The Falcon and the Snowman

by Robert Lindsey

  Chris’s voice thickened as he spoke. Reporters sitting at the press table saw moisture glistening in his eyes that reflected the soft lights of the crowded courtroom.

  “What I failed to understand,” Chris went on, looking up at Judge Kelleher from the words he had written the night before, “was that it didn’t matter if the President was a criminal; it didn’t matter if the land was filled with prejudice and bias; it didn’t matter if law enforcement could be lawless or that we could kill and maim in Vietnam for eight years. It didn’t matter if we could assassinate and topple elected governments.

  “What I failed to grasp,” he continued, “was that while these and other things disgusted me, none of them individually or even their sum total were the central issue. What was vitally, indispensably important was that we had ideals. That we based our society on law.…”

  Chris turned to the next page and started to continue. But as he began to speak the words, he was momentarily stunned. The page read:

  “Dear Dad and Mom: My thoughts are a jumble.…”

  It was his half-finished suicide note from the night before, written on the back of a sheet of the tissue-paper stationery on which he’d drafted his appeal to the judge. Quickly, he flipped over the piece of paper and continued:

  “No matter that our history was flawed … There are those who strive to be correct, to heal, to persevere toward those goals upon which we base our government.

  “And when the time arrived, in the face of pressure, my decision was colored in the back of my mind with the thought that I had been betrayed by my government. That what we were and where we had arrived were irreconcilable. I was wrong to believe that my ideals no longer counted. I believed the nation to have abandoned those commitments toward principle which have made this country unique. And when I was coerced, it left me with little strength to fall back on. It was a position I did not seek. My primary error was in failing to appreciate that my country is anchored in principle no matter what the practices of its government. On the eighth of January I was determined to remain in the United States and to account for my actions. It was no easy decision. I appreciate the court’s position. I would hope that at some reasonable time I’d be allowed to contribute once again to this society. There is no possibility of a recurrence of this matter. I have never been involved in criminality. I am emotionally exhausted but not beaten. I have one goal in my life and that is to recover my reputation. I am resolved to accomplish it. I appreciate the conscientious defense my attorneys provided. I apologize to my father. I express profound regrets to the American people and their principles.”

  There was a silence in the courtroom that lasted perhaps thirty seconds. Then Judge Kelleher, after praising Chris’s two defense lawyers for work in the “finest tradition” of the law (he seemed to appreciate how little they had to work with), sentenced Chris to a ninety-day psychiatric study. The sentence was imposed under the Federal statute designed to allow leniency for young offenders. His final sentencing was delayed until September.

  There was rejoicing in the Boyce camp. “I’m delighted,” Dougherty told a press conference after the hearing ended. Without divulging its contents, he said the probation report had been “extremely favorable,” and added that the judge’s seeming puzzlement over Chris suggested to him that he was going to show compassion for him at the final sentencing three months hence. “Sentencing him under the Youth Act is a bellwether,” he said. “I think it’s possible he may not serve more than six years.”

  Daulton returned to the courtroom of Federal District Judge Robert J. Kelleher on the morning of July 18, 1977.

  He had observed Kelleher long enough now not to expect the patience he had found in the Torrance courtroom of Judge Donahue. Nevertheless, as he entered the courtroom that morning wearing the conservative business suit he had worn throughout his trial, Daulton still clung to a shaft of hope. The hope was based on one thing: he had, like Chris, agreed to be debriefed by Jerry Brown and his associates, and as Chris had before him, Daulton had given the CIA a step-by-step account of the espionage partnership. He maintained that it had been Chris’s idea from the beginning and gave his interrogators a list of the documents and photographs he could remember delivering to the Russians. He couldn’t recall all of them, though, he said; he hadn’t bothered to read a lot of the documents he sold to his KGB contacts. He gave every impression of being a simple peddler, unconcerned about the nature of his merchandise, interested only in the money he could sell it for.

