‘Falcon’ and ‘Snowman’

 

Between April 1975 and January 1977, two young men, one a drug dealer and the other an intelligent dropout, sold sensitive US government secrets to the Soviet Union. The two men were Christopher Boyce, nicknamed ‘The Falcon’ because of his love of falconry, and his childhood friend, Andrew Daulton Lee, a heroin and cocaine dealer by trade, hence his nickname ‘The Snowman’.

 

insight into their backgrounds

 

Christopher Boyce was born on February 16, 1953, in Santa Monica, California. Christopher’s father, Charles, a former FBI agent, had moved west after he resigned from the intelligence services to work as a security executive for an aircraft manufacturer. Boyce was the eldest of nine children and was brought up under the strict Catholic beliefs of his mother, Noreen. The children grew up surrounded by law enforcement agents and police officers who loved to exchange stories about their work, and from an early age Boyce became enthralled with the thoughts of adventure and excitement. To him, undercover work sounded thrilling, feeding his already daredevil spirit and love of taking uncalculated risks. Very often Boyce’s love of adventure had disastrous consequences.

Boyce’s best friend at the St John Fisher elementary school was Andrew Daulton Lee (more commonly known as Daulton), the adopted son of a wealthy physician. Daulton also had a pious Catholic upbringing, and the two boys attended the same church, both becoming altar boys. Although the boys spent much of their time together, their academic levels were very different. Boyce achieved ‘A’ grades with ease, while his friend struggled to obtain ‘C’s. Daulton found it hard at school, preferring to work with his hands rather than his mind.

As a teenager, Boyce joined a falconry club and, unlike his friends who drifted off to pursue other sports, Boyce became an expert. Daulton also shared his passion for the hunting birds and this caused the two teenagers to form an even closer bond.

By sixteen, Boyce had grown into a handsome young man with an exceptionally amiable personality, which made him very popular with his fellow pupils. However, at school his grades started to slip as he found that some of the subjects were starting to get boring. He also suffered a crisis of faith and began to doubt many of the Catholic beliefs. He was becoming more and more disillusioned with the country he was living in as night after night he watched horrific pictures of the Vietnam War. He also began to doubt US politics during the Watergate scandal, and he questioned the abilities of the people who were supposed to be in charge of his country.

Daulton, on the other hand, had very different problems. Neither his appearance or his personality attracted any close friends, and he became obsessed with his height, which was only 157 cm (5 ft 2 in). He developed a complex and became extremely obsessed by his appearance, believing that he was not attractive to the opposite sex. Although his grades were poor, Daulton showed a great talent in woodworking and impressed his teachers with intricate and detailed work. He decided he would like to become a carpenter, but his idea was ridiculed as he lived in a neighbourhood where people were respected for their brains not their brawn.

Daulton soon found a way of making himself popular and numbing his feelings of worthlessness – he turned to marijuana and cocaine. Like many of his schoolmates he loved the false sense of security these substances provided, but Daulton went one step further in exchanging the drugs for sex.

When Daulton left high school, his occupation was primarily a drug dealer. It was a life he enjoyed, which reaped large rewards and meant he had a lot more spare time than a regular job. His speciality became cocaine, which earned him the nickname ‘The Snowman’.

Boyce struggled when he left school, dropping out of one college after another, unsure of what he wanted to do. Eventually, in desperation, his father called a friend who worked for TRW Defence and Space Systems Group. It was a private company that had a contract to design US spy satellites. By the age of twenty-one, Boyce was hired as a $140 per week general clerk.

 

a high-security risk

 

Boyce was issued with a security badge and was forced to sign a Secrecy Act document, saying that he would not pass on any classified information to any unauthorised person or agency. He was employed in the Classified Material Control, which, as the name suggests, gave him access to a lot of classified information.

During his first months at TRW, Boyce did not have the authority to enter the Black Vault, a special room that required high security clearance from the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency. Boyce was flattered when he was offered this clearance within his first few months of joining the company. The atmosphere within the Black Vault was light-hearted and jovial and the workers talked freely. One of his co-workers was a Vietnam War veteran, and he talked in detail about his experiences, little realising that he was fuelling Boyce’s growing dislike of US superpowers. Added to this, Boyce had access to highly secret telex documents that passed between the US government and TRW, the contents of which made him hate the country in which he lived, even more.

Boyce’s protests against US policy were not open and public, like many protesters. He chose to express his dislike for the USA in a far more secretive and illegal manner. He started to betray his country and he enlisted his close friend, Daulton, to help him.

Boyce knew that his friend loved money, and so he approached him and told him he could make far more profit by dealing with the USA’s chief enemy, the Soviet Union. He told Daulton that he would smuggle information out of the Black Vault and that his friend could act as the courier, taking it to a Russian embassy in a different country. At first Daulton laughed, not believing his friend. However, when he realised that Boyce was serious, he jumped at the chance, aware that this was an opportunity to make big bucks.

 

dodgy dealings

 

In April 1975, Daulton travelled to Mexico City and headed for the Russian embassy. When he reached the reception he told the man standing behind the desk that he had some important information regarding spy satellites that he thought might be of interest. Daulton was introduced to a Soviet official by the name of Vasily Okana.

At first Okana was suspicious of the American with the unkempt hairdo and moustache, but he thought he would listen to what he had to say. He was invited to sit down and was offered a glass of Vodka and some caviar. Daulton told Okana that before he would release any classified information, he would need to know how much he was going to get paid, bearing in mind that his associate had access to top-secret material on a daily basis. Okana remained doubtful, so Daulton passed him an envelope. Inside this envelope was a brief note saying:

 

Enclosed is a computer card from a National Security Agency crypto system. If you want do do business, please advise the courier.

