Prosecutors Give Theory in Case of Jailed Scientist

WASHINGTON —  Federal prosecutors have concluded that fired Los Alamos engineer Wen Ho Lee was trying to boost his job prospects with research institutes in Europe and Asia when he allegedly copied a virtual archive of nuclear weapon secrets.

The disclosure, contained in court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque, marks the first time the government has publicly stated its theory of Lee’s intent in the highly controversial case. He faces 59 felony counts.

Until now, federal investigators have suggested that Lee was a skilled spy who either passed or planned to pass some of America’s most valuable nuclear secrets to China or Taiwan. Defense lawyers say that a more mundane motivation may undermine the government’s case when Lee’s trial begins Nov. 6.

In the two-page court filing, Norman C. Bay, U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico, wrote that Lee “was interested in seeking employment abroad” at the time he began downloading thermonuclear weapon designs and other highly classified files onto an unsecured computer system and portable tapes at the weapon lab. Seven of the tapes are unaccounted for.

“In 1993, at or about the time of the first offenses charged, the defendant addressed letters seeking employment in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan,” Bay added.

Bay also reiterated previous government assertions that Lee “made contact” with representatives of China’s Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, which is involved in the design and computational simulation of nuclear weapons. Lee took two lab-approved trips to China in 1986 and 1988.

Defense Sees a Triumph

The prosecution document appears to be a triumph for the defense in the intense pretrial skirmishing now underway. Already emboldened by the security scandal at Los Alamos last month, when two classified computer hard drives vanished and then mysteriously were found, Lee’s lawyers now hope to scuttle the government case before it goes to trial.

In a flurry of recent motions, the defense has challenged the legality of an FBI search warrant, has claimed that Lee is a victim of ethnic profiling and--most important--has insisted that Lee needs to show the jury all the classified information in question if he is to receive a fair trial. A closed-door hearing on that crucial issue is scheduled for next Wednesday in Albuquerque.

Lee was indicted in December for allegedly misappropriating 400,000 pages of secret computer data on the design, construction and testing of nuclear weapons. Most of the charges allege that he acted “with the intent to injure the United States, and with the intent to secure an advantage to a foreign nation.”

In oral arguments last week, the government fought a defense motion to identify that foreign nation. Prosecutors argued that they were “still refining” their theory of the case and that it was too early “to lock the government into one theory.”

But Judge James A. Parker sided with Lee’s lawyers and ordered the government to name names. Mark Holscher, Lee’s lawyer, fairly crowed at the result Thursday.

“It’s absurd for the government to submit a written document that it may seek to prove Dr. Lee was attempting to assist countries like Australia and Switzerland,” Holscher said by telephone from Los Angeles. “The idea that he’s aiding countries that don’t even have nuclear programs is bizarre.”

Holscher said that the government was “clearly backing off” any claim that Lee was a spy. Holscher said that he would ask the court to reconsider Lee’s application for bail.

“Dr. Lee has been shackled in custody because the government falsely raised the specter that he might give classified information to China,” Holscher said.

Government witnesses at Lee’s four-day bail hearing in December warned that foreign agents could spirit Lee away in helicopters or that he might reveal the location of missing tapes by using such code phrases as “Uncle Wen says hello.” As a result, Chinese-speaking FBI agents monitor all his conversations in jail, including those with his family.

Assistant U.S. Atty. George A. Stamboulidis, the chief prosecutor in the case, declined Thursday to discuss the theory laid out in the court filing or whether it suggests the government is scaling back its position against Lee.

The Lee case first erupted into the headlines in March 1999 amid allegations that the Taiwan-born nuclear engineer was a Chinese spy who had provided top secret W-88 nuclear warhead designs to Beijing. Lee’s lab-approved trips to China had made him the prime suspect in a three-year FBI investigation.

The FBI conceded in September that it had wrongly focused on Lee and Los Alamos as the only possible source of the leak, and Lee was never charged with espionage. But Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen and 19-year veteran of the Los Alamos lab, appeared to have been indelibly branded as a spy. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The question of why Lee copied the files has stumped investigators from the start. The theory that he was searching for a job surfaced at the bail hearing in December, when government witnesses testified that Lee was notified in 1993 that he was on a list of Los Alamos employees whose jobs were at risk because of budget cuts.

An FBI agent testified that Lee sent letters in 1993 and 1994 expressing interest in employment to seven overseas institutions, including the National University of Singapore, Nanyang University in Singapore, the Swiss Defense Technology Procurement Agency in Switzerland, a private company in Germany called Messerschmitt Bolkow-Blohm, the Chung Cheng Institute in Taiwan, Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and the Hong Kong Institute of Science and Technology.

It was not clear Thursday where Lee also sought jobs in Australia and France.

Investigators now believe that Lee, whose doctorate is in mechanical engineering, downloaded the files in an attempt to show prospective employers overseas that he also was intimate with the complex physics and arcane detail of nuclear weapon design.

The evidence appears mostly circumstantial and includes the letters recovered in the FBI search of Lee’s home and office, a notebook containing detailed notes of what he copied onto the tapes and the timing of his actions. He stopped most of the downloading in 1994, when he was told that he had survived the cutbacks.

Lee’s lawyers have suggested that Lee wanted a backup of his work in case of a computer failure at Los Alamos, but they have never fully explained his actions.

FBI Analyst Agrees With Job-Hunt Theory

Paul D. Moore, the FBI’s chief Chinese intelligence analyst for more than 20 years, said Thursday that the government theory suggested Lee “was downloading this material in furtherance of seeking another job and essentially bringing along a load of bread under his arm” to entice prospective employers.

Moore noted that, given the cutbacks at the labs, Lee may have gone to foreign-run institutes and said: “Here’s something that could put your research ahead 25 years.”

Even though most of the countries named by the government in its filing are U.S. allies, Moore said, that does not diminish the severity of the alleged offense.

“You don’t have to hurt the United States” to damage national security, he said. While Lee is not charged with espionage, he said, prosecutors “are looking at somebody who appears to be preparing to commit espionage, at the very least. It doesn’t reduce the seriousness if you say, ‘Oh, maybe he was going to Taiwan.’ ”