Drogin, Vroomer and Clark interview

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/july-dec00/wenholee_9-13.html
A few excerpts below:
BOB DROGIN: Gwen, this has been the incredible shrinking prosecution from the start. As you said, he was originally cited, although never charged as a spy, he was branded the spy of the century. By the time they finally got an indictment nine months later, they had something very different. They accused him of downloading, copying a great deal of classified information. It turned out very soon after that that information was classified at the time, or even now is classified at such a level that it essentially could be sent through the US mails. So that was a big problem. Secondly, of course, the defense was able to find a number of experts who were able to challenge and in some cases ridicule the government claims that this data was as crucial and indeed the crown jewels. And then the government had a tremendous problem when their chief witness, the chief FBI investigator in this case, recanted crucial testimony. So they had a tremendous credibility problem with the witness. And then you had a judge who was openly skeptical of government claims. There were a couple of other issues, but essentially the case began crumbling all around them.

BOB DROGIN: It was stunning. It was a very emotional kind of hearing. And afterwards, it was marked by a great deal of laughter and tears. It was quite a statement that he made. It went on for about 30 minutes and he just repeatedly apologized to Dr. Lee. He repeatedly said how sorry he was that he had been put in jail under what he called demeaning and inhumane conditions. He said he had been misled by the government. He said he had been led astray by the government, and particularly singled out what he called the top leadership at the Justice Department, Attorney General Reno and the Energy Department. And then he also singled out a former U.S. Attorney here who brought the original prosecution. So it was a very powerful denunciation of government prosecutorial tactics.

BOB DROGIN: The only thing we do know is that Wen Ho Lee wasn't the source of that.

ROBERT VROOMAN, Former Chief, Counterintelligence, Los Alamos Laboratory: Well, the original case against Dr. Lee was flawed from the beginning. And yet there was an insistence that the case should be pushed forward even though every FBI agent that I worked with said it was flawed, including Mr. Messemer, who used the term to me that it was intellectually flawed.

GWEN IFILL: And I'm curious if you have a sense about what he did, how damaging is the information that he actually downloaded and copied on to unclassified computers?

ROBERT CLARK: Well, although I don't know the exact details of every file that he put on those tapes, in general, the computer codes that we're talking about, although they are used for simulating nuclear weapons, what happens to a nuclear weapon when you ignite it, the stuff that's in the codes is used for thousands of other things, and the methods that are in there are readily available in open literature, and worked on by people at universities and everywhere. The only thing that's really classified about Robert Clarkthem is that when you compile them into a single code and you tell a foreign power that this is the way we do it, they would be interested in knowing that's the way you do it and then they'd look at it and study it. But they certainly -- I certainly do not believe, let's call a spade a spade, we're talking about China, I certainly do not believe the Chinese would ever take these codes and try to design a weapon with these codes. So, I think, I heard the testimony both ways and I believe it was exaggerated both ways. The codes are useful and valuable, but the fact is the vast majority of this stuff is unclassified by vast, almost all, but several lines.

ROBERT VROOMAN: That's a nice choice that you give me. If I have to take one of the two, I would say that he's a naive bungler. He's not a spy. I have maintained that for many years. And I'm very comfortable with that and today I feel vindicated about that.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Clark, you worked with Mr. Lee in the Los Alamos laboratories. Do you have any sense that the man you worked with, in the laboratory you worked in, would have made him a target because of his ethnic heritage?

ROBERT CLARK: I... I hate to say he was made a target, but clearly, as soon as they found a Chinese-American that had done basically exactly the same things that I had done, I went to China with Wen Ho Lee on one of those trips. I worked on the same codes that Wen Ho Lee worked on. We were good friends. I had access to everything that Wen Ho Lee had access to. But someone obviously felt that he was more likely to be a spy than I was.

ROBERT CLARK: I have to, I have to say that in the real world, justice in the sense of he admitted to a crime, and has been punished, may be true, but the actual crime to which he admitted, I do not believe, is that rare that it deserves a felony on one's record. And if everybody in the country that had ever done something like that had a felony conviction, I would be surprised if anybody in the country who has done something similar to that has a felony conviction for it. So I'm not so sure that this was really justice.