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 Marxâ??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.
Dung Huang
Details
â?? Click here for a look at the NSA study into the defection of Mitchell and Martin.
â?? Click here for excerpts of NSA's investigation documents in the case.
â?? Click here for State Department documents on Martin's death and U.S. burial.
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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 deviantsâ??then the commonly used term for homosexual menâ??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."
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