John A. Walker Jr., a convicted spy who masterminded a family operation that sold military secrets for nearly two decades and enabled the Soviet Union to decipher more than 1 million classified messages sent and received by U.S. Navy vessels, has died in a prison hospital. He was 77.
His death Thursday at a penitentiary in Butner, N.C., was confirmed by Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesman Chris Burke. The cause was not disclosed.
The FBI arrested Walker in 1985 with his son Michael, brother Arthur and best friend Jerry Whitworth. Arthur died in the same prison hospital in July. Officials said it was one of the most damaging U.S. espionage rings ever uncovered.
John Walker was a Navy warrant officer when he started selling shipboard secrets to bail himself out of financial problems at a failing South Carolina bar he owned. He lured family members into the spy operation with prolonged sales pitches, and once even used his mother, Peggy, as an unwitting courier. When he treated her to a European vacation in 1979, he had her carry back a money belt in which he had secretly stashed $24,000 in KGB earnings.
Walker made more than $1 million as a spy, officials estimated.