what many top officials call the most damaging espionage ring in U.S. history. Hunter, a foreign counterintelligence agent for the FBI, was the lead investigator on the case. His book presents an insider's account of the detection, pursuit, and capture of the U.S. Navy communications expert and his partners in espionage. He writes from a unique perspective - no one else was involved with the case from beginning to end - and he allows the reader not only behind the scenes but into his mind as he plots his course of action.

In this book, the author writes of Johnny Walker, the flamboyant mastermind of one of the most damaging spy rings in U.S. history. However, unlike John Barron's "Breaking the Ring," Blum's extensively documented account concentrates on the personalities involved. Most attention is devoted to Johnny, a former Navy warrant officer who sold top secret codes and technical manuals to the Soviets for 17 years before his ex-wife exposed the operation, which by that time included their son Mike, Johnny's brother Art, and a friend.

American Spies presents the stunning histories of more than forty Americans who spied against their country during the past six decades. Michael Sulick, former head of the CIA's clandestine service, illustrates through these stories--some familiar, others much less well known--the common threads in the spy cases and the evolution of American attitudes toward espionage since the onset of the Cold War. After highlighting the accounts of many who have spied for traditional adversaries such as Russian and Chinese intelligence services, Sulick shows how spy hunters today confront a far broader spectrum of threats not only from hostile states but also substate groups, including those conducting cyberespionage. Sulick reveals six fundamental elements of espionage in these stories: the motivations that drove them to spy; their access and the secrets they betrayed; their tradecraft, i.e., the techniques of concealing their espionage; their exposure; their punishment; and, finally, the damage they inflicted on America's national security.