-Caveat Lector-
NYTimes
December 22, 1999
Reno Called Inquiry Too Focused
on Scientist
By JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 -- Attorney General
Janet Reno told Congress in June that she thought
federal investigators had prematurely focused on the
weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee in their initial inquiry
into whether China had stolen United States nuclear
secrets, according to newly declassified Senate
testimony.
In a secret hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Ms. Reno said that an administrative inquiry conducted
in 1995 by the Department of Energy, with help from
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had failed to
adequately investigate others who had access to
classified information about the United States' most
advanced nuclear warhead, the W-88, according to a
transcript of the hearing released by the committee
tonight.
"The elimination of other logical suspects, having the
same access and opportunity, did not occur," Ms. Reno
told the committee.
Ms. Reno's testimony came in defense of the Justice
Department's 1997 decision to reject an F.B.I. request
to seek a court-authorized wiretap of Dr. Lee, who was
then a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in
New Mexico.
After being the focus of a three-year federal
investigation into China's apparent theft of data related
to the W-88, Dr. Lee was fired from Los Alamos this
March for security violations. The F.B.I. discovered
later that he had conducted unauthorized transfers of
vast amounts of secret material about nuclear weapons
from the laboratory's classified computer system.
Dr. Lee was arrested on Dec. 10 and charged with
mishandling classified information. He has pleaded not
guilty to the charges. He has not been charged with
espionage.
But even as the government has proceeded with its
criminal case against Dr. Lee, government officials
have acknowledged that the original espionage inquiry
was not properly handled.
In September, Ms. Reno and the director of the F.B.I.,
Louis J. Freeh, ordered federal agents to broaden the
W-88 investigation beyond Dr. Lee and Los Alamos to
other possible sources of the secret information. Yet the
newly released testimony shows that Ms. Reno was
concerned that investigators had prematurely focused
on Dr. Lee for months before she ordered the
broadened inquiry.
The 1995 inquiry focused on Los Alamos and
Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, the two
laboratories that design the United States' nuclear
weapons. The W-88 was designed at Los Alamos. The
theft related to the W-88 was believed to have occurred
between 1984 and 1988.
Ms. Reno said the Justice Department turned down the
F.B.I.'s request for the wiretap in that inquiry because
other laboratory employees had not been adequately
investigated.
Her testimony also provided new insight into Dr. Lee's
activities in the early 1980's, when he first came under
scrutiny in a separate inquiry.
At that time, the F.B.I. questioned Dr. Lee after a
wiretap picked up a phone conversation he had with a
scientist from Lawrence Livermore who had been fired
in connection with the government's investigation into
China's theft of neutron bomb secrets. On Dec. 20,
1983, Dr. Lee told the F.B.I. that he had been in contact
with Taiwanese nuclear researchers since 1977 or
1978, and had done consulting work for them in
addition to giving them unclassified research papers,
according to Ms. Reno's testimony.
Dr. Lee told the F.B.I. at the time that he had contacted
the Lawrence Livermore scientist because he thought he
had been fired for doing the same thing that Dr. Lee had
been doing for Taiwan, Ms. Reno testified. On Jan. 24,
1984, Dr. Lee took a polygraph exam, answering
questions about whether he had ever passed classified
information to a foreign government and about the
nature of his contacts with the Lawrence Livermore
scientist and the Taiwanese Embassy.
"The polygraph confirmed that he had not passed
classified information to any foreign government, and
the accuracy of his claims concerning the nature of
contacts" with the scientist and the embassy, Ms. Reno
testified.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, 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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