Mrs. Dahl, an elderly woman who had lost none of her sharpness, had read about her former student in the St. Paul papers and she had contacted the military authorities. When she was on the stand, Major Beck allowed her to tell the court the story she had told him.
In 1979 she had taught a course called “The 1920s and 1930s,” and Clayton had been a class member. Periodically students were expected to turn in their notebooks, and when Clayton turned in his, she noticed a swastika drawn on the cover. Mentally she had raised her eyebrows, because they were not covering German history, but she didn’t say anything; she simply returned the notebook. Until the next time the notebooks were turned in and she found the swastika had been embellished with other material she could not ignore. Incendiary slogans such as “The Holocaust is a lie,” and “Jews are our misfortune,” and “Hitler had the right idea” were scrawled like graffiti across the cover.
Mrs. Dahl said she had asked Clayton to stay after class, and when she tried to talk to him about the meaning of this, he had accused her of “believing all those Jew lies.” The next time the notebook was turned in, it contained the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of members of the American Nazi Party. Never before or since, she said, had she seen such hatred in any of her students.
After initially protesting that what this witness had to say had nothing to do with the charges and was inflammatory, the defense tried to downplay Mrs. Dahl’s concerns. This was the stuff of a teenage boy’s fantasies. Clayton Lonetree did not have any idea what Nazism was about. How could he? It was a violent antiminority cult, and he was an Indian. Besides, Germany and the Soviet Union were enemies in World War II.
Major Beck thought it went deeper than that. The point that he tried to make had first been articulated for him during a conversation with the famous Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko. “You must realize, yes, the two countries fought against each other. But the end result of Nazism and Communism is the same. The socialist state takes away all ownership of property. The fascists let you keep your property but take away all the rights that go with it. The end of both is complete control and power, and they accomplish it through repression and murder.”
A light had switched on for Major Beck when he heard that. He felt that with full awareness both were repressive regimes, Lonetree had expressed a preference for the Soviet system as recently as 1986, and as far back as high school he had been infatuated with a fascist system that was equally repressive. What was the connection? Beck didn’t know for sure, but by the time Mrs. Dahl left the witness stand, a nexus had been suggested: It was because they were both the mortal enemies of the United States.
When he shuffled the order of witnesses for the prosecution, Major Beck had decided that this was the right time for the jury to hear from an expert witness who was qualified to give testimony on Soviet intelligence recruiting practices. He had wanted someone without any CIA or State Department baggage, an American citizen who could express in layman’s terms the modus operandi of Soviet intelligence agents. While reading the record of the espionage trial of John Walker, he had discovered that John Barron, a former naval intelligence officer and the author of several books about the KGB, had testified for the Justice Department. When he asked John Dion and John Martin about Barron, they spoke highly of him, calling him a great American, an excellent speaker, someone dedicated to the security of the United States. But they also said they were concerned about wearing out their welcome with Barron and did not wish to impose on him for a case that wasn’t theirs. Beck, as persuasive as he was persistent, had characterized a meeting with Barron as essential to his education, so one had been arranged at the Justice Department.
Beck and Barron had conversed for about an hour when Martin and Dion were called from the room, and even though the major had been told that Barron was not the only expert witness on espionage matters, that others could be made available, Beck had heard enough to think that Barron would be the best.
“I sure appreciate your taking the time to talk with me today, Mr. Barron,” he said with sincerity, “because your friends at Justice told me how busy you are and that I shouldn’t bother you. But I knew how knowledgeable you were when it came to the KGB, and that you, of all people, know we aren’t talking about an innocent love affair between a Soviet gal and an American Marine here.”
When John Barron nodded, Beck continued. “It’s such a shame that you aren’t going to be available to testify, however, because we are talking about the first espionage trial in the history of the Marine Corps, and it would have been nice to have you part of that.” Now he chuckled reflectively. “And I would have loved to have seen you match wits on the stand with William Kunstler….”
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?”