Tinker, Tailor, Stoner, Spy

Summary

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Crimes of the Times: "Tinker, Tailor, Stoner, Spy"

Podcast: Crimes of the Times (L.A. Times Studios)
Host: Christopher Goffard
Guests: Kate Mills (Boyce's ex-wife), Joel Levine (Former Assistant U.S. Attorney)
Release Date: October 28, 2025
Duration: ~29 minutes

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the infamous espionage case involving Christopher Boyce and Andrew Dalton Lee, two Southern California altar boys who became Soviet spies in the 1970s. Christopher Goffard takes listeners behind the scenes, unraveling the improbable ways Boyce accessed sensitive military secrets and sold them to the Soviets—with the help of his friend Lee. The episode examines how 1970s counterculture collided with Cold War realities, shining a spotlight on missed red flags, questionable security, personal motivations, and the human toll of betrayal.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Boyce’s Unlikely Access to National Secrets

• Background: Christopher Boyce was born and raised in the affluent, Catholic community of Palos Verdes, Southern California, and embodied a blend of liberal, countercultural disillusionment and traditional upbringing ([00:42]).
• Job Acquisition: Boyce secured a clerical position at TRW’s classified defense complex, largely thanks to his father's connections. The background check was cursory at best ([01:57]).
  • Quote: “His father ran security for an aircraft contractor and had once been an FBI agent. He’d called in a favor. The family name seemed to carry great weight and TRW investigators had performed only a perfunctory background check before hiring him.” — Christopher Goffard [01:57]
• Lifestyle: Despite his high-clearance job, Boyce was openly part of the counterculture, popping amphetamines by day and smoking joints by night ([02:50]).

2. The Missed Red Flags

• Weak Vetting: Neither TRW management nor security interviewed Boyce’s friends or peers, missing clear indicators of his unsuitability for sensitive work ([02:21], [02:37]).
  • Quote: “Had anybody at TRW… interviewed any of his friends… they would have found out he was this nomadic, pot smoking, counterculture kind of guy. They would never have hired somebody like that at TRW.” — Kate Mills [02:37]

3. Motives for Betrayal

• Disillusionment: Boyce, disenchanted by Vietnam and Watergate, was further incensed by evidence of American government deception, particularly in dealings with Australia ([03:40]).
• Impulse or Ideology?:
  • Quote: “I think that he saw a challenge and he went for the challenge and he roped in his friend.” — Kate Mills [06:15]
  • Mills argues Boyce was motivated more by daredevil thrill than genuine idealism.

4. The Role of Andrew Dalton Lee

• Partner in Espionage: Lee, a childhood friend and ex-altar boy, was already deep in the drug trade and craved money ([07:20]).
• Personality Contrast: Lee’s recklessness and appetite for risk made him the operational partner.
  • Quote: “If Boyce had political and ideological motives for espionage, money was Lee’s obsession.” — Goffard [07:20]
  • Lee’s indiscretion (showing off spy gear, braggadocio at parties) hastened their downfall ([08:11]).

5. The Operation: Passing Secrets to the Soviets

• Spycraft 101: Lee approached the Soviet embassy in Mexico City offering secrets, adopted clandestine protocols (e.g., taping an X to lampposts), and trafficked “thousands of classified documents” over more than a year ([08:11]).
• Failure and Arrest: Lee, desperate for heroin cash, was caught waiting outside the embassy with sensitive film. He named Boyce under pressure ([09:00]).

6. Prosecution Challenges and Legal Tactics

• Sensitive Evidence: Prosecutors, led by Joel Levine, walked a tightrope: revealing too much could compromise national security, but withholding evidence risked undermining the trial ([10:31], [11:18]).
  • Quote: “We had to devise strategies where that wasn’t the subject matter of our prosecution…if we’re forced to go beyond certain category of information, we might have to cut the case short, you know, and dismiss the charges.” — Joel Levine [10:37], [11:30]
• Historical Paranoia: After the Pentagon Papers embarrassment, the prosecution was hypersensitive about mishandling the case ([11:45], [12:05]).

7. Defense Strategies & Courtroom Drama

• Turning on Each Other: Each defendant’s legal team tried to shift the blame ([14:32]).
  • Lee’s defense: He thought he was helping the CIA transmit disinformation to the Soviets ([14:50]).
  • Boyce’s defense: He claimed Lee blackmailed him, using a letter he’d written while high ([17:09]).
  • Quote: “No, I never believed a word of that. … Both of them, the guilt is equitable between the two of them.” — Kate Mills [17:23]
• Juror Reaction: Neither defense swayed the jury. Lee got life, Boyce received 40 years ([18:58]).

