The boy who stole the company store

Press, 25 May 1977, Page 9

The boy who stole the company store

By

CHARLES FOLEY,

of;

the Observer Foreign News Service Los Angles Fervent efforts are being made to limit the international repercussions from America’s latest spy trial — said to be the gravest since the execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953. It has already caused a furore in Australia, and brought angry exchanges between Canberra and Washington. Two voung men, boyhood friends, "are at the centre of the affair. They have been convicted of selling thousands of secret documents which could compromise Central Intelligence Agency bases around the world from Alice Springs to Holy Loch. Life imnrisonment — if not the death penalty', which could be applied under Federal law — will be demanded by the prosecution. Publicly, the CI.A. says it dees not’ know how much the Soviets have learned through this betrayal. The chief defendant in rhe case is now being “debriefed” in a Los Angeles cell, and if he confesses in detail to what secrets were passed over, his help will be taken into account by the court which is to deliver sentence on Friday. The conspiracy began at a wine-and-pot party in a well-to-do Los Angeles suburb, when talk turned to C.I.A. activities in Chile. Christopher Boyce, aged 23, told Andrew Lee, aged 24, “That’s nothing to what we’re doing in Australia.” As a confidential filing clerk at T.R.W., a big Californian defence contractor. Boyce paid he had decoded messages which revealed that the C.LA. was infiltrating labour unions and meddling in Australian politics to protect covert United States operations there. The indignant Boyce wrote down the facts for Lee, whe promised to leak them to the press. Instead, he took

lithe notes over the frontiers I j to the Soviet Embassy in h :! Mexico City, which is re- r Hgarded as Russia’s main es- p pionage base in these parts, r 1! Lee — the always-in-debt v • j son of a California patholog- c Hist — had discovered a new is ■(source ot income. ' p From now on, Boyce;s ■(testified, Lee threatened to 1 i expose him and also impli-n i cate his father, who had goti< 'ihim the T.R.W. job Boyceir i Senior is chief security (f officer at McDonnell-Douglas, •i [ another top defence firm. ic fi “I was always scared of < ! Lee,” said Boyce. “He shot < . my cat with a rifle and said s ; he would murder me too > unless I produced the stuff J , the Russians wanted.” I i Lee’s contact in Mexico J . was a K.G.B. officer, Boris * i Grishin, listed as science at- f iitache at the Embassy. ” ■I Boyce also made trips south 5 - of the border at their behest, ■ ■was wined and dined by Gri-J, t'shin and given $15,000 for; 5 i-film strips and coded docu-i i ment s-. Lee collected someii ! $60,000. ; 5 The traffic continued for;’, i two years, and after Boycej( ; had — in the words of one(; t j intelligence source — “sto-1, ,|len the company store blind (J >|for him,” Grishin told him'* i to study Russian and Chi-ij -inese as' a basis for joining',] the State Department, where < 1 he could be more useful. , i! Strenuous efforts were ; •(made at the trial to limit t 51 Boyce’s testimony to the so- .; called “pyramider” project, ■ i. by which C.LA. agents, even j I.j behind the Iron Curtain, i t could talk via spy satellites < ”j to their headquarters in the i it (United States, using hand- 1 a'held transmitters. This ; e'James Bond plan, since i - abandoned because of its ; t.high cost, was only one of a < g dozen areas of secret infor-1 g mation that Bovce is be- i -IliPved to have betrayed. ; s] The most sensitive of these led to a meeting in i el Vienna between Lee and Gri- ] o shin’s spy-masters from i o, Moscow. Cypher documents 1 k on United States reconnais- 1

sance satellites changed hands. They are a means of monitoring Soviet compliance with S.A.L.T. agreements by photographing Soviet nuclear activities — and could help enable the Russians to put the vital earlywarning system of missile attack out of action. Lee said in Court that he was really working for the C.LA., a claim dismissed as nonsense by the agency. His fortuitous capture made an ironical postscript to a career which included three drug-dealing charges, on one of which he served a jail sentence in 1972. He was stopped outside the gates of the Soviet Embassy by a Mexican policeman who saw him throw a packet through the railings, and suggested it was marijuana. After an argument he was taken to the station, where an envelope contain--ling 20 film strips of documents stamped “top secret” was found in his pocket. ( Attempts to muzzle court, 'hearings on security grounds' seem to have exacerbated ’ anger in Australia, where , C.LA.-run electronic bases (are crucial to United States (satellites and Polaris submairines in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It was to project these, according to Boyce. that the C.LA. “funded and manipulated” union leaders in an attempt to suppress strikes and political unrest. Mr Gough Whitlam, who was dismissed as Prime Minister by the Governor-Gen-eral (Sir John Kerr) in a controversial dispute 18 months ago, has claimed that the nation’s integrity as a sovereign State is at stake; Mr Clyde Cameron, one of his colleagues, has accused the Queen’s representative of being associated with the C.LA. as far back as the fifties. Cables from Washington expressing alarm over a public row “which can blow the lid off installations vital to both our countries” were leaked in Canberra.