 

As the note said, inside the envelope were some computer programming cards and a 30 cm (12 in) piece of paper tape used in the KG-13 and KW-7 crypto machines at TRW.

Okana left the room, taking the envelope with him. He returned a short while later carrying an envelope, which contained $250 and handed it over to Daulton. Okana said that under no circumstances was Daulton to return to the embassy and that from now on they should use code names. Okana said he should call him ‘John’ while Daulton was given the name ‘Luis’. Okana also told him that in future they would meet at a designated location and would use coded messages and passwords to recognise one another.

As Boyce continued to take photographs and steal vital information, Daulton made more and more visits to Mexico. Each time he went, Okana kept pushing him for details of his informant and where he worked. Although the Soviets paid for every piece of information that the two men supplied, sometimes there were complaints that the photographs were too fuzzy and asked for more details. However, when Daulton phoned his friend to ask for these details, very often Boyce could not give him the information he needed and this led to squabbles between the two men. Tension mounted and Boyce was nervous because of his friend’s addiction to heroin. He felt that this might make him careless and let information slip. He also doubted that Daulton was being honest about the money he received, and worried that he was not getting his fair share.

In almost two years of passing information to the Soviet Union, Boyce only earned himself around $20,000. His motive was never really the money. It was the excitement of the danger and the fact that he was pulling one over on US intelligence.

Eventually, Boyce told Daulton that he had had enough and that he wanted to get out of the spying game before they were caught. Daulton, on the other hand, said there was still a lot of money to be made and urged his friend to reconsider.

Meanwhile, the Russians were still eager to meet the man who was giving them so much information. Daulton was not keen on them meeting Boyce, because he felt his friend might double-cross him. After all if they had the main man, then they would have no need of a courier. Eventually, the pressure was too great and a meeting was set up, with Boyce accompanying Daulton to Mexico City.

The meeting did not go well. The Russians demanded code room transmission frequencies, but when Boyce told them he did not have access to that kind of information, it reflected badly on Daulton who had said it was only a matter of time.

 

disastrous dealings

 

At the time Boyce decided to tender his resignation from TRW in 1973, the company had just received a contract to design the ‘Pyramider’. It was a top secret project for a huge communication satellite that resembled an open umbrella. Before he left Boyce managed to take several photographs of the prototype, which he intended to pass on to his friends in the Soviet Union. Boyce had decided to leave work and go back to college full time, but in the meantime he would continue with his espionage work. Daulton, armed with his photos of the Pyramider, had returned to Mexico. He had become rather blasé about his missions and when he arrived at the embassy, finding it shut, he simply threw a message inside the gates. Little did he realise that he was being watched and within seconds he was surrounded by police officers.

The police wanted to know what he had thrown and Daulton answered casually that it was just a packet of cigarettes. The Mexican police did not believe his story, because a member of an anti-government terrorist group had recently been arrested for doing a similar thing. As Daulton argued with the police, they were overheard by Eileen Heaphy, who was an officer working at the US embassy. Daulton hoped that because he was a US citizen, he would get her support. When he was asked to go with the police for questioning, the Mexicans said it would be all right for members of the US embassy to be present. Daulton was therefore accompanied by both a vice-consul and a CIA agent.

Back at the station, Daulton was asked to empty his pockets and put everything he was holding on the desk in front of him. The first thing that intrigued the investigating officer was a fake postcard, which Daulton had been given to show his designated meeting place. The officer then opened the plain, brown envelope that Daulton had been carrying, and found some photographic film inside marked ‘Top Secret’. Daulton tried to explain that it was just a photograph that was to be used in an advertising campaign, but his story did not wash with the official. The officer said he would have the film developed and that the US officials should come back after one hour.

When the investigating officer told Daulton that he was being charged with aesisinato, he asked them to explain exactly what it meant. When they said the word ‘murder’, Daulton’s face turned white and he felt as if he had been hit by a bolt of lightning. He panicked and started planning what he was going to say.

Over the next few days he was interrogated for hours on end, but still he denied any knowledge of a murder and that he was simply a tourist. At one point in the proceedings, Daulton changed his story and said that he and an associate, Christopher Boyce, worked for the CIA. Once again the police said he was guilty of killing a policeman. The reason they believed he was the murderer was because the fake postcard showed a picture of the junction where the policeman had been killed. Daulton continued to plead innocence and eventually the Mexican police lost their patience. They ordered him to take off all his clothes and an officer threatened to cut off his genitals. They also held his head over a filthy toilet bowl and dunked his head in it three times. In between questioning Daulton was made to lie blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back. He was given nothing to drink except tap water which upset his stomach, and he was left lying in his own faeces.

Eventually, the Mexican police allowed the FBI to talk to their prisoner. He told them the same story that he had fed to the Mexicans, saying that he worked for the CIA but that he had fed false information to confuse the Russians. The FBI contacted the CIA, the Pentagon and the White House, and they were ordered to bring Daulton back to the USA to stand trial.

Christopher Boyce was arrested in January 1977. It only took him a couple of days of interrogation before he confessed to spying and selling secrets to the Soviet Union. The two men were tried separately and eventually they were both convincted of espionage and sent to Lompoc Federal Prison in California. Boyce was sentenced to forty years, but he escaped in January 1980 by hiding in a drainage hole for over three hours. While on the run he carried out several bank robberies in Idaho and Washington. He was arrested in Idaho in August 1981 after the authorities received a tip-off about his whereabouts. He was eventually released from prison on May 15, 2003, but he will remain on parole until his original release date of 2046.

Andrew Daulton was given a life sentence. He received a heavier sentence than Boyce because of his prior criminal record. He was released on parole in 1998 and, apparently, at some point after his release, Daulton was hired by the actor Sean Penn to be his personal assistant.