  The government representatives showed Daulton photographs, many of them taken surreptitiously by CIA agents. Some were slightly fuzzy pictures of a man getting into cars; others showed men walking along streets and entering a restaurant. Daulton recognized an old friend—there was a photograph of Old Steely Teeth, Mikhail Vasilyevich Muzankov—in the full-dress uniform of a Red Army general. There were photos of Boris, Okana, Karpov, Dagtyr and a half-dozen other KGB agents whom Daulton identified for the CIA as his contacts in Mexico City. “I blew a dozen agents for the KGB,” Daulton would boast afterward.

  On the morning of July 18, his cooperation with the agency whose secrets he had sold to the Soviet Union was his only hope—the government had promised to take this into consideration when he was sentenced. He hoped the judge would sentence him under the Youth Act so he could get out in six or seven years.

  When Richard A. Stilz rose to address Judge Kelleher, the first thing he did was inform the court of the defendant’s cooperation with the CIA, and he said it had helped the agency assess the damage from the espionage conspiracy. But it was soon apparent that leniency was not on his mind. Stilz began his argument by recounting Daulton’s long record in drug trafficking. From the time he was a teen-ager, he said, Daulton had spurned the basic tenets of conduct of a civilized society.

  “Furthermore,” he said, “based on the evidence that has been adduced before this court, there can be no question but that defendant Lee committed perhaps the most serious crime that a person could possibly commit—espionage. A crime against one’s country; in many respects, a crime more serious than murder … a crime, your honor, not committed against one victim, such as murder, but against millions of victims … here the entire population of the United States.

  “And for what?” Stilz asked, looking over at Daulton, whose eyes were cast down at the table in front of him.

  “Why did he do what he did? What was his motive for selling out his country? What was his motive in delivering this country’s most sensitive top secrets to the Russians for over a two-year period?” Stilz asked, slightly stretching the duration of the espionage operation.

  “His motive was simple, yet shocking. He did it for money. In other words, Your Honor, he jeopardized this country’s safety and well-being for money. Not for any strong anti-America belief or for any particular ideology which he possessed. He simply did it for the money.”

  And then, for the first time, Stilz acknowledged in public that the loss from the Black Vault had extended beyond the Pyramider papers. Some of the documents sold to the Russians, Stilz said, were “so extremely sensitive that the government did not include them in the indictment or expose them in trial.”

  Daulton fidgeted in his seat and looked at Ken Kahn with a frown that needed no words to convey his fear.

  “Your Honor,” Stilz went on, “no value can be placed on the actual damage that defendant Lee had caused to the national defense and security of the United States, nor the damage that he had done to the CIA’s covert intelligence gathering and operations. Nor can we place the value on the lives of covert CIA intelligence agents which may have been jeopardized due to defendant Lee’s espionage activities. In fact, we will probably never know the full extent or content of the damage done by defendant Lee, but may someday, unfortunately, realize its effect.” Given Lee’s long pattern of criminal behavior; his unwillingness to abide by the rules of society; the seriousness of the charges of which he was convicted; the nature of the documents he ha
d sold to the Russians and his calculated economic motive in selling out his country, Stilz argued, there was only one choice facing Judge Kelleher: life imprisonment.

  Don Re stood up and approached the lectern with a seemingly impossible task. After Stilz’ stinging attack on Daulton, Re had to plead for compassion. He tried gamely, but there was not much he could say.

  One of the basic reasons for sending one man to jail, he said, was to deter another from committing the same crime in the future. But, he argued, espionage was not a crime in this category: the motives for espionage were so varied, so unique to the individuals who were moved by the temptation to commit it, that the traditional concept of deterrence did not apply. “It is almost inconceivable that a person can engage in that kind of conduct if he is fully aware of what the potential harm can be.