8. The Aftermath: Escapes, Media, and Regret

• Dramatic Escape: Boyce’s 1980 prison break led to bank robberies and an eventual recapture ([18:58]).
• Media Depiction: The story became the book and film The Falcon and the Snowman—with Boyce as the falconer and Lee as the snowman ([19:38]).
• Testifying to Congress: Boyce later spoke on the hollowness of espionage:
  • Quote: “There was no thrill… only depression and a hopeless enslavement to an inhuman, uncaring bureaucracy. No American who has gone to the KGB has not come to regret it.” — Christopher Goffard paraphrasing Boyce [20:22]
  • He described making mixed drinks in the code destruction blender ([20:41]).

9. Rehabilitation and Redemption

• Lee’s Parole Push: Kate Mills, initially fascinated by the case, labored for 20 years to secure Lee’s release, ultimately with support from former prosecutors ([21:38], [22:00]).
  • Quote: “Those letters made every single bit of difference.” — Kate Mills [21:53]
  • Levine: “He had made a genuine effort to change his life. Maybe I was being a softy, but that’s how I felt.” — Joel Levine [22:36]
• Romance & Release: Mills fell in love with Boyce, later married him after his release in 2002 ([23:39]).
  • Quote: “He said, ‘My mother would never forgive me if I did that.’” — Kate Mills, on their marriage [23:39]
• Current Lives: Boyce and Mills are now divorced but remain close. Boyce and Lee have not spoken in 45 years ([24:10]).

10. Legacy and Lasting Damage

• Estrangement: Lee has “written off” Boyce, blaming him for his imprisonment ([24:31]).
• Assessment of Harm: Boyce claims the secrets were worthless, but prosecutors say otherwise.
  • Quote: “In a murder case, you have one victim ... In an espionage case, the whole country is a victim. ... They leveled the playing field.” — Richard Stull, former prosecutor (relayed by Goffard) [25:38]
  • Levine confirms that the material provided to the Soviets had “substantial value” ([26:31]).
• Human Cost: The anguish suffered by both families, especially Boyce’s father, is highlighted as a poignant note ([27:31]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Boyce's Fit for the Job:
  “They would have found out … he was this nomadic, pot smoking, counterculture kind of guy. They would never have hired somebody like that at TRW.” — Kate Mills [02:37]
• On Motivation:
  “I think that he saw a challenge and he went for the challenge and he roped in his friend.” — Kate Mills [06:15]
• On Security:
  “Security was a joke, he said. … We used the code destruction blender for making banana daiquiris and mai tais.” — Christopher Boyce via Goffard [20:41]
• On Redemption:
  “He had made a genuine effort to change his life. Maybe I was being a softy, but that’s how I felt.” — Joel Levine [22:36]
• On Repercussions:
  “In a murder case, you have one victim ... In an espionage case, the whole country is a victim.” — Richard Stull via Goffard [25:38]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Setting the Stage & Background (00:00–03:40)
• Boyce’s Work at TRW, Disillusionment (03:40–04:57)
• Failed Security Vettings & Lifestyle (02:21–03:10)
• Initiating Espionage, Motives (06:15–07:20)
• Introducing Andrew Dalton Lee (07:20–08:11)
• Spying Operations in Mexico City (08:11–09:00)
• Discovery, Arrest, and Legal Peril (09:00–10:31)
• Prosecution Strategy and Courtroom Challenges (11:18–12:57)
• Kate Mills’ Interest and Emotional Involvement (13:01–14:32)
• Mutual Betrayal in Trials (14:32–18:12)
• Boyce’s Prison Escape and Pop Culture Legacy (18:58–20:41)
• Parole Battles and Redemption for Lee (20:56–22:49)
• Life After Prison, Marriage, and Estrangement (23:03–24:10)
• Lasting Impact and Damage Assessment (25:38–26:39)
• Reflection on Family Anguish (27:31–27:55)

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Tone and Style Reflection

Delivered in Christopher Goffard’s signature investigative style—unhurried and reflective—the episode combines a keen eye for character detail with a sense of profound strangeness about Cold War California. Contributions from Kate Mills are personal, blunt, sometimes darkly funny; legal insights from Joel Levine are measured and candid. Together, they provide a nuanced, sometimes tragic, always human account of an American espionage saga that’s stranger than fiction.

