WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New Mexico wants prosecutors to
answer a critical question by July 5: Was former Los Alamos scientist
Wen Ho Lee spying for China, or Taiwan, when he copied nuclear bomb
secrets onto portable tapes?
It’s a trick question, one the defense is using to try to weaken the
case against Lee for mishandling classified information. It knows the
panda-hugging administration is loath to connect Lee to communist China,
even though it’s obvious.
How can I be so sure amid all the recent confusion over Lee’s
loyalties and motives? Because it’s confusion by design.
The Clinton administration has been leaking disinformation since it
was finally forced to oust Lee from the lab in March 1999, after four
years of protecting him from thorough investigation.
First came the spin that the FBI focused too quickly on Lee, singling
him out mainly because of his race during its Chinese espionage probe.
Then came the spin that Taiwan-born Lee may have actually been spying
for Taiwan to land a university job there. Attorney General Janet Reno
made that easier to swallow when she added Taiwan to the list of nations
viewed as hostile spy threats to the U.S.
The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus and other administration shills
have been reporting such spin to you with shameless alacrity. Meantime,
they’ve neglected to tell you the side of the Lee case argued by Energy
Department and FBI counterintelligence agents.
They’ve had the chance since at least Aug. 5. That day, Sens. Fred
Thompson, R-Tenn., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., issued the findings of
their bipartisan inquiry into the handling of the Lee espionage probe.
Their panel conducted nearly 13 hours of closed hearings with 20
line-level FBI agents and Justice Department attorneys.
They reserved copies of the 32-page report for the major media in a
little room in one of the Senate buildings. They even held a press
conference.
Yet the media focused on Justice’s doubts about the Lee case, and
glossed over three critical pages — 14, 15 and 16 — that summarize, in
18 bulleted points, the FBI’s case for probable cause to support its
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act application for a warrant to
conduct electronic surveillance on Lee.
On June 30, 1997, the FBI asked Reno’s Office of Intelligence Policy
& Review for the warrant. For the first time in an espionage case like
this, the FBI was turned down. Reno’s office refused to even submit the
request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for review.
The FBI’s case for probable cause to monitor Lee’s activities was
pretty clear, going far beyond his Chinese ethnicity. Agents suspected
Lee had ample opportunity to leak secrets about U.S. nuclear warheads,
including the prized W-88, during numerous contacts that he and his
China-born wife, Sylvia, had with key Chinese officials.
The media never reported the 18 points. You are reading them here for
the first time:
“By mid-August 1997, the information compiled by the FBI in support
of its FISA application and presented to OIPR, included the following:
- “DOE (Department of Energy) counterintelligence and weapons
experts had concluded that there was a great probability that the W-88
information had been compromised between 1984 and 1988 at the nuclear
weapons division of the Los Alamos laboratory. - “It was standard PRC (People’s Republic of China) intelligence
tradecraft to focus particularly upon targeting and recruitment of
ethnic Chinese living in foreign countries (e.g., Chinese-Americans). - “It is common in PRC intelligence tradecraft to use academic
delegations — rather than traditional intelligence officers — to
collect information on science-related topics. It was, in fact, standard
PRC intelligence tradecraft to use scientific delegations to identify
and target scientists working at restricted United States facilities
such as LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory), since they ‘have better
access than PRC intelligence personnel to scientists and other
counterparts at the United States National Laboratories.’ - “Sylvia Lee (Wen Ho Lee’s wife and a former Los Alamos employee)
had extremely close contacts with visiting Chinese scientific
delegations. Sylvia Lee, in fact, had volunteered to act as hostess for
visiting Chinese scientific delegations at LANL when such visits first
began in 1980, and had apparently had more extensive contacts and closer
relationships with these delegations than anyone else at the laboratory.
