Rodney Barker - Dancing with the Devil - Sex, Espionage and the U.S. Marines - The Clayton Lonetree Story

When information about massive fraternization among the Marine security guards began to come out, no one at NIS headquarters wanted to jump to melodramatic conclusions—but the implications were unavoidable. Throughout the Cold War the Soviets had repeatedly demonstrated a bold proclivity toward the use of clandestine listening devices with legendary success. They had given a hand-carved replica of the Great Seal to U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman. This masterpiece of art and ingenuity, constructed with a wireless resonant cavity, was given a place of honor on one of Harriman’s walls, where it hung as an invisible witness to U.S. foreign policy in the making, monitoring the ambassador’s conversations for several years, until located. (Later a U.S. diplomat was quoted as saying they went to the middle of Red Square for their private conversations, while in the embassy “they spoke for the mikes.”)

In the years since, the KGB had bombarded the embassy with microwaves to pick up the vibrations of voices on the windowpanes; it had slipped an elaborate eavesdropping antenna in the embassy’s chimney, stolen the embassy’s electronic typewriters and rigged them to transmit every letter; and it had sprinkled a powder that was invisible to the human eye but glowed under certain lights as a way of tracing the travels of suspected agents. Not to forget the extensive list of foreign diplomats and officials captured “en flagrant” on KGB audiotape and film, these were just the efforts that were known.

So it was against this historical tapestry that a new threat had to be evaluated. Fraternization in the Soviet Union was more than a violation of regulations. From the viewpoint of Soviet intelligence, any American who agreed to an unofficial and personal relationship with a Soviet woman and concealed the fact from his superiors had already taken a first compromising step. While there was as yet no hard evidence linking fraternization to spying, in light of previous efforts by the Soviets to compromise the American Embassy, agents of the NIS were forced to consider the possibility that in the process of investigating a single Marine gone bad, they might have stumbled across something far bigger. Because everywhere they scratched, it was starting to bleed.

On January 30, Mike Stuhff, accompanied by a friend and private investigator by the name of Lake Headley, flew to National Airport in Washington, D.C., rented a car, and drove south to Quantico, where they checked into the Quality Inn motel across from the entrance to the Marine base. The next morning Major Henderson’s legal assistant, Capt. Andy Strotman, delivered the unclassified NIS files to the two Las Vegans, which kept them up most of the night reading. The following morning all four men met for breakfast and discussed the case.

Henderson said that, bottom line, he thought a plea agreement was the way to go, because Lonetree had confessed and parts of his confession had been corroborated. If there were any promising aspects to the case, he said, he thought they would be procedural rather than factual, and he told Stuhff about the military’s speedy-trial provision.

Mike Stuhff smiled privately, keeping his suspicions about Major Henderson’s conflict of loyalties to himself. All he said was that while he recognized that the major’s expertise on the procedural intricacies of military law was greater than his own, he felt that Henderson might be overstating the promise of the speedy-trial tactic. He found it hard to believe that the military would allow a case of this magnitude to be dismissed simply because the government wasn’t ready to try the case; but this was not a decision that needed to be made this minute, and certainly not before he’d had a chance to meet his client.

A half hour later Major Henderson, Mike Stuhff, and Lake Headley were joined in a small conference room at the Quantico brig by Clayton Lonetree, who wore camouflage utilities and a yellow plastic badge with his name and photograph. Lonetree seemed to recognize that his fate rested in the hands of these three men, and he expressed his gratitude, indicating a ready willingness to answer all their questions openly and honestly. He was polite and addressed them as “sir” and “Major,” and when he was asked by Stuhff to tell him what happened, he replied, “Where do you want me to start, sir?”

“At the beginning.”

“When I was born?”

“No. Begin with Violetta.”

The first time Sgt. Clayton Lonetree saw Violetta, he was standing at the window of the Marine House, and she was walking down the sidewalk toward the American Embassy. He thought she might be Swedish, she was so pretty, so sleek, and dressed so fashionably. She certainly wasn’t typical of the Russian women he was accustomed to seeing since he’d arrived in Moscow almost a year earlier. The kind, he had heard at MSG school, who could be identified as Russian by their bad breath and big breasts.

When he asked around, he learned that he was not alone in his reaction to her. Other Marines commented on her provocative beauty. Later he would observe the way their heads craned whenever she bent over. He also discovered that only recently had she begun work at the embassy as a translator, which meant she spoke fluent English.

After that he went out of his way to cross paths with her. Post One was a glassed-in booth at the front door of the embassy where the Marine guards verified the identification of everyone who entered, and whenever she passed he would conduct a badge check just for the opportunity of talking with her. He obtained her work schedule and juggled his to be at the same place at the same time. He wanted to get to know her better, and he dared to believe, from their friendly exchanges, that maybe she wanted the same.

To put the next scene in perspective, Lonetree said that ever since arriving in the Soviet Union he had taken an intense interest in the country, its history, the culture, the people. He had read books, hired a tutor to teach him the language, collected Russian memorabilia, and traveled around the city visiting national historic sites. He had admired the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral that floated above the bricks of Red Square like hot-air balloons. He had watched the solemn changing of the guard in front of Lenin’s mausoleum. Mentally he had scaled the turrets and the battlements of the Kremlin wall like a Mongolian invader.

But his favorite activity was joyriding in the Moscow metro. Even though Marines were instructed to travel in pairs outside the embassy, often he couldn’t find anyone to go with him, so he would sign out and by himself ride the underground trains to the end of the line.

The Moscow metro was another world, he said. Built in the 1940s as a monument to the revolution as well as an air-raid shelter during the Great Patriotic War, it had no graffiti, no lurid advertisements. Many of the stations were veritable museums, with grand marble halls, frescoes and sculptures, gilded chandeliers, and bas-reliefs and ceiling mosaics depicting the brave new world of Soviet heavy industry and idealizing the rural lifestyle and traditions of Russian peasants. He enjoyed getting lost, just to see where a particular line went, coming up in the outskirts of the city and getting his bearings by searching the skyline for the ruby stars atop the tallest buildings in Moscow.

There were periods when he rode the metro almost daily, just to get out of the embassy, where he had made no friends, and to escape an environment that was dreary and, he felt, increasingly unwelcome to him. He had come to consider himself an expert on the Moscow metro and would fantasize that his knowledge of the metro system would one day be important. He envisioned himself guiding a U.S. Marine Corps general through the subway system of Moscow during a U.S. occupation.