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Transcript

[Christopher Goffard]

This is an LA Times Studios podcast. Chris Gofford here at LA Times Studios. Thanks for joining us on Crimes of the Times. Today we discuss an infamous espionage case in which a Southern California stoner stumbled into a vault full of America's secrets and decided to sell them to the Soviets. Tell us what you think in the comments below. The story of two Palos Verdes altar boys who grew up to be Soviet spies is one that should never have been possible. It's hard to fathom how a young man named Christopher Boyce gained access to some of America's most sensitive defense secrets in the mid-1970s with such ludicrous ease. It's hard to believe that no one was watching him. But for months he smuggled documents out of the TRW defense complex in Redondo beach, passing them to the Russians through his buddy Andrew Dalton Lee. It's a story of the Cold War that would only have been conceivable in 1970s Southern California, where the state's sprawling defense and aerospace industry collided with the state's anti establishment counterculture. Christopher Boyce was raised in the Catholic pews and prosperous suburbs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. He was a liberal and a stoner and a lover of falcons. He had an intellectual bent and was bitterly disaffected by the country amid news of the Vietnam War and Watergate. In the summer of 1974, as a 21 year old college dropout, he got a job as a clerk at the TRW Defense and Space Systems complex in Redondo Beach. How did he manage this? Through the old boys network. His father ran security for an aircraft contractor and had once been an FBI agent. He'd called in a favor. The family name seemed to carry great weight and TRW investigators had performed only a perfunctory background check before hiring him.

[Kate Mills]

Had anybody at trw, anybody in management, Anybody in security? If they would have interviewed any of his friends or any people outside of just his father.

[Christopher Goffard]

This is Kate Mills, Boyce's ex wife.

[Kate Mills]

They would have found out, I mean, that he was this nomadic, pot smoking, you know, counterculture kind of guy. They would never have hired somebody like that at trw.

[Christopher Goffard]

According to author Robert Lindsay's account of the case the Falcon and the Snowman, Boyce would begin the day by popping amphetamines and would wind down after a shift by puffing on a joint in the TRW parking lot. Boyce made $140 a week at the defense plant and held down a second job tending bar. Boyce impressed his bosses and was soon cleared to enter the steel doored fortress called the Black Vault, a classified sanctum where he was exposed to sensitive CIA communications pertaining to America's network of espionage satellites. The satellites eavesdropped on Russian missiles and defense installations. The satellites existence was not officially acknowledged. One of their main purposes was to thwart a surprise nuclear attack. Boyce began reading CIA communiques and he did not like what he saw. Among its other sins, he decided the US Government was deceiving its Australian allies by hiding satellite intelligence it had promised to share. The US was also meddling in Australia's elections. Many years later, Boyce told the Times, I was just in total disagreement with the whole direction of Western society. How did he wind up in a position to access his country's secrets? He called it synchronicity and seemed to marvel at how easy it was. He explained how many kids can get a summer job working in an encrypted communications vault. Today on Crimes of the Times, the story behind a Cold War spy scandal that only could have happened in Southern California. For the Los Angeles Times, this is Christopher Gofferty.

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[Christopher Goffard]

Having found himself, improbably, in a job that gave him access to some of America's most sensitive defense secrets, Christopher Boyce soon would make what he called his life's biggest, dumbest decision and began slipping some of those secrets to the Soviet Union.

[Kate Mills]

I'll tell you, it was a 21 year old at the time who had seen all the President's Men and who, you know, were living through Watergate and all of that kind of stuff. And I this is my personal opinion. I don't know this as a fact, but I mean, I've lived with it for 45 years, so I kind of know what I'm talking about. Chris Boyce is the guy who will hang over a 75 foot cliff to grab a baby bird out of a nest. Because everything to him, life is a challenge and a dare. And I believe that's exactly what happened in this case. He came across these documents, he was a student of history and I think that it, it bothered him. Did it bother him to the point where he thought he was saving the people of Australia? No, I don't think so at all. I think that he saw a challenge and he went for the challenge and he roped in his friend.

[Christopher Goffard]

The friend he enlisted was Andrew Dalton Lee, his childhood buddy. In its half hearted background check, TRW had not even bothered interviewing Boyce's peers. They might have revealed his links to the drug culture. They certainly would have revealed his connection to Lee, who already had multiple drug busts. Lee was the adopted son of a local doctor. Like Boyce, he had been an altar boy. Now he was a cocaine and heroin pusher with a bad drug habit of his own. He was reckless and self destructive. If Boyce had political and ideological motives for espionage, money was Lee's obsession.