  “I suppose in this case we have some indications as to the ‘why.’ We can see the excitement that is generated. We can see a young man in his early twenties at the time this began perhaps being attracted to the notion of excitement, the notion of adventure. But that attraction is not the attraction of a criminal to do a criminal act. That is an attraction of an immature individual who chooses perhaps the most unwise course he could ever choose.…”

  The youthful dark-haired attorney was trying, but if he was making any points with Kelleher, there were no indications of it in the bored expression of the judge.

  “I would ask the Court to give long consideration,” Re continued, “to the question of whether there is anything that can be salvaged from this life or whether we just throw it away and determine to make an example, or for whatever other purpose, keep him out of society. And I think that when the balance is struck in that manner, some substantial consideration has to be given to whether there is salvageable material in this defendant. And it really is salvage, because regardless of what this court does, this defendant bears a stigma which he can never erase for the rest of his life. He will bear a stigma that he is not trustworthy, that he is not loyal.

  “He has stigmatized his name through this conviction,” Re said.

  “It is a family which is torn apart now, not only through the potential loss of their eldest son, but, I think the Court is aware, through the imminent loss of the head of the household; that since the termination of this trial, Mr. Lee’s father has discovered that he is terminally ill.”

  Kelleher asked Daulton to stand while he imposed sentence.

  Daulton lifted his small body with its almost simian geometry out of his seat and prepared to hear the judge’s decision. Kelleher asked Daulton if he had anything to say in his own behalf. Daulton said he did not and was allowed to sit down.

  “This is a crime of great degree … treason doesn’t occur very often,” the judge began. He acknowledged Daulton’s cooperation with the CIA and that he planned to weigh it as “an act of expiation” in determining his sentence.

  Hope flickered in Daulton. But as quickly as the judge had ignited it, he snuffed it out:

  “This Court is satisfied that the defendant made available to the Soviets—for a price—whatever he was able to obtain,” and along the way passed a substantial measure of corruption to his codefendant.

  “The Court is satisfied that there was a disposition on the part of this defendant to do any hurt which might result from turning over to the Soviets the materials available to him as long as the price was right. The Court has in mind also that this is a youth. When were you born, Mr. Lee?”

  “January, 1952.”

  “That is January 2, 1952?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “The Court is aware that this is a defendant now in his twenty-sixth year and was a youth when the crime was committed. The Court is not persuaded at all that he suffered during the period involved with any significant degree of immaturity. The Court is impressed and wholly satisfied that this was a young man mature beyond his years in the sophistication of world travel and engagement in nefarious activities on a wide geographical basis.” It was a tip-off that Kelleher did not intend to sentence Daulton under the Youth Act.

  Looking at Re, Kelleher said he found it difficult to give weight to his argument that Lee deserved mercy because he came from a close, devoted family. He made no mention of the reference to Dr. Lee’s cancer, but said, “The Court’s heart goes out to the parents of this defendant.” He noted that he had observed their daily attendance at his trial. He said he felt compassion for them and respected their loyalty. But in his next breath, he said that, contrary to Re’s argument, treason was a crime that demanded a sentence with a deterring effect.

  Daulton looked quickly over at Re and Kahn, as if pleading for help.

  “The Court,” Kelleher continued, “must give recognition to the compelling need to those similarly disposed that for whatever reasons—of youth, or challenge, or excitement, or otherwise—that this is a game you do not play for any such purpose.…

  “The defendant is hereby committed to the custody of the Attorney General or his authorized representatives for imprisonment for a term of his natural life.”

  Daulton packed the few possessions he had in his jail cell in Los Angeles and prepared for transfer to a Federal penitentiary to begin the life sentence. He had not seen Chris now in many weeks. But through Kahn, he had followed his efforts to get a favorable sentence under the Youth Act, via his defense of extortion and his participation in further debriefings with the CIA. Daulton had heard about the favorable probation report and felt a grudging admiration for Chris: it looked as if he might save himself.

  When Daulton had finished packing, he was taken to a car by Federal marshals for the trip to his next prison. But en route, Daulton made one stop, arranged by Stilz at the request of Anne Lee.

