-Caveat Lector-
Landfill Tapes May Hold Secrets
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 12, 2000 ; Page A02
The FBI's crime laboratory is examining more than 10 computer
tapes recovered from a New Mexico landfill, and a government
official said yesterday that, judging by their "outside
appearance," they could be the classified cassettes that former
Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee claims to have thrown into the
trash.
Officials said it will take several days to begin to reconstruct
what is on the tapes, many of which are crushed. But the FBI has
temporarily halted its two-week search of the Los Alamos County
Landfill, and Energy Department experts have been put on alert to
analyze whether the tapes hold the nuclear weapons data that Lee
downloaded from the computer system at Los Alamos National
Laboratory from 1993 to 1997.
If the tapes excavated from a mountain of garbage prove to have
been made by Lee, the discovery would help to back up the
Taiwanese American scientist's assertion that he tossed
approximately 17 tapes into a trash receptacle at Los Alamos in
January 1999. It also would help reassure investigators that the
tapes did not end up in the hands of a foreign country.
But government officials cautioned that it may be impossible to
determine from the physical evidence whether all of the tapes
ended up in the landfill � or whether anybody other than Lee ever
handled them.
"Among the tapes there could be one or more [that Lee] might have
thrown away," said one official familiar with the investigation.
"But we don't know if they are all of them."
The official added that, by the same token, if the tapes found in
the landfill do not turn out to have been made by Lee, "that
doesn't say he didn't destroy the ones he had."
Still, the apparent discovery of the missing tapes was a dramatic
turn in the long and controversial case.
Lee, 60, has been under steady FBI investigation since 1996, when
he was targeted as a possible source of secret data about the
newest U.S. nuclear warhead, the W-88, which had been obtained by
China, possibly through espionage.
Although the espionage case against Lee essentially collapsed and
he was never charged with spying, he was fired from his job at
Los Alamos for security violations in March 1999. Investigators
then searched his office and home, where they found evidence that
he had downloaded the equivalent of more than 400,000 pages of
nuclear weapons design data and computer simulation programs to
his office computer and to portable tapes.
As a result, the FBI opened a new investigation, which led to
Lee's arrest in December 1999. Charged with 59 counts of
mishandling classified information and violating the Atomic
Energy Act, he was held in solitary confinement and threatened
with life in prison.
Part of the evidence against Lee was that he appeared to have
gone to great lengths to hide his downloading by erasing data and
repeatedly attempting to enter the top-secret X Division at Los
Alamos after his security clearance was revoked.
Lee, through his lawyers, steadfastly maintained that he had
never given the tapes to anyone and had destroyed them, though he
long declined to say exactly how. His supporters, including
Asian American groups, said he had been singled out because of
his ethnicity. Government experts disagreed over the importance
of the information he had downloaded, and his lawyers proved that
the lead FBI agent on the case had given faulty testimony.
Ultimately, Lee pleaded guilty to a single felony count and was
sentenced in September to the nine months he had already served.
The federal trial judge apologized to him and excoriated other
branches of government for his harsh treatment.
As part of Lee's plea bargain, he pledged to tell investigators
why he made the tapes and exactly what he did with them. Until
now, however, government officials have been skeptical of his
claim that he made the tapes as protection against computer
failures and later just threw them away.
FBI officials in Washington yesterday refused to confirm that any
tapes have been discovered. Bill Elwell, a spokesman for the FBI
field office in Albuquerque, said its grueling, dawn-to-dusk
search of the 50-acre landfill with handrakes was halted Friday
because agents were tired and needed a rest. He declined to
confirm that any tapes had been found.
Lee's plea agreement allows the FBI to question him for up to 10
full days. Two days of questioning remain. Afterward, the FBI
can request that he take a polygraph exam to try to determine
whether he has told the truth.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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