SPY HUNTER.

• Author: Pincus, Walter
• Position: Review

SPY HUNTER by Robert W. Hunter Naval Institute Press, $27.95

ONE REASON TO READ SPY Hunter, former , FBI Agent Robert W. Hunters story about his lead role in the investigation and conviction of John Walker, the onetime U.S. Navy communications expert, is to get the feel of a real espionage case. I suggest this as background to dealing with today's still-unproven allegations of Chinese espionage of so-called U.S. nuclear secrets, developed into a major spy story by Republicans in Congress and a part of the media, led by The New York Times.

Walker began his espionage in 1968, his 13th year in the Navy, and continued turning over top secret documents he personally stole for eight of his 20 years in the Navy. And for 10 years after he retired, Walker continued to provide those documents taken by the Navy-based spy network he recruited--his son, brother and a friend. Overall, Walker was responsible for delivering to the Soviets some 1,500 classified documents, including those in the highest communications category, until he was caught in 1985.

He was only caught because his ex-wife turned him in, not for patriotic reasons but rather in the hopes that her action would get her help in aiding their daughter to gain custody of her child, who was living with his father. In the end, she did.

The details of his case are fairly well known, but they have an added piquancy given today's concern about the Chinese and the so-called "lax security" at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories run by the Department of Energy. Talk about lax security, take a look at the Walker team's techniques and try to remember if anyone back in the late 1980s held congressional investigations calling for heads to roll in the Navy, the Pentagon or the National Security Council.

For example, Walker confessed he started spying while he was in need of money and after he and his Navy pals at the Norfolk Naval Station sat around talking about how much the Soviets would pay for the crypto code materials they all worked with every day. Several days later, during a midnight shift, Walker simply stole the secret key list, or code translating guide, for one communications system. He drove to Washington the next day, slipped into the Soviet Embassy, gave them the key list, and set up a deal to get paid several thousand dollars a month for continued deliveries. He never seemed to have trouble laying his hands on top secret documents and nobody seemed to miss them.

Were they important...