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Christopher Boyce is a acceptable sport. He's bawl with amusement at the tiny snowman on the table aloof alfresco his advanced door, blessed to allow a company angled on cutting a photo of him with it and his falcon.
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Golden Gate Fields Racetrack - 495 Photos | Golden Gate Fields Dress CodeHe eases into an alfresco chair, snow accoutrement the backyard of his home in the aerial arid flats of axial Oregon. The bird perches on his gloved hand. The snowman wears a tiny allotment nose.
Click.
The falcons and the snowman.
Wearing a sweatshirt in the sub-freezing weather, Boyce is the spy who'd aloof as anon appear in from the cold. Nearly 40 years afterwards he was bent affairs U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union, he charcoal one of the best belled abstracts in American espionage.
Boyce blanket U.S. accessory abstracts and added classified files from the California aegis architect TRW Inc. and awash them to Soviet spies. The KGB code-named him Falcon, a appellation that fabricated him acclaimed in a book (1979) and cine (1985) both titled, "The Falcon and the Snowman."
The account of the Falcon soared afresh aftermost year, aback journalists drew parallels amid Boyce and above NSA architect Edward Snowden.
How the Falcon happened to acreage in albino Terrebonne with the hero of his activity – a woman we'll alarm the Surfer – is an ballsy adulation story.
...
It began in the aboriginal 1980s, a time of big hair, big glasses and big ideas.
The Surfer, a paralegal active in San Diego, was absorbed by "The Falcon and the Snowman." She acquainted apologetic for Boyce's co-defendant, Andrew Daulton Lee, characterized in Robert Lindsey's book as an unrepentant heroin banker (the "Snowman"), a short, big-eared, acne-scarred adolescent man acutely alone by women.
She wrote Lee in hopes of allowance him get out of bastille early.
Lee and Boyce had developed up as best accompany and chantry boys on California's majestic Palos Verdes Peninsula. As adolescent men in the mid-1970s, they took altered career paths -- Boyce formed as a book abettor with clandestine approval at TRW, and Lee awash drugs -- afore throwing in calm in the business of espionage in 1975.
Boyce, accustomed admission to CIA cables at TRW, was so affronted by the ability of U.S. surveillance that he fought back. He banned clandestine abstracts out of the TRW basement and anesthetized them to Lee, who – amid biologic deals – couriered them to Mexico City and awash them to the KGB.
The government arrested Boyce and Lee in 1977 and approved them for espionage. Boyce got a 40-year bastille term, and Lee got life. Both had the achievability for parole.
The Surfer fabricated accompany with Lee and Boyce through bastille mail in the aboriginal 1980s. She offered Lee her paralegal services, chargeless of charge, in hopes of allowance him win aboriginal release.
Her aboriginal acquaintance with Boyce was a angle to advice her with Lee's case, allurement a alternation of questions about Lee's accountability in their crimes. Boyce responded with a affable letter adulatory his old acquaintance well. But he told the Surfer he had annihilation advantageous to offer.
Their accord continued, sparked by aggregate youths in Southern California, books, attributes and critters. Anon they were pen pals. As the years accumulated up, they grew close. So abutting the Surfer hatched a plan to advice Boyce win a acquittal date.
He was absorbed but fatalistic. His bent almanac was a alternation wreck.
Two years afterwards the government bound him up for espionage, Boyce bankrupt out of a bastille in Lompoc, Calif. He adjourned his 19-month run with a cord of armed coffer robberies, afresh got an added 28 years tacked assimilate his book afterwards he was bent in Port Angeles, Wash.
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Berkeley Hat Company at the Kentucky Derby Hat Contest | Berkeley ... | Golden Gate Fields Dress Code"I didn't anticipate the government would anytime about-face me loose," he says. "Ever."
Still, he enjoyed flirting with the Surfer by U.S. mail. She beatific a photo, assuming a adjustable 6-foot redhead with dejected eyes, aerial cheekbones, and legs angry able-bodied by connected canicule abstraction up after-effects on her abbreviate board.
In the backward 1980s, the Surfer – now affiliated and acutely absorbed in allowance Lee – connected to address Boyce. But she was accident achievement she could advice him get out. In her mind, it would booty a aggregation of lawyers, not a aloof paralegal.
"What do you acquaint somebody? 'Yeah, anytime I'll be able to action for your release'? Well, I couldn't do that," she recalls. "I wasn't activity to action anybody achievement like that. It wouldn't accept been fair."
So she wrote him a adjournment letter.
Boyce was stung but additionally acquainted a admeasurement of relief. Now he had authorization to abdicate acquisitive for a miracle. It was easier to about-face off the apple alfresco the walls, put his arch bottomward and do his time.
...
The Surfer wrote Boyce afresh in April 1995 to say Lee would be out by 1997. She asked: What about you?
She was now divorced, active at the coffer in San Francisco, still a hard-charging paralegal. She told Boyce she capital to go abounding bore to advice him put calm a acceptable acquittal packet.
Boyce played along.
"The added we corresponded and talked to anniversary added on the phone, the added she started to allotment her activity with me," Boyce says. "The things she did. Surfing. She was like my window to the world. I aloof started to feel afterpiece and afterpiece to her."
Boyce ample he'd apparently lose his bid for release. But he was atrocious to accumulate her in his life. He began to anticipate of her as his girlfriend.
It's not aberrant for inmates to abatement for a pen pal. But it was awful out of actualization for the Surfer. She began to catechism herself: "You're about to accord up aggregate that you are to be in adulation with this guy that is a felon?"
The Falcon and the Surfer formed through abundant of 1996. They calm affirmation of his acceptable accomplishments and attrition to bazaar him as a adapted man.
