The Falcon and the Snowman (22 page)

On November 10, 1975, five days after Daulton's latest delivery in Mexico City, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization received a message from its liaison officer with the CIA in Washington. Repeating expressions of concern voiced previously by the U.S. intelligence agency over public discussion of the bases, he said he had just returned from a meeting with senior CIA representatives and, attempting to summarize its contents, he reported:

CIA IS PERPLEXED AS TO WHAT ALL THIS MEANS. DOES THIS SIGNIFY SOME CHANGE IN OUR BILATERAL INTELLIGENCE SECURITY RELATED FIELD. CIA CANNOT SEE HOW THIS DIALOGUE WITH CONTINUED REFERENCE TO CIA CAN DO OTHER THAN BLOW THE LID OFF THOSE INSTALLATIONS IN AUSTRALIA WHERE THE PERSONS CONCERNED HAVE BEEN WORKING AND THAT ARE VITAL TO BOTH OUR SERVICES AND COUNTRIES, PARTICULARLY THE INSTALLATIONS AT ALICE SPRINGS
.

Nevertheless, members of the Labour Party were increasingly raising public inquiries and making pointed comments about the mysterious facilities. Late in October the Government revealed that construction of the bases had not been supervised by the U.S. Department of Defense, as claimed by the previous government, but by a CIA official, whose name became public. It was revealed during inquiries by Labour Party members that not even senior members of the Australian Foreign Ministry had been told the exact function of the bases.

But the mystery over the purpose of the bases in the Australian desert was not the only one being talked about regarding the CIA.

Prime Minister Whitlam began to charge in public that the American intelligence organization—which at that time was incurring growing international notoriety over its suspected machinations in Chile—had tampered with the Australian political process by secretly channeling funds to his opponents in the Liberal and National Country parties—politicians who had supported the American bases. Whitlam demanded an investigation by the Australian Defense Department to identify, once and for all, the real purpose of the bases.

In early November, the Prime Minister said in a speech that he had confirmed reports the CIA had indeed built the facilities. This official acknowledgment of the CIA's role in Australia intensified the crisis atmosphere within certain components of the CIA, where it was feared the political brouhaha could explode and force closing of the bases. The threat was perceived as anything but a minor matter. Within the National Security Council, the bases were considered absolutely vital to America's survivability in an era of nuclear warfare, not only because of Projects Rhyolite and Argus but because of other satellite espionage systems that were considered indispensable to the country's efforts to keep a constant eye on Soviet military preparedness.

The message from Washington concluded with a warning that if public discussion of CIA operations and facilities in Australia continued, the United States might see fit to stop sharing its intelligence information with Australia. (At the time, Australia had thought it was receiving
all
of the information from the satellites.)

What other steps the CIA took to protect its bases and ensure a friendly government in Canberra are not known.

On November 11, Prime Minister Whitlam had scheduled another speech in which he was to discuss the CIA and the mysterious installations in the Outback.

But he never got a chance to deliver it. On that day, Governor-General Sir John Kerr removed him from office.

24

Robert Langstroth, a twenty-eight-year-old Vietnam veteran who found a job with the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department when he came back from the war, was at the wheel of a city police car about six o'clock on a Saturday night three weeks before Christmas in 1975. It was nearly dark, with only an orange-and-rose haze still lingering over the Pacific as he guided the black-and-white Dodge past the oceanfront homes lining Paseo del Mar.

Langstroth had just rounded a curve near the Lee family's silver-gray home when he saw a red sports car about fifty yards ahead of him and noticed that the red reflector was missing from one of the car's taillights. He decided to stop the car and advise the driver, thinking he probably wasn't aware of it.

Switching on his red lights, Langstroth moved in behind the sports car.

Daulton looked in his mirror and was startled by the glowing double red eyes behind him. He speed-shifted the MG into second without hesitating and jammed his foot on the accelerator. By the time he was at the first corner, the roadster was doing 80. Daulton took this corner without moving his foot off the gas; the police car, its siren screaming, however, stayed right behind him, and the two vehicles roared through the neighborhood of some of Palos Verdes' most expensive homes.

