Comprehensive information and links about Wen Ho Lee

Wen Ho Lee (Chinese: 李文和; pinyin: Lǐ Wénhé; born December 21, 1939Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwanese American scientist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory and was accused of stealing secrets about the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal for China. After investigators dropped these original accusations, the government conducted a new investigation and charged Lee with improper handling of restricted data, one count of which he pled guilty to as part of a plea bargain. Lee's case has been compared to the Dreyfus Affair, and some consider it to be a textbook example of the harm that can be done to an individual when the power of government and the power of media unite against one person. Others, however, note that Lee improperly and illegally copied national secrets, and suspect that even if he did not sell these secrets on the black market he kept them as "insurance" to be sold if he were ever fired (he was threatened with termination in 1996).

Born in Nantou, Taiwan, Lee got his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cheng Kung University. He received a Ph.D. from Texas A

Investigation

After an intelligence agent from the People's Republic of China (PRC) gave U.S. agents papers which indicated that they knew the design of a particularly modern U.S. warhead, the FBI started an investigation codenamed Operation Kindred Spirit to look into how China could have obtained that design. The investigation eventually fixated on Wen Ho Lee to a degree that was later widely criticized.

Lee was fired from his job at Los Alamos National Laboratory on March 8, 1999. On the same day, Lee's name was leaked to the media, with the New York Times publishing a sensationalist story about his case. However, FBI investigators soon determined that the design data the PRC had obtained could not have come from the Los Alamos Lab, because it related to information that would only have been available to someone like a so-called "downstream" contractor, meaning one involved in the final warhead production process, and this information was only created after the weapon design left the Lab.

Even though this left Wen Ho Lee apparently in the clear, the FBI and the Department of Energy decided at this point to conduct a full forensic examination of Lee's office computer.

Indictment, Imprisonment and Release

The examination of Lee's computer determined that he had backed up his work files, which were restricted though not classified, onto tapes, and had also transferred these files from a system used for processing classified data onto another, also secure, system designated for unclassified data. With this information in hand, the government then retroactively redesignated the data Lee had copied, changing it from its former designation of PARD (Protect As Restricted Data), to a new designation of Secret, giving them the crime they needed for a formal charge. Lee was arrested in December 1999 and held without bail in solitary confinement for 278 days until September 13, 2000, when he accepted a plea bargain from the federal government.

Wen Ho Lee pleaded guilty to one felony count of improperly downloading Restricted Data. In return, the government released him from jail and dropped the other 58 counts of illegally downloading classified data from the computers at the Los Alamos weapons lab. Judge James A. Parker offered an apology to Lee for what he called "abuse of power" by the federal government in its prosecution of their case, while reiterating that Lee did plead guilty to a "serious crime." Later, President Bill Clinton remarked that he had been "troubled" by the way Lee was treated.

, Lee charged that his Chinese ethnicity was a primary factor behind his prosecution by the government. As evidence of such racial profiling, he cited cases of several scientists of non-Chinese ancestry who were responsible for similar security transgressions but were able to continue their career. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh categorically denied these charges.

Former Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, who had oversight of Los Alamos National Laboratory at the time and effectively ordered Lee's firing, is considered, by some, likely to have been the mysterious source who leaked Lee's name to reporters. Lee has sued the Energy Department, the FBI, and unnamed individuals to recover damages for harm to his reputation caused by leaks of confidential information from the espionage investigation. The success of his case hinges on knowing the identity of the leaker, and several reporters privy to this information have become embroiled in legal battles as they defy court orders to reveal their sources. The ultimate closure of the Wen Ho Lee saga has yet to be achieved, with the outcome now depending on whether a reporter's first amendment right to protect a source extends even to cases where the sources are possibly committing libel against another citizen.

My Country Versus Me: The First-Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy