John A. (Johnny) Walker seemed to be a good ole boy, given to girls, guns and gadgets, not politics. A career Navy man who retired as a chief warrant officer in 1976, Walker, 47, worked as a private detective in Norfolk, Va., dated a policewoman and loved to fly around in his single-engine plane. His three private-investigation firms supplied security services to companies as well as run-of-the-mill snooping for individual clients. But on a rural Maryland road one night last week, FBI agents caught Walker apparently pursuing another one of his businesses: supplying U.S. military secrets to the Soviet Union.
Authorities...