-Caveat Lector- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/A23405-2001Feb3.html Interrogation of Lee Raises New Questions, Sources Say By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 4, 2001; Page A02 The FBI and Justice Department prosecutors are considering seeking court approval to further question former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee under oath because they are not satisfied with the answers he gave during 60 hours of questioning last November and December, according to sources close to the investigation. During the interrogation by FBI agents, Lee's answers raised new questions about his relationships with nuclear scientists from China and Taiwan, the sources said. He also has yet to provide a verifiable explanation of why he downloaded U.S. nuclear weapons secrets to portable computer tapes while working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and what he did with the tapes, the sources said. Sources last week offered some new wrinkles about that questioning, including a disclosure by Lee of additional dinner meetings he had with Chinese and Taiwanese nuclear weapons scientists. He also acknowledged that he has a modest bank account in Taiwan into which he put part of a $5,000 fee he received in 1998 from that country's leading military research center, the sources said. Lee made the disclosures during 10 days of closed-door questioning under oath by the FBI that ended Dec. 12 as part of a plea bargain reached in September. Under the deal, Lee pleaded guilty to a single felony count of mishandling classified information. In return, he was released from jail after nine months in solitary confinement and given immunity from further prosecution as long as he tells the truth. Many of the details revealed by Lee were not known to prosecutors at the time they arranged the immunity deal. Most prominent among them was his disclosure that in 1998 he received $5,000 from the Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology, located about 25 miles southwest of the Taiwanese capital of Taipei. The institute allegedly was involved in past efforts by Taiwan to develop nuclear weapons. Because of these disclosures, the government has been looking into the possibility that Lee may have accumulated numerous nuclear weapons secrets from computers at Los Alamos with the intention of aiding Taiwan, the country of his birth, which has long feared an attack from the communist mainland. Further fueling the U.S. government's suspicions, Lee also said he had reviewed on his office computer classified data about the three newest U.S. nuclear warheads: the W-87 warhead used on the Peacekeeper ICBM, the W-88, used on the submarine-launched Trident missile, and the W-80, used on the Tomahawk cruise missile, the sources said. Fear that China had obtained classified information about the W-88 triggered investigations at Los Alamos that led to tighter security and a reorganization of the nuclear weapons complex in the Energy Department. Lee never reported the fee from the Taiwanese weapons institute, which was for a six-week consultancy, to his superiors at Los Alamos. The additional disclosure that he had a bank account in Taiwan has led to an intensive new investigation into his finances, according to sources. Sources close to Lee said that despite the new information about Taiwan, they believe nothing new emerged in his questioning to challenge his insistence that he never knowingly showed or gave classified information to any foreign individuals. In any event, one source close to Lee said, "his statements all came under immunity and can't be used against him to build a [criminal] case." Lee, 61, a naturalized U.S. citizen who worked at Los Alamos from 1979 through 1999, has never been charged with espionage and adamantly denies passing classified information to any foreign government. Nonetheless, FBI investigators and Justice Department prosecutors are trying to decide whether to request U.S. District Judge James A. Parker in Albuquerque, N.M., to authorize additional time to question Lee under oath, the sources said. They said the FBI and Justice Department may be waiting to make the request until Attorney General John D. Ashcroft assembles his team and reviews the case. If the government decides not to seek further questioning of Lee, or if Parker denies a request, the government is expected to give Lee a polygraph test on the responses he has made, the next step authorized by the plea agreement. If Lee registers a deception, there is little prosecutors can do unless they have evidence admissible in court that he has perjured himself, the sources said. Lee initially had been targeted in 1996 by FBI agents and Energy Department investigators looking into alleged espionage by China. The focus at first centered on two trips he took to Beijing in 1986 and 1988, and meetings he held with Chinese nuclear scientists in the Chinese capital and during exchange visits to Los Alamos. Lee reportedly has cooperated during the questioning, although one government official termed him "evasive, confusing, and frustrating for people conducting the interview." On the other hand, sources close to Lee have said investigators were repetitive in their questioning and "wasted" much of the 60 hours allotted under the plea agreement. Among the new dinner meetings Lee discussed was one at Lee's home outside Los Alamos at which he may have talked about a complex computer code relating to weapons with a Chinese scientist visiting the lab, sources said. The dinner with a Taiwan weapons scientist took place in Taipei and was arranged by one of the Los Alamos scientist's relatives, sources said. Lee was said to have been surprised by the scientist's presence at the dinner. Lee told his interrogators that his Taiwan bank account was used for family spending and could be accessed by his sister who lives there, sources said. Lee said the small amount of money in the account was used for such things as helping a nephew who in December 1998 returned to Taiwan from the United States, where he had developed a drug problem, the sources said. Sources said Lee initially denied he had reviewed on his office computer classified data about the three newest U.S. nuclear warheads. But they said when shown the computer data he acknowledged he may have reviewed the information but asserted he did not download it to a portable tape or copy it into an unclassified system. ================================================================= 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. 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