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

Lonetree’s appellate attorneys immediately requested a meeting with the general, and their pitch was basically this. All along, the Marine Spy Scandal had been characterized as a major espionage case that caused considerable damage to national security. The agency that claimed it was impacted the most was the CIA. The CIA said its agents were compromised. It said it had to bring equipment back and redo codes, and the cost of its damage assessment ran into the millions. Now we find out that a lot of what the CIA blamed on Lonetree was caused by one of its own people. Now we really know what a major espionage case looked like. The Marine Corps took the hit back in 1987; by further reducing Lonetree’s sentence, it would put the word out that the Corps now realized it had been disproportionately blamed for problems that belonged to the CIA, and that it was setting things right.

After listening to the appellate attorneys and reviewing the records of trial, General Krulac decided the facts of the Ames case did not excuse Clayton Lonetree from the standpoint of criminality. His conduct was unacceptable and should have been tried and punished. As for whether Clayton Lonetree had been wrongfully accused of crimes actually committed by Aldrich Ames, certainly the difference in their positions made them agents of different orientation and different value, and the evidence suggested that Lonetree had not been initially recruited for this purpose but rather that this was one more use for him subsequent to his recruitment. If that was the case, if the KGB had been using Lonetree as a decoy and through his complicity with Soviet agents at that critical point in time it had allowed Aldrich Ames to carry on his spying, the role Lonetree unwittingly played might well have been the most harmful thing he’d done.

But as a matter of extenuation and mitigation these significant new developments did undercut some of the CIA’s claims, and justified in General Krulac’s mind a further reduction of Lonetree’s sentence to fifteen years. Factoring in the credit the military justice system extended for good behavior, this meant that Clayton Lonetree would be released from prison in the spring of 1996.

Now that the future was no longer beyond the horizon but within view, Clayton Lonetree began to reassess his plans and dreams. In this light his relationship with Glory began to pale, and his letters decreased until, with an apology and an awkward offer of friendship, they stopped altogether. The offer of a position working with young Navajos trying to overcome substance-abuse problems remained on the table, but he wasn’t so sure anymore that was what he wanted to do. Everyone around him had ideas about what was best, but he didn’t want others deciding for him; he wanted to keep his options open for the time being and decide for himself.

Caught between an uncertain future and the weight of a past he was anxious to leave behind, Clayton Lonetree pondered his alternatives. He had to go back a long ways to remember when he’d last been on his own. The seven years at Fort Leavenworth had been preceded by a year at the brig in Quantico, two and a half years on embassy duty, four years in the Marine Corps, four years in a household run by his father like a boot camp, and before that five years in an orphanage. He didn’t think of himself as being institutionalized, but he did realize that life was going to be very different for him once his time was no longer regulated.

One of the most unsettling considerations he faced was how to deal with his parents. United in their crusade for his freedom, they were typically divided over what was best for him, and his mother was counting on him to come to Arizona once he was free, while his father had plans for him in Minnesota.

What he really wanted was to walk out of prison and step into a situation that offered him, as much as a fresh start on a new life, a different ending to his story. Clayton Lonetree’s favorite book from the Bible was the story of Job, who had been robbed by Satan of every sign of God’s favor, losing family and property and experiencing personal adversity. Lonetree could relate: He felt as though he’d gone through a similar ordeal. And just as Job had persevered, believing that everything that happened to him was part of a higher purpose, so had he maintained faith that the trouble and suffering he’d endured was not merely a sinner’s punishment, but would end up serving as a trial that culminated in spiritual gain and perhaps vindication before his peers.

“Once I’d acquired the taste, it was like going back to the apple tree every summer,” Lonetree wrote me in a letter responding to a query about the significance of the Book of Job to him. “The content is just as sweet as the first time I absorbed it, satisfying the taste buds of the heart and mind every time.”

When a journalist researching his story in Russia returned with a letter from Violetta in 1993, in which she wrote that she still loved him and was waiting for him, he did not immediately recognize it as the opportunity he was waiting for. His astonishment was too great. The overture was completely unexpected. After it had been pointed out by experts at the court-martial how gullible he’d been to think that Violetta ever really cared for him, he’d done his best to cross her out of his mind.

He didn’t know what to think. He knew what his lawyers would say, because they had drilled him in preparation for his second hearing before the Navy Clemency and Parole Board, and told him he should expect to be asked, “How do we know the next sexy pretty thing that crosses your path isn’t going to lead you down another primrose path?” They intended to argue that proof of their client’s rehabilitation was his insight into the various ways he’d been manipulated. They anticipated that he would respond that he understood now what had gotten him into this mess, and was immune to further foolish temptations.

But what if she was telling the truth? What if he’d been right about her all along?

For better or worse, Violetta was the great love of his life. They were inextricably linked in history. He had no idea what would happen if they were reunited, but he did know there was only one way to find out.

On January 19, 1995, the CBS newsmagazine Eye to Eye, with Connie Chung devoted a segment of its broadcast to the Clayton Lonetree story. Lonetree did not appear in person on the program—military policy denied the press access to prisoners in the disciplinary barracks except under extraordinary circumstances—and in his absence the star of the show was Violetta. “The KGB’s most famous seductress,” according to the CBS correspondent.

Using Spencer Lonetree as a go-between, CBS had approached Violetta with the incentive that cooperation could increase the chance of an even earlier release for Clayton, and she had made an appeal to her contacts at the reconstructed KGB, which, as it turned out, was currently embarked on a public-relations campaign to improve its image. After a discussion of the parameters of what she could talk about, she had been given permission to participate in the program.

Violetta was filmed strolling across Red Square, riding the same metro line on which Lonetree first approached her, applying cosmetics in front of the vanity in her apartment, and sitting at the kitchen table answering questions. She admitted that she had delivered her lover into the hands of the KGB, but said she had done it only because “I was put under conditions such that there was no choice for me. I absolutely had to do it.”

Asked “Do you feel guilty about what you and Clayton started years ago?,” she nodded vigorously. “Yes, absolutely. He fell in love with me. As a result, he’s in prison.”