White House meeting before indictment

Decision Nears on the Fate Of Ex-Los Alamos Scientist
By JAMES RISEN AND DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: December 8, 1999

The Federal authorities have intensified their deliberations about whether to prosecute a nuclear weapons scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on charges of mishandling highly classified atomic data, government officials said today.

A decision on whether to charge the scientist, Wen Ho Lee, is expected within days, the officials said, after a crucial meeting held on Saturday at the White House and attended by the administration's top security, law enforcement and energy officials.

The participants concluded after a lengthy intelligence review that should Attorney General Janet Reno decide to prosecute, the secrets that would probably be divulged at a criminal trial would not irreparably damage national security.

Among those present in addition to Ms. Reno were Samuel R. Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser; Energy Secretary Bill Richardson; Louis J. Freeh, the director of the F.B.I.; George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and John Kelly, the top federal prosecutor in Albuquerque, who has jurisdiction in the case.

Law-enforcement officials and Mr. Kelly have recommended going ahead with a case against Mr. Lee, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Richardson, who supports bringing a prosecution, indicated that he was prepared to exercise his statutory authority to declassify atomic secrets likely to be needed as evidence in the trial, the officials said. But they added that it was Ms. Reno who must decide whether to seek an indictment and that she had not given prosecutors final approval.

Mr. Lee, his lawyers and his supporters have repeatedly said that he has done nothing wrong and that no one has ever been criminally charged for similar conduct, for example, transferring classified information into a nonclassified computer. Mark Holscher, Mr. Lee's lawyer in Los Angeles, did not return telephone calls today.

In the past, Mr. Holscher and Mr. Lee's other supporters have said that Mr. Lee is a loyal American who has been unfairly singled out for investigation because of his Chinese ancestry. They say Mr. Lee is being made a scapegoat by law-enforcement and energy officials who have been under fire by Republicans in Congress for security lapses at the country's weapons laboratories. In a television interview in August, Mr. Lee also said he was innocent.

The highly unusual White House meeting reflects the acute political sensitivities and high stakes involved in a case that has become a battleground for the administration and Republican critics who have said that Chinese intelligence had used scientists to steal information from the weapons laboratories that was used to vastly speed the pace of Beijing's nuclear weapons program.

As expected, if he is charged, Mr. Lee will not be accused of espionage, the officials said, which would require prosecutors to show that information was not only stolen but passed to a foreign power. Prosecutors are now weighing whether to charge Mr. Lee with a lesser crime of mishandling and failing to adequately safeguard classified information.

The recent surge of activity in the case comes just before the expiration of the term of a federal grand jury in Albuquerque that has been hearing evidence. The grand jurors were to be dismissed this month, but their terms have been extended until early January.

Mr. Lee, who worked in the nuclear weapons design area of Los Alamos, was fired in March for security violations. By that time, he had been under investigation for nearly three years in connection with the government's inquiry into the suspected theft of United States nuclear secrets by China. United States investigators believe that design information related to the most advanced nuclear warhead in the nation's arsenal, the W-88, was obtained by China, in part through espionage. The W-88 warhead was designed at Los Alamos.

After Mr. Lee was fired, investigators found evidence that he had transferred vast amounts of secret nuclear data from the classified system at Los Alamos into an unclassified system. In a televised interview, Mr. Lee acknowledged that he transferred the data, but said he did so to protect the material from being lost in computer crashes.

Since the investigation into Mr. Lee became public, a furious debate has erupted over whether the inquiry was properly handled by the Energy Department and the F.B.I. Subsequently, F.B.I. officials said that the initial inquiry into the evidence of Chinese atomic espionage was flawed, and other current and former government officials argued that investigators had focused prematurely on Mr. Lee without first determining how widely accessible the information on the W-88 warhead had been at the time officials concluded the Chinese obtained it. Asian-American groups rallied to Mr. Lee's cause, saying he was the victim of racial stereotyping.

In September, Ms. Reno and Mr. Freeh ordered federal agents to go back to square one and broaden their investigation into the evidence of China's theft of W-88 secrets, moving beyond Los Alamos to look at other labs and defense contractors that may have had access to the data.

But even as that broader inquiry into evidence of Chinese espionage is continuing, the government has been moving forward in its investigation of Mr. Lee over accusations of unauthorized computer transfers of nuclear secrets.

