Lee, Accused Los Alamos Spy, Cuts Movie, Book Deal

The Los Alamos scientist accused of copying top U.S. nuclear secrets, then freed after a plea bargain, will tell his side of the story in a book and a television miniseries, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Wen Ho Lee and his family examined “numerous” book and movie offers before finalizing two deals this week, said attorney David Weil of O’Melveny & Myers, a Los Angeles firm that was part of Lee’s courtroom defense.

Lee signed contracts with publisher Hyperion, a branch of Disney-owned ABC Inc., and with film production company Robert Greenwald Productions Inc. of Culver City, Weil told Reuters.

“We spent a lot of time talking with members of the Lee family and their advisors and discussing with the interested parties their perspective on the events that occurred to the Lee family,” Weil said.

“It’s a very powerful story so I suspect . . . it will generate significant public response.”

Weil declined to say how much the book and TV deals are worth.

Robert Greenwald Productions is an independent company whose credits include the 1984 TV movie “The Burning Bed,” a domestic abuse drama starring Farrah Fawcett, and this year’s “Steal This Movie” about the life of 1960s radical Abbie Hoffman.

Hyperion hopes to have the book out in the fall of 2001, Weil said. He said negotiations were not yet completed with an undisclosed author who would write the account.

The TV miniseries will cover four hours on two nights and could be aired around the time the book is released, said Alys Shanti, vice president of Robert Greenwald Productions.

Lee, a nuclear arms designer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was arrested in December 1999 and spent the next 278 days in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, on 59 charges of illegally copying and storing what prosecutors called “the crown jewels” of U.S. nuclear weapons design secrets.

Sources in the U.S. government and Congress accused Lee of being a spy for China, but there was no evidence that he passed information to another country and he was never charged with espionage.

Indeed, the U.S. government’s case against the 60-year-old, Taiwanese-born U.S. citizen ended with Lee pleading guilty to only one of the 59 felony counts in return for a promise to answer extensive questions from the FBI.

Amid charges Lee was targeted because of his race, chief U.S. District Judge James A. Parker publicly apologized for what he called Lee’s “embarrassing” treatment by the federal government.

Lee and his family were initially very reluctant about a movie deal, Shanti said.

“We as producers believe it’s a very, very important story,” she said. “It is our hope we can help Americans look at themselves and their own biases.”