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 attache 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.

The operation ran smoothly, according to Boyce, until Jan. 6, when Lee failed to find Grishin waiting for him at the Soviet embassy. Lee pitched a piece of paper through the embassy gate. Mexican police, who routinely guard the embassy, immediately seized him, apparently thinking he might have thrown a bomb. In Lee's pocket, the police allegedly found microfilmed documents from a feasibility study of an American spy communications satellite.

Back in Langley, the CIA was tightlipped about exactly what might have been passed on to the Soviet Union. But after Boyce was convicted, an intelligence expert told TIME that the operation "virtually stole the company store at TRW and gave it to the Soviets." As Lee's trial began, his lawyers planned to defend his claim of innocence by arguing that he felt he was working for the CIA and was giving the Soviets "disinformation." The CIA regards this claim as an absurdity.

Two other developments last week were also likely to dampen CIA morale. Director Stansfield Turner, making what he called his "most difficult decision in 31 years of military service," fired two middle-level agency employees for "lack of good judgment." Their mistake, Turner told the Senate Intelligence Committee, was helping a former colleague to purchase 500 explosive timing devices to sell to Libya. When he learned of the situation, said Turner, he "lost a lot of sleep" and "worked hard for some days to decide what was fair to them and best for the welfare of our intelligence operations." CIA sources identified the purchaser of the devices as Edwin Wilson, 48, who now operates his own consulting firm. Wilson has categorically denied the allegations.

In Baltimore's U.S. district court, meanwhile, former CIA Supply Officer Edwin Moore went on trial for allegedly trying to sell classified documents to the Soviet Union (TIME, Jan. 3). Moore was apprehended last December after tossing a fat manila envelope into the parking lot of the Soviet embassy's residence in northwest Washington. Thinking that the packet might be a letter bomb planted by anti-Soviet activists, an embassy watchman called in U.S. officials. Moore was later caught by FBI agents, who lured him into a trap baited with a fake payoff package ostensibly from the Soviets. Moore's attorney said his client may change his plea to innocent by reason of insanity, and produced a psychiatrist who told the court that Moore appeared to be paranoid and insane at the time he tried to peddle a CIA directory to the Soviets.

*Bob Hawke, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, denied having any knowledge of CIA involvement in Australian union affairs. Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser promised to look into the allegation.

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