Reno Tells of Concerns Over FBI Focus on Lee

Justice Department officials worried in the summer of 1997 that the FBI investigation of alleged Chinese nuclear spying focused too narrowly on Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno told Congress in testimony made public Tuesday.

Those concerns led Justice Department lawyers to reject an FBI request to seek court approval for bugging Lee’s home and office, Reno told a closed-door meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee in June.

The newly disclosed testimony shows Reno also was aware of problems in the case and that she discussed them with Congress this summer.

At the time of the 1997 bugging request, Lee and his wife, Sylvia, a former data analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory, were suspects in the alleged theft by China of information about the W-88, the smallest and most sophisticated warhead in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The FBI focused on the Lees and did not follow up on other scientists at Los Alamos who knew the same secrets and had traveled to China--including four others of Chinese descent, Reno said.

“The elimination of other logical suspects having the same access and opportunity did not occur,” Reno said. She later added: “There are perhaps other leads that could have been followed. There are other people that have a motivation, perhaps a greater motivation than Wen Ho Lee.”

The number of other potential suspects at Los Alamos was among many details blacked out from the report released Tuesday.

Lee was fired from the New Mexico weapon lab in March and indicted Dec. 10 on 59 felony charges that he transferred nuclear secrets to his desktop computer and portable data tapes. He was not charged with passing any classified information to China.