Christopher John Boyce

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Christopher John Boyce (born 1953) was convicted of spying against the United States for the Soviet Union. He was arrested in January 1977 for selling U.S. spy satellite secrets to the Soviet Union.

Boyce, the son of a security chief at McDonnell Douglas, along with childhood friend Andrew Daulton Lee, were raised in the very affluent seaside community of Palos Verdes Peninsula near Los Angeles. In 1974 Boyce was hired at TRW, a Southern California aerospace firm in Redondo Beach, California. His father, in his position as an aerospace security officer, was able to help get his son a job at TRW. Boyce was eventually promoted to a sensitive job in TRW's "Black Vault" (classified communications center) with a top secret security clearance.

Boyce claims that he began getting misrouted cables from the Central Intelligence Agency discussing the CIA's desire to depose the government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in Australia. Boyce claimed the CIA wanted Whitlam removed from office because he wanted to close U.S. military bases in Australia, including the vital Pine Gap secure communications facility, and withdraw Australian troops from Vietnam. Whitlam had also begun making diplomatic overtures to China, as President Nixon had previously done. For these reasons, some people claim that U.S. government pressure was a major factor in the dismissal of Whitlam as prime minister by the governor general Sir John Kerr, who, according to Boyce, was referred to as our man Kerr by CIA officers. Through the cable traffic, Boyce saw that the CIA was involving itself in such a manner not just with Australia but with other democratic, industrialized allies. Boyce considered going to the press, but believed the media's earlier disclosure of CIA involvement in the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, which had resulted in the overthrow and killing of Chilean president Salvador Allende, had not changed anything for the better.

Instead he gathered a quantity of classified documents concerning secure U.S. communications ciphers and spy satellite development and had his friend Andrew Daulton Lee, a cocaine and heroin dealer since his high school days (hence his nickname, "The Snowman") deliver them to Soviet Embassy officials in Mexico City, returning with large sums of cash for Boyce (nicknamed "The Falcon" because of his long time interest in falconry) and himself.

Boyce, then 24, was exposed after Lee was falsely arrested by Mexican police in front of the Soviet Embassy in December 1976 on suspicion of having killed a police officer. During his interrogation, Lee, who had top secret microfilm in his possession when arrested, confessed to being a Soviet spy and implicated Boyce. Boyce was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 40 years in prison at the federal penitentiary in Lompoc, California.

In January 1980, he escaped from prison. While a fugitive, Boyce carried out several bank robberies in Idaho and Washington state. He was arrested in Port Angeles, WA in August 1981 after the authorities received a tip about Boyce's whereabouts from his former bank robbery confederates.

Boyce was released from prison on parole in May 15, 2003.

The story of their case was told in novelist Robert Lindsey's best-selling 1979 book The Falcon and the Snowman. The book was turned into a film of the same title in 1985 by director John Schlesinger starring actors Timothy Hutton as Boyce and Sean Penn as Lee.

Boyce later rationalized his actions by claiming that he was selling this information in the hopes of fostering peace between the Soviet Union and the United States. He currently lives in Central Oregon. His wife was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and he has since taken a leave of absence from his job at PETCO.

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