In addition to the unauthorized transfers of nuclear data into an unclassified computer system at Los Alamos, government investigators now believe that Mr. Lee also copied the nuclear secrets onto computer tapes and took those tapes out of the lab, officials said. The F.B.I. cannot account for those missing computer tapes, officials said. Officials have no evidence that the tapes have been handed over to any other unauthorized individuals, however.

The discovery that the computer tapes are missing appears to have convinced government officials that the evidence against Mr. Lee may be more serious than initially believed. Stephen Younger, associate laboratory director for nuclear weapons, who oversees the division where Mr. Lee worked, has completed a highly classified analysis of Mr. Lee's computer activities showing that the potential damage to national security could be extensive, officials said.

If he is charged in the computer downloading case, Mr. Lee's lawyers appear likely to respond by saying that he is the victim of selective prosecution for relatively common practices. The former C.I.A. director John Deutch, for example, who was investigated by the intelligence agency's inspector general for improperly handling classified information on his computer, had his security clearance stripped this year, but was not charged with a crime.

But Los Alamos officials have said that they disagree with Mr. Lee's assertions that his computer activities were routine.

John Browne, the director of Los Alamos, said in an interview in August: ''We have no evidence that anyone has ever done anything like this before at Los Alamos, and we have looked. I have no doubt that he violated Los Alamos security regulations, and I have no doubt that he deserved to be terminated. We have fired people for much less.''

Energy Secretary Urges Nuclear Lab to Punish 3 Over Security

By JAMES RISEN
Published: August 13, 1999

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has recommended disciplinary action against a former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and two other officials for failing to handle properly the spy investigation at the lab, officials said today.

Mr. Richardson acted in response to a critical new report by the department's Inspector General that focused on the actions of 19 current or former officials at Los Alamos and at Energy Department headquarters who were involved in investigating evidence that China had stolen nuclear secrets.

The officials said one of Mr. Richardson's recommendations was aimed at Siegfried Hecker, director of Los Alamos in 1986-97, who still works there as a scientist. He also recommended to the current director, John Brown, that action be taken against Terry Craig, until recently a counterintelligence team leader at the lab, and Robert Vrooman, former chief of counterintelligence.

Mr. Craig is still employed at the lab; Mr. Vrooman has retired but works for a lab contractor. Mr. Craig and Mr. Hecker did not return telephone calls seeking comment; Mr. Vrooman could not be reached.

The form of discipline is up to Mr. Brown, but officials say Mr. Craig could be fired and Mr. Vrooman's ties to the lab could be ended. It is unclear what Mr. Hecker faces.

Mr. Brown said he would act soon.

The full report is classified, and does not assign specific blame. But it does include ''implied criticism'' of the actions of the former Energy Secretary, Federico Pena, and of the former Deputy Secretary, Elizabeth Moler, for not being more aggressive in handling the investigation, officials familiar with the report said.

In the face of mounting criticism, Mr. Richardson had promised action, but he decided to wait for the Inspector General's review.

In March a Los Alamos scientist, Wen Ho Lee, the chief suspect in the espionage investigation, was fired for security violations at the lab. He has not been charged with any crime, and he has denied that he spied for China. After he was fired, investigators found he had conducted unauthorized transfers of secrets from a classified computer into an unclassified network.

The United States Attorney in New Mexico has been considering whether to seek an indictment against Mr. Lee for his handling of classified information. Mr. Lee has stated that he transferred the data to protect the contents as a routine part of his job.

The Inspector General's report focuses on the investigation of Mr. Lee, particularly the failure of officials to restrict his access to classified material or to monitor his computer until long after he came under investigation.

Mr. Hecker was cited for failing to follow through on ''an express request by senior management to develop a plan for limiting the suspect's access, for failing to inform department's management that the plan had failed, and for failing to take alternative actions,'' according to a statement by Mr. Richardson. Though he did not name Mr. Hecker, other officials said his reference was to Mr. Hecker.

Mr. Vrooman was cited for allowing Mr. Lee continued access to nuclear secrets.

Mr. Craig, who was also not identified in the statement, was cited for failing to determine whether Mr. Lee had signed a waiver allowing monitoring of his computer. Mr. Lee signed the waiver in April 1995.

