Andrew Daulton Lee (January 3, 1952) is a former drug dealer who was convicted of espionage for his involvement in the Cold War spying activities of his childhood friend, Christopher Boyce.
His lifelong friendship with Boyce led him into espionage activities after Boyce, an employee of US defense contractor TRW (headquartered in the Los Angeles suburb of Redondo Beach), began stealing classified documents detailing how to decrypt secure US government message traffic and detailed specifications of the latest US spy satellites with the intention of delivering them to agents of the Soviet Union.
He alleged that Lee made copies of the stolen documents with the intention of selling them to the Chinese, but this was false testimony by Boyce to exculpate himself to get a lighter sentence.
[citation needed] In January 1977, Lee (with top secret microfilm in his possession) was arrested by Mexican police in front of the Soviet embassy in Mexico City for littering.
[citation needed] Lee was portrayed by actor Sean Penn in director John Schlesinger's 1985 movie The Falcon and the Snowman, based on the book of the same name by Robert Lindsey.