5-7-99May 7, 1999, Friday
HEADLINE: SCIENTIST IN CHINA SPY CASE OFFERS A DEFENSE; INQUIRY: LAWYER SAYS IN STATEMENT WEN HO LEE NEVER GAVE OUT ATOMIC SECRETS, ONCE AIDED FBI IN UNDERCOVER ROLE.
BOB DROGIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
WASHINGTON
The lawyer for Wen Ho Lee, in his first detailed response to allegations that his client passed America's most prized nuclear secrets to China, said Thursday that Lee is a "loyal American" who once carried out an undercover mission for the FBI in an unsuccessful effort to ensnare another suspected Chinese spy.
Lee's Los Angeles attorney, Mark Holscher, also denied in a six-page statement that the former Los Alamos National Laboratory computer expert had "given classified computer files to any unauthorized person." He said "no third party could have accessed or did access his protected computer files."
But the statement did not answer the key question of why, according to federal investigators, Lee repeatedly transferred top-secret computer files from a classified system at Los Alamos into an insecure system between 1983 and 1995, and then tried to delete them shortly before he was fired for security violations on March 8.
The so-called legacy codes contain complex mathematical computations and other classified programs created by U.S. scientists over decades to develop, build, test and simulate successive generations of nuclear weapons. Loss of the archival files would represent a staggering blow to U.S. national security.
So far, the FBI has yet to determine if anyone other than Lee gained access to the highly classified material. "Nobody can show any information went to the Chinese," a law enforcement official said Thursday. But he added that investigators are "very optimistic" that a prosecution is likely in the case.
Lee has not been charged.
Holscher said in a telephone interview that he would provide a "detailed confidential explanation" of Lee's actions to the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, who is the chief prosecutor in the case. Holscher added that he does not yet possess the top-secret security clearances required to review the files.
"Our release of this information is certainly not to be viewed as a summary of our numerous compelling explanations," he said.
Holscher said in his statement that Lee, like other Los Alamos scientists, was permitted to spend 20% of his time on projects unrelated to his classified work. Lee's computer, he said, thus contained "dozens of non-classified codes" containing several hundred thousand lines of computer code.
"Dr. Lee's changing of file names on non-classified computer codes to reflect improvements he made in non-classified codes is not only proper, it is accepted and recognized as standard procedure when revising computer codes," he said.
But a scientist who has worked on the classified computer files that Lee transferred said Holscher's statement "doesn't even deal with classified codes. He talks about other things and what Lee did with unclassified codes. Those are distinctly different."
Holscher, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles who is now a partner in the Los Angeles-based law firm of O'Melveny & Myers LLP, said that Lee, a naturalized American who was born in Taiwan, has "dedicated himself to the defense of this country for the last 20 years."
He added: "His work, much of which is classified, has led directly to the increased safety and national security of all Americans, and he is responsible for helping this country simulate nuclear tests."
In the years before he was fired, Lee was assigned to the lab's "stockpile stewardship" program, which uses the world's fastest computer and other highly sensitive equipment to model and simulate nuclear explosions. The goal is to maintain the reliability and safety of nuclear weapons without actually testing them, which would violate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Holscher's statement, titled "A Reply to Misleading Press Reports Concerning Dr. Wen Ho Lee--May 6, 1999," also includes several startling new details about the FBI's use of Lee and his wife, Sylvia, during the 1980s.
According to Holscher, the FBI sent Lee on an undercover mission to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco after an FBI wiretap in 1982 overheard Lee telephone a Livermore scientist "who was rumored to be facing disciplinary action for delivering a scientific paper in Taiwan." At the time, Lee was considering delivering a paper in Taiwan.
The Livermore scientist, who has never been publicly identified, actually was under suspicion for passing classified information to China that helped Beijing explode a neutron bomb in 1981. The scientist later was fired from Livermore, but was never charged, and the case remains open.
"The FBI paid for Dr. Lee's travel expenses" to Livermore, Holscher said. "Dr. Lee received instructions from the FBI before the meeting, met with the scientist and then briefed the FBI after this meeting."
In a polygraph administered by the FBI after the trip, Lee's answers indicated deception on seven questions relating to possible ties to foreign intelligence agencies and whether he had delivered classified information. After he was given a chance to explain his answers, Lee was retested and passed.
On Thursday, a U.S. official familiar with the neutron bomb investigation confirmed Lee's role.
"It was another case where we tried everything we could, and didn't make it," the official said. "The suspect was very suspicious of us and wasn't cooperating. . . . Lee didn't know him, he came out of the blue, so we may have tipped our hand by using him."
Holscher also provided new details of Sylvia Lee's work as an unpaid FBI informant between 1985 and 1991. He said she attended a 1986 scientific conference in Beijing with her husband, "where she voluntarily provided background information on Chinese scientists" and briefed the FBI.
In 1988, she wrote a report for the FBI after she and her husband returned from a second scientific conference in Beijing. She forwarded copies of all correspondence with Chinese scientists to the FBI until 1991, when the FBI ended the relationship because it decided she wasn't offering anything she hadn't already given Los Alamos officials.
"In helping the FBI, Mrs. Lee put herself and her husband at risk, with no possible benefit to herself or her husband," Holscher said. "Mrs. Lee never requested any payment from the FBI for her help, although the government paid her expenses to travel to mainland China with her husband and offered to pay her expenses for entertaining Chinese scientists who visited the Los Alamos Laboratory."
In the interview, Holscher said the FBI gave Sylvia Lee a hot plate, a coffeepot and other gifts as "tokens of its appreciation for her work."
