The Sparrow's Prey
WEST, WOODY
The Sparrow's Prey By Woody West Violetta was not a classic KGB "swallow," trained to compromise foreign officials. She was a "sparrow," say, in the sense that the late Evil Empire kept as keen an...
...Not that much really, it would turn out, beyond Lonetree's loathsome adventures...
...The Naval Investigative Service was excoriated on Capitol Hill (the font of incessant and, as it proved, wildly inaccurate leaks) and scourged in the press for bureaucratic feebleness...
...That he was the first Marine to betray his country in such a fashion was not mitigated by his disclosing the nasty business himself...
...Kunstler played every stop on his far-left flute when Lonetree's parents got him into the case- claiming the Marine was a victim of racism, ethnic discrimination, diabolical mis- and malfeasance by a corrupt U.S...
...A translator at the U.S...
...The reason would emerge while Lonetree was in prison: Aldrich Ames...
...He had served eight years...
...This tale is evidently not complete: Violetta wrote Lonetree in prison that she loves him, misses him, and wants to marry him...
...Marines: The Clayton Lonetree Story (Simon & Schuster, 336 pages, $24...
...Clayton was a target of opportunity, not too swift a boy and looking for the love of a good woman, or something approximating that...
...He has talked to lots of people, read lots of trial transcript, gone to Russia and chatted with ex-KGB agents and the sparrow, Violetta...
...Barker rounds out the context and fills in the wide gaps in the news coverage of the revelations...
...he had unforgivably given the Soviets useful information...
...senator from Minnesota who suggested the test was "culturally biased," Lonetree got a second try and, we're told, passed-a bit of the old quota game by the Marine Corps, where quotas don't exist...
...But, with a nudge from a U.S...
...government, and the perversity of the military justice system...
...the commandant's house is there, not headquarters...
...He provides an incisive portrait of an unstable young man who scored so low on the qualifying test that he never should have been an embassy guard...
...This bizarre case is reprised well by Rodney Barker in a luridly titled book, Dancing with the Devil: Sex, Espionage, and the U.S...
...The Naval Investigative Service gets gentler treatment, and it was clearly a significant source for Barker...
...Such a deal would have deprived Kunstler of his podium and attentive pressies...
...the gentleman is "Charles Krulak," who has been commandant for 10 months now...
...It would appear that the author has reported thoroughly, but it is disconcerting to find errors in small things with which one is familiar, as they cause one to wonder about larger ones...
...One thing led to another, as things will, and friendly "Uncle Sasha" appeared...
...Ames, as we now know, had a long and sordid career as a Soviet spy, the gang at Langley blundering about while Ames tipped off the Soviets and caused the deaths of at least 10 U.S...
...Not long after, a second Marine admitted to spying, and the reportorial pack was off in full throat as assorted government agencies scuttled for the bunkers...
...In 1987 Lonetree was convicted by a court-martial on charges of espionage...
...Embassy in Moscow, Violetta Seina did not rebuff the awkward advances of Clayton Lonetree, a sergeant in the embassy's Marine guard...
...Late last month, Clayton Lonetree, whose sentence had been reduced to 15 years in procedural twists, walked out of military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas...
...The author is critical as well of a lethargic State Department, under whose jurisdiction the Marines on embassy duty fall...
...The sentence was 30 years, reduced to 25 for his cooperation in trying to figure out just what the hell was going on...
...The buzz was that more Marines than the 25-year-old American Indian might have been snared by the KGB and the embassy itself thoroughly penetrated...
...Who can doubt that there's a major motion picture here and surely a book by Lonetree-the invariable return for infamy in our queer time...
...He names the Marine general who ultimately reduced Lonetree's sentence to 15 years as "C...
...Woody West is associate editor of the Washington Times...
...Indeed, Barker writes, with the evidence making Lonetree's conviction likely, Kunstler scuttled a deal that might have gotten the befuddled Marine off with five years...
...The second Marine's confessional torrent could not be corroborated at all, and charges were dropped...
...Presently the Marine was passing interesting data to Uncle Sasha, who was, of course, no uncle...
...She was a "sparrow," say, in the sense that the late Evil Empire kept as keen an eye on its citizens as Providence is supposed to on each small bird...
...But the most egregious player is the recently deceased William Kunstler, for whom radical causes were profound and clients incidental...
...Barker contends that the KGB was not displeased at the eruption of the penny-ante Lonetree case because they felt it might provide a false trail and thus protect their cherished mole, Ames-now serving a life sentence and complaining about how beastly his incarceration is...
...Barker, for example, places the Marine headquarters at the 8th & I barracks in Washington...
...Krulac...
...agents abroad...
...The author hammers the CIA for its mulish refusal to cooperate with the Naval Investigative Service...
...This was disclosed in January 1987, and the press went berserk with what was soon dubbed the "Marine Spy Scandal...
Vol. 1 • April 1996 • No. 28
