The Worst Internal Scandal in NSA History Was Blamed on Cold War Defectors’ Homosexuality

To some of his detractors, William Hamilton Martin was something of an amusing figure on the streets of Washington, D.C., in the 1960s, a bookish mathematician with a crew cut who walked with a Groucho Marx–like waddle. But what others remembered most was that lean, blue-eyed "Ham" Martin, a University of Washington graduate and the son of an Ellensburg meatpacker, was a meticulous dresser, spoke "slightly effeminately," and may have had a thing for a Stanford grad named Bernon Mitchell. Furthermore, the belief among some officials, politicians, and the press was that because Martin and Mitchell might be homosexual, they did the unthinkable: In the midst of the Cold War, the two National Security Agency code breakers defected to Russia and went to work for the Soviet government.

On June 25, 1960, after four years as trusted employees of America's largest spy agency, Martin, then 29, and Mitchell, then 31, flew out of Washington, D.C., with one-way tickets to Mexico City. From there, they quietly slipped off to Havana and took a Russian freighter to the Soviet Union, following a plan that had evolved over a year. The case stunned politicians and intelligence officials alike. Looking back, some of the defectors' neighbors and co-workers told investigators that if they'd been more vigilant about the pair's sexual proclivities, maybe they'd have been more suspicious of their patriotism.

In the eyes of many Americans, sexual deviants—then the commonly used term for homosexual men—were potential traitors, a belief that's been perpetuated in more modern times. A 1991 Pentagon study of paraphilia (kinky or bizarre sexual behaviors) issued by the Defense Security Service and used today in military circles counts Martin and Mitchell among a group of "publicly known homosexuals" who betrayed their country. Political, counterintelligence, and religious Internet sites currently refer to Martin "and his gay friend," and a 1997 book, The Homosexual Revolution, informs readers that the two "were homosexuals who had been permitted access to classified information."

But according to the NSA's own investigative files, obtained exclusively by Seattle Weekly, there's one major problem with the flaming traitor theory: Martin and Mitchell weren't gay. The formerly classified Pentagon and NSA documents, which reveal previously unpublished details of the historic spy-agency saga, appear to clear Martin and Mitchell of the sexual charges that rocked the country 47 years ago this summer and led to landmark NSA policy changes.

"Beyond any doubt," the unnamed author of a then-secret NSA study on the defection wrote in 1963, according to the recently released documents, "no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, a greater impact on the Agency's security program." Screening methods used today at NSA, with a work force estimated at 30,000, evolved from Internal Security Act legislation passed in the wake of the pair's defection.

After interviewing more than 450 individuals about the twosome's character, habits, and sex lives—right down to the skin rash on Martin's stomach—the NSA, in a 1961 report, could find no conclusive evidence the two men were gay. "Martin and Mitchell were known to be close friends and somewhat anti-social, but no one had any knowledge of a homosexual relationship between them," investigators reported. Both, in fact, had American girlfriends, and Martin married a Russian woman four months after his arrival there. Mitchell also wed later.

The recently declassified documents—about 85 pages of lightly redacted records that include information from the FBI, CIA, and State Department, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request that took four years to fulfill—reveal that both men, now reported dead, quickly soured on Soviet life, felt their defection was a mistake, and tried repeatedly to return to the U.S. Mitchell never made it, having been buried in St. Petersburg, Russia, in November 2001 at the age of 72. But Martin, the Ellensburg defector, returned to American soil in 1987—literally. A diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico that year states: "William H. Martin died of cancer at Hospital Del Mar in Tijuana on January 17, 1987." He was three months short of his 56th birthday. "Burial," the cable noted, "took place in the United States." No location or details were provided.

Revelations of a witch-hunt gone astray don't surprise former Washington National Guard Col. Grethe Cammermeyer, a lesbian and the military's highest-ranking officer to be discharged because of sexual orientation. "[It is] my understanding that there had never been a homosexual blackmail [in which silence was] traded for state secrets," she says.

Author and historian David K. Johnson, an expert on the Cold War history of gays in the government, agrees with Cammermeyer, adding that desertion to Russia "was literally unthinkable for most American officials. So to make sense of the defection, they turned to the alleged sexual perversion. That was already associated in the popular imagination with subversion and communism." Among the gay bashers was then–FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who, after his death, was rumored to have been an avid cross-dresser.

James Bamford, an expert on the NSA and author of the best-selling agency exposé The Puzzle Palace, was surprised to hear that old lefty defector Martin was interred in the country he betrayed. That's "new and very interesting," he observed. Bamford, who labeled the defection the worst internal scandal in NSA history, says lack of proof the two were gay confirms his belief the public was misled about Martin and Mitchell. "I think the NSA was looking for any straw to grasp when the defections occurred," he says, "and homosexuality was the perfect excuse."