[Kate Mills]

If TRW would have known for five seconds that this is who Chris was hanging out with. Holy crap.

[Christopher Goffard]

Lee talked his way into the Soviet embassy in Mexico City and told them he had secrets to sell. The Russians fed him caviar. They began buying classified documents. They toasted to peace. Lee's KGB handlers devised protocols to stymie anyone who might be watching. When he wanted to meet, he would tape an X to lampposts at designated intersections around Mexico City. For more than a year, thousands of classified documents flowed from the TRW complex to the Soviets. Boyce sometimes smuggled them out and potted plants. In exchange, he and Lee received an estimated $70,000. Lee was indiscreet. At parties. He showed off his miniature Minox camera and bragged that he was engaged in spycraft. By January 1977, he was desperate for money to finance a heroin deal. He ignored his instructions from his KGB handlers and one day appeared unannounced outside the Soviet embassy. Mexican police thought he looked suspicious and arrested him, then alerted American officials. The whole scheme began to unravel from there. Lee was holding an envelope with film strips documenting a secret US satellite project called Pyramidder. Under questioning, Lee gave up the name of Boyce, who soon was also under arrest. Their espionage trial presented special challenges for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. The Carter administration was ready to pull the plug on the case if it meant airing too many secrets. So what was the seriousness of the security breach to the United States, as it seemed to you at the time?

[Joel Levine]

Well, part of that I can't answer because the actual information that was transmitted by them to the Soviets is probably still classified. I know that there were things that were involved in that case that could, couldn't reach into our prosecution. It would have been too costly.

[Christopher Goffard]

This is Joel Levine, one of the former assistant US Attorneys who prosecuted the case.

[Joel Levine]

We had to devise strategies where that wasn't the subject matter of our, of our prosecution.

[Christopher Goffard]

So it sounds like you were kind of walking a tightrope for a while.

[Joel Levine]

That's true, that's true. And there was ultimately a meeting that I went to in Washington where the thing came to a head and a decision was made. You can go forward with this, but not this. And fortunately for us, there were a couple of more benign pieces of information or projects that we could tap into that could form the basis of a prosecution. And that was sort of a balancing act that continued on for several months.

[Christopher Goffard]

A strategy was devised. Prosecutors would focus on the perimeter documents, which involved a satellite system that never actually got off the ground and was deemed safe to talk about.

[Joel Levine]

The others know, we were not allowed to use that. You know, that's when we developed a strategy of telling the court that if we're forced to go beyond certain category of information, we might have to cut the case short, you know, and dismiss the charges.

[Christopher Goffard]

For prosecutors in the Los Angeles office, hanging over the case was the memory of a recent humiliation, the collapse of the Pentagon paper trial as a result of the Nixon administration's attempt to bribe the presiding judge with a job. It had caught prosecutors by surprise.

[Joel Levine]

The prosecutors in that case who were extremely talented people, got backdoored by information they weren't given. As a result of that, that case got destroyed. And now we come along just a couple of years later, also a sensitive case. And it was very, very concerning that that didn't happen to us. We were afraid it would ruin our reputation forever. So we made it very, very clear right from the get go that if we smelled something like that was afoot, we would walk into court and have the case dismissed on our own. Made it known to our bosses. We made it known to the people in Washington D.C. who were supervising our activities. So it's not going to happen here.

[Kate Mills]

I never set out to get involved in this case.

[Christopher Goffard]

Kate Mills was working as a paralegal in San Diego when she became interested in the case, never realizing how intensely personal her role would be.

[Kate Mills]

I read Lindsay's book and I was absolutely fascinated, and in particular about Andrew Dalton Lee. Now with the expose of Lee in Lindsay's book. You know, he wasn't some poor innocent kid. This guy was a major drug dealer. He was huge in the business. But there was just something about Dalton Lee. And I just felt so gutted by the whole thing. Chris Boyce and Andrew Dalton Lee were best buddies. And I think that Chris led his friend astray. And I still believe that. I still believe deeply that Chris led his friend astray. Chris obviously was the brains. Dalton was more of the how to make money guy. But I think their friendship was very, very equal. I don't think anybody was the bigger person. I think they were on such an even footing with each other. They had so many mutual interests. And I have pictures of them as young boys camping, you know, just the two of them out in the woods and, you know, a campfire and things like that. And I think that was the scope of a lot of their friendship. Politically, they did not share an ideology. Dalton was a youth for Nixon. Chris was a rabid Democrat.

