Report Cites Missteps in Secrets Case

The government struck a plea bargain that resulted in no prison time for a nuclear scientist who confessed to passing secrets to China, rather than await an analysis that ultimately concluded he “directly enhanced” Beijing’s weapon program, documents disclose.

The documents, gathered by Senate investigators, detail weeks of miscommunication among prosecutors, defense officials and the FBI that led to the December 1997 plea bargain for former U.S. nuclear lab scientist Peter H. Lee.

The miscommunication left the Justice Department official with final authority for the case unaware that his prosecutor would seek minimal prison time for Lee. As it turned out, the judge gave Lee no prison time, even though he was informed Lee had been deceptive in his cooperation.

“Had this been our opening position in plea negotiations, I doubt that I would have approved it, particularly the short period of incarceration,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. John Keeney told a Senate judiciary subcommittee recently.

Lee’s case has fallen in the shadows of accusations against Wen Ho Lee, a former scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

But testimony, government documents and a draft Senate report reviewed by the Associated Press detail missteps by the government that mirror those that have been criticized in Wen Ho Lee’s case.

The problems included the unexpected appearance of a Navy memo that raised questions about the quality of Peter Lee’s case and would have been available to defense lawyers at trial.

“The conclusions drawn by this draft report are contrary to fact,” Justice Department spokesman Myron Marlin said Saturday. “The government secured two felony convictions in a difficult case.”

Law enforcement officials say they wanted to avoid a trial to protect sensitive counterintelligence information that would have divulged some of the methods and sources used to detect Peter Lee’s activities for China.

Instead, officials sought to press Lee into a plea bargain, secure his cooperation, put him in prison for a short time and hope he would help on other China espionage matters, officials said.

The plan backfired, however, when Lee was found to be deceptive during his cooperation. Prosecutors also were surprised by the judge’s leniency.

There were other complications.

Prosecutors decided not to wait for an analysis of how much Lee damaged national security and proceeded with the plea bargain just weeks after obtaining his confession.

Michael Liebman, a prosecutor, told senators he thought it was “impractical” to wait for a damage assessment because he believed it would take a year to complete.

But within two months, the Energy Department had completed an analysis of Lee’s disclosures.

Lee’s classified information “was of significant material assistance to the [People’s Republic of China] in their nuclear weapons development program,” the department concluded in February 1998.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who led the Senate review, sharply criticized the rush to the plea bargain.

“That was just atrocious,” Specter said. “I think it was indifference to the severity of the issue and a traditional interest in chalking up a conviction, which is meaningless when there is no substantial jail time as warranted by the infraction.”

Specter’s draft report concludes prosecutors should have brought more severe espionage charges against Lee or at least tried to break the plea bargain.

Lee worked at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos nuclear labs and was a federal contractor for more than two decades.

In October 1997, he admitted to the FBI he shared classified information with Chinese nuclear scientists, both in 1985 and 1997--some of it involving a $100-million joint U.S.-British project on radar detection of nuclear submarines.