SPY SUSPECT'S HOME SEARCHED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302090011-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: May 25, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302090011-9
ARTVIE
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NEW YORK TIMES
25 May, 1985
Spy Suspect's Home Searched
By BEN A. FRANKLIN
Special to The New York Times
NORFOLK, Va., May 24 ? Swinging
sledgehammers, Federal agents
pounded away today inside the home of
Jonn A. Walker, the retired Navy war-
rant officer who has been charged,
along with his son, with selling Navy
secrets to the Soviet Union.
The noisy dismantling of the house,
officials said, was a fruitless search for
an explosive device.. Agents had theo-
nzed that Mr. Walker might have
noboy-trapped the house.
Ihe search of Mr. Walker's two-
story, brick-and-ciapboard house
began this morning when the police or-
dered neighbors to evacuate the im-
mediate area.
Mr. Walker's block of Old Ocean
View Road, in the Bay View section of
Norfolk, was barricaded at each end by
city police cruisers with flashing red
lights. The house itself was ringed late
Thursday by yellow tape saying, "Po-
lice Line ? Do Not Cross."
Neighbors said the house was
wawiieti throughout Lhe night by police
officers and agents of the Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation in parked cars.
Lee Quick, a special F.B.I. agent,
told reporters this morning that the
neighborhood was ordered evacuated
because of the "slight possibility of
hazardous materials" in the Walker
house, meaning, he said under ques-
tiulling, explosives. Asked if this was
based on letters or notes of Mr. Walk-
er's, the agent would not respond.
At least three houses in the immedi-
ai t: vicinity of Mr. Walker's house were
evacuated. Its owners returned to their
homes about two hours later.
An hour-and-a-half search by two
Navy dog handlers, leading a German
shepherd that Mr. Quick said had been
trained to sniff for explosives, yielded
no explosives, the agent said.
The dog left, to be succeeded at once
by two radio-dispatched carloads of
agents from the F.B.I and the Naval In-
vestigative Service.
The new arrivals, wearing blue fa-
tigue jackets with foot-high yellow let-
ters stenciled on the back identifying
them as "F.B.I." or "police," entered
the house carrying hammers, crow-
bars and several black cases of the
kind often used to carry electronic or
photographic gear.
Heavy pounding began, loud enough
to be heard and felt outside, and lasted
intermittently for about an hour. Then
the agents left.
The excitement caused by the order
to evacuate Mr. Walker's block on Old
Ocean View Road served to underline a
neighborhood characteristic of unusual
aloofness.
People who have been neighbors here
for a decade or more- said they did not
know one another's name. Even Mr.
Walker's next-door neighbors said they
did not know his first name and never
spoke to him except to exchange per-
functory greetings.
Today, while neighbors gathered on
the front porch of Alma Pacini, a resi-
dent in the same house for 39 years who
lives across the street from the Walker
home, Barbara Barrett, a 3I-year-old
housewife, remarked, "This has cer-
tainly brought everyone in the neigh-
borhood together."
"We've never even talked before,"
Mrs. Barrett added. "Most people on
the block seem much older, and until
now we just didn't have anything in
common."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302090011-9