FBI Searches Home of Los Alamos Spy Suspect

Armed with a warrant, the FBI searched the New Mexico home, car and garage Saturday of a Taiwan-born computer expert who has been identified as the chief suspect in an apparent case of Chinese espionage of U.S. nuclear weapon secrets in the 1980s.

After a six-hour search, witnesses said, the agents removed several boxes of papers, books and other items from the home of Wen Ho Lee, who was fired last month from his job as a senior computer scientist in a top-secret weapon modeling division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The FBI obtained the court-authorized warrant, its first since it began investigating the alleged espionage more than three years ago, after Lee’s co-workers told agents in recent interviews that he had frequently carried work home from the lab, according to a senior law enforcement official.

Lee, dressed in gardening clothes and a fishing cap, stood outside talking to neighbors during part of the search at his wood-and-brick bungalow in White Rock, a suburb of Los Alamos, which is northwest of Santa Fe.

Lee declined to talk to reporters, as he has since his name first surfaced in public, and his attorney could not be reached for comment. No one has been charged in the case, and an FBI official in Washington said no arrest is imminent unless significant new evidence is uncovered.

The FBI, CIA and Department of Energy are seeking to determine how China obtained data that apparently helped it build smaller and more powerful nuclear warheads that are suspiciously similar to the state-of-the-art W-88 warheads carried on U.S. Trident submarines.

“The labs are convinced the Chinese acquired W-88 information,” one official said. “How they did it, where they did it, when they did it, is still not clear.”

Lee has told the FBI he was approached and asked to reveal classified information during a scientific conference in Beijing in 1988, but he said he refused. He was fired, in part, because he didn’t report the covert contact at the time.

Shortly after the conference, U.S. intelligence obtained a Chinese document that first raised suspicions about espionage because it specifically cited the top-secret W-88. Some U.S. scientists suspect that a series of underground nuclear tests that China conducted in the early 1990s may have used the new design, although there is no evidence that China has yet deployed it on any weapons.

The investigation began in earnest in 1996 and focused on Los Alamos, where the W-88 was designed. Although Lee was quickly identified as someone who had dealt with Chinese officials, he was not removed from his job--until the case erupted in the news in early March--for fear of tipping him off that he was a potential suspect.

The search warrant executed Saturday is “the kind of thing we’re able to do now because the investigation has gone overt and we’re able to talk to people,” an official said.

Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson announced the warrant. “The FBI is investigating and pursuing this case vigorously, and the Department of Energy is supporting the law enforcement effort fully,” he said in a statement.

As part of the investigation, the Energy Department abruptly ordered all classified computer work stopped on computers and related equipment at Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore in Berkeley and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, the nation’s main nuclear weapon facilities, on April 2 pending an intense review of security procedures.

The stand-down, as it’s called, is still in effect, said Jim Danneskiold, spokesman at Los Alamos. He said about 2,400 employees with access to classified computers, servers, routers, printers and other equipment have undergone special briefings on cyber-threats.

“The gist was: we want employees to ensure that there is no way that information can leave the secure network,” he said.

Under the current system, Danneskiold said, only some e-mail to the outside world is monitored, and rules require employees to lock up removable hard drives, zip drives, discs and other material containing classified data in safes at night.

“What’s to keep someone from sticking a removable hard drive in his pocket and walking out the gate at night?,” he asked. “Nothing. Except the rules. And we’re patriotic Americans.”