-Caveat Lector-
December 12, 1999--NYTimes
Officials Describe Loss of Nuclear
Secrets at Los Alamos
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON -- When a former scientist at the
Los Alamos National Laboratory was indicted
on Friday on charges that he had improperly removed
American nuclear secrets from the lab, the government
outlined a possible compromise of classified
information far greater than previously disclosed.
Although he was not
charged with espionage,
senior government
officials now say that
Wen Ho Lee, the former
Los Alamos scientist
arrested Friday and
charged in the case,
jeopardized virtually
every nuclear warhead in
the American arsenal
through unauthorized
computer transfers of
many of the country's
most sensitive nuclear
secrets.
The officials also said
much of the information
Lee removed was
missing because he had
copied the data onto
portable computer tapes,
many of which the
Federal Bureau of
Investigation cannot find.
The officials said they
found the methodical and
comprehensive way in
which the data had been
copied particularly
alarming.
Although early accounts
of the investigation
described nuclear
secrets being mishandled
on a large scale, never
before has the complex
case been presented in
such detail.
The key to the
government's case, and
what finally persuaded
prosecutors to seek an
indictment and arrest
Lee, is the evidence
developed by F.B.I.
computer experts to
show that Lee copied
thousands of pages of
nuclear-related
documents onto 10
computer tapes in 1993,
1994 and 1997. Only
three of those tapes have
been recovered.
Officials said it was the
discovery that the tapes
were missing and the
extraordinary breadth of
the secret nuclear details
on them, more than the
initial discovery of Lee's
unauthorized transfers of
data, that prompted the
government to treat the case so seriously.
A federal grand jury in Albuquerque issued a 59-count
indictment against Lee, charging him with violations of
the Atomic Energy Act and the Foreign Espionage Act.
Some of the most serious offenses are punishable by
life in prison.
It was previously known that Lee had, mainly in 1993
and 1994, transferred onto an unsecure computer
system computer data used to design nuclear weapons,
analyze nuclear test results and evaluate weapons
materials and the safety characteristics of America's
nuclear warheads. But in the indictment, the government
said for the first time that Lee had transferred
information in a more determined manner and for a far
longer time than investigators initially believed.
The government charged that Lee had copied secret
nuclear data onto a tape as recently as 1997. Officials
initially believed that Lee's unauthorized computer
activities had ended by 1995.
For example, the indictment says that in 1997, Lee
copied onto a tape the "complete source code for the
current version" of the government's most advanced
primary weapon design, which is an atomic bomb that
acts as the trigger to explode a hydrogen bomb.
Evidence about the processes Lee used to transfer the
material is also being used by the government to argue
that his actions were not accidental or intended to
protect the information, as he has asserted. According
to the indictment and government officials, as Lee
moved the material from the classified network to an
open system, he deleted classification markings
identifying it as secret. After they were in the open
system, he copied them onto tapes on the office
computer of another employee.
Lee is being held without bail pending a hearing on
Monday.
But the government is not saying Lee committed
espionage by giving the classified information to
another country or person.
In fact, while Lee's arrest was the culmination of an
F.B.I. investigation into his computer activities that
began in March, the broader espionage inquiry that first
brought Lee to the government's attention is continuing
at a much slower pace.
The government stumbled onto evidence of Lee's
unauthorized computer transfers because he was under
investigation in connection with an inquiry into
evidence that China may have stolen secret data related
to America's most advanced nuclear warhead, the
W-88, which was designed at Los Alamos.
That investigation began in early 1995 by the
Department of Energy, which owns the national
weapons labs, and the F.B.I. The investigation started
after American intelligence received sensitive
information about a 1992 Chinese test of an advanced
nuclear warhead that appeared to be modeled after an
American weapon. Subsequently, the Central
Intelligence Agency received a Chinese government
document that included secret data about the W-88,
indicating that the Chinese had obtained classified
information from the American nuclear program.
By 1996, when the F.B.I. opened a formal criminal
investigation, Lee had emerged as the prime suspect as
the source of the leak.
But after the case became public in March, a national
furor erupted over the way the government had handled
the investigation, leading to a series of reviews of the
actions of officials at the F.B.I. and the Energy and
Justice departments.
By September, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department
had determined that the initial administrative inquiry by
the Energy Department and the F.B.I. that began the
investigation had been flawed and that investigators
had prematurely focused on Lee.
Officials determined that the secret data about the W-88
included in the Chinese government document handed
over to the C.I.A. in 1995 did not necessarily come
from Los Alamos.
The Chinese document was dated 1988, and by that
time the classified information on the W-88 included in
the document might have been available at other
laboratories or federal agencies, or even at defense
contractors.
So the F.B.I. went back to square one on the W-88 case
this fall, broadening its investigation in an effort to
account for how the information about the warhead was
disseminated through the government and its
contractors. On Friday, a senior government official
said that renewed inquiry is continuing on a separate
track from the criminal case pending against Lee. He
said Lee's indictment "does not answer the original
referral from the Department of Energy on the W-88."
The official added that the Chinese intelligence service
tends to rely on many sources.
The Lee case "could be one source, or it may have
nothing to do with it," he said.
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