Wen Ho Lee, Designated Scapegoat

http://www.polyconomics.com/memos/mm-990809.htm

Memo To: Bob Novak
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Recapping the China Spy Story

I know this stuff gets awfully complicated, Bob, but the latest turn in the China spy story really deserves your attention. There seems to be no other journalist in the country who is interested in getting to the bottom of the story. Mike Wallace did a great job on 60 Minutes last Sunday making Bill Richardson look like the prevaricator he is. Yes, he is a good friend of yours and has been for a long time, but Richardson has become the designated liar for his pal, the President, from one assignment to the next.

The latest Lie by the Designated Liar is that he, Richardson, "fired" Wen Ho Lee because he had been discovered to have committed the "most massive violations of DOE rules for handling classified information" in history. Richardson was talking about Wen Ho Lee having downloaded the so-called "legacy files" from a "secure" computer network at Los Alamos to a less "secure" [but still practically impenetrable desktop computer] in Wen Ho Lee's office in "X" Division at Los Alamos [one of the most "secure" facilities in the whole country]. The problem for Richardson is that he did not know about these "massive violations of Los Alamos Security procedures" at the time he "fired" Wen Ho Lee. Richardson told Mike Wallace that he did, in response to a specific question about what he knew when he fired Wen Ho Lee. But Richardson lied. No one -- except Wen Ho Lee -- knew.

And it gets worse, Bob. According to Fox News, the Clinton Administration represented to Senator Thompson's Government Affairs Committee that DOE/FBI had presented in August 1997, in their third attempt to get a wiretap for Wen Ho Lee, 18 elements of "probable cause." One of the most important of those 18 elements that the FBI/DOE is now alleging that they presented in August 1997 is: Lee worked on "legacy codes" (vitally important computer data from U.S. nuclear tests), a top priority of Chinese intelligence.

But as I have said, Bob, nobody at DOE/FBI even knew what the "legacy codes" were until after Wen Ho Lee was "fired" on March 8, 1999! They could not possibly have listed that as one element of probable cause presented to Janet Reno two years ago.

There's more, worse yet: When Chris Cox had Trent Lott and other key Senators in for a briefing on the "classified" evidence they said they had to back up their claim of massive penetration of the U.S. weapons labs decades ago, the "classified" evidence that Trent Lott later said made the "hair on the back of my neck stand on end." I will bet you that what Chris Cox showed Lott et al. was the "legacy files." Now as Gordon Prather states in his Report to Jack Kemp in summing up the W-88 caper:

It did not seem to occur to any Committee Member that the FBI really had no "probable cause" at that time, no justification for believing that a crime may have been committed. It follows that the Cox Committee had no "probable cause" to accuse the "unidentified Los Alamos suspect" of any crime either. As to the reports leaked by the Clinton Administration of the "evidence" they found when they searched Wen Ho Lee's computer at his office in a secure area at Los Alamos, that search happened after the Cox Report was "filed" and so could not have been included.

Here are excerpts from the April 28 Risen-Gerth NYT report about when they found the "legacy files" on Wen Ho Lee's's computer: "It was not until last month [March], just a few days before he was fired, that the FBI finally asked for and received Lee's authorization to search his computer, officials said. Once the bureau saw the transferred files in the unclassified computer network, investigators realized their significance. Within days, Richardson was briefed, and he then told the president [on March 31] and shut down the lab's computer systems for two weeks."

To recapitulate, Bob, from everything we have learned on the public record, we can now say that:

1. Wen Ho Lee was suspected by Energy Department Security "snoops" in the 1980s of doing something because he was Chinese and attended scientific meetings in Beijing on behalf of Los Alamos. Nevertheless, he had been cleared for Top Secret work when he first came to Los Alamos and had survived at least three periodic re-investigations of his suitability to hold a "Q" Clearance. Therefore, he continued to work in the most sensitive areas of Los Alamos, "X" Division.

2. According to Stephen Schwartz, the publisher of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who appeared as an expert witness for Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, in 1995 a Chinese double agent presented documents to the CIA he said the PRC had stolen from the United States. On a single handwritten sheet there was information on several U.S. warheads and re-entry vehicles and a cutaway drawing of what purported to be the re-entry vehicle for the Trident II missile.

3. Ignoring all the rest, Energy Department Security agents immediately homed in on the W-88, Los Alamos and Wen Ho Lee. Everyone -- including Chris Cox, Warren Rudman and Fred Thompson -- who has examined this immediate focus on Wen Ho Lee on the part of the Energy Department Security officials has been baffled by it.

