-Caveat Lector-
Intelligence officials also said China warned the Clinton administration
not to deal harshly with an earlier Chinese spy, Peter Lee, and that senior
Clinton administration officials may have intervened to quietly derail the
Wen Ho Lee case.
August 18, 2001
Lee still suspected of spying
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Counterintelligence experts say they still suspect that convicted nuclear
weapons designer Wen Ho Lee was involved in Chinese espionage on U.S.
nuclear laboratories.
The experts were reacting to portions of a once-secret Justice Department
report on the Lee case made public this week. The heavily censored report
criticized the FBI and the Energy Department for their handling of the
case, but it did not provide answers to many of the questions about the
nuclear espionage case, which began in 1995.
Paul Moore, a former FBI intelligence analyst and specialist on Chinese
spying, said the Justice Department's report "missed the point."
"The problem with Wen Ho Lee is that he is like flypaper," Mr. Moore said.
"He was doing things that were suspicious and lying while doing them.
Either you become more suspicious when you encounter that, or you get out
of the [counterintelligence] business."
"'What are the odds?' is the question you should ask," Mr. Moore said.
"What are the odds that you run across somebody who is propositioned in a
hotel room in China to commit espionage and he has not reported it [to
security officials]."
Mr. Moore said the same Chinese nuclear officials who met Lee in China
during visits there in 1986 and 1988 later came to the United States and
met with Lee.
One senior Chinese nuclear official, Hu Side, embraced Lee at a reception
and was overheard by an FBI informant to have said Lee made a major
contribution to China's nuclear weapons program, according to U.S.
officials close to the case.
This was one of numerous pieces of evidence gathered by the FBI over
several years, before the formal investigation of Lee over the loss of
nuclear warhead secrets began in 1998.
Other information included Lee's request to have a Chinese national who was
a student in Pennsylvania become a research assistant for him at Los
Alamos, where Lee was involved in classified weapons research.
"When you are doing odds, you have to multiply, not add," Mr. Moore said.
"You get all these different things, and he's lying to you. And all these
things happened before he made copies of the nuclear codes. The record is
very clear: Wen Ho Lee is a liar and a thief. The question is: Is he taking
the information he's stolen and giving it to a foreign country? I don't see
any proof that he did so. But he may have been preparing to do so."
The report by federal prosecutor Randy Bellows also said that Lee, a
Taiwanese-born nuclear weapons designer who pleaded guilty in September to
mishandling nuclear data, was not singled out for investigation because of
his racial or ethnic background.
The Justice Department report is only a small portion of an 800-page
"top-secret" report on the case, and the documents released this week have
been redacted. Additional material is expected to be made public in the
next several weeks, although officials said that material also will be
heavily censored.
The report was made public by a judge as part of a lawsuit filed by former
Energy Department counterintelligence chief Notra Trulock. Mr. Trulock says
two Energy Department investigators defamed him by contending that Lee was
targeted because of his race.
Mr. Trulock said in an interview that he felt "vindicated" by the report
because it shows racism was not a factor in the Lee investigation.
As for the rest of the report, Mr. Trulock said it is a "glass half-full."
"I think the public deserves to see the rest of the story, and I hope the
Justice Department will keep its promise to release it," Mr. Trulock said.
"The rest of the story will describe the FBI's role in the Kindred Spirit
investigation."
John Martin, a former Justice Department spy prosecutor, also said he still
has suspicions.
"We know Los Alamos and the other national labs were penetrated by the
Chinese, and God knows who else," Mr. Martin said. "You have to start with
a basic premise: The FBI didn't have a Chinese counterintelligence program,
they did not competently handle the loss of W-88 [warhead] secrets and they
focused too soon on Wen Ho Lee."
Mr. Martin said the case shows "massive ineptitude" stretching to the top
of the FBI and the Justice Department.
U.S. officials said the 1995 Energy probe concluded that 12 Energy
officials, including Lee and his wife, Sylvia, who was working secretly for
the FBI, should be investigated by the nation's top law enforcement agency.
However, the FBI did not act right away on the matter.
U.S. intelligence officials have said Lee first came under suspicion by the
FBI in 1982 when he contacted another Chinese spy suspect who had been
dismissed from Lawrence Livermore laboratory. In an intercepted telephone
call, Lee told the suspected spy that he would try to find out who in China
had disclosed the spying activity.
Lee then traveled to China in 1986 and 1988 and met secretly with Chinese
nuclear weapons scientists but did not report the meetings until 1998, when
he had come under suspicion of passing nuclear warhead secrets to China.
Lee, 60, pleaded guilty in September to one count of mishandling classified
information. Fifty-eight other mishandling charges were dropped as part of
a plea agreement. He was charged with downloading large quantities of
testing codes used in developing nuclear weapons through computer
simulations. Six computer tapes containing information never were
recovered.
Energy intelligence officials and the FBI had suspected that he was the
source who disclosed to China classified U.S. nuclear weapons information
on the W-88 warhead, the most powerful modern warhead in the U.S. strategic
arsenal.
The CIA concluded later in a report that China had obtained U.S. warhead
secrets through espionage.
U.S. officials close to the case said one reason the FBI may not have been
aggressive in pursuing Chinese nuclear spying in the late 1990s was that
the agency was trying to persuade Beijing to allow the FBI to open an
office in China. A Chinese espionage probe would have made it all but
impossible for that to happen, said officials who spoke on the condition of
anonymity.
Intelligence officials also said China warned the Clinton administration
not to deal harshly with an earlier Chinese spy, Peter Lee, and that senior
Clinton administration officials may have intervened to quietly derail the
Wen Ho Lee case.
Larry Wortzel, a former Pentagon intelligence official and specialist on
Chinese spying, said the main question left over from the Lee case is the
missing tapes.
"What was he downloading that information for?" said Mr. Wortzel, now with
the Heritage Foundation.
================================================================
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
