-Caveat Lector-
FBI Errors In Lee Case Detailed Investigation, Supervision Faulted
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 27, 2001; Page A01
The FBI's investigation of Wen Ho Lee was more seriously bungled than
officials have previously disclosed, with inept agents making amateurish
mistakes and ignoring orders to consider other suspects, according to an
unreleased portion of a classified Justice Department report.
The 166-page chapter, part of a larger report on the Lee probe, outlines
a succession of blunders, misjudgments and faulty assumptions by the FBI
that contributed to the government's shoddy investigation of the former
Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist. Lee was suspected of giving
nuclear secrets to China. Inattentive FBI supervisors in Washington
compounded the problem by failing to correct the mistakes or to keep the
investigation on track.
The chapter says FBI Director Louis J. Freeh was not kept informed of
the case's shortcomings, including problems with the investigation in
New Mexico and disagreement among government experts over the
seriousness of the suspected security loss.
"This investigation was a paradigm of how not to manage and work an
important counterintelligence case," says the report, written by federal
prosecutor Randy I. Bellows.
If Lee was a spy, Bellows concludes, the FBI let him get away. If he
was not, the bureau blew repeated opportunities to consider other
options -- including the possibility that nuclear weapons secrets were
not obtained by the Chinese in the first place.
Originally charged with 59 felony counts, Lee pleaded guilty in
September to one felony charge of mishandling classified information
after the government's case against him fell apart. He was not charged
with espionage and has repeatedly denied giving information to China.
Two other chapters of the exhaustive Bellows inquiry were released by
the government earlier this month. They faulted the FBI and the Energy
Department for their "slapdash" investigation. But the latest chapter,
obtained by The Washington Post with some sensitive information blacked
out, underscores how investigators botched the case. Among its
revelations:
. Investigators in the FBI's Albuquerque office ignored an order from
top FBI officials in December 1997 to open inquiries into suspects other
than Lee and his wife, Sylvia. Those inquiries were not begun until 15
months later, after Lee had been fired.
. The photocopying of the outside of Lee's mail, known as a "mail cover"
operation, was allowed to lapse for three months in
1997 because investigators failed to file a routine renewal application.
. Most of the supervisors and agents on the case didn't bother to read
or question a flawed 1995 Energy Department report that Bellows called a
"virtual indictment" of Lee. That report was the basis for opening a
full FBI investigation.
When the new head of Albuquerque's FBI office finally read the report in
December 1998, he described it as a "piece of junk"
that called into question the entire probe.
. The agent in charge of the case for its first three years, from 1994
to 1997, did not see the document obtained by the CIA that detailed what
the Chinese knew about the W-88 nuclear warhead, the weapon that Lee was
suspected of compromising.
. For years, the Lee probe was handled by solo agents who also
investigated robberies and other duties, and it was frequently ranked as
the lowest intelligence priority in the Albuquerque office. Top
Washington officials also were unaware that when two rookie agents were
sent to Albuquerque to bolster the Lee case in November 1996, they were
assigned to other cases.
Several agents assigned to the probe were unqualified for the task,
Bellows found. One supervisor said that working with the first agent
was "like pushing a cart with a dead donkey." Another supervisor called
the second agent on the case a "reject."
Taken together, FBI Assistant Director Neil Gallagher told the Bellows
team, the first two agents to head the probe added up to "a third of an
agent."
The report by Bellows, an assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria, is the
government's official account of the botched probe that led to Lee's
nine-month incarceration. The prosecution of the former Los Alamos
scientist spawned congressional hearings, civil lawsuits and a strong
rebuke from the judge in the case, who said the treatment of Lee "had
embarrassed this entire nation."
Bellows's assessment is another in an extraordinary string of
embarrassments for the FBI this year, including the compromise of
national security secrets by spy Robert P. Hanssen; the FBI's failure
to turn over thousands of pages of documents to defense attorneys in the
Oklahoma City bombing case; and the loss of weapons and laptops
computers by FBI agents. At least six reviews of FBI conduct are
underway.
