Fugitive spy Christopher Boyce, showing no emotion and answering...

By TOM GREEN
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SEATTLE -- Fugitive spy Christopher Boyce, showing no emotion and answering questions through his lawyers, appeared before a federal magistrate Monday while FBI agents tried to tie him to a series of bank robberies.

U.S. Magistrate Philip Sweigert set bail at $500,000 on the escape charge and set a hearing Sept. 3 to establish that Boyce, 28, is the spy who escaped 19 months ago from the federal prison at Lompoc, Calif.

Boyce, convicted of selling vital secrets to the Soviet Union, was only a week away from getting a pilot's license that would have enabled him to fly away from his remote hideout on the Olympic Peninsula when agents captured him at a drive-in cafe last Friday night.

FBI agents said they were investigating Boyce as a suspect in a series of robberies in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. They believe he used loot from the holdups to buy cars, a commerical fishing boat and flying lessons.

'We are looking at him regarding possible involvement in a series of bank robberies in the Pacific Northwest,' said FBI spokesman George Fisher in Seattle.

He declined comment on reports Boyce is a suspect in 16 robberies, but the FBI's top man in Montana and Idaho, Jay E. Bailey, said he was considered a suspect in six holdups in those two states.

Boyce was represented by California attorneys George L. Chelius of Newport Beach and William Dougherty of Tustin -- the same attorneys who defended him at his spy trial and when he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Wearing a three-piece gray business suit, Boyce entered the magistrate's small and crowded hearing room with his hands manacled behind him and escorted by four U.S. marshals.

The blue-eyed Boyce, whose brown hair was closely cropped, showed no emotion as Sweigert advised him of his rights and the federal escape charge.

Boyce later agreed to make a statement to the news media, but backed out of his appearance in the Federal Courthouse's grand jury room when U.S. marshals insisted he would have to wear handcuffs.

'I'm not going to stand before God and the world in chains,' Boyce told Dougherty.

The convicted spy was ready to enter the room where two dozen reporters waited when a U.S. marshal mistakenly took off his cuffs and another immediately ordered them put back on. Both marshal's policy and the magistrate's order allowing the news conference required Boyce to be manacled.

Boyce's lawyers went into the corridor outside the room and tried to convince him to make the statement, which Chelius described as 'philosophical in nature.' Boyce refused.

'It goes back to his falconry -- being free as a bird,' Chelius said, referring to the hobby that earned Boyce the nickname 'The Falcon.'

'It's like a tethered flight,' the attorney said. 'It's almost unbearable to, if you want to say, a free spirit.'

The U.S. Marshal's office said it was moving Boyce from a holding cell at the U.S. Courthouse to the Snohomish County Jail in Everett where there were better facilities and tighter security.

Spectators were required to submit to metal detection examination before they were allowed into the hearing room.

Dougherty said the Sept. 3 hearing would serve both as a preliminary hearing on the escape charge and a removal hearing. If Boyce is indicted on the escape charge in Los Angeles, the preliminary hearing won't be needed. If convicted of escape, Boyce faces an additional five years in prison.

The two attorneys had differing opinions as to their client's mood.

'He's depressed. Surprised and depressed,' said Dougherty.

'He's jovial -- the same Chris that we knew before,' Chelius said. 'But he seems to be much more serious than before.'

Shortly after his arrest, Boyce told his captors, 'I would have had my license in five days and would have been gone.' He had been taking a crash course in flying and had completed his first solo flight. His first cross-country solo flight was set for late this week.

His arrest ended a global manhunt. Boyce escaped from Lompoc using a technique taken from a Clint Eastwood movie. He hid in the prison yard during a work detail and an accomplice put a paper mache dummy in his bunk, giving Boyce time to go over the wall.

He showed up several months on the remote Olympic Peninsula where he worked as a logger and a fisherman and eventually bought part-interest in a fishing boat.

Boyce, son of a former FBI agent, worked as a $140 a week clerk at TRW Inc., an aerospace firm in Redondo Beach, Calif., where he had access to a top secret 'black vault.'

He was convicted of espionage in 1977 for selling satellite technology to Soviet KGB agents through Andrew Daulton Lee, a boyhood friend, for $70,000.

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