-Caveat Lector-
June 15, 1999
Suspect in Loss of Nuclear Secrets
Unlikely to Face Spying Charges
By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON -- Three months ago, a research
mathematician was dismissed from his job at the
Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory for security
violations. Today federal authorities say it is most
unlikely that the mathematician, who is at the center of
the uproar over the suspected theft of nuclear secrets by
China, will ever face criminal charges of espionage.
Moreover, the officials are unsure whether the scientist,
Wen Ho Lee, will be accused of any wrongdoing, even
though investigators found in March that he had
downloaded thousands of secret codes used in the
design of the most sophisticated American nuclear
weapons.
The uncertain status of the case has infuriated some
government officials and lawmakers, primarily
Republicans, who say Lee may be responsible for the
most damaging espionage of the post-Cold-War era.
That conclusion was reinforced last month, when a
congressional panel found that China had used nuclear
secrets stolen from American labs to develop advanced
miniature warheads and a mobile ballistic missile.
Lee's lawyer, Mark Holscher, said his client was an
innocent scientist who had been publicly branded as a
spy even though he had not even been charged with any
crime.
"Mr. Lee has been unfairly injected into a politically
charged debate over America-China relations and has
been subject to improper leaks in violation of federal
law," Holscher said.
The extent and nature of evidence against Lee remains
obscure. But a review of the still classified evidence --
including details about Lee's work, his meetings with
Chinese scientists and his overseas travel -- helps
explain why after three years of investigation,
law-enforcement officials acknowledge that they will
probably never learn the truth.
Overall, officials said, the evidence is a mosaic of fact
and conclusions that suggests why counterintelligence
cases are frustrating and often fail to result in
prosecutions. These are some of the points:
-- There are no witnesses who saw Lee engage in
espionage.
-- There is no evidence of a motive in the form of
unexplained income or a change in his style of life.
-- Nor are there indications that Lee, a naturalized
American who was born on Taiwan, was ideologically
allied with Beijing.
-- Even the evidence that a theft occurred is
circumstantial.
Still, counterintelligence officials said, they strongly
suspect that China stole the important information data
in the mid-'80s. The loss was apparently not found at
the time, when an investigation might have had the
greatest chance of success. Authorities did not realize
that the information had been stolen until 1995, when
suspicions were aroused at the lab in northern New
Mexico by an analysis of Chinese nuclear tests and
when the Central Intelligence Agency obtained a
document with esoteric computations that indicated that
Beijing had acquired nuclear secrets.
Lee emerged as a suspect because he was one of the
few researchers in the area that is thought to have been
compromised, computational fluid dynamics. Many
people at the Energy Department were aware of the
information. But officials said Lee was the sole
scientist with full access who had also visited Chinese
counterparts in Beijing.
From there the evidentiary trail followed a meandering
course. Investigators pieced together an account of
Lee's contacts with Chinese over the years, producing
an outline of circumstantial information. Some of it
seemed to raise questions about Lee. Some of it seemed
too speculative to shed significant light on his
activities. And none of it was solid enough to form the
basis for an indictment, government officials said.
One crucial component is missing. There is no direct
evidence that Lee ever passed or tried to pass on to
China any classified national security information.
Although the evidence is apparently insufficient to
prosecute Lee, the FBI thought that the case against him
was compelling enough to ask the Justice Department in
1997 for permission to eavesdrop on Lee under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law lets the
government monitor subjects electronically, not to
assemble evidence of a crime, but to gather intelligence
in national security cases.
The still classified FBI application cited questions
about Lee dating from the early '80s, when he contacted
a scientist who had been ousted from a weapons lab in
California after an inquiry into the theft of secrets about
the neutron bomb.
The application, made up of drafts of documents
exchanged between the FBI and the Justice Department,
described how Chinese intelligence differed from
espionage by the United States' traditional adversaries.
The Chinese, the document said, usually seek
information from overseas Chinese who are traveling in
China through scientist-to-scientist contacts, a more
elusive form of espionage, because it does not rely on
identifiable intelligence officers.
The FBI request said Lee had failed to disclose the
identities of all the scientists whom he contacted in
China on visits in 1986 and 1988. The Energy
Department had approved the trips and authorized his
meetings and discussions of nonclassified matters with
Chinese officials. After the trips, Lee and his wife met
American security officials and identified a number of
Chinese scientists whom they had met.
But counterintelligence officials apparently suspected
that Lee might have held back some pertinent
information about his activities during vacations taken
after each trip. On the vacations, the officials said, Lee
had undisclosed contacts with scientists, including one
identified as Side Hu, a top official at an institute of
engineering physics involved in nuclear weapons
research. Other officials said the omissions might have
been inadvertent, in light of the numerous contacts that
Lee did report.
In 1992, Hu led a delegation of Chinese officials on an
official tour of Los Alamos that the Energy Department
had authorized, documents show. On the visit, Hu spoke
privately with Lee and embraced him in a
congratulatory manner.
Later, counterintelligence agents surreptitiously
analyzed Lee's spending and found what they thought
might be another puzzle piece. They found two charges
on a credit card at a travel agency while Lee was in
Hong Kong in 1994. One charge was for $100, the
other for $700, enough to pay for what officials said
might have been an airline ticket to China.
Republican Senators like Fred Thompson of Tennessee
and at least one Democrat, Robert Torricelli of New
Jersey, have expressed outrage that the Justice
Department blocked the FBI request for a warrant to
eavesdrop on Lee, a step that they suggest would have
accelerated the investigation at a critical time, before
Lee realized that he was under suspicion.
In mid-1997, the Office of Intelligence Policy Review
at the Justice Department found that the evidence was
so nebulous and dated that it refused the FBI request for
electronic monitoring. After a bureau official had
questioned the decision, Attorney General Janet Reno
ordered a second review by the Justice Department,
which also found that the bureau had failed to produce
enough evidence to justify the request.
A counterintelligence official who was skeptical of the
application said, "It was very indirect and inferential,
and the law requires more than mere suspicion,
particularly for U.S. citizens."
Reno has said bureau officials dropped the issue. For
her part, she said recently, "I assumed that since I did
not hear from the FBI that the matter had been resolved
to their satisfaction."
Instead, bureau officials said investigators decided to
pursue other avenues. An agent who was posing as a
Chinese intelligence officer approached Lee. The
scientist rebuffed an invitation to spy for Beijing,
government officials said, but he did not tell authorities
about the contact until they had approached him to
explain it.
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Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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