[Christopher Goffard]

The defendants got separate trials and they turned on each other, or at least their lawyers did. Andrew Dalton Lee's defense was that Boyce had led him to believe he was working for the CIA and that they were feeding misinformation to the Russians.

[Joel Levine]

His grandmother was on the stand at the trial as a character witness. And my co counsel was questioning her and she. And he asked her a question. She said he said he was working for the government. And Richard asked her the question, did he say what government it was? And she had no answer, but no. That was Lee's defense. That came out pretty early on and consistently.

[Christopher Goffard]

Jurors didn't buy it. They convicted Lee of espionage and a judge gave him a life term. When Christopher Boyce went on trial, his attorneys also decided to blame the other defendant. Would the strategy work any better for him?

[Kate Mills]

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[Christopher Goffard]

Christopher Boyce's defense was that Lee had blackmailed him into espionage by threatening to expose a letter he had written while stoned on hashish alleging secret knowledge of CIA malfeasance.

[Kate Mills]

All that stuff about, oh, you know, I did this and Dalton was blackmailing me. No, no, I never believed a word of that. It was all about how, how horrible Dalton Lee was. Dalton Lee's guilty on this. Dalton Lee was guilty of that. And Dalton Lee was guilty of a lot of things, let's face it. I mean, he was. But was he the devil incarnate? No, he was not. He was Chris Boyce's friend. They hatched a plan. So frankly, both of them, the guilt is equitable between the two of them. And one of them shouldn't be taking any more blame than the other.

[Christopher Goffard]

Boyce's defense included the argument that the documents he passed to the Russians contained information that was already available elsewhere. Levine countered the claim.

[Joel Levine]

I remember because I gave the final argument in the case that if you were in Europe on June 5, 1944, and you picked up a piece of paper and it had the word June 6, and another piece of paper had the word Operation Overlord and another piece of paper had the name Omaha beach, they would be innocuous pieces of information. You could get them out of any literature. But if you picked up a fourth piece of paper and it said on June 6, 1944, Allied forces under Operation Overlord would attack Omaha beach and begin the invasion of Europe, that'd be pretty valuable information.

[Christopher Goffard]

Jurors didn't buy Boyce's defense either. They convicted him and a judge gave him 40 years. Soon afterward, Boyce was in the news again in January 1980, at a federal prison in Lompoc. He hid in a drainpipe and then sprinted to freedom over a fence. He was on the run for 19 months. He robbed banks in the Pacific Northwest until federal agents caught him outside a burger joint in Washington state. He was convicted of bank robbery and got 28 more years. In 1985, a popular film adaptation of Robert Lindsay's book the Falcon and the Snowman was released, starring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. Boyce was the falcon because of his obsession with falconry. Lee, the coke dealer, was the snowman. The same year, Boyce testified on Capitol Hill about how bleak a life of espionage actually was. There was no thrill, he said. There was only depression and a hopeless enslavement to an inhuman, uncaring foreign bureaucracy. No American who has gone to the KGB has not come to regret it. He spoke of how easily he had been allowed to access classified material at trw. Security was a joke, he said. And he described regular Bacardi fueled parties in the Black Vault. He said, quote, we use the code destruction blender for making banana daiquiris and mai tais. Kate Mills thought Andrew Dalton Lee had been unfairly maligned and she spent two decades fighting to win him parole, working without compensation.

[Kate Mills]

We started talking and I went up and visited, and then I represented him at like his second parole hearing. And for every parole hearing, every two years, for 20 years, I think everybody regarded it as a hopeless endeavor. And I found out that most of the examiners were retired military or retired police, which was, you know, now I know what I'm going into. So I had a couple brief, fleeting moments where I thought, this is not going anywhere. This is an epic fail. Why am I doing this? You know, I'm working a full time job and I'm working for these people, for this person full time.

[Christopher Goffard]

Lee had taken classes in prison and become a dental technician. And she managed to persuade the former prosecutors to write letters supporting Lee's parole. The judge did as well. The letters noted his strides toward rehabilitation.

[Kate Mills]

Those letters made every single bit of difference.

[Christopher Goffard]

Why did you write the letter in support of Dalton Lee's parole?

[Joel Levine]

He had spent a considerable time by then in custody, and he had rehabilitated himself quite a bit in custody.

[Christopher Goffard]

This is Joel Levine.

[Joel Levine]

His family submitted to me a whole bunch of materials that I read, and a lot of time had gone by by then. And I said, well, I'm going to write the letter.

