Christopher Boyce, whose Cold War spying was immortalised on film in The Falcon and the Snowman, has been released after a quarter of a century in prison in the United States.
Boyce, freed from a San Francisco halfway house on Saturday, will be on parole until 2046, his original release date.
Boycewas 22 when his father, a former FBI agent, helped him land a summer job as a clerk at TRW in Redondo Beach, where he had access to classified communications with CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
He smuggled some of the documents home and sold them to the Russian Embassy in Mexico City, taking in about US$77,000 before he and childhood friend Andrew Daulton Lee, his courier, were caught.
Boyce was tried and convicted of espionage in 1977. He turned 50 last month.
Lee, tried separately, was also convicted of espionage and paroled in 1998.
