Justice Dept. Report Faults FBI in Scientist Spy Case

The FBI seriously mishandled the Wen Ho Lee espionage investigation by moving too slowly and may have failed to detect other breaches of national security because of sloppy investigative methods, according to a highly classified report prepared for Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

While the new report reaches many of the same conclusions as a series of earlier reviews by congressional committees, it is the Justice Department’s first official acknowledgment of how internal turf battles hindered the espionage inquiry.

“It is a top-to-bottom criticism of the FBI’s handling of the Wen Ho Lee case,” a Clinton administration official said Thursday. “It highlights the scary question of whether there were other people who were overlooked by the FBI. That is a major national security concern that flows from the report.”

The four-volume report, which has not been released to Congress, is the product of an internal review ordered by Reno in the aftermath of questions surrounding the Lee matter, sources said Thursday. On Tuesday, the attorney general was briefed for two hours behind closed doors on the study and its findings.

Lee was arrested in December and indicted under the Atomic Energy Act and the Espionage Act on 59 felony counts of misappropriating nuclear weapon secrets, charges that could carry a life sentence. The 60-year-old engineer is now in solitary confinement in New Mexico awaiting trial in November.

The report concludes that the FBI could have moved in on Lee and others sooner if its agents had shared information with the bureau’s own counterespionage experts, sources said. The FBI also failed to commit sufficient resources to the case early in the investigation of alleged theft of nuclear secrets by China and prematurely focused on Lee as the prime suspect to the exclusion of others, sources said.

Those suspects may have committed other acts of espionage that remain undetected, the report said.

The new internal review concludes that investigators did not need a court order to search Lee’s computer because he had signed a privacy waiver granting permission for a search. Had Lee’s computer been searched in 1997 without a warrant, Lee’s computer downloads could have been discovered earlier.

The review also concludes that attorneys at the Justice Department improperly applied a law governing the granting of secret warrants to conduct electronic surveillance, demanding too much evidence instead of determining that probable cause existed.

The FBI and Energy Department were faulted last summer by a Senate committee for focusing prematurely on Lee. Most recently, a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) cited “inexplicable lapses” that kept FBI agents from searching Lee’s computer.

Lee’s computer also bore a warning, Specter reported, that explicitly gave Los Alamos officials the right to search the computer.

The FBI said it is in the midst of responding to the deficiencies cited in the report. The FBI believes the “recommendations will further enhance our ongoing efforts,” said FBI spokesman John Collingwood. “These are serious issues that deserve a serious response.”

Government officials have acknowledged they have no evidence that Lee passed secrets to China or any other foreign government, despite his allegedly illegal downloads of vast amounts of nuclear secrets.

(The Los Angeles Times has reported previously that the investigation focused on Lee early on to the exclusion of other possible suspects and that it did not commit sufficient resources to the case. Previous reports have noted that investigators could have search Lee’s computer earlier without a search warrant and that the improper downloads could have been detected.)