[Christopher Goffard]

Was part of your reasoning that there was no chance that he would do such a thing again? There would just Never be any opportunity.

[Joel Levine]

That would be part of it. I think he had made a genuine effort to change his life. Maybe I was being a softy, but that's how I felt.

[Christopher Goffard]

Andrew Dalton Lee won parole in 1998. Kate Mills turned her attention to freeing Christopher Boyce, and she fell in love with him. I asked her what the appeal was.

[Kate Mills]

He was not the kind of guy that I would have hung out with. I hung out with people that were a little bit more radical, a little bit more left wing because I found Chris to be very conservative. And to this day, he's very conservative. You know, explaining this with the fact that the guy went to prison for all those years for a wild and crazy thing, but he's so conservative, it just annoys the daylights out of me.

[Christopher Goffard]

And Boyce got out in 2002 and they married.

[Kate Mills]

I was 48 and he was 50. And we got married because he said, well, we should get married. And I said, no, we shouldn't. There's absolutely no reason for us to get married. You know, we're ancient adults. Get over it. I said, we can just live together. And he said, this is this exact quote. My mother would never forgive me if I did that.

[Christopher Goffard]

So.

[Kate Mills]

So somewhere back there, there was still that altar boy kind of a thing. You know, he's like my parents. Oh my God, no. Uh huh.

[Christopher Goffard]

They later divorced, but remain close. Both live in central Oregon. Kate Mills said that Boyce and Lee, childhood best friends and co conspirators in espionage, have not spoken for 45 years and that the silence between them continues to wound Boyce.

[Kate Mills]

There's no nice way to say this, so Dalton is the kind of human being that once you do something that he perceives as an act against him, then you cease to exist. It's really that simple. You just literally cease to exist. He believed that had it not been for Chris Boyce, he would not have gone to prison.

[Christopher Goffard]

She said Boyce, now in his 70s, lives a solitary life and immerses himself in the world of falconry.

[Kate Mills]

I don't think Chris ever had any intention of harming the country. This is a country he loves. Chris was not a whistleblower. He should have been a whistleblower. That's how he should have done this. He should have gone to any place other than what he did. Any place. And he said it repeatedly, because what he did was just the wrong path. And he recognized that.

[Christopher Goffard]

She told me she wrote to the Russians and asked how much value there had been in the stolen TRW documents. She says The Russians replied, claiming the information had been useless. Richard Stills, one of the former prosecutors, told me he doesn't believe that. Of course they'd say that, Stull said, what do you think they'd say? He said the damage to America's security was enormous. He told me, in a murder case, you have one victim and a person dies. In an espionage case, the whole country is a victim. We were so far advanced over the Russians in spy satellite technology, they leveled the playing field. That's probably the most important point. End quote. Intelligence agencies did a damage assessment of what Boyce and Lee had given the Russians.

[Joel Levine]

I think that they concluded that there was substantial value to the Soviets to have their hands on some of these materials.

[Christopher Goffard]

You're telling me that only a tiny fraction of what they leaked to the Soviets was ever exposed in, in trial?

[Joel Levine]

That's true. I can only go on what I was told. And what I was told was these other projects should not be revealed. It's too costly to our, to our government and you can't base a prosecution on them, either in whole or in part. And they were compromised and you just got to stay away from it. So after hearing that and being told I can't use it, the fast conclusion is that it was valuable.

[Christopher Goffard]

Probably the most poignant moment in the film the Falcon and the Snowman focuses on the anguish of Boyce's father, the ex FBI man. He's sitting with a drink as he contemplates his son's betrayal of his country. He knows it was his connections that got his son the job. He tells the feds not to give his son any special treatment.

[Joel Levine]

So you know, these people probably didn't deserve the agony they went through. Both families.

[Christopher Goffard]

From LA Times Studios, this is Crimes of the Times. To read more about these cases, check out Crimes of the Times. We also have a link to our video episodes in the show Notes. This episode was written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Goffard. Our senior producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shifflet with sound design by Jonathan Shifflet. Associate producer is Jordan Patterson. Video editing by Cooper Kenward. Special thanks to LA Times Studios President Anna Magzanian. President and Chief Operating Officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argenteri and executive Editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Crimes of the Times is executive produced and co created by Darius, Derek Shahn and me, Christopher Goffard.

[Kate Mills]

A kidnapped child whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands. But a lost cassette will reveal the ugly truth. From Curious cast and Blanchard House comes a cross continental odyssey to recover a stolen past. This is Stop Rewind, the Lost Boy, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.