On one occasion, moreover, Wen Ho Lee had himself aggressively sought
involvement with a visiting Chinese scientific delegation, insisting
upon acting as an interpreter for the group despite his inability to
perform this function very effectively. - “Sylvia Lee was involuntarily terminated at LANL during a
reduction-in-force in 1995. Her personnel file indicated incidents of
security violations and threats she allegedly made against co-workers. - “In 1986, Wen Ho Lee and his wife traveled to China on LANL
business to deliver a paper on nuclear weapons-related science to a
symposium in Beijing. He visited the Chinese laboratory — the Institute
for Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM) — that
designs the PRC’s nuclear weapons. - “The Lees visited the PRC — the IAPCM — on LANL business again
in 1988. - “It was standard PRC intelligence tradecraft, when targeting
ethnic Chinese living overseas, to encourage travel to the ‘homeland’ —
particularly where visits to ancestral villages and/or old family
members could be arranged — as a way of trying to dilute loyalty to
other countries and encouraging solidarity with the authorities in
Beijing. - “The Lees took vacation time to travel elsewhere in China during
their two trips to China in 1986 and 1988. - “The FBI also learned of the Lees’ purchase of unknown goods or
services from a travel agent in Hong Kong while on a trip to that colony
and to Taiwan in 1992. FBI agents speculated that this payment might
have been for tickets for an unreported side trip across the border into
the PRC. - “Though Wen Ho Lee had visited IAPCM in both 1986 and 1988 and
had filed ‘contact reports’ claiming to recount all of the Chinese
scientists he met there, he had failed to disclose certain information
that the FBI deemed significant. - “Wen Ho Lee worked on specialized computer codes at Los Alamos —
so-called ‘legacy codes’ related to nuclear testing data — that were a
particular target for Chinese intelligence. - “The FBI learned that during a visit to Los Alamos by scientists
from IAPCM, Lee had discussed certain unclassified (but weapons-related)
computer codes with the Chinese delegation. It was reported that Lee had
helped the Chinese scientists with their codes by providing software and
calculations relating to hydrodynamics. - “In 1997, Lee had requested permission to hire a graduate
student, a Chinese national to help him with work on ‘Lagrangian codes’
at LANL. When the FBI evaluated this request, investigators were told by
laboratory officials that there was no such thing as an unclassified
Lagrangian code, which describes certain hydrodynamic processes and are
used to model some aspects of nuclear weapons testing. - “In 1984, the FBI questioned Wen Ho Lee about his 1982 contact
with a U.S. scientist at another DOE nuclear weapons laboratory who was
under investigation. - “When questioned about this contact Lee gave deceptive answers.
After offering further explanations, Lee took a polygraph, claiming that
he had been concerned only with this other scientist’s alleged passing
of unclassified information to a foreign government against DOE and
Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations — something that Lee himself
admitted doing. (The FBI closed this investigation of Lee in 1984.) - “The FBI, as noted above, had begun another investigation into
Lee in the early 1990s, before the W-88 compromise came to light. This
investigation was based upon an FBI investigative lead that could
reasonably be interpreted to indicated that Lee had provided significant
assistance to the PRC. - “The FBI obtained a copy of a note on IAPCM letterhead dated 1987
listing three LANL reports by their laboratory publication number. On
this note, in English, was a handwritten comment to ‘Linda’ saying
‘(t)he Deputy Director of this Institute asked (for) these paper(s). His
name is Dr. Zheng Shaotang. Please check if they are unclassified and
send to them. Thanks a lot. Sylvia Lee.'”
So where does Taiwan fit into this picture? It doesn’t. Against such
a pro-China backdrop, Lee’s denouncement of China on CBS’ “60 Minutes”
— after he was caught — rings hollow.
FBI counterintelligence agents thought that these circumstances, when
viewed together, provided enough probable cause to eavesdrop on Lee to
see what contacts he might have with Chinese intelligence.
By not granting the warrant, the Clinton administration adopted a
highly restrictive view of probable cause for tracking spy suspects. The
threshold for issuing such a warrant in a national security case is
lower than that of a common criminal case.
Bear in mind, too, that the 18 points don’t include two damning
pieces of evidence that surfaced after 1997, when the FBI first made its
request:
Lee would later flunk a polygraph test asking about the W-88
mini-warhead, the secrets to which China stole.
Also, investigators hadn’t yet learned that Lee downloaded all of the
nuclear legacy codes, developed from 1,000-plus underground bomb tests,
from a classified computer system to his unsecured computer — in clear
violation of lab security rules. (The codes, if obtained, would be a
gold mine for China’s relatively fledgling nuclear program, especially
since it’s agreed to a moratorium on nuclear testing.)
Lee transferred the classified files, containing the equivalent of
400,000 pages, onto 10 portable tapes. Seven are missing.
That’s what he’s on trial for now — mishandling classified
information. The Clinton administration won’t pursue the more serious
charge of Chinese espionage. There’s not enough evidence, administration
sources claim.
Not enough, or too much?
The devils are here
Ben Shapiro