Operation Damage Control

By Frank Trippett

Caspar Weinberger's opinion was blunt and harsh. Asked how the four suspects in the Walker spy scandal should be punished if found guilty, the Defense Secretary replied, "They should be shot," adding that he supposed "hanging is the preferred method." Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who introduced a bill to make spying for money punishable by death, was even more draconian. "If there is an execution, it should be public and on television," he said. "I want the widest possible visibility of this kind of crime (to) deter people who may be starting down this road."

John A. Walker Jr., his son, brother and California accomplice need not worry about execution for their years of espionage while in the Navy. At present, the maximum penalty for spying in peacetime is life imprisonment; both Weinberger and Stevens knew that a harsher sentence could not be imposed retroactively. Nevertheless, the Defense Secretary's comment indicated how Washington's initial shock at the Walker case has given way to anger. Weinberger's outrage at the spy scandal was also directed toward a more practical purpose: he ordered the military to eliminate 10% of the security clearances currently issued to 4.3 million uniformed and civilian personnel. Navy Secretary John Lehman was ready to go even further. Said Lehman: "We want to reduce (security clearances) by half. We are starting with an immediate 10% reduction."

Lehman last week ordered tighter security procedures in all Navy units. Among other things, he reminded commanders to heed a requirement long on the books but often ignored: two persons must participate in the destruction of classified material. John Walker's son Michael is accused of filching classified documents out of a burn bag while serving as a seaman on the aircraft carrier Nimitz.

Weinberger and Lehman made their proposals after a formal assessment of the damages caused by the family-and-friend spy ring. The good news, the Navy said last week, was that the U.S. fleet of ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs), the most important element of the nation's sea, air and land nuclear deterrent, seems secure. Admiral James Watkins, Chief of Naval Operations, said SSBN tactics and equipment have changed greatly in the 18 years since John Walker served on two nuclear subs. "We remain convinced that our SSBN force is still 100% survivable," he said.

The bad news, in contrast, came in bunches. With possible access to U.S. teletype and voice communications systems, Watkins said, the Soviets gained "the ability to better understand what they observed" of U.S. naval maneuvers. This may have helped the U.S.S.R. shorten the American technological lead in antisubmarine warfare. Naval tactics and capabilities in air and surface warfare were compromised as well. Fortunately, the Chief of Naval Operations said, much of the information that might have passed to the Soviets was "perishable," coding systems that are constantly changed and hence of little use to an enemy. The main damage was done, Watkins added, in compromising the communications systems.

The Pentagon concluded that the spillage of Navy secrets might have affected the Army and Air Force as well. The three services all use basically the same coding machines and encrypting equipment. So do the allied navies of NATO; their communications, too, have probably been compromised, according to Admiral Wesley McDonald, Supreme Allied Commander of the Atlantic.

As Washington struggled to assess the damage caused by the Walker scandal, Moscow engaged in some spy bashing of its own. The Soviet news agency TASS announced last week that Paul M. Stombaugh, a second secretary at the U.S. embassy, had been caught "conducting an espionage action" and would be expelled from the U.S.S.R.

In Norfolk, federal prosecutors herded yet another Walker -- John's older brother Arthur, 50 -- through a preliminary hearing toward arraignment this week. Arthur, who retired from the Navy as a lieutenant commander in 1973, is apparently cooperating with investigators, unlike his brother and nephew, who have pleaded not guilty. Evidence in the hearing strongly suggested that money was the Walkers' motive. Documents indicated that after the 1979 failure of a car-radio shop, Arthur and John Walker faced a $28,807 lien for unpaid taxes. FBI agents testified that John Walker then urged his brother to get a job "where he would have access to classified information." Arthur landed a position (and a top security clearance) with the VSE Corp., a defense contractor in Chesapeake, Va. He has admitted to the FBI that John Walker then paid him $12,000 for access to documents on landing-craft repairs from the VSE files that were classified confidential.

Need and greed also figured prominently in the sixth week of the Los Angeles espionage trial of Svetlana Ogorodnikov, 35, and her husband Nikolay, 52. Richard W. Miller, 48, the first FBI agent ever accused of espionage, admitted to having been sexually involved with Svetlana but denied on the witness stand that serious financial straits moved him to pass on classified information to the Russian emigres. Miller admitted that he bounced checks, cheated his wife's uncle on a business deal, pocketed a $113 Social Security check from his wife's grandmother, sold FBI information to a private investigator and cheated an FBI informant out of $500. Miller, who will be tried later for allegedly selling classified matter to the Soviets for $65,000, could be heard in a tape recording that prosecutors played saying, "I'm almost obsessed with the idea of making money."

With reporting by David Halevy and Bruce van Voorst/Washington