The Falcon and the Snowman (24 page)

Preliminary Psychiatric Report

Re: Mr. Andrew Daulton Lee

Age: 24

The above was seen in one hour psychiatric interviews on 1/15/76 and 1/19/76. He presented as an extremely tense young man who says he suffers from a peptic ulcer, a nervous rash (he shows me on his back) and is depressed and pessimistic about the prospect of spending a protracted period of confinement in either a prison or a mental institution as a result of probation violation.

For a similar reason he has spent a year in Mexico to avoid the consequences of an alleged violation, returning last November to visit his family but getting involved in trying to escape police investigation in a car chase which ended in his arrest. He denies drug involvement in that incident, or significant use of drugs other than occasional smoking of marijuana for a couple of years, although he has been involved since his teens in drug peddling and using it with much legal consequences.

On examination he seemed intelligent and articulate and began to attempt to justify his difficulties by various rationalizations. Before long, however, he was able to communicate more freely and came across as a seriously depressed young man who is unsure whether he can rehabilitate himself into anything like a normal life. He is extremely tense although becomes less so as he settled into the interview.

He is intelligent and showed no evidence of organicity. Altho somewhat suspicious and paranoid this was not to any psychotic degree, nor were there any indications of any other thought disorder.

Impression: Anxiety state severe with depression and psychophysiologic concomitants, drug use in the past, not however apparently under any drug influence now despite severe insomnia.

Recommendations: Would seem to have reached a crisis of identity and is in conflict whether or not he can rejoin society and at the moment would seem a suitable candidate for intensive psychotherapy to begin within a supervised hospital setting. (I have reserved a bed at the Westwood Psychiatric Hospital for him). Rapport with myself seemed good.

It is my clinical opinion that this course of action under probation supervision offers what may be the last chance this troubled young man has to rehabilitate himself.

There were other items in the file of Andrew Daulton Lee on January 21, 1976, when Judge Donahue was to decide whether he should be sent back to jail, including letters from friends and his family, including one that read:

I am willing to do everything within my ability to rehabilitate my son, Andrew Lee.

Sincerely,

Daulton B. Lee

Pathologist

Kahn, emphasizing that there was now medical evidence of hope for Daulton, asked Judge Donahue to give him a chance and allow him to undertake psychotherapy before making a final decision that might deprive him of his last chance at rehabilitation. Consenting to the proposal, Donahue placed Daulton on probation once again, conditioned that he stay out of trouble, that he neither take drugs nor associate with people who did, that he take periodic tests to determine if he was using narcotics, that he enroll in school or seek employment and “enter forthwith the Westwood Psychiatric Hospital.”

Five days later, Daulton was admitted to the clinic in Westwood, the community best known as the site of the University of California at Los Angeles. After six days, he was discharged with an agreement to continue twice-weekly sessions as an outpatient.

Daulton told Chris about his experiences with the psychiatrist after he got out.

“You wouldn't believe me in action,” he boasted. “I conned the shit out of him, and he believed me. You know what he told me? He said he'd give me the same kind of advice he gave to a prostitute—‘if you really like what you're doing, do it.'” Daulton said the psychiatrist continually interrogated him about his feelings about being adopted and wouldn't believe him when he said he didn't have any hang-ups about it. When the psychiatrist asked Daulton why he made so many trips to Mexico, Daulton told Chris, “I told him I couldn't take the city here and all the people and had to go by myself all alone in Mexico and think, and he bought it.”

27

A postcard requesting another meeting in Mexico City had arrived at his sister's home while he was in the hospital, and two days after his release, Daulton boarded an early-morning Western Airlines flight at Los Angeles International Airport bound for Mexico City. This time he had a traveling companion, his old friend Barclay Granger.

Like Daulton, Barclay was waging a court battle to stay out of prison. He had been arrested by Federal agents in October for cocaine trafficking and was free on bail pending his trial. Two things had happened to Barclay the preceding December: he had had a run-in with the Mafia, and he had finally broken up with Carole Benedict. Carole had flown to Hawaii to live with Barclay's mother, who had taken her side in the couple's fight. But the handsome surfer wasn't lacking for female company. Darlene Cooper had now moved into the Redondo Beach apartment that he'd previously shared with Carole.

