by Dan Stober
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- It was a telephone call overheard on a wiretap 17 years ago that first brought Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, to the attention of the FBI.
Lee had called a man under investigation for allegedly providing secrets about the neutron bomb to China in the late 1970s. Today, Lee is in jail awaiting trial on charges of illegally downloading nuclear secrets from his lab's computers.
Now, for the first time, the man whose phone the FBI bugged has been identified through a court document obtained by the Mercury News. His name is Gwo-Bao Min, 61, of Danville, a former nuclear weapons engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Min's case arose at the same time that China's efforts to obtain U.S. atomic secrets were blossoming, intelligence officials say. Min was never charged with any crime, but he was forced to resign from the lab in 1981. Since then, he has lived in Contra Costa County and has been active in trade ventures in China. His 1982 phone conversation with Lee has emerged as an important piece of the prosecution's case against Lee.
Lee's case has become the most-watched espionage case in years, with prosecutors saying he may have given away the designs of the most sophisticated U.S. nuclear weapons.
His defenders disagree, saying Lee is being prosecuted to ward off political criticism that the Clinton administration has tolerated lax security at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories. Many Chinese-Americans say he is a scapegoat.
Lee's 1982 phone call to Min has emerged as an important piece of the prosecution's case against Lee. It was the beginning of a long, complicated chain of events that ultimately resulted in Lee's December arrest in New Mexico on charges that he used portable backup tapes to steal classified computer programs used to design thermonuclear weapons.
``It was clear from the beginning of the . . . investigation that Wen Ho Lee was the prime suspect because of a phone call that he had made to the subject (of the neutron bomb case),'' former Los Alamos counterintelligence chief Robert Vrooman said during a speech in Albuquerque in February.
On Dec. 2, 1982, the phone rang in Min's home. The FBI was eavesdropping. The caller identified himself as Wen Ho Lee, a nuclear weapons designer with a high-level security clearance at Livermore's sister laboratory in New Mexico. After mentioning a mutual friend, Lee got to the point: He had heard that Min was in some kind of trouble, and he wanted to help. According to the FBI translation of the conversation, which was in Mandarin, Lee told Min that he could find out who had ``squealed'' on him.
Min was indeed having troubles. He was the FBI's prime suspect in the alleged loss of neutron bomb secrets, according to government officials as well as co-workers and friends of Min's.
A congressional committee has made further allegations against Min, without mentioning him by name. ``In addition to design information about the W-70 (the neutron bomb), this suspect may have provided to the PRC (People's Republic of China) additional classified information about other U.S. weapons that could have significantly accelerated the PRC's nuclear weapons program,'' according to the 1999 report of the U.S. House of Representatives select committee headed by Rep. Christopher Cox, a Republican from Newport Beach.
Reached at the Danville office of his company, Grand Monde Trading, Min would not discuss the investigation. ``Thank you much for your concern,'' he said Tuesday, before hanging up the phone. He returned written requests for an interview to the Mercury News, unopened.
``I never talk to him about it,'' said J.J. Lee, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who has known Min since they were college classmates in Taiwan 40 years ago. ``He got a raw deal. He wanted to wipe out his memory of all that bad stuff.
``It certainly ruined his life,'' he said of the neutron bomb investigation. ``He had to change fields.''
To the FBI, Min is known as ``Tiger Trap,'' the code name given to the investigation of his activities.
In the late 1970s, the FBI opened an investigation into whether Min had given China information about the neutron bomb, a nuclear weapon that could be used to kill humans while minimizing damage to buildings. Exploded in the sky above a town or battlefield, the W-70's deadly radiation would reach people on the ground, while the powerful shock wave from the blast would dissipate high above. An ``Intelligence Community Damage Assessment'' on Chinese spying, released last year by CIA Director George Tenet, concluded that China ``obtained information on a variety of U.S. weapon design concepts and weaponization features, including those of the neutron bomb.''