When he reached Palos Verdes Drive, a four-lane divided highway that hugged the ocean, Daulton turned right without stopping and picked up speed, missing an oncoming station wagon by eight or ten feet. When Langstroth followed him around the corner, he had even less room to spare.

With open road ahead of him, Daulton floored the agile roadster, and was soon careening at more than 100 miles an hour along the curving drive that clung to a rocky bluff high above a stretch of turbulent white surf.

Langstroth saw a small package sail out of the speeding car; but before he could react, the MG swerved off the highway into the dirt center divider strip, digging up such a cloud of dust that for a moment Langstroth lost the red car in his headlights. The policeman now expected the driver to make a quick U-turn on the divider strip, and he slowed to loop around behind him.

But instead of slowing and turning in the opposite direction, Daulton gunned the engine and headed south again—going the wrong way in the one-way lane.

Sitting beside Daulton in the car, Peter Frank begged for him to stop. A high school friend and fellow falconer, Frank had been visiting Daulton at his home when Daulton suggested they go for a ride in the MG, which was owned by his brother, David.

Rocketing south on the northbound road, Daulton said he couldn't stop.

“They've got a warrant out on me,” he said.

At that moment Frank saw a Pontiac headed directly at them and shouted, “Turn, turn!”

Daulton yanked the steering wheel and the car bounced back into the divider strip, out of the path of the Pontiac, and skidded crazily in the dirt. The MG shuddered as Daulton pressed the accelerator and tried to get it moving again in the loose dirt. As the car's wheels groped for traction and momentarily spun, Frank opened the door and threw himself out.

Langstroth saw a young man with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing Levi's and a blue Levi jacket, but lost him as he sprinted in the direction of the ocean cliffs.

Daulton finally managed to get the car under control and back onto Palos Verdes Drive, and tried to lose the policeman by using the sports car's maneuverability to turn sharply into a residential neighborhood.

Langstroth saw him make the turn, and started to follow, but the police car was traveling at almost 100 miles an hour. He fought the wheel to stay with the MG, but his prowl car was too heavy and was going too fast, and it went into a long, sweeping skid.

Langstroth spotted another car headed directly at him. It was northbound on Palos Verdes Drive. The driver had begun to heed the red light and siren and was pulling to a stop. But the wheels of Langstroth's patrol car were locked and he was skidding, and there was nothing he could do except wait for the impact. The police car slammed into the other vehicle and spun around. But Langstroth discovered his car was still operable, and he picked up the pursuit.

Once again Daulton was headed south in the northbound lanes. Northbound cars, bewildered by the sight of Daulton's approaching headlights and the flashing red lights behind them, peeled off onto the shoulder like birds scattering from the sight of a man with a gun. At the foot of Hawthorne Boulevard, just where it slopes down and ends at the ocean, Daulton turned left and began to climb up the slope in the direction of Los Angeles. Then, in another try to lose the cop, he made a sharp turn and veered onto a steep incline leading to a residential side street.

This time Langstroth was ready and stayed right behind him. For Daulton, the turn was a mistake: he had to slow the MG to 60 miles an hour as it rose up the hill, and the more powerful engine in Langstroth's car began to close the gap.

Still, Daulton gave no sign of abandoning his run. The policeman decided there was only one way he could stop the fugitive. He accelerated the police car and aimed it directly at the rear of the laboring MG.

He struck it, and Daulton's car was rammed into a curb. He wasn't hurt, but he was stopped.

When the police discovered that the fleeing suspect had a wad of bills totaling $302 in his pocket, Daulton was booked for armed robbery and reckless driving. Daulton scoffed at the robbery charge and said he could settle everything.

