ESPIONAGE: Stealing the Company Store

The case, said one U.S. intelligence expert, reaffirmed an old axiom in espionage: "Don't go after the bosses—go after the file clerks." Last week Christopher Boyce, 24, was found guilty in a Los Angeles courtroom on eight counts of spying for the Soviet Union. He could be sentenced to as long as life in prison. No sooner was Boyce's trial finished than the same judge and the same Government attorneys began taking part in a similar case against Andrew Daulton Lee, 25. The Government charges that the two men—boyhood friends—had worked together to give the Soviets a top-secret feasibility study for a satellite spy system.

In the last days of his trial, Boyce surprised the courtroom by taking the stand and in effect admitting he had passed on information (Lee so far insists that he is innocent). Boyce was apparently hoping he could win the sympathy of judge or jury by relating how he became a spy. The defendent told how his father—a former FBI agent —had helped him get a job at TRW, a big California defense contractor. With a "top secret" clearance, he began working in the communications "vault," where he supervised the highly classified communications between TRW and CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.

Early in 1975, said Boyce, he attended a party at the home of Lee, a convicted drug dealer who had violated his parole and was a fugitive. As the two drank wine and smoked pot late into the evening, the talk turned to politics and the complaints both had against the U.S. Government. "You ought to hear what the CIA is doing to the Australians," Boyce told his friend. Then he cited materials that had crossed his desk at TRW telling how the CIA had infiltrated Australian labor unions.*

The two young men agreed that the matter should be made public, and Boyce provided Lee with a report spelling out his accusations against the CIA. But instead of publicizing the material, said Boyce, Lee took it to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, the center for Soviet espionage in northern Latin America. Boyce said the Soviets liked what they saw and demanded more.

Pet Cat. The defendant testified that Lee next threatened to expose him if he refused to deliver other materials. Boyce cooperated, fearing blackmail and remembering Lee's callousness as a child, when he shot his pet cat with an air rifle because it "bored" him.

Boyce admitted using a Minox camera he said was given him by Lee to photograph some IBM cipher cards and parts of a top-secret feasibility study of a satellite system. Furthermore, Boyce said he himself had made two trips to Mexico City and met Boris Grishin, the science attaché at the Soviet embassy. The defendant acknowledged that he had received $15,000, and said that Lee had received $61,000. His main motivation in all this, Boyce maintained, was simply to "keep Lee off my back," claiming that his old friend had even threatened to have him killed.