There's George Smiley and Jason Bourne, Austin Powers and Ethan Hunt,

Maxwell Smart, and Emma Peel, and of course, James Bond.

Secrets, lies, and a license to kill make for great stories,

so it's no wonder books, film, and TV have been littered with secret agents.

Good spy story has all the right ingredients, suspense and action, high stakes and plot twists, moral conundrums, and complex characters.

As for me, I love a good spy story, even more when they resemble reality.

So while I love the spectacle of the dashing, tuxedoed leading man, blowing up the villain's layer, I think I prefer the pensive, quiet, forbidding, intense narrative of the more

real-life spy.

The unlikely hero, riddled with doubt and paranoia, but still driven by purpose, whether that's

some moral code, patriotism, or just greed or ego. That's the sort of story we're bringing

you today, and it can't be more close to reality because it's all true. The American Sons

turned Soviet spies is an episode from the podcast's True Life Spy Stories, and I hope you enjoy.

While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow True Life Spy Stories.

We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you.

I'm not a professional spy, and I'm not a a professional anything. I'm an amateur and everything I do or else I wouldn't be here right now sitting here in this prison. What you did as me described as the greatest security breach in decades. serves them right, serves them right. It's my feeling on it.

I have no longer. In decades, serves them right, serves them right.

It's my feeling on it. I have no regrets.

The nine miles stretch of coastline in Southern California, known as Palos Verdes,

is home to some of the wealthiest Los Angeles families.

It is hardly the place you would expect a true Cold War spy thriller to be born.

Yet it was here that childhood friends Christopher John Boyce and Andrew Dalton Lee would meet

and move on from their privileged upbringings to betray their country.

...