This is an L.A. Times Studios podcast. Chris Gawford here at L.A. Times Studios. Thanks for joining us on

Crimes of the Times. Today we discuss an infamous espionage case in which a Southern California stoner

stumbled into a vault full of America's secrets and decided to sell them to the

Soviets. Tell us what you think in the comments below.

The story of two Pallas Verde's altar boys who grew up to be Soviet spies is one that should never

have been possible. It's hard to fathom how a young man named Christopher Boyce gained access

to some of America's most sensitive defense secrets in the mid-1970s with such ludicrous

ease.

It's hard to believe that no one was watching him.

But for months, he smuggled documents out of the TRW defense complex in Redondo Beach,

passing them to the Russians through his buddy Andrew Dalton Lee.

It's a story of the Cold War that would only have been conceivable in 1970s Southern California,

where the state's sprawling defense and aerospace industry

collided with the state's anti-establishment counterculture.

Christopher Boyce was raised in the Catholic pews and prosperous suburbs of the Palace Verde's Peninsula.

He was a liberal and a stoner and a lover of falcons.

He had an intellectual bent and was bitterly disaffected by the country amid news of the Vietnam War and Watergate.

In the summer of 1974, as a 21-year-old college dropout, he got a job as a clerk at the TRW

Defense and Space Systems Complex in Redondo Beach.

How did he manage this?

Through the Old Boys Network, his father ran security for an aircraft contractor and had

once been an FBI agent.

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