FBI officials said the Bellows report, which was delivered to former
attorney general Janet Reno in May 2000, has formed the foundation for
wide-ranging reforms in the way the FBI and other U.S. intelligence
agencies deal with national security investigations. FBI spokesman John
Collingwood also said the bureau deserves criticism for its early
mistakes in the Lee case.
"Clearly, when the institution turned its full attention to the case [in
1999] as it should have from day one, the resources and expertise were
in abundance," Collingwood said. "We should have done that earlier on."
Lee's attorney did not return a telephone message left for him Friday.
Bellows, who has not commented publicly on his report, could not be
reached for comment.
For 4 1/2 years, Bellows wrote, the case "proceeded at a pace that can
only be described as languid, if not torpid," and "suffered from
neglect, faulty judgment, bad personnel choices, inept investigation and
the inadequate supervision of that inept investigation."
The chapter, which serves as the report's overview of the FBI's role in
the Lee case, also confirms and expands on many previously publicized
missteps. These include the failure to examine Lee's computer use
despite waivers allowing the FBI and the Energy Department to do so; the
diversion of agents from the case; and the failure to monitor two trips
that Lee made to Taiwan in 1998.
Lee, a U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, was charged in December 1999 with
59 felony counts of mishandling classified information and violating the
Atomic Energy Act, which could have brought a life sentence on
conviction. After pleading guilty to the charge of mishandling
classified information, he was sentenced to the time he had already
served.
Lee ultimately acknowledged copying classified nuclear data onto
portable computer tapes and removing them from Los Alamos. Despite an
intensive debriefing by the FBI under the terms of his plea agreement,
the tapes have never been found.
Lee has not publicly explained why he made them or what became of them.
Lee is pursuing a civil lawsuit against the FBI and the departments of
Energy and Justice for violating his privacy by leaking his name as a
suspect. He is also sparring with the government to obtain clearances
for the release of his memoirs.
Because the 800-page Bellows report was completed in May 2000, when Lee
was in jail, it focuses largely on ways in which investigators failed to
be aggressive enough in pursuit of the case.
Nonetheless, Bellows also faults the FBI and the Energy Department for
focusing exclusively on Lee and ignoring the possibility that the
alleged crime -- providing nuclear weapons secrets to China -- may never
have occurred.
The FBI is not the only target of the critique. Another chapter of the
report, also obtained by The Post, faults the Justice Department's
Office of Intelligence Policy and Review for not granting the FBI a
warrant to secretly monitor Lee's computer --
although it says in hindsight that the bureau misstated facts underlying
the request.
Bellows also devotes chapters, including those already released, to
criticism of the Energy Department for being too quick to focus on Lee
and his wife as espionage suspects. The 1995 Energy report that
prompted the FBI investigation, Bellows wrote, included "misleading
representations" that further sharpened the focus on the Lees to the
exclusion of others.
But much of the most withering criticism is aimed at the FBI, which
conducted an inquiry of Lee from April 1994 to November
1995 and launched a full-blown investigation in May 1996. For the next
three years, Bellows concludes, the probe faltered and was often dormant
because of the incompetence of the agents assigned to it.
For extended periods, Bellows found, the investigation essentially
ground to a halt. An agent said he did nothing on the probe for several
weeks because he was working on other crime cases. In another instance,
the investigation stalled for four months in late 1997 while the
Albuquerque office awaited instructions from FBI headquarters.
Yet when the investigative plan finally arrived that December from
Washington, "they largely ignored it," Bellows found. One of the items
was a mandatory directive to open preliminary inquiries on other
suspects, which did not happen until March 1999.
These and other blunders went largely unnoticed by Freeh, Bellows
found. The FBI director was not briefed on the investigation until more
than a year after it began, and important decisions -- such as a 1996
memo requesting mail cover authority -- were made by subordinates.
As a result, Bellows concludes, "the Attorney General received a written
briefing on the FBI's Wen Ho Lee investigation before the Director did."
After June 1997, Freeh got regular updates on the case but was not
informed that the Albuquerque office was, in the words of an FBI
official, "screwing up and sitting on a time bomb."
"By the time Director Freeh was finally briefed on the case, it was in
trouble and the prognosis for the case seemed grim," Bellows wrote. "So
much had already gone wrong."
================================================================
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
================================================================
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
