Science Academies Decry Lee’s Treatment

In an apparently unprecedented move, the nation’s three most prestigious scientific academies Thursday publicly protested the government’s incarceