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

John Barron eyed Major Beck for a long moment, seeming to appreciate the major’s tactics at the same time he allowed them to pull on him. Finally he said, “Major, when these two get back, why don’t we go out for lunch.”

“What for?” Beck asked, barely restraining a smile.

At that point Martin and Dion returned to the room, just in time to hear John Barron say, “To prepare our strategy, of course.”

As it unfolded under questioning by Major Beck, John Barron’s testimony was riveting. He talked about the structure of the KGB, and the primary objectives of its intelligence operations, particularly as they were directed against the American Embassy in Moscow. After establishing that the KGB would consider the recruitment of a Marine security guard a major coup, Major Beck directed his questioning toward the KGB’s use of sex to recruit Americans. Sexual entrapment, or the “tragic misrepresentations of affection,” was a favorite ploy of the KGB, Barron said, because they found it so effective. The way it would normally proceed, a female KGB agent would use sex to initiate contact with an American, and then she would introduce the prospective recruit to a KGB officer, who would handle the case.

There was one other matter that Major Beck wanted this witness to settle.

“Mr. Barron, does the KGB pay money, in large or small amounts, on more than one occasion, or several times, for extended periods of time, if they have received nothing of value?”

“In my experience, no. And I think there’s a very logical and understandable reason for that. If we accept that they are employing money to condition and control, then they defeat their own purposes when they pay money for nothing, because they are thereby communicating to the individual that he need not do anything and he’ll still get money.”

Under cross-examination Mike Stuhff tried to suggest one or two hypotheticals that characterized Lonetree’s involvement as an innocent mistake made by a naive young man who was love-addled and not very smart and wanted to singlehandedly bring in a Soviet spy, but John Barron dismissed them as implausible, and the entire effort succeeded only in setting up Major Beck for redirect.

“Taking the defense counsel’s hypothetical, if you knew that this person, who he referred to as stupid or naive, had gone through Marine security guard school, and in that school signed documents, agreements of nondisclosure, which talked about the importance of nondisclosure and the fact that if you do disclose you’re going to be violating the law, you’re going to be jeopardizing national security… if this Marine security guard received courses of instruction at school wherein he was warned about foreign service nationals and what could happen and that he should be prepared… if this Marine had even read your books, Mr. Barron, wherein you outlined these very dangers… and yet in spite of all this, if this Marine went ahead and developed a relationship with a Soviet woman, and she introduced him to a case officer who worked for the KGB, and she brokered all of their meetings, attended those meetings, and after he left Moscow wrote letters to this Marine saying, ‘Sasha is coming to see you’—this is the case officer’s name—‘please be nice to him, he wants us to be friends.’ And then this Marine says at a later point, ‘I didn’t believe she was involved.’ Do you think there’s another possibility than stupid or naive? Is there a third possibility about this Marine saying he didn’t believe that?”

“Well, I guess there is,” Barron replied.

“And what is that possibility, in your opinion, Mr. Barron?”

John Barron seemed to have trouble finding his voice. He glanced at the jury, and it almost seemed as if a tear was forming. To himself Major Beck said, “Don’t get too theatrical, please.” But Barron came across as Mr. Sincerity when he answered, “That the Marine was being a traitor to his country.”

In the recess that followed, John Dion from the Justice Department rushed up to Beck as though he wanted to slap high-fives. “You hit a home run with that redirect.”

Beck shrugged. “When you’re in a 300-foot ballpark and the defense moves you to the 290-foot mark and lobs a softball, you better hit a home run.”

Meanwhile, a very different reaction was taking place at the defense table. Throughout most of the trial Clayton Lonetree appeared to be mentally absent. From time to time, in reaction to something that was said on the witness stand he would whisper to his defense counsel or jot a note on a yellow lined pad, disputing a statement. But it usually addressed some minor matter—the wrong color or an inverted sequence of events—and after a while he seemed to realize that he could not be an effective ally in his own behalf and almost to lose interest in the proceedings.

All that changed with John Barron’s testimony. In some ways Barron had been his hero—Lonetree had read several of his books—and his testimony held Lonetree in rapt attention. As Barron described sexual seduction as a routine KGB activity, Lonetree leaned forward, as if to hear better. When Barron described KGB recruiting methods that precisely matched his own experiences, Lonetree was drop-jawed. Up until this point he had refused to accept that Violetta had seduced him for the purposes of the KGB. He had managed to hold on to the belief and even defended the hope that she had not been a witting part of his recruitment but was a victim of the KGB like himself.

But at a certain point in John Barron’s testimony, when it was no longer possible for him to delude himself, Lonetree seemed to realize he had been used. Removing his wire-framed glasses, he stared up at the ceiling as though floating up there was a last brilliant, fragile image of Violetta that was suddenly shattered by the truth… and his head dropped to the table, and he covered his face with his arms, and he wept.

William Kunstler, who was sitting to his left, put his arm around Lonetree and offered him a glass of water, but Lonetree shook his head. “She didn’t love me,” he mumbled through his tears. “I thought she loved me.”

It was time for the anonymous CIA witness. Identified only as John Doe even to the prosecution, in a cleared courtroom he provided the clinching piece of corroboration. He said that on December 27 he had shown up at the church in Vienna where Lonetree was scheduled to meet “George,” and he remained there long enough to confirm that the Soviet agent whom Sergeant Lonetree had identified from photographs did indeed appear and seemed to be waiting for an appointment.

Although the judge had ruled during motions that this witness would not be identified and cross-examination would be restricted, Kunstler was unable to let the occasion pass without renewing his objections and at least attempting to sneak questions past the judge. He got away with inquiring about the conditions under which John Doe observed George: Was it day or night? Was the weather clear or was it raining? How close did you get to him? But he had no luck when he tried to challenge the qualifications of the witness that would allow him to make an ID based on an old photograph: Are you an expert? Have you done this before? How could you be sure it was the same person?

Corroboration aside, what most distressed Kunstler about John Doe was the impact of a deep-cover witness on the minds of the jurors. It created a cloak-and-dagger ambience. It couldn’t help but lead them to think that if the government was going to this much trouble to protect this witness’s identity, then Lonetree’s crimes were extremely serious. Maybe more than they were being told. But given the constraints imposed on the defense, there was little he could do to counter the negative effect he was sure the CIA spook was having.