Report: Feds believe Lee used atomic data for resume
Friday, 7 July 2000 13:49 (ET)
LOS ANGELES, July 7 (UPI) -- Recently filed court documents
indicate federal investigators may no longer suspect that
scientist Wen Ho Lee was acting as a foreign spy when he copied
reams of secret nuclear information from the computer system at
the Los Alamos National Laboratory but rather may have been
simply beefing up his resume.
A two-page document filed in federal court in Albuquerque said
that prosecutors believed Lee was "interested in seeking
employment abroad" and downloaded a large amount of sensitive
nuclear weapons information to show off for potential employers,
the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
The document filed by U.S. Attorney Norman C. Bay is the first
formal declaration of the prosecution's theories regarding Lee,
who faces trial Nov. 6 in Albuquerque on 59 felony counts
involving the alleged mishandling of some 400,000 pages of
classified documents. Lee has not been charged with espionage,
although the high-profile investigation has centered on the
possibility that Lee passed U.S. nuclear secrets on to China or
some other foreign government.
Lee, who was employed at Los Alamos for 19 years, has denied any
wrongdoing.
Bay said in his filing that Lee had sent out letters seeking
employment to universities and private companies in European and
Asian nations, including his native Taiwan, in 1993 "at or about
the time of the first offenses charged."
Investigators believe Lee wanted to use the vast number of
classified pages to prove his knowledge of nuclear research to
prospective employers.
The Times said the job-hunting theory surfaced last December
after it was learned that Lee had been informed in 1993 that his
job could be eliminated, due to budget cuts.
Bay, however, reiterated the government's contention that Lee had
also made contact with representatives of China's Institute of
Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, which is involved
in research into nuclear weapons computer simulations.
The document was still considered a victory by Lee's defense
team.
"It's absurd for the government to submit in a written document
that it may seek to prove Dr. Lee was assisting countries like
Australia and Switzerland," attorney Mark Holscher told the
newspaper. "The idea that he is aiding countries that don't even
have nuclear programs is bizarre."
A former FBI intelligence, Paul D. Moore, told the Times that
the documents Lee is accused of copying could also give a foreign
nation's nuclear program a major boost.
A hearing was scheduled before the trial judge on July 12 on a
defense motion that would force prosecutors to disclose the
allegedly stolen classified information to the jury.
--
Prosecutors Give Ground in Case of Jailed Scientist
By BOB DROGIN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
LA Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON--Federal prosecutors have concluded that fired Los
Alamos engineer Wen Ho Lee was trying to boost his job prospects
with research institutes in Europe and Asia when he allegedly
copied a virtual archive of nuclear weapon secrets.
The disclosure, contained in court papers filed in U.S.
District Court in Albuquerque, marks the first time the
government has publicly stated its theory of Lee's intent in the
highly controversial case. He faces 59 felony counts.
Until now, federal investigators have suggested that Lee was a
skilled spy who either passed or planned to pass some of
America's most valuable nuclear secrets to China or Taiwan.
Defense lawyers say that a more mundane motivation may undermine
the government's case when Lee's trial begins Nov. 6.
In the two-page court filing, Norman C. Bay, U.S. attorney for
the District of New Mexico, wrote that Lee "was interested in
seeking employment abroad" at the time he began downloading
thermonuclear weapon designs and other highly classified files
onto an unsecured computer system and portable tapes at the
weapon lab. Seven of the tapes are unaccounted for.
"In 1993, at or about the time of the first offenses charged, the
defendant addressed letters seeking employment in Australia,
France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan,"
Bay added. Bay also reiterated previous government assertions
that Lee "made contact" with representatives of China's Institute
of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, which is
involved in the design and computational simulation of nuclear
weapons. Lee took two lab-approved trips to China in 1986 and
1988.
Defense Sees a Triumph The prosecution document appears to be a
triumph for the defense in the intense pretrial skirmishing now
underway. Already emboldened by the security scandal at Los
Alamos last month, when two classified computer hard drives
vanished and then mysteriously were found, Lee's lawyers now hope
to scuttle the government case before it goes to trial.
In a flurry of recent motions, the defense has challenged the
legality of an FBI search warrant, has claimed that Lee is a
victim of ethnic profiling and--most important--has insisted that
Lee needs to show the jury all the classified information in
question if he is to receive a fair trial. A closed-door hearing
on that crucial issue is scheduled for next Wednesday in
Albuquerque.