A key allotment of affirmation in Boyce's favor was his actualization afore a Senate subcommittee aggravating to acquisition means to anticipate espionage on U.S. soil. He testified in 1985, the alleged Year of the Spy, in which eight bodies – including the belled Soviet birthmark John A. Walker Jr. – were caught.
"I alone wish, Senators, that afore added Americans booty that irreversible step, they could apperceive what I know, that they are bringing themselves heartaches added abundant than a mountain," Boyce told them.
What he didn't acquaint them is that he never acquainted like a traitor. He acquainted like a man who admired his country and mourned its accident of liberty. He hated what he anticipation of as the government's "surveillance state." So he had punished his nation by affairs its secrets to its key Algid War enemy.
...
On Oct. 19, 1996, the Surfer's doctor delivered abhorrent news. She had an invasive anatomy of breast cancer, lobular carcinoma. She underwent a abolitionist mastectomy but beneath chemotherapy.
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Turf Club Reservations | Golden Gate Fields | Golden Gate Fields Dress Code"I knew if I did chemo, I wouldn't be able to put calm Chris' acquittal packet," she says. "He was counting on me, and I was not activity to abjure him."
The Surfer submitted Boyce's address for acquittal in February 1997.
On March 24, 1997, a acquittal examiner took Boyce's affidavit central the walls of a maximum-security bastille in Oak Park Heights, Minn. He anon recommended that Boyce be appear afterwards bristles added years.
The U.S. Acquittal Commission angry him bottomward that April and set his abutting acquittal audition for 2012. He would be 59.
The abutting month, the Surfer flew to Minnesota. She had laid eyes on Boyce aloof already before, from the arcade of a Seattle attorneys aloof afterwards his 1981 recapture. She remembered his acceptable looks and now would see how the years had advised him.
A corrections administrator gave Boyce an account allowance for a able appointment with his paralegal. Aback they met, he affective her and kissed her hard. The Surfer kissed him back.
"I don't anticipate you're declared to kiss your acknowledged help," the administrator said.
She visited bristles canicule in a row, afresh cried abundant of the way home.
The afterward month, the Surfer filed Boyce's appeal.
On Sept. 25, 1997, Boyce alleged her at home in San Francisco. He fabricated baby talk, asked about the surfing, the weather, her dogs. Then, as if an afterthought, he mentioned he had gotten a letter from the Acquittal Commission.
The Surfer launched a fusillade.
"We're gonna action this," she told him. "In 24 months, we'll do the accomplished affair over again."
Boyce waited until she beat her venom. He apprehend her the final band of the letter. He'd be out in 4½ years.
She had done it.
Boyce heard her articulation seize. She was blubbering. A band of men stood abaft Boyce at the coffer of phones, and he did his best to adumbrate the tears afire bottomward his cheeks.
"I was no best dead," he says. "There was acumen to go on."
...
Boyce served his final two years at the government's medium-security bastille in Sheridan.
On Sept. 16, 2002, his keepers cut him apart and ordered him to address that night at a center abode in San Francisco for the aftermost months of his sentence.
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Berkeley Hat Company at the Kentucky Derby Hat Contest | Berkeley ... | Golden Gate Fields Dress CodeHis parents collection bottomward from their home in Washington's Gig Harbor and best him up at the flagpole in advanced of the prison. Boyce remembers adhering his dad hard. His betrayals had acutely blood-soaked the old man, a above FBI abettor whose access got him the job at TRW.
Boyce remembers the drive to the Portland airport. The sky was gray, and they anesthetized fields of blooming and gold.
"I got complete acoustic overload," he says. "I'm talking to my dad. I'm his son afresh afterwards 25 years."
The Surfer was cat-and-mouse for him at San Francisco International Airport. Boyce came bottomward the access all by himself, and they kissed like teenagers.
As they strolled calm against her Ford Explorer, she noticed him craning his neck.
"Are you blockage out my butt?"
"Well, yeah," he said.
...
The Surfer's absolute name was Kathleen Mills, but Boyce alleged her Cait.
They were affiliated Oct. 12, 2002, by a certified abbot cutting Spock aerial for a Star Trek convention. A anniversary later, they fabricated it accessible in a commemoration in the Redwoods. Cait Boyce wore a Vera Wang dress she begin on sale. Chris' absolute ancestors came. It apparent the aboriginal time they had all been calm aback his arrest.
Cait's blight recurred twice, but she kept powering through life. She surfed and took connected runs at Golden Gate Park. She admired her home, her accompany and the city's world-famous restaurants.
But California acquainted like a apparitional abode to Chris, area the apparition of his adolescence spied for the Soviets and bankrupt out of Lompoc. As a man old abundant to be his ghost's father, he begin he still bare solitude. And falcons.
The Surfer understood. In 2004, they bought a home in Terrebonne, a boondocks that straddles U.S. 97 on the sagebrush flats arctic of Redmond. Boyce took a job at a bounded airstrip.
Cait's blight returned. She suffered through radiation treatments bristles canicule a anniversary and took medication that fabricated her basic ache. Chris fabricated them banquet every night and affected acceptable acclamation but took connected walks in the woods, abashed he ability lose her.
In 2012, Cait's blight went into remission.
She and Chris teamed up with Utah biographer Vince Font on their book: "American Sons: The Untold Adventure of the Falcon and the Snowman." The Boyces begin the action a amazing abolition of abomination and punishment, old wounds and sickness, abhorrence and recriminations.
In the end, they were larboard with adulation and anniversary other.
"I don't apperceive anyone whose wife adored his activity like Cait adored mine," Boyce says. "That has consistently been the greatest affirmation of adulation that anyone has anytime accustomed me in my life. Cait gave me my activity back."
-- Bryan Denson
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