The Falcon and the Snowman (56 page)

A Biography of Robert Lindsey

Robert Lindsey is a journalist and the author of several award-winning true crime books. He won the 1980 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime for
The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage
, which the
New York Times
called “one of the best nonfiction spy stories ever to appear in this country.”

Lindsey was born on January 4, 1935, in Glendale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, and grew up in Inglewood near the Hollywood Park racetrack. His parents divorced when he was a child, and his mother, Claire Elizabeth Schultz, worked as a bookkeeper to support herself and her son. Lindsey's father, Remembrance Hughes Lindsey Jr., also known as Robert Lindsey, fought a long battle with alcoholism. During his brief periods of sobriety, he would live with his family, but until he became completely sober later in life, his addiction hindered their relationship. Due in part to his father's alcoholism and in part to his mother's gambling habit, Lindsey was mostly raised by his two sisters, Catherine and Jean. He explores his turbulent childhood in his 2012 memoir,
Ghost Scribbler
.

Lindsey first dreamed of being a reporter in elementary school after listening to a radio soap opera about the newspaperman “Front Page Farrell.” A self-described rebellious “greaser” in high school, Lindsey still joined the school newspaper,
El Centinela
. Later, he attended San Jose State with aspirations of joining their journalism school but ultimately decided to study history.

After graduating from San Jose State, he married his college sweetheart, Sandra Wurts, and started a job as a country correspondent for the
San Jose Mercury-News
, where he covered Gilroy, a small farming town with only 5,000 residents. The newspaper eventually promoted him to report “North Country” news, which included a chain of small towns north of San Jose. Lindsey started writing about the wave of technology companies moving into this central California region, making him one of the first journalists to report on Silicon Valley.

In the early 1960s, Lindsey began working as an aviation reporter and was invited by airlines to fly around the world and cover their inaugural flights. He traveled to London, Munich, Copenhagen, Zurich, Prague, Tokyo, and many other destinations, and was a national officer of the Aviation Writers Association.

His work caught the attention of the
New York Times
editors, and in 1968, they hired Lindsey as the
Times
' aviation reporter. After several years, he was relocated to California upon his request, and became the
Times
' LA Bureau Chief. The
Times
didn't limit his topics of reportage: He interviewed celebrities from Jack Nicholson to silent screen actress Mary Pickford, and wrote about whatever interested him at the moment, such as California's economy and agriculture.

In 1977, Lindsey began covering a spy story about two Californians, Andrew Daulton Lee and Christopher John Boyce, who were arrested for selling government secrets to the Soviet Union. Boyce worked inside the CIA communications vault, also known as the “Black Vault,” full of confidential government papers. As the inside man, Boyce smuggled thousands of documents out of the building, and Lee then transported them to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. This news story inspired Lindsey's most famous work,
The Falcon and the Snowman
, which achieved major commercial and critical success and was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1985. During his research, Lindsey developed a close friendship with Boyce, and when he escaped from prison in 1980, Boyce called Lindsey from a payphone to let him know he was safe. This infamous prison break was the basis for Lindsey's 1983 book,
The Flight of the Falcon
.

Lindsey wrote a number of other books, including
Irresistible Impulse
and
A Gathering of Saints: A True Story of Money, Murder and Deceit
, which won the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Nonfiction in 1989. He also assisted both Ronald Reagan and Marlon Brando, a close friend, in writing their autobiographies,
Ronald Reagan: An American Life
and
Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me
.

Lindsey currently lives in California with his wife, Sandra. They have two children, Susan and Steve.

Lindsey at a roller-skating party with friends in the early 1950s, during his phase as a teenage “greaser” at Inglewood High School. One of his friends, Sonny Bono, went on to have a successful singing career and marry pop icon Cher.

Lindsey photographed during his career as a
New York Times
journalist in the 1980s.

Lindsey with John Schlesinger and Steven Zaillian, the director and screenplay writer for
The Falcon and the Snowman
, on set in Mexico City in 1984.

Lindsey at his retirement dinner from the
New York Times
with his wife, Sandra, and David R. Jones, the former national editor and assistant managing editor of the
Times
, in 1988.

Lindsey and former president Ronald Reagan photographed while they were working on Reagan's autobiography,
Ronald Reagan: An American Life
, in 1989.

A letter dated November 25, 1990, from President Ronald Reagan thanking Lindsey for helping him write his autobiography,
Ronald Reagan: An American Life
.

Lindsey and Sandra at their home in Carmel, California, in the 1990s. They have been married for over sixty years.

In the 1990s, Lindsey was designated an honorary member of Britain's Devon and Cornwall Constabulary and the US Marshals Service in recognition of books he had written about important investigations. He was awarded two badges and a bobby helmet to commemorate the honors.