Lee was indicted in December for allegedly misappropriating
400,000 pages of secret computer data on the design, construction
and testing of nuclear weapons. Most of the charges allege that
he acted "with the intent to injure the United States, and with
the intent to secure an advantage to a foreign nation."
In oral arguments last week, the government fought a defense
motion to identify that foreign nation. Prosecutors argued that
they were "still refining" their theory of the case and that it
was too early "to lock the government into one theory."
But Judge James A. Parker sided with Lee's lawyers and ordered
the government to name names. Mark Holscher, Lee's lawyer,
fairly crowed at the result Thursday.
"It's absurd for the government to submit a written document that
it may seek to prove Dr. Lee was attempting to assist countries
like Australia and Switzerland," Holscher said by telephone from
Los Angeles. "The idea that he's aiding countries that don't
even have nuclear programs is bizarre."
Holscher said that the government was "clearly backing off" any
claim that Lee was a spy. Holscher said that he would ask the
court to reconsider Lee's application for bail. "Dr. Lee has
been shackled in custody because the government falsely raised
the specter that he might give classified information to China,"
Holscher said.
Government witnesses at Lee's four-day bail hearing in December
warned that foreign agents could spirit Lee away in helicopters
or that he might reveal the location of missing tapes by using
such code phrases as "Uncle Wen says hello." As a result,
Chinese-speaking FBI agents monitor all his conversations in
jail, including those with his family.
Assistant U.S. Atty. George A. Stamboulidis, the chief
prosecutor in the case, declined Thursday to discuss the theory
laid out in the court filing or whether it suggests the
government is scaling back its position against Lee.
The Lee case first erupted into the headlines in March 1999 amid
allegations that the Taiwan-born nuclear engineer was a Chinese
spy who had provided top secret W-88 nuclear warhead designs to
Beijing. Lee's lab-approved trips to China had made him the
prime suspect in a three-year FBI investigation.
The FBI conceded in September that it had wrongly focused on Lee
and Los Alamos as the only possible source of the leak, and Lee
was never charged with espionage. But Lee, a naturalized U.S.
citizen and 19-year veteran of the Los Alamos lab, appeared to
have been indelibly branded as a spy. He has denied any
wrongdoing.
The question of why Lee copied the files has stumped
investigators from the start. The theory that he was searching
for a job surfaced at the bail hearing in December, when
government witnesses testified that Lee was notified in 1993 that
he was on a list of Los Alamos employees whose jobs were at risk
because of budget cuts.
An FBI agent testified that Lee sent letters in 1993 and 1994
expressing interest in employment to seven overseas institutions,
including the National University of Singapore, Nanyang
University in Singapore, the Swiss Defense Technology Procurement
Agency in Switzerland, a private company in Germany called
Messerschmitt Bolkow-Blohm, the Chung Cheng Institute in Taiwan,
Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and the Hong Kong Institute of
Science and Technology.
It was not clear Thursday where Lee also sought jobs in Australia
and France.
Investigators now believe that Lee, whose doctorate is in
mechanical engineering, downloaded the files in an attempt to
show prospective employers overseas that he also was intimate
with the complex physics and arcane detail of nuclear weapon
design.
The evidence appears mostly circumstantial and includes the
letters recovered in the FBI search of Lee's home and office, a
notebook containing detailed notes of what he copied onto the
tapes and the timing of his actions. He stopped most of the
downloading in 1994, when he was told that he had survived the
cutbacks.
Lee's lawyers have suggested that Lee wanted a backup of his work
in case of a computer failure at Los Alamos, but they have never
fully explained his actions.
FBI Analyst Agrees With Job-Hunt Theory
Paul D. Moore, the FBI's chief Chinese intelligence analyst for
more than 20 years, said Thursday that the government theory
suggested Lee "was downloading this material in furtherance of
seeking another job and essentially bringing along a load of
bread under his arm" to entice prospective employers.
Moore noted that, given the cutbacks at the labs, Lee may have
gone to foreign-run institutes and said: "Here's something that
could put your research ahead 25 years."
Even though most of the countries named by the government in its
filing are U.S. allies, Moore said, that does not diminish the
severity of the alleged offense.
"You don't have to hurt the United States" to damage national
security, he said. While Lee is not charged with espionage, he
said, prosecutors "are looking at somebody who appears to be
preparing to commit espionage, at the very least. It doesn't
reduce the seriousness if you say, 'Oh, maybe he was going to
Taiwan.' "
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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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