-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. ================================================================= 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. ================================================================= DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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