FBI Targeted Lee, Official Tells Panel

The Department of Energy intelligence chief who led a 1995 probe into suspected Chinese espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratory blamed the FBI for targeting scientist Wen Ho Lee as the government’s prime suspect and denied that racial profiling played a role in the case. “It was the FBI that focused solely on Dr. Lee,” Notra Trulock III told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee. At the hearing, Trulock also injected himself in a growing controversy over who first identified Lee by name as the suspect in the espionage investigation. Lee and his wife, Sylvia, have filed a civil suit against the FBI, the Department of Justice and the Department of Energy, alleging that Lee’s privacy was violated by government leaks to the press. Trulock said he believed that Energy Secretary Bill Richardson was responsible for leaking Lee’s name to the media in March 1999 as Richardson ordered Lee’s dismissal for violating lab security regulations. The department denies the allegation.