cover image Dancing with the Devil: Sex, Espionage, and the U.S. Marines: The Clayton Lonetree Story

Dancing with the Devil: Sex, Espionage, and the U.S. Marines: The Clayton Lonetree Story

Rodney S. Barker. Simon & Schuster, $23.5 (8pp) ISBN 978-0-684-81099-7

The sentencing of Native American Marine sergeant Clayton Lonetree in 1986 to 30 years' imprisonment for espionage has become one of the nearly forgotten episodes of the Cold War's final stage. In describing Lonetree's recruitment by the KGB while assigned to the U.S. embassy in Moscow, freelance writer Barker (The Broken Circle) makes a strong case that the actual damage of the affair was minimal; in fact, improved security measures introduced in its aftermath may have even represented a defeat for the KGB. Barker is far less convincing in depicting Lonetree as a victim of racial prejudice, a scapegoat for his superiors' errors or a misguided victim of love-even though the Soviet woman who seduced him and began his subornation apparently plans to marry him on his release in 1996. Barker's detailed account of Lonetree's court-martial shows that his protagonist received justice, if not mercy, from the Corps and the country he betrayed. (Mar.)