Hotel managers, bartenders and Uber drivers in Lompoc, Calif., readily admit that their town of less than 43,000 people isn’t one of the most exciting in all of Southern California. But due to its proximity to Vandenberg Air Force Base, they also say it never gets old to see a rocket blast into space – a spectacle that’s afforded to few other towns in the world.

On Jan. 14, residents were again awed when SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg loaded with 10 satellites. Anyone near Lompoc with a vantage point of the northwest sky, including anyone near the Lompoc Federal Penitentiary, could see, feel and hear the Falcon 9 ignite, lift off the ground and soar into space.

The significance of the penitentiary and its ties to the Falcon were meaningful. It was two days before the 40th anniversary when a former Lompoc inmate, who was one of the most famous spies in U.S. history and nicknamed “the Falcon,” was arrested for espionage.

The Falcon, however – whose real name is Christopher Boyce, from Palos Verdes – is well aware it has been four decades since he was arrested for crimes against the United States. He had teamed up with his best friend Andrew Daulton Lee and sold secrets to the Soviet Union in an effort to call the United States to task for allegedly influencing a change of power in Australia, an ally nation. The Falcon fled U.S. authorities for almost two years until he was arrested on Jan. 16, 1977.

Boyce’s and Lee’s story was adapted into the book and Hollywood film, “The Falcon and the Snowman,” but notoriety can’t possibly be consolation for a 40-year prison sentence and the “ongoing nightmare” of espionage.

“I only wish that before more Americans take that irreversible step, they could know what I now know – that they are bringing down upon themselves heartache more heavy than a mountain,” Boyce said during testimony to Congress in 1985. “If a person knows what espionage would mean to him, what kind of life he would have in the future, it’s just so totally an unattractive thing to be into – you’re never going to get away from it and it’s never going to end.”

The Hollywood spy movie, however, didn’t include what happened after the Falcon’s clipped wings grew back.

When the SpaceX’s Falcon 9 raced into space on Saturday, it was also one week from the 37th anniversary of when Boyce turned Lompoc into ground zero for one of the largest and most polarizing manhunts in United States history. Boyce did his best Clint Eastwood impression by setting up a life-like dummy in his cell and successfully cutting his way through the perimeter fence to freedom.

Officials caught the fugitive spy nearly two years later in Washington state after he robbed  several banks. Boyce’s notoriety fluctuated over the decades, and the world continued to evolve while he was in prison until 2002.

As evidence of the technology involved in the satellites launched from Vandenberg on Saturday – which include advancements in national security communication – much has changed since Boyce revealed United States government secrets in the 1970s.

But now – as the United States weighs the security of its masses and the privacy of its individuals within the new terrains of cyber warfare – Boyce’s story has become increasingly relevant again.

In 2013, Boyce teamed up with the paralegal who victoriously fought for his freedom, Kathleen Mills, and author Vince Font to write “American Sons: the Untold Story of the Falcon and the Snowman” to answer questions of what happened after the espionage convictions. For the 40th anniversary of his arrest, they also plan to re-release the book with additional context. The following story is attributed to their accounts from the book, and an interview with Font and Mills.

 

 

In the early 1970s, Christopher Boyce – described as a former altar boy who spent his time perfecting the ancient art of falconry – worked at aerospace and defense firm TRW Inc. in Southern California. He never set out to be a spy, wasn’t an escape artist and never considered himself to be a traitor. But when he discovered CIA communications that showed plans to influence and change power in the government in Australia, an ally country, his anger and his best friend Andrew Daulton Lee convinced him to expose the government secrets.

Pairing Boyce’s adoration for falcons with his partner’s history as a cocaine and heroin dealer, the nicknames “the Falcon and the Snowman” were born.

After they were arrested in 1977, the friendship deteriorated. In court, fingers were pointed in both directions. They were convicted of espionage, sent to prison, and they both wound up in the penitentiary in Lompoc.

By 1980, Boyce decided he’d had enough and that he wasn’t going to survive in prison. He witnessed violence, murders and misery while he was locked up, Boyce wrote. Lee’s cell was set on fire more than once at Lompoc, and Boyce was constantly warned that he could be a target of violence as a convicted traitor. It made him lose any hope he had in the criminal rehabilitation process.

He understood the crime he committed was “egregious,” but the part of him with an instinct for survival pushed him to look for a way out.

“Lompoc has been built by the hand of man. And man, Chris had come to understand in his brief 27 years, was an intensely flawed and often bafflingly inept creature,” wrote Font.

Boyce discovered an “architectural blunder” in the prison’s security when he noticed an area without a double layer of fence. From there, he saw a 200-yard dash to the tree line.

