Baloney Salesman

Christopher Boyce, the spy from Palos Verdes who sold U.S. intelligence secrets to the Russians, has been getting a lot of attention lately. A few months ago he testified before a Senate committee in Washington about allegedly lax security at TRW in Redondo Beach, where he had worked and where he stole vital information about U.S. spy satellites. Recently Boyce has been a regular on network TV. From the federal prison in Marion, Ill., where he is serving a 68-year term, Boyce tells interviewers about the terrible life of a spy and how remorseful he is about what he did.

“I was 21 and I was naive and I thought that I could use the KGB to bash the CIA because I thought that what was wrong with the United States at the time was the CIA,” Boyce told Charlie Rose on CBS’ “Nightwatch” the other morning. “It was never my intention to help the KGB,” he said.

“Regardless of everything else, I’m still an American,” he said, “and this is still my country, and this is where I was brought up, this is where I was born and this is where I stay.”

Makes you want to cry, doesn’t it? Not for a second. Boyce is a convicted spy and a convicted bank robber who has escaped from prison once. He will be eligible for parole in 1988, and he is now trying to establish himself as a model citizen. He will say anything that he thinks will increase his chance of being sprung. No one should believe him.

Before Judge Robert J. Kelleher passed sentence on Boyce in 1977, he reviewed Boyce’s testimony. It is worthwhile to recall Kelleher’s conclusions:

“I am not sure that the record here would disclose in fact that there was a significant degree of laxity in the security program at TRW. It is true that this defendant testified that there was a marijuana plant growing there, there was wine scattered on the wall, that there were drug parties in or about the premises. I don’t believe a word of that, and I am sure the jury doesn’t--or didn’t.

“The difficulty that this defendant faces at the present time is whether there is any integrity within him . . . . The court didn’t believe a word the defendant expressed on any material issue . . . . The defendant was not deterred in the saying of those things, because apparently he thought they would serve his purposes.”

It’s the same Christopher Boyce.