John L. Martin, upon graduating from the College of Law at Syracuse University, began his career as a Special Agent of the F.B.I.  As a young agent he was assigned to the infamous murder case of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi.  This case later became the subject of several books and a movie entitled “Mississippi Burning”.  While still assigned to the MIBURN case –as it was known in F.B.I. circles-- John was promoted to Bureau Headquarters to oversee the investigations nationwide of domestic terrorism perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist organizations. 

After five years with the F.B.I., John left the Bureau to join a Washington law firm specializing in corporate, administrative and communications law. He also handled pro bono criminal defense cases. Three years later he was invited to join the Department of Justice. In a short time, he was heading up the investigation and prosecution of national security cases, most of which involved espionage against this country by American citizens and foreign operatives.  For a period of ten years from the mid-60s to mid-70s the intelligence community, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department had failed to successfully prosecute a single spy in a federal courtroom.  That was about to change. One of John’s earliest cases involved two young men, Christopher Boyce and Andrew Dalton Lee, who sold U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union.  After they were convicted, the case was portrayed in a book and movie entitled “The Falcon and the Snowman”. By then John had brought several highly visible, complex and, at times, controversial cases and was promoted to Chief of the Internal Security Section and became a member of the Senior Executive Service at Main Justice.

In the mid-80s, during the height of the Cold War, John was responsible for initiating twenty-seven espionage prosecutions in a period of twenty-four months.  These cases included the indictments of the first C.I.A officer and the first F.B.I. agent for spying on behalf of Russia and the first cases ever brought against U.S. citizens for spying on behalf of China and Israel.  In the 26 years that he supervised the prosecution of espionage cases for the Justice Department, John brought charges against 76 defendants, only one of which was not successful.

During this same period, while cases were being vigorously prosecuted, John and his State Department colleagues began secretly negotiating with the Soviet Bloc for the release of our agents and political prisoners being held in Russia and Eastern Europe.  Eventually, in June of 1985 and April of 1986, John and his colleagues were able to obtain the release of 30 prisoners and their families including the Russian dissident Anatoli Shcharansky.  John personally escorted Shcharansky across the Glienicke Bridge from East Germany into the American Sector of Berlin.

In 1986 Attorney General Edwin Meese presented John with the Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award, the Justice Department’s highest award, for his work in prosecuting spies and obtaining the release of prisoners and their families from foreign prisons. Special recognition was given to John for development of procedures for maintaining secrets during the prosecution of spies and terrorists in Federal trials.  Those procedures, which John helped draft into legislation, were passed by Congress in the “Classified Information Procedures Act”.  The Attorney General included in his comments recognition for assisting the intelligence services of allied governments in prosecuting spies and terrorists in their countries. That same year John received an award from the Association of Federal Law Enforcement Officers for his legal advice to the law enforcement community.  In 1989, Syracuse University presented him with the George Arents Pioneer Medal, its highest alumni award. 

By the time of his retirement from the Justice Department in 1997, John had been in government for thirty-one years and had served under seventeen Attorneys General.  The Vidocq Society of Philadelphia presented John with its Distinguished Service Medal.  The Society is a volunteer group of prosecutors, forensic scientists and law enforcement officers who assist law enforcement at all levels in solving “cold cases”, suspicious deaths and complex crimes.  In 1998 he received an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) from Syracuse University. 

John grew up in Central New York.  He received his undergraduate degree in Economics from Syracuse University and then went on to SU Law where he wrote for the Law Review.

He is a member of the Bars of the State of New York and the District of Columbia.  He is admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court and other federal courts.

John is a member of the White Collar Crime Section of the American Bar Association.  He is on the Board of Directors of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and he has served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Senior Executives Association (SEA).  He is also a member of the Washington Chapter of the Association of Former Agents of the F.B.I.

John has spoken at the Smithsonian Institution Cold War Lecture Series and he has been a frequent lecturer at the F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Virginia.  He has also spoken at the Judge Advocate School, University of Virginia; the Maxwell School, Syracuse University; the Humphrey School at the University of Minnesota and other institutions of higher learning. He was a featured speaker at the 1996 International Bar Association conference in Dublin, Ireland.  He has frequently appeared on network television and survived two appearances on “60 Minutes”.  In his novel Sum of All Fears Tom Clancy includes in his dedication “To John for the Law”, and, in a later novel Executive Orders, Clancy develops a character, Patrick Martin, a Justice lawyer and former F.B.I. agent who eventually becomes Attorney General after a terrorist attack wipes out the President’s Cabinet.