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

There was a degree of cautious excitement at Bobsled. McCullah knew this was not an exploitable piece of courtroom evidence, but finally, after all the disappointments and bad press, he felt they were on the verge of that “big break.”

But information on the anomaly was followed by several weeks of silence. So just before the Lonetree court-martial, inquiries were initiated to obtain the results of the examination and a conclusive opinion. The response was deceptively simple: McCullah was told it was an unexplainable, benign anomaly, without purpose or audit trail, perhaps a manufacturer’s defect or the result of sloppy paperwork.

A frustrated Lanny McCullah was left without confirmation or denial, and the realization that if, in the process of examining the equipment, hard evidence of penetration had been discovered, chances were the NIS never would have known it. The information would have been kept in-house. The priority would have been to determine the manner in which it had been penetrated and to initiate countermeasures, not to notify NIS and say, “Yeah, you guys were right. Now you can silence your critics.” Better to keep the Soviets guessing and the public in the dark.

Looking objectively at what the NIS had accomplished, McCullah thought they’d done an outstanding job under extremely difficult circumstances. Marines who admitted to violations that potentially made them national-security risks had been removed from their positions. Others who appeared to be in the early states of recruitment were rescued from continuing with activities where they might have inflicted damage. The identification of problems within the Marine security guard program had precipitated changes in procedure and policy within the Marine Corps and State Department.

But success had a thousand fathers while failure was an orphan, and the Naval Investigative Service was left looking like a bastard son, because when all was said and done, after interviewing 564 Marines and more than 1,300 other people, administering 264 polygraph examinations and opening 143 investigations into possible espionage on security-related infractions by Marines, it had scored a single successful prosecution: Clayton Lonetree.

The Marine Corps draws heavily on traditions, and every battalion has its heroes. Those who have come before, who distinguished themselves in combat, are continually held up as examples to emulate. Stroll down the corridor of any Marine facility and you will find rooms named for soldiers who lost their lives in the line of duty, and memorial plaques dedicated to individuals who stood fast before machine-gun fire and exploding mortar rounds. Recruits are told that when they read about the exploits of other Marines, they could be looking at their own future. The ghost of Sergeant Tuberville, killed when Communist terrorists attacked a U.S. mission with hand grenades during an embassy softball game in Phnom Penh, is believed to patrol the halls at the Marine security guard battalion, looking over the students’ shoulders….

In a somewhat similar fashion, after the Marine Spy Scandal, Clayton Lonetree was never far from the minds of the Marine Corps. His memory was invoked in the upper echelons of leadership: When the commandant delivered a speech about the importance of integrity in the Corps, invariably he made reference to the worst example in its history, Pvt. Clayton Lonetree. Drill instructors in boot camp, indoctrinating troops with the notion of Semper fidelis, referred to the one who was not. At MSG school, where Marines were taught how to guard the secrets of the United States, they also heard about the Marine who turned over the keys to the kingdom. For the Marine Corps, Lonetree, like Quisling, became a shorthand term for “traitor.”

The demoted and disgraced Clayton Lonetree, whose journey to infamy ended at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in January of 1988, did not dispute any of this. He seemed to know very well that a Marine did not slap America with a Russian hand in the Cold War and expect to simply walk away. He was stunned by the thirty-year sentence. Those who visited him at Quantico before his transfer described him as looking like someone who had been spun in circles and had yet to focus. But when he did speak, the anger he expressed was at his own foolishness, the exquisite little psych job he had performed while convincing himself the truth of things was what he wanted it to be.

In fact, once he got over the initial emotional shock of a thirty-year sentence, Lonetree seemed almost to embrace the judgment. During a farewell conversation with his military attorney, he remarked, “I got myself into this, Major. I’ve got nobody to blame but myself, and nobody could have gotten me out of it.”

Afterward, Major Henderson found himself thinking about civilian counsel and how different things would have turned out if they had not come aboard. The nation would have been spared a trauma, the government would have saved millions of dollars, and his client would have received a significantly reduced sentence.

Personally, Henderson held William Kunstler responsible. In retrospect he would believe that the cause behind the case was more important to Kunstler than the fate of his client. He knew what Kunstler would have said about that, because Henderson had heard him say it. “Going along with the military never works. You become a tool of the government’s lie. Only when you fight do you have a chance to win.” But Kunstler’s role in discouraging a pretrial agreement in the face of overwhelming evidence, his cavalier disregard for the facts in favor of a pat conspiratorial interpretation of the case, and his willingness to fight to the last ounce of his client’s blood made Henderson wonder if, in that part of his mind where he saw himself as serving a higher social purpose, William Kunstler wasn’t capable of rationalizing the conviction of certain clients as a victory of sorts—because it provided him with a chance to dramatize claims of racism and injustice. And he needed to lose from time to time in order to prove his point that the system was corrupt.

When he asked himself why Lonetree had gone along with Kunstler, Henderson felt that from the start his client had known damn good and well that he was going to be convicted for his crimes, but when told by civilian counsel that they could get him off, it had been a natural thing to let them try. If that had happened, however—if Lonetree had managed to slip through the justice system on a technicality—Henderson believed that, emotionally and intellectually, Lonetree would not have been satisfied. Because Henderson believed that for the scenario begun when Lonetree came forward to be complete in his mind, he needed to be found guilty. And he needed to be given a substantial sentence so he could stand tall while taking his punishment.

That said wonderful things to Henderson about his client’s character. That indicated a mature acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of his actions.

In the years that immediately followed the court-martial, Major Henderson’s impression would remain intact. Lonetree never complained that justice had not been served. Though rejected by the Marine Corps, he continued to align himself in his mind with behavior expected of a Marine. It was almost as if he thought that if he honored the image he had singlehandedly tarnished, redemption was possible for him.

There remained one disturbing area of doubt for Clayton Lonetree. To his family and lawyers he would swear that he had been stripped of his illusions about Violetta. He would say that he had been stupid to think her feelings for him were genuine, there was nothing more to be said, he didn’t want to talk about her. When he had no choice—when, for example, he was asked about her by members of the Navy Clemency and Parole Board considering further reductions in his sentence—he could not even bring himself to speak her name. She was “that person.” If he ever saw that person again, he said, he hoped she would be standing at the end of a breadline.