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

Next, Beck requested a meeting with the Department of Justice. Although he was an experienced trial attorney, he knew absolutely nothing about espionage. He was starting from square one and wanted to know how an espionage case was built. Their prosecutorial experience in these kinds of cases made them the experts.

The men he met with—John Martin, head of the Internal Security Section, and John Dion, who was in charge of the Espionage Unit—were smart and helpful. They shared their knowledge of the espionage-case world, briefed him on such issues as the handling of classified material in court-martial proceedings, which were generally open to the public, and supplied him with trial records of previous espionage cases. They also offered to talk strategy and help him prepare witnesses as the trial neared. But perhaps most important, they briefed him on the difficulties he could expect to encounter when dealing with the CIA.

“The most important of all principles to remember when dealing with the Agency is their mission—it’s an intelligence-counter-intelligence one,” he was told. “Everything they say and do is always directed toward accomplishing that mission. Criminal prosecutions rarely assist them in this. In fact, criminal prosecutions often harm the accomplishment of that mission by revealing classified information or disclosing covert identities. The Agency doesn’t have a clue what it takes to prove a criminal case and they’re not interested. So you may think they’re your allies, but they’re not. In a case like this, after they have done their damage assessment and put in their own internal preventive measures, the next thing that is important to them will be denial.”

The Justice Department also arranged for him to meet with several Soviet defectors from the KGB, who educated him about the Soviet intelligence services, their tradecraft, and their recruitment techniques. Although no one knew for sure Violetta’s background and whether she had been trained as a professional agent before being assigned to the embassy, or whether she had been tasked specifically to sexually entrap Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the consensus was that this was a classic KGB “honey trap” operation: Violetta performed in a virtuoso capacity as a “swallow,” and Sergeant Lonetree had been “played like a violin.”

Beck couldn’t understand it. This was the oldest trick in the book. In such a way had the Philistines given Samson a haircut. Anyone who had ever read a spy book or seen a James Bond movie should have known better than to get involved with a Soviet woman. Why would a Marine knowingly dance with the devil? he asked himself.

At the same time that he was acquainting himself with the espionage laws, reading the records of previous espionage trials prosecuted by the Justice Department, and initiating a rapport-building effort among the various agencies whose cooperation he knew he was going to need, Major Beck put in a travel request. If he was going to effectively prosecute this case, he felt it was imperative that he visit the key sites referred to in Lonetree’s confession. He wanted to go to the American embassies in both Vienna and Moscow and examine documents and conduct interviews, and he wanted to go to London, where the NIS had interrogated Lonetree.

It so happened Major Henderson had already made a similar request, so Beck merely added his application. And on March 12 the trial counsel and defense counsel, along with their assistants Capt. Andy Strotman and Maj. Frank Short, flew commercial out of Dulles Airport, stopping first in Frankfurt, for Vienna, where they were met at the airport by NIS agent Dave Moyer, who drove them to their hotel.

It had been a long flight, and after a light workout to loosen up, Henderson and Beck stripped down and entered the hotel sauna for a sweat. The two had not known each other previously, meeting for the first time at Quantico shortly before their trip, and even though they were opponents in the case, already they had come to a mutual respect that allowed for good-natured banter.

They were relaxing on the wooden racks, soaking in the heat, and Beck was kidding Henderson, saying that after their Vienna and Moscow excursions he was looking forward to visiting the hotel room in London where Lonetree had confessed to see if the chains and torture devices had been removed and the bloodstains on the carpet cleaned up, when the door opened and a woman entered. A gorgeous blonde, wearing only a towel. Which she promptly removed.

On the drive in from the airport, while pointing out landmarks and giving them an overview of Viennese customs, Agent Moyer had mentioned that the bathhouses here were coed. Yeah, right, they had thought. Now, with a beautiful blonde sitting beside them without a stitch of clothing on, like this is the way it goes, they came to a new appreciation of cultural differences.

The woman was obviously more comfortable with her nudity than they were, because after she took a seat, she gave them each a friendly smile and struck up a conversation. She introduced herself by saying she was a cosmetics representative from Germany.

“Really?” Dave Henderson said, hoping that small talk would relieve the sexual tension in the air. “My wife sells Mary Kay products. Who do you work for?”

The woman hesitated. “It’s a new company,” she said at last. “It doesn’t have a name yet.”

That struck Henderson as odd, and he shared a glance with Beck. Then he asked her several more questions, all of which she answered vaguely. Several times she responded with a question of her own, attempting to turn the conversation around to them and what business had brought them to Vienna. When the two men were equally vague, the conversation lagged, and a short time later the woman excused herself, leaving Henderson and Beck smug with the belief they had just flushed a Soviet swallow.

“That’s enough action for me,” Henderson said, and he too got up to leave.

Beck said he would be along shortly, but he wasn’t alone five minutes before the blonde reappeared with a big smile, as though for a planned date.

Years later, when he would recall this incident and how he fled down the hall, Major Beck would chuckle and say, “My Marine and aviator buddies would have been ashamed of me.” But from his own KGB come-on there was also something to be learned. Once he had asked himself, Why would a Marine knowingly dance with the devil? Now he remembered his Bible, and how it was told that Lucifer was one of God’s most beautiful creations, and the devil’s game was to masquerade as an angel of light.

From the start it was intended to be an investigative trip. While the two majors had slightly different interests—Beck was looking for corroborative details, while Henderson wanted to make certain Lonetree’s third statement could not be substantiated—they both wanted to better understand the embassy world, to get a feel for the Marine security guard program and the role it played in providing security, and to ascertain the truth of what had happened. After two days of interviews in Vienna, during which neither man uncovered anything startling, they left for Moscow.

Major Henderson’s first impression of the Soviet Union, formed during the drive into Moscow from the airport, was that this was a journey back in time. Motor traffic zigzagged around trams and trolley cars. Monstrous and shoddy apartment buildings rose into a gray sky with an unconvincing air of urban modernity. In America you saw people standing on the corners talking to each other, but in Moscow they walked straight ahead, coming and going with somber looks. He was reminded of black-and-white newsreels of a bad stockmarket year in the fifties.

What Major Beck would recall of the day they arrived was his footrace with a KGB shadow. After checking into his hotel room, he dressed for a jog and chose a route that took him along the Moscow River. He had just settled into a comfortable pace when he remembered where he was and glanced behind him. Sure enough, he’d picked up a tail. A man in a jogging suit was letting him set the pace. Nothing if not competitive, Beck picked up speed, and when he looked back again he saw the man was holding his own. Beck kicked into an even higher gear, and a two-man race was on. Perhaps a mile later he once again checked on the competition, and if he hadn’t looked back at that moment, he would have missed the satisfaction of seeing the Russian leaning against a car that had pulled up alongside him, holding his side and gasping for breath.