The U.S. official disputed parts of that account, however. The official said the FBI never asked Sylvia Lee to go to China, didn't approve or authorize her trips, and never paid her way. The official added that the FBI doesn't hand out kitchen appliances.
May 07, 1999
Atomic Scientist Denies He Spied, Cites Aid to FBI
Vernon Loeb; Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers
Wen Ho Lee, the prime espionage suspect at Los Alamos National Laboratory, spoke out for the first time yesterday, insisting in a lengthy statement by his attorney that he has never spied for China and never "given any classified information to any unauthorized persons."
"Dr. Lee will not be a scapegoat for alleged security problems at our country's nuclear laboratories," the statement declared.
Seeking to refute a long list of government allegations and press reports implicating him in espionage, Lee in the statement stacked up an equally long list of claims that he has taken "substantial steps" to safeguard secret computer programs and, with his wife, has repeatedly cooperated with FBI agents on the prowl for Chinese spies.
Lee's quiet existence as an obscure nuclear physicist at the Energy Department weapons lab on a thinly populated mountain plateau near Albuquerque ended two months ago when he was fired for unspecified security violations and identified by U.S. officials as a possible Chinese spy -- even though a three-year FBI probe had produced no hard evidence of espionage.
He immediately found himself in the middle of a political firestorm in Washington, his name bandied about the Sunday morning talks shows as a Chinese spy. Leading Republicans in Congress, having investigated the Clinton administration's China dealings for the past year, seized on his case and used it to argue that Clinton's policy of engaging China led to security lapses that compromised national security.
Lee remained silent as the rhetoric escalated, even after U.S. officials confirmed last week that he transferred secret nuclear weapons computer programs from Los Alamos's classified computer system to his desktop computer, which is vulnerable to outside penetration -- by far the most serious disclosure to date.
But the silence ended yesterday when Lee's attorney in Los Angeles, Mark C. Holscher, released a six-page defense of the Taiwan-born scientist. It depicted him as a loyal U.S. citizen and "dedicated" weapons scientist who has never provided "any classified information whatsoever to any representative of Mainland China."
The statement asserted that Lee took "substantial steps" to safeguard the downloaded computer programs.
"Upon receipt of proper security clearances, Dr. Lee's lawyers will present specific evidence of his innocence confidentially to the United States Attorney's Office," the statement said. "We are confident that federal investigators will also conclude that no third party could have or did access his protected computer files."
The statement also portrayed Lee as anything but a Chinese spy, describing numerous instances in which both he and his wife, Sylvia, cooperated with FBI agents to help expose Chinese espionage.
Lee assisted the FBI in the early 1980s when it was investigating another Taiwan-born weapons scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory suspected of espionage, and he worked as an FBI informant in an attempt to catch the suspect, the statement said. "Dr. Lee received instructions from the FBI before the meeting, met with the scientist, and then briefed the FBI after this meeting."
Lee's wife, who held a clerical position at Los Alamos, for years helped the FBI keep tabs on Chinese scientists visiting the labs, agreed to allow the FBI to monitor her conversations with these officials and forwarded translated copies of all her correspondence with Chinese scientists to FBI agents, according to the statement.
FBI agents and intelligence officials at the Energy Department began assembling a list of suspects in 1996 after the CIA obtained a Chinese document containing classified information about the shape and size of the W-88 warhead, the most advanced U.S. nuclear weapon designed at Los Alamos.
The Chinese document was dated 1988, the same year Lee had traveled to China to deliver a scientific paper. The coincidence was one of the reasons Lee's name was added to the suspects' list. A call he made in 1982 to the espionage suspect at Lawrence Livermore was another.
Lee's statement addressed both the call to Livermore and the trip he made to China, raising questions about the reasons his name was placed on the suspect list in the first place.
Investigators assembling the suspect list in 1996 construed it as evidence that Lee may have been aiding the Livermore suspect in espionage activities, according to one senior administration official. But Lee's statement described the call as an innocent conversation that was intercepted by the FBI, ultimately triggering Lee's long cooperation with the bureau in its espionage investigation at Livermore.
Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) disclosed at a Senate hearing Wednesday that Lee was given a polygraph examination by the FBI about his initial call to the Livermore scientist and showed deception on seven key questions. He was then retested, Domenici reported, and cleared, showing no deception.
In the statement released yesterday, Holscher said: "Dr. Lee was told he passed the polygraph test."
The statement said Lee traveled to China to deliver papers in 1986, when he was accompanied by his wife, and in 1988. Both trips were "pre-approved and encouraged" by officials at Los Alamos and the Department of Energy, who "cleared the texts of the papers given at these conferences." The FBI also approved both trips, the statement said.
Sylvia Lee accompanied her husband on the 1986 trip at the request of the FBI, the statement said, and helped the FBI compile data on Chinese scientists they met.
"Dr. and Mrs. Lee supported and agreed with the FBI's request that Mrs. Lee assist it in obtaining background information on Chinese scientists," the statement said. "It simply defies logic for critics to now allege that Dr. Lee was engaged in improper activities in Mainland China while he and his wife were there."
As for the computer programs found on Lee's desktop terminal, the statement refers only to "dozens of nonclassified codes, which include several hundred thousand lines of code."
U.S. officials have said highly sensitive classified codes were found there as well.
Holscher, in an interview, said he could not comment on whether classified information also was found on Lee's computer. That question, he said, will be addressed when Lee makes a defense with the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque.