Spy’s Tools, Booty Go on Auction Block

SAN FRANCISCO — The items range from a high-tech walkie-talkie with a warranty personally signed by convicted spy Jerry Whitworth to rare coins and original artwork.

The Internal Revenue Service is offering those goods and other trappings Whitworth amassed to the highest bidder on Friday.

The intent of the auction is to pay off a whopping tax bill Whitworth accumulated during 10 years selling military secrets to the former Soviet Union in what has been called the most damaging espionage case in U.S. history.

The sale will feature 98 items. About two-thirds of the collection is camera equipment, but there are a number of well-preserved collectors’ items with police “evidence” stickers still attached.

Whitworth, a longtime Navy radioman convicted in 1986 for his role in the Walker family spy ring, may have used some of the camera equipment to photograph secret files and code books during his lunch hour, IRS Spokesman Larry Wright said.

In some of the more dramatic cloak-and-dagger maneuvers, Whitworth would sell his exposed film to ringleader John Walker, who put it in empty 7-Up cans. Russian KGB agents disguised as garbage men collected the cans from public streets.

“It’s safe to say that if you show up at this auction with only a few hundred dollars, you won’t walk away with much,” Wright said of the booty. He anticipated that the celebrity value will attract buyers and increase the bids, some into the thousands.

Whitworth owes the agency more than $580,000 worth of back taxes on an estimated $332,000 he earned as a spy for the Walker family. Nobody at the IRS knows the total worth of the memorabilia, Wright said, but the auction is not anticipated to raise anywhere near that much.

A jury sentenced Whitworth, 54, to 365 years in jail for conspiring with John Walker to steal Navy secrets between 1974 and 1983.