4. For three years, Energy's chief snoop, Notra Trulock, and the FBI got nowhere -- until the Cox Committee came along, which really had not been looking into this realm at the time. Cox was looking at the technology transfer involving the Loral-Hughes satellites and the Chinese commercial rockets used to lift them into orbit. But without hearing from the real experts on nuclear weapons, Chris Cox [over the objections of some of his Committee] accepted the Trulock hypothesis about the W-88 and Wen Ho Lee.

5. Arriving at the Energy Department from his previous post as United Nations ambassador, Bill Richardson became alarmed at the realization that Trulock was now being believed by Chris Cox, whereas for three years no one in the Clinton Administration, including Sandy Berger and Janet Reno, had believed Trulock. Richardson decided he immediately had to take drastic action, to take the heat off the White House. In December 1998, he ordered Wen Ho Lee removed from "X" Division. In February, he rescinded his "Q" clearance. On March 8, 1999 he pressured Los Alamos -- a private contractor -- into firing him.

6. But [according to 60 Minutes expert Schwartz] Wen Ho Lee had not worked on the W-88 warhead itself, but on the "primary" trigger that had been developed, put on the shelf along with other "primaries," then taken off the shelf and used in the W-88. Wen Ho Lee would not have, therefore, have had a "need to know" how the W-88 was designed or how thermonuclear warheads "worked" in general. Wen Ho Lee's work in the "X" Division on "primaries" would not have been of much interest to the PRC. But, because of Trulock's suspicions about Wen Ho Lee and the W-88, Wen Ho Lee was moved in 1993 from working on "primaries" to an "archiving" project [WARP], apparently in the belief that he could not learn much on an archiving project that would be of value to anyone. It was only in March of 1999 that Trulock et al. learned how wrong they had been. If Wen Ho Lee is a PRC mole, Trulock is responsible for planting this mole smack in the middle of the nuclear weapons developer's mother lode!

7. Lee's problems with Richardson and Cox, instead ending when nothing about the W-88 was found in mid-March on his computer or in his home, actually were exacerbated from mid-March on. The planting of Wen Ho Lee smack in the middle of mole heaven had been done by the Clinton Administration. When Richardson fired Wen Ho Lee he thought he was firing a Ronald Reagan mole. Until mid-March Richardson had been claiming that whatever Wen Ho Lee did had been done on Ronald Reagan's watch. Now, after discovery in mid-March of the downloaded "legacy files," Chris Cox could blame the Clinton Administration for leaking nuclear secrets to Beijing that would make Trent Lott's hair stand on end. It was now in both Richardson's and Cox's interest for everyone to believe that they had " known" all along that Wen Ho Lee gave the legacy files to the PRC. Clearly, they believed it to be so much in their interest that they have conspired to lie about it.

8. Both Richardson and Cox and the FBI desperately want Wen Ho Lee to "cop a plea" and agree that he "mishandled classified material" [as Peter Lee -- no relation -- had already done in 1997]. If they can get Wen Ho Lee to plead guilty to even a minor offense, then the Feds won't have to prove that he did. But more importantly to Richardson is that in his 60 Minutes interview, Wen Ho Lee said such transfers were routine at Los Alamos and elsewhere. Which is true, according to 60 Minutes expert Schwarz. Then Mike Wallace got Richardson to commit to finding out the identity of the hundreds or thousands of Lab employees who had similarly "mishandled classified material" and to deal with them in exactly the same manner as he intends to do with Wen Ho Lee. We have to hope, for God's sake, that Wen Ho Lee won't plead guilty. Make Richardson prosecute half the weapon scientists at Los Alamos and Livermore!!!

Why is it important that you get involved, Bob? Because the rest of the news media has invested so much of its credibility in this wild goose chase of the NYTimes and the Cox Commission that they will not admit their mistakes. I'm afraid that Wen Ho Lee will feel such pressure from the weight of the Political Establishment that he will buckle, as so many other innocent people have done when faced with the threats of the federal government. If the feds want you to go to prison, you will, even if you are named Mother Theresa. Your friend Bill Richardson seems prepared to do just that, to save his own skin.

I wish you would have a chat with him. Before you do, please read Stephen Schwartz's account in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. (http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1999/mj99/mj99schwartz.html)