The encounter with the Mafia had had less pleasant aftereffects. Many South Bay drug traders knew that the owners of an Italian restaurant in Redondo Beach claimed to have ties to a New York Mafia organization. Theirs was a minor-league operation, in terms of organized crime, but the family did wholesale drug peddling.

One member of the family, a young man in his early twenties with limited ambitions, had entered the South Bay retail drug trade. At a point sometime in September, 1975, one of his customers had gotten into debt with him for more than $3,000 worth of heroin, and the Italian had decided to cut off the addict until he paid his bill. He had sent word to other local pushers to cut him off too.

Barclay, like Daulton, had received the message not to sell to the youth, who was a teen-ager living in Redondo Beach. But he ignored it.

One night, about 3
A.M.
, Granger drowsily opened the front door of his apartment. Before he could see who his callers were, two men attacked him and broke his jaw.

At the time Daulton and Barclay boarded the jetliner bound for Mexico City early in February, Granger's jaw had been wired for two months; his doctor had just removed the wire, and the trip was partly to celebrate this milestone. Barclay had seen Daulton regularly during the past few months, usually when Daulton had sought a place to hide during his quick trips to the States. Granger thought he had noticed some changes in his friend. “He wasn't the same guy anymore—he was scared all the time—afraid of strangers, anybody.” Granger figured that he had become paranoid because he was afraid of being busted again by undercover narcs. “You couldn't even discuss the weather with him without him looking around to see if someone was listening,” he would recall. Once, when he watched Daulton try to roll a marijuana joint, Barclay said, “Look at your hands: they're shaking all over the place.”

“I'm just getting old,” Daulton said.

Granger didn't like to fly, so he swallowed two large barbiturates just before they took off. Daulton was lost in an espionage novel as the Boeing 727 droned south toward Mexico City when he noticed that a stewardess was shaking Barclay.

“He's on fire!” she said.

Daulton then smelled smoke and discovered that the smoke was coming from Granger. Quickly, he helped the stewardess arouse his friend, and they discovered he had gone to sleep with a lighted cigarette in his hand, and it had burned a large dark hole in the inside left elbow of his jacket. Granger woke up and they laughed about it and he lit another cigarette. Daulton went back to his novel. A few minutes later, the stewardess was standing over him again. This time, the cigarette had burned a hole in his right coat sleeve. “You wake him up this time,” she said.

Daulton had bragged to Barclay that he knew Mexico “like the back of my hand” and promised to show him a good time, tantalizing him with descriptions of Mexican prostitutes he had done business with on previous trips. The jetliner landed in Mexico City shortly before 11
A.M.
, and they rode in a cab to the Holiday Inn. Daulton hurried Barclay to their room, which they immediately left after dropping their suitcases.

“I've got to tell my people I'm in town,” Daulton said as their taxi pulled away from the hotel.

Granger noticed that they were headed outward from the center of the city toward what appeared to be a residential area. He was unfamiliar with the geography of Mexico City and asked Daulton where they were headed. Daulton ignored the question, but with a touch of mystery that seemed to give him pleasure, Daulton said, “I've got to set up a meeting with my uncle.”

At Daulton's instruction, the cab driver stopped in what Barclay took to be a neighborhood of expensive homes, a quiet street with not much traffic.

Daulton took out a roll of adhesive tape and told him to watch. He ripped off two short strips of tape and attached them in an X to a utility pole, then walked on to another pole and repeated the process. Then he gave a second roll of tape to Granger and told him to mark the next four poles in succession while he did the same thing on the other side of the street.

“What the hell are we doin'?” Granger asked.

“It ain't nothing,” Daulton said; and then he added, “It's just my spy thing.” Granger took the remark as a joke, and decided the taping of the poles had something to do with his friend's traffic in stolen securities. They flagged a cab and returned to their hotel, where Daulton changed his clothes from a business suit to slacks and sport shirt and left with two cameras hanging around his neck. “Do I look like a tourist?” he asked smugly. “When I get back, we'll get laid.”

