Lee’s Lawyers Urge Dismissal of Charges

Wen Ho Lee’s lawyers asked a judge Monday to dismiss most of the charges against the fired nuclear scientist on grounds that his alleged misconduct is not covered by federal law.

Lee, 60, is charged with 59 counts, mostly alleging that he transferred restricted files from secure to unsecure computers and to computer tapes at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

He could spend life in prison if convicted. His trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 6.

In their motion, defense attorneys Mark Holscher and John Cline asked U.S. District Judge James A. Parker to dismiss all but 10 of the counts because they deal with “intangible information” not covered by federal law.

“The statutes at issue . . . respectively cover only tangibles such as documents and writings and do not apply to intangibles such as information,” the motion states.

In a separate motion, the defense argues that the lab did not assign a classification level to the files Lee allegedly downloaded until after he was fired on March 8, 1999. “The allegations concerning the files’ classification levels represent an improper, after-the-fact attempt to inflate the files’ sensitivity,” the motion says.