The original neutron bomb was built at Lawrence Livermore in the 1970s; the Chinese first tested a neutron bomb in 1988. The weapon made headlines last month when a Chinese military newspaper threatened to use neutron bombs to capture Taiwan if it declared independence.
Min was born in Taiwan in 1939, a few months before Wen Ho Lee. In 1962, after graduating from Taiwan National University with an engineering degree, he came to the United States.
Min earned a master's degree in engineering from West Virginia University, then, in 1970, a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan. He became a U.S. citizen and went to work for Lawrence Livermore on Nov. 3, 1975. He and his wife settled into a comfortable ranch-style Danville home where they have lived since.
Min worked in the lab's D-Division, which does not design nuclear weapons but conducts studies of their military uses. He had an office on the second floor of Building 111, where the lab's most important administrators and weapons designers worked. His office was three floors below that of Edward Teller, the famous Cold War physicist who founded Lawrence Livermore.
Min was assigned to research on Ballistic Missile Defense, which a few years later would become known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, or ``star wars.'' The goal was to shoot down enemy missiles or to damage their nuclear warheads so they would not explode.
``He was a pleasant guy, technically a good guy,'' said Douglas Clarke, a scientist who worked with Min. Asked about Min's departure from the lab, Clarke said, ``I can't go into that.''
In his five years at Livermore, Min was mentioned in the lab newspaper only once, for winning a speech contest sponsored by the Toastmasters Club. ``He was a hard worker,'' said another of Min's co-workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ``But he was kind of unhappy at Livermore. He was thinking about going into business with his family. They had an import business going. He told me he could make good money.''
Min left the lab on Feb. 10, 1981, according to laboratory records. The former co-worker said he was told by administrators that Min had been ``allowed to resign.''
The FBI continued its investigation of Min after his dismissal. Under the authority of a special warrant approved by the secretive United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, the FBI conducted electronic surveillance of Min, including a wiretap on his home phone in Danville.
It was this wiretap that recorded the Dec. 2, 1982, phone call from Wen Ho Lee. After the call, the FBI immediately opened an investigation of Lee, with agents pretending to be conducting a routine background check required for the renewal of Lee's security clearance.
The FBI did not interview Lee about the conversation until 11 months later.
When he was approached, in November 1983, Lee lied, according to the testimony of FBI agent Robert Messemer. Lee said he did not know Min, had not talked to him and did not know how to get in touch with him, Messemer said during a bail hearing for Lee after his arrest.
That encounter was described by Messemer as the first deception in a long string of lies and misrepresentations by Lee. It is a vital list for the federal prosecutors because they are relying on it to demonstrate, indirectly, that Lee acted with ill intent when he downloaded the classified computer programs. When FBI agents confronted Lee with the wiretap information on Dec. 20, 1983, he admitted he had made the phone call to Min from his office at Los Alamos, Messemer said.
But Lee said the conversation had nothing to do with espionage. He said that he had been providing unclassified U.S documents about nuclear reactors to the Taiwanese government and that he was worried that Min was in trouble for doing the same thing, according to congressional testimony last June by U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.
After Lee admitted making the phone call, the FBI asked him to aid its investigation of Min, and he agreed. It would be a ``false flag'' operation, in which Lee would pretend to be an agent working for China. He would phone Min and attempt to win Min's cooperation in espionage.
When the phone call fizzled, the FBI paid for Lee to go to Min's Danville home, apparently wearing a hidden microphone. The details of what happened are not publicly known, but Min did not respond to Lee's enticements.
Exactly how the government discovered the loss of neutron bomb secrets to China and what led investigators to Min remain a secret. Sources outside the FBI say the agency is protecting its source, which could be a spy or the clandestine interception of an electronic communication.
Min's job at Lawrence Livermore gave him access to information about the design of the W-70, the neutron-bomb warhead for the Lance missile, and a variety of other nuclear warheads for missiles, according to the Cox Report and intelligence officials interviewed by the Mercury News.