  The prison car climbed up The Hill from the flatlands of Los Angeles, followed the high bluffs that skirted the Pacific, and came to a stop on the big driveway in front of the Lee home.

  A marshal led him into the house and then stood back, waiting, while Daulton tiptoed into his father’s bedroom and said good-bye.

  “Pops, I love you,” he said, and held his hand a few moments.

  Lompoc is a small town in Central California 170 miles north of The Hill that is best known for its production of commercial flower seeds—an industry that each spring turns the Lompoc Valley into a panoramic rainbow of fragrant sweet peas, stock, petunias and a dozen other varieties of flowers. Besides flower blossoms, Lompoc’s economy is rooted in the payrolls of two institutions of the United States Government—the Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution and Vandenberg Air Force Base—the CIA’s principal launching platform, along with Cape Canaveral, for spy satellites.

  The prison car arrived at the Lompoc penitentiary late in the afternoon of August 4, 1977, and Daulton began his life term. At 1:10 P.M. the following day, his father died of stomach cancer.

  51

  At 2 P.M. on September 12, 1977, the clerk of Federal District Court Judge Robert J. Kelleher announced Item 19 on the judge’s calendar that day:

  “Criminal Case 77-131, United States of America versus Christopher John Boyce.”

  Chris’s parents and most of his eight sisters and brothers were seated in the second row of the crowded courtroom. It was the first time they had come to court. George Chelius had told his friend and former boss, Charles Boyce, that he was optimistic Chris would get off with a moderate sentence.

  Chris had reason to be hopeful. There were now two encouraging reports about him in the possession of Judge Kelleher. Since the favorable presentencing probation report had been filed with the court in June, he had been interviewed at Terminal Island by Federal Bureau of Prisons psychiatrists and psychologists, and they, like the probation officer who had written the earlier report, had accepted his story that he had become a spy because he was blackmailed by an old friend. Maybe his lie had worked.

  The other reason to be optimistic was Kelleher’s decision in June to sentence him preliminarily under provisions of the Youth
Act. To the lawyers, this seemed to signal that the final sentence would also be under this provision of the law. Daulton’s life sentence had not added to their optimism, but the lawyers hoped the judge accepted Chris’s story of extortion.

  A few days before the sentencing, Chris had told two newspaper reporters, during an interview at Terminal Island, that he hoped for a sentence of six or seven years. Then, he said, he wanted to become a lawyer. “I know that sounds funny,” he said, gesturing toward his prison uniform. “But the law is something that’s always interested me, and it’s something by which I would be able to show society that I’m a worthwhile person and that Judge Kelleher was not wrong.”

  Although Chelius and Dougherty were ostensibly optimistic when they entered the courtroom, they knew there was the equivalent of a legal bomb that could detonate Chris’s chances of a lenient sentence—his letters to Vito Conterno.

  The clerk had barely finished reading the docket number of the case when Chelius signaled the judge that he wanted to make a motion at the side of the bench, where he would not be heard by the spectators.

  Chelius, Dougherty and Stilz all approached the bench. Joel Levine had resigned from government service, and Stilz was representing the government alone.

  “Yes, gentlemen?” Kelleher inquired.

  Chelius said he wanted to bring up the matter of letters Chris had written while he was at Terminal Island. “We would like to see those suppressed on the basis that they would cause undue prejudice and would be only cumulative in nature as to the continuing charges for which he has been found guilty.”

  “I am not clear what you are saying. Specifically, to what letters are you referring?” Kelleher, like Chelius, was whispering.

  “Well,” Chelius said, “the United States Attorney submitted letters purportedly written by the defendant Boyce prior to the last sentencing—”

  “If I may interrupt for a minute,” Stilz said. “They were letters purportedly written by defendant Boyce to an inmate in prison, and these letters discuss partly about the spy trial, that in fact he still works with the KGB and that his interests still lie with the KGB.”