Breaking the ring.

Breaking the Ring

by John Barron(Houghton Mifflin, 244 pp., $17.95)

"THE BANALITY of evil' was HannahArendt's famous phrase, referring to Nazi-style evil. U.S. District Judge John P. Vukasin Jr., sentencing a big-time Soviet spy last year, turned the phrase around: "the evil of banality.' Bull's-eye.

The members of the Walker-Whitworthspy ring, whose treason damaged U.S. security in ways that may never become fully known, were as banal a bunch as you could hope never to meet. Judge Vukasin, consigning Jerry Whitworth to 365 years in prison, called him "a zero in his bones. He believes in nothing.' Neither was John Walker, the ring-leader, any Mephistophelean figure--just a vain, foulmouthed ex-Navy noncommissioned officer, lacking convictions of any sort save one--that John Walker should prosper at all costs. The other two members of the spy ring, John's brother Arthur and son Michael, were mere puddings. What they did, they did for money.

The world was ablaze with ideologicalpassion in January 1968, when Walker strolled up to the Soviet embassy and offered the KGB the rich cryptographic data then at his disposal. But ideology formed no part of Walker's motivation. A communications watch officer on the staff of the Atlantic submarine command, Walker was bored and in debt. The world was to him "a ------- joke,' he would later recall. In the spirit of levity, he handed over to the KGB everything it needed to read all coded messages of the U.S. submarine fleet.

Before retiring from the Navy in1976--his security clearance was up for review--he recruited Whitworth, a former subordinate. During his last five Navy hitches, Whitworth enjoyed access to most of the Navy's cryptographic and communications data.

No Hisses here, no Rosenbergs orFuchses, full of zeal for the proletarian revolution; just banal little men out for easy money.

John Barron, author of two bookson the KGB and a profound student of Soviet espionage, presents a deft, well-informed account of the Walker story. Breaking the Ring won't remind anyone of John le Carre, in any way: It is anything but morally detached, in the le Carre manner; and it is remarkably unsuspenseful. Walker and Whitworth enjoyed almost confidential access to the secrets they stole. The Navy didn't know for sure it was being spied on until Walker's ex-wife belatedly tipped off the FBI.

Once the FBI moved in, the arrestscame quickly; but Barron is unwilling to concoct a happy ending. Thanks to John Walker's boredom and greed, the Kremlin was able for almost two decades to read the U.S. Navy's top-secret mail. The full measure of the damage may never be disclosed--or known.

The KGB defector Vitaly Yurchenkocalled the Walker affair "the greatest coup in KGB history.' Yurchenko said a senior KGB officer told him that, in the event of war, "devastating' consequences would have befallen American forces, given the Soviets' ability to read American naval messages. Walker undiscriminatingly relayed to his Soviet employers everything that came his way. "You wanna know what happened?' he asked American interrogators. "Just figure it this way. If I had access to it, color it gone.'

The head of naval intelligence toldthe federal court trying Whitworth: "Recovery from the Walker-Whitworth espionage will take years and millions of taxpayer dollars.' While the government assesses the damage, the spies serve life sentences: all but Michael Walker, who got 25 years. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, faithful servitors of the Kremlin, should have had it so good.

What is the upside of the Walkeraffair? Is there an upside?

Barron notes encouragingly that spies,like child molesters, don't fare well in prison.

The U.S. Government woke up, onlearning that the Soviets could read American naval messages as easily as American naval personnel could. The Reagan Administration expelled the KGB's principal agents in this country. Barron sees, in consequence, "a historic change in American policy toward Soviet espionage.' Naturally, though, you wonder why, if we knew who all these spies were in the first place, we waited to evict them. Why was a full-fledged spy scandal necessary to make the government move?

A book about bad guys needs goodguys, if only for emotional relief. The men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are the good guys of Breaking the Ring. They are very good indeed.

Without sentimentalizing them (governmentagents swear and have family problems, too), Barron shows people utterly unlike the Walkers--people who unashamedly love their country; nay, who do the jobs they do in order to show that love. John Martin of the Justice Department; William Farmer and Leida Schoggen, federal prosecutors; Bill Smits, John Peterson, Janet Fournier, and David Szady, of the FBI; Lieutenant James Alsup of the Navy legal department--here is a large enough supply of good guys to overpower the stench of the Walker family, as Whittaker Chambers morally fumigated Alger Hiss.

Except then you start wonderingwhy, in the almost forty years since the Hiss case, we've learned so little about life, Communists, and espionage. Doubtless, that's another whole book.