After two hours, Granger's lust got the better of him, and he decided to stop waiting for his traveling companion. He took a cab to a whorehouse that had been pointed out to him by Daulton, and when he returned to the hotel, Daulton was waiting for him. Daulton had hoped to expedite a meeting with the Russians by waiting near a spot not far from the construction site of a new hotel, a route that he knew Okana frequently passed on his jogging runs. But Okana did not appear, and Daulton returned to the hotel. Granger gave him a detailed report of his experience at the bordello, and then they went to bed.

About one o'clock the next day, Daulton woke up to the glow of fuzzy sunlight pushing through the window of the hotel room and shouted, “Jesus Christ, I'm late.”

Hurriedly dressing in a business suit, Daulton left Granger in bed and slammed the door of the hotel room. Daulton's schedule for meetings was changed regularly, and according to the current schedule, he was supposed to rendezvous with the Russians at 1300 hours—1:00
P.M.
At 1:15, his cab pulled up to a spot in Chapultepec Park that had been previously assigned for this month. According to plan, he knew the Russians were supposed to leave after waiting fifteen minutes.

Music from a merry-go-round calliope filled the park. Daulton scanned the faces all around him. But the only people he saw were children—hundreds of them; brought, he guessed, as part of a school tour to Chapultepec Castle, which sat atop the mountain in the center of the park and where Emperor Maximilian had lived with his tormented bride, Carlota. Then he spotted the face of Karpov in the crowd, walking with another man who was wearing the same kind of dark chauffeur's suit. Daulton recognized him from the embassy.

Karpov seemed suspicious and annoyed. He said Okana had been there but had not waited for him. The chauffeur, however, offered to return to the embassy and inform him that Daulton had arrived after all. Daulton, he said, should meet them at 1600 hours at a spot near the Bali Restaurant where they had met previously. Daulton handed Karpov his merchandise—two rolls of film containing a package of advance ciphers from the Black Vault and other documents photographed by Chris. Daulton returned to the hotel and told Granger there had been a delay in the receipt of his payment for securities and, after a while, left again.

Okana was waiting for him at four o'clock. They walked a block to a
cantina
and ordered a beer. The Russian said the film had been developed. Some of the photographs, he said, were of poor quality, but overall, he had done well. Once again he said they wanted the frequencies used in the CIA transmissions. And once again, Daulton promised to get them—“next month.” Daulton asked about The Colonel and was told he had gone back to Moscow because his visa had expired.

When Daulton returned to the hotel room, he proudly held up three fat yellow envelopes in front of Granger.

“Everything's done,” he said. He had passed the stolen securities, he said, and had received his commission of 10 percent.

Then he threw down the envelopes on a bed, and what seemed to Granger like a green avalanche of money poured out—stacks of crisp, new $50 bills. He helped Daulton count the money. There was $10,000.

That evening, two $75-a-night prostitutes entertained them in their hotel room. The following day, his business now taken care of, Daulton gave Granger a tour of the city that he was coming to know so well.

The short misfit and the aging surfer circumnavigated the sprawling central square of the city, the Zócalo, then explored the huge Mexico City Cathedral that dominates the square, before strolling like tourists along Reforma. That night, there were cocktails, dinner and two more prostitutes in their hotel room. On the morning of their fourth day in Mexico City, they flew to Mazatlán. Daulton picked up $1,500 for an hour's work by serving as intermediary for a marijuana buy by a Los Angeles dealer, and they bought a pound of cocaine and a small amount of heroin to take back with them. Their idyll continued with sunbathing, parties and more prostitutes.

After two more days, they boarded a commercial airliner for Tucson at the airport in Mazatlán. As Daulton had done many times before, he got up and went to the bathroom not long after their jet was in the air. He pried open a bulkhead in the lavatory, hid the cocaine and went back to sit beside Barclay, who once again was out cold from a barbiturate. This time, however, Daulton had persuaded him not to smoke.