My Life As A Spy Summary

In the book My Life as a Spy by John A. Walker Jr, the author recounts his time as a spy for the Soviet Union while assigned as the Chief Warrant Officer and Communications Specialist for the US Navy. He reveals that not only was it him that sold off secrets to the Soviet Union, he also got his son, brother, ex-wife, and a close friend involved into it as well. The book starts off with Walker explaining his new job in the Navy aboard a Submarine, then dwelling into his family and their financial troubles, claiming that with a military job and a failed attempt at a bar his family was going bankrupt. His solution was to march into the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC and share private documents for a large sum of cash. It was this act of treason …show more content…
Walker Jr and is an autobiography describing his turn from a respected Chief in the Navy to a dishonorable and corrupt traitor . Walker wrote many letters to his daughter while in prison attempting to explain why he did what he did. Unfortunately he was facing a growing vision disability that was taking his eyesight away, so he only had a limited time to write these letters and get them out in the public. It didn 't help that the prison staff and his editor kept “losing” his letters, and time was running out for him to get his story out. These letters were eventually crafted together, and the autobiography of John Walker came …show more content…
Even though I knew the ending, the suspense of waiting for Walker to be caught kept me interested the entire way through, and I also found it extremely interesting to see the idea of what desperate people do in desperate situations play out on paper, and seeing it from the angle of a traitor or the stereotypical “antagonist” really gave me an insight to what he was thinking and why he chose to do exactly what he did. I will admit that this book was quite difficult to read, as Walker uses a lot of military slang and terms that I really didn 't understand the meaning of. However I really did enjoy the story as Walkers offers up a unique approach and vision of the time period that I haven 't seen anywhere else. Because Walker played both sides of the coin, his opinion and view of the soviet was is very straight to the point and unbiased, because he 's looking at it very logically and with a businesslike approach. He doesn 't see America or the Soviets as good or bad, and he instead uses both to achieve his means in order to serve his family. It was a fantastic read, and while looking up all of the military slang took quite a while, it is a great book that really goes to show the differences between organized crime and the government in America vs the Soviet