Detectives were called to the Palos Verdes Estates Police Station from their homes and took the case over from the uniformed division. Daulton told the detectives that his name was Ted Lovelance and that he was a resident of Santa Cruz; he identified himself with his driver's license. He explained that he had been traveling down the coast from Santa Cruz to San Diego and in order to enjoy the scenery had passed through Palos Verdes Estates, where he had picked up a hitchhiker. He didn't know the hitchhiker's name, but he remembered that he wore Levi's and had shoulder-length hair. Everything had been normal, he continued, until the police car tried to stop him; when the red lights went on, he said, the hitchhiker had drawn a gun and told him to lose the patrol car. After that, Daulton said, he had had no choice but to obey out of fear for his life.

“Why didn't you stop when he jumped out?” a detective asked incredulously.

“I wanted to get as far away from that guy as I could.”

“What about the money?”

“It's for my vacation.”

Another detective who was standing by during the questioning picked up the driver's license and took a second look at Daulton. The license said the driver was five feet five. He noticed that Daulton was several inches shorter. The detectives conferred in another room, and one recalled that there was a felony warrant outstanding for a drug pusher who was quite short—just like this suspect.

After a check of the files, a detective returned to Daulton and asked him to roll up the sleeves of his shirt to the elbows. Daulton silently complied.

The officers saw a panorama of inflamed skin. The blotches weren't drug-injection puncture marks, as the cops thought, but evidence of Daulton's old problem with acne. But they didn't believe it was acne.

“Are you a hype?” a policeman asked. Daulton repeatedly denied that he was an addict, but the red scars on his arm worked against him.

Finally, Daulton admitted his real name.

The robbery charge was dropped, and he was booked for reckless driving, resisting arrest, driving under the influence of a controlled substance and displaying a fictitious driver's license and as a fugitive wanted for violation of probation on drug charges.

Four days later, Daulton was out of jail.

He posted $2,500 bail, including $500 borrowed from Chris, who extracted an I.O.U. in exchange for the loan for which he would be repaid after the next delivery to the Russians. Judge Burch Donahue said he would take up the case again in early January. Until then, at least, Daulton was back on the streets.

There were two postscripts to the chase: Officer Langstroth, in a case that would drag on unresolved for years, sued David Lee for more than $1 million, because of back injuries he had received in the collision with the car which Lee owned. And when drugs were found in the other car that Langstroth collided with during the chase, a passenger was arrested for possession of illicit drugs.

Daulton's long-pending arrest warrant had finally caught up with him. Yet within two days of the arrest, he was out on bail. Over the next year, in a curious demonstration of the workings of the American judicial system, he would constantly be able to postpone his return to jail. Perhaps the system worked precisely as it was supposed to by giving Daulton every constitutional protection, every opportunity for rehabilitation—not only a second chance but third and fourth chances. Perhaps the system was abused. But because of a compliant court and the skills of an effective attorney, Daulton was able to avoid his final denouement on the drug charges for many months while continuing his transactions with the Russians.

His lawyer, Kenneth Kahn, was, like Daulton and Chris, a product of a particular time and place that had left a mark on him. Thirty-three years old, he had grown up in a poor family in Los Angeles, become a politically conservative American Legion “Boy of the Year” in high school, gotten high marks at the University of California at Los Angeles and entered Boalt Hall Law School at Berkeley. And there, like so many students at Berkeley in the sixties, he was radicalized. He joined the Free Speech Movement and other student protest groups and, after passing the bar, twice gave up his law practice—once to spend six months in the Federal prison on Terminal Island in California on a hashish-possession charge, and once to travel around the world. When he finally settled down, Ken Kahn discovered a lucrative specialty: defending the young drug dealers and users from the Palos Verdes Peninsula—a crop of defendants that, for many years, seemed inexhaustible, and many of whom became his friends.

With dense, curly brown hair, a curly moustache and muttonchops, Kahn was facetiously called “the hippie lawyer” by some of his colleagues. He looked the part and liked the allusion. In court, he had a feisty style that some judges called abrasive—but he was very good at what he did, agilely challenging the constitutionality of police searches, seizures and arrests in order to keep his clients out of jail—or at least postpone their day of reckoning.

25

As 1975 ended, each of the two young friends from Palos Verdes was facing a personal crisis that would make him more desperate.