Boyce plotted, forged work order signatures and made connections to switch his labor duties so he could dig a hole and orchestrate the getaway.

“You don’t belong in this place,” an accomplice named Billy said to Boyce. “You’re not cut out for it. No offense.”

“None taken,” Boyce replied. “You ask anyone in Palos Verdes Country Club if they’ve ever been to prison, you might as well ask them if they’ve ever [had sex with] a goat.”

On Jan. 21, 1980, Billy put a lifelike dummy in Boyce’s cell so guards wouldn’t know he was gone. Boyce hid in a hole, waited for a clear coast, and cut his way to freedom. It started one of the most extensive and complex manhunts in U.S. history, according to the FBI.

Boyce camped in the hills in Lompoc Valley “countless times” in his teens and early 20s, and he knew the land like his own backyard. While hiding in the Santa Ynez Mountains, he noticed a falcon in the trees that would come and go while he was on the run from federal authorities.

“The falcon is a stocky creature with long, pointed wings and a short tail. It is the embodiment of speed and power,” Boyce wrote.

Boyce lived off the land, ate peeled acorns, nuts and moss, and slept on the ground. But he knew he was being chased.

“Ruthless, [the falcon] lights upon rocks and telephone poles and concrete creations and gazes down on the works of humans,” Boyce wrote. “And like the earthbound fugitive, it sleeps the fitful restless sleep of the hunted.”

Boyce made it to Monterey Peninsula approximately 120 miles north and met a former fellow inmate, Calvin Robinson, in Santa Cruz. They made their way to Idaho, and Boyce continued to see falcons, which reminded him that he was still being hunted.

Media reports from the 1980s suggest that Boyce went to aviation school in hope of fleeing the country. But Boyce explained in “American Sons” that he was planning to return to Lompoc to break Lee out of prison using a helicopter. Even though their friendship no longer existed, Boyce felt guilty that Lee was in prison “because of something he started,” he explained.

Unbeknownst to Boyce, a paralegal from San Diego was already working on a different and significantly more legal strategy to free Lee after Boyce escaped. Lee had received a life sentence with the possibility of parole, which means every two years he could file to have a hearing to determine if he should remain in prison.

In 1981, Mills drove to Lompoc from San Diego several times to visit Lee to develop a case for him.

She joked sarcastically that Lompoc was “bustling” in those days. The town consisted of a Circle K store, two motels, one bowling alley, one Chinese restaurant, and one of the nation’s most notorious spies at the time.

Her case for Lee started as a case against Boyce, who was on the run. She felt Boyce’s prison escape hurt Lee’s chances to gain freedom. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t a fan of the outlaw at first.

“I was representing Daulton when Chris was on the run,” Mills said on Monday. “From that moment in January in 1980 when he escaped from prison – there was just something about that because he was my age and generation – I couldn’t help but root for him.”

In contrast to Lee’s and Boyce’s upbringing, Mills describes herself as one of the kids from that time who got arrested for participating in Vietnam protests.

“I kept thinking to myself, ‘there is someone that believes in the same morality that I did,’” she said.

Boyce returned to Lompoc to scope out how he might free Lee. While federal officials searched for Boyce as far as Australia and South America, he was in a field in Lompoc analyzing the place from which he escaped.

When he looked at the penitentiary, Boyce described it as the “personification of evil.” It motivated him to want to free Lee from “the nightmare world within.”

On Aug. 21, 1981, Boyce was arrested by a U.S. Marshals Service Task Force assisted by FBI agents in Washington state. While he waited to be sent back to prison, he remembered sheriff’s deputies asking for his autograph and taking photos with him while they celebrated his arrest.

The Falcon was sent back to the cage.

 

 

Boyce wanted to give up hope, and was certain he would never be free again.

Mills continued to build a case for Lee, and in the process started communications with the incarcerated Boyce.

Then she decided to work on developing parole strategies for both inmates. Her correspondence with Boyce continued until they developed a personal relationship.

But as the years started to accumulate, she started to lose hope that she could help free the Falcon, especially after the robbery stint. And they started to lose touch.

It wasn’t until 1995 that Lee won parole. Mills reached out again to Boyce and said she would win his freedom, too.

Boyce didn’t think he had a chance, but he didn’t want to lose contact with Mills again. The relationship flourished while they worked. Boyce called her “Cait.”

In 1996, Mills was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery, but declined chemotherapy. Without the debilitating side effects of the treatment, she was able to file a request for Boyce’s parole in 1997. After an appeal, Boyce was told he would be released in less than five years.

They’ve were married shortly after his release in 2002.

Mills’ cancer didn’t go away, and she fought through treatment. But she was married to a free man who was there to support her. In 2012, her cancer went into remission.