Officials familiar with the investigation allege that Min had gathered information about weapons designs. ``He was going to the library and getting lots of stuff that had nothing to do with his job,'' said one official familiar with the case.
``We did not design nuclear warheads (in D-Division), but we had access to all that stuff,'' said one of Min's co-workers. ``They're classified documents and you go down and check them out. There's a classified library and you sign your name to show what you checked out.''
``If the information was compromised, (the damage) could have been quite severe,'' said Houston T. Hawkins, an expert on Chinese nuclear weapons who is the top intelligence official at Los Alamos. Hawkins directs the group that wrote the ``damage assessment'' in the wake of the Tiger Trap case.
Hawkins discussed the case without revealing Min's name.
The FBI watched Min closely. At one point he was stopped at an airport, where he was found to be carrying documents that the FBI considered suspicious, according to investigators. The nature of the documents could not be learned.
Min was eventually confronted and questioned by FBI agent William Cleveland, who was then the chief spy-catcher in the bureau's San Francisco office. Min maintained his innocence. Min was not the only person questioned. The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board reported last year, somewhat cryptically, that there was no prosecution in the neutron bomb case because neither the ``suspect'' nor the ``foreign agent'' would confess.
Stanford University physicist Sidney Drell, a member of the intelligence board, said he could not elaborate on the identity of the alleged ``foreign agent.'' However, another official, speaking with the understanding he would not be identified, said that the alleged ``agent'' was an associate of Min's who made frequent trips between the United States and Asia.
``We may have information identifying someone as a foreign agent, but we cannot always arrest them,'' said Edward Curran, the head of counterintelligence at the Energy Department. Curran said he was not directly referring to the Tiger Trap case.
``There was no smoking gun,'' said a federal scientist familiar with the evidence against Min. ``But there were several guns that appeared to have been recently fired.''
The case against Min, while never officially closed, grew cold in the early-1980s, according to the report of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Officials were then surprised to discover that Min took a half-dozen trips to China in the mid-1980s, according to knowledgeable officials.
On one of his trips, Min by chance encountered Cleveland, the FBI official who had attempted to coax a confession out of him in 1981. Each man was startled to see the other in China, according to the account Cleveland later provided to associates. Cleveland, who now runs the counterintelligence program at Lawrence Livermore, declined to be interviewed.
Min's trips may have seemed suspicious to the FBI, but would have come as no surprise to his friends.
``He had a business in China,'' said James Loh, an engineer in Southern California who knows Min.
It was somewhat unusual 20 years ago for a Taiwanese to establish a business relationship with the mainland, Loh said. But Min had a connection. ``At the University of Michigan, he had classmates from China. A classmate went back and asked him to help with that business. At that point he went back to China and invested in a business. I don't know what it was, but it didn't have anything to do with weapons.''
Min has had a business license for Min's Consulting Associates since at least 1983. It and his other business, Grand Monde Trading, share an upstairs office with other small businesses in downtown Danville.
Today, according to Loh, Min does mostly consulting work. ``If an American company wants to start doing business in China, he can help you do that,'' Loh said.
For years, Loh said, Min has helped arrange scholarships for Chinese students to study in the United States, particularly students in law and business.
Loh said he met Min through Min's latest business interest, involvement in the World Marketing Alliance, a ``network marketing'' company that sells insurance and financial investments. Emphasis is placed on recruiting new participants. Loh sees no motive for Min to spy for Beijing. His family is native Taiwanese, having lived on the island for generations before it was taken over by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists troops in 1949, after they lost the civil war to the Communists, he said.
Min has no love for the Nationalists or the mainland Communists, instead supporting Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party, Loh said. ``Min is pro-independence, so why would he give information to communist China?'' Loh said.
``Min is a very good person,'' said J.J. Lee, his longtime friend. ``A good heart. If there's anything wrong with him, he's too kind. Trying to be helpful.''
J.J. Lee also doesn't believe that Min was a spy.
``Maybe he was used or something because of his big heart,'' he said. ``Maybe somebody wanted to use him and get him in trouble.''