 

 

In addition to adding triple the amount of wire at Lompoc, Mills said that now all federal prisons conduct “standing counts,” in which it is mandatory that every prisoner stand in front of their cell so guards could be certain they all are accounted for.

“It wasn’t ever that way before (he escaped),” she said. “Incoming prisoners are told, when there is a standing count at 3 a.m. and it’s freezing cold, to thank Chris Boyce. … When one of my former clients found out who my husband was, he said ‘you can thank that bastard for me.’”

Mills, who now goes by “Cait” Boyce, said she still sees stark contrast in public opinion of Chris. She said people in their generation who might remember the “Falcon and the Snowman” book in 1979, express different opinions than younger generations.

“There was a whole different take with how the millennials take it and the generation that we come from,” she said. “It leaves me in awe when a 16-year-old comes up to me and says, ‘Your husband should rot in prison.’”

But when she talks to people her age, especially people from Australia, Boyce is “well thought of.” An Australian recently told her that most students still know who Boyce is today.

But Mills doesn’t hesitate to admit that Boyce committed a crime with Lee, and neither does Chris.

“That needs to be front and center,” she said. “It was a violation of the U.S. code, they absolutely deserved to pay a penalty.”

But she never agreed with the extent of the punishment for espionage.

“I can tell you that if I hear one more word about Putin (from Trump), I’m filing a clemency petition for anyone currently serving time for espionage. These two men (Boyce and Lee) did nothing more than what Mr. Trump is doing right this minute,” she said.

After former CIA employee Edward Snowden revealed classified global surveillance programs, Congress restricted the NSA, but a new conversation started over the government’s control of the governed. The polarization is further amplified by incidences with online platforms like WikiLeaks, which released Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 campaign, or when the FBI requested iPhone records of the terrorists who conducted the massacre in San Bernardino.

As the United States intelligences agencies announce Russia’s influence in the 2016 election, parallels can be made to the Falcon’s past. Many media outlets reached out to the Boyces for comment as news broke about the Russian hacks, but they declined.

“In my particular feeling, it’s not a safe time to say anything right now,” she said. “But the more I see about the Russian involvement in the election and the normalization of what happened, from a legal standpoint, what they could be charged with is no different than anything some of these other people are serving time for right now, for what Chris and Daulton did.”

“If [Trump] is going to do this, there should be a blanket exoneration, including on people like Chelsea Manning,” she said.

The following day, on Jan. 17, President Barack Obama announced he will commute the sentence for ex-Army analyst, Chelsea Manning, who released sensitive documents to WikiLeaks, and she will be freed in May.

“For a long time, there was that catch word – ‘whistleblower,’” Cait said. “A lot of people put Chris in that category. I know Australia does. I don’t know if I do. He headed off to do the right thing.”

Though he “strongly regrets it,” she said because Chris decided to team up with Lee and make money by selling secrets instead of simply releasing the information, it makes a large difference between the Falcon and Snowden. Additionally, Cait said the documents Boyce was selling to the Soviet Union dealt with a communication device that was never developed. Snowden, by contrast, has enough information on a thumb drive that “could literally take down the government,” she said.

“(Author Vince Font), Chris and myself, we all have a great respect for Snowden,” she said. “But it’s apples and oranges.”

But they are also concerned.

“The kid is stuck now,” she said, adding that his future will become even more uncertain once a new administration enters the White House.

 

 

The Boyces live in central Oregon now. Cait works for the Human Dignity Coalition, a nonprofit that works to ensure equal rights for LGBT communities. Chris refurbishes and sells houses.

Cait said it was important for Chris to write and work on the book with Font, and that it was “cathartic” for both of them.

“But I think that in writing the book, as positive of an outlook he had when we were finished, it sent him into a spiral of PTSD, which is why I’m talking to you and he’s not,” she said.

Shortly after they published the book, Boyce discussed the story and participated in interviews. But when a televised interviewer tried to sensationalize their fractured relationship with Lee, it turned Boyce off the idea to participate.

“It was clear from the first question that (the interviewer) didn’t read the book,” Mills said.

She said Chris continues to hang out with his falcons and he has become close friends with David Lee – Daulton’s brother.

“Boyce and Lee together again,” Font said. “Not the criminal part. That’s one of the most fascinating parts to me.”

Font said a writer approached the trio with a plan to write a screenplay based on Boyce’s life.

“And I remember he said there were some major parts that he would have to play down,” Font said. “He thought some people just wouldn’t believe it.”

 

 

SpaceX plans to launch more rockets from Vandenberg, but Cait said Chris won’t see them. The Falcon has taken his final flight from Lompoc, and has no intention to return.

Espionage is a crime. As for any current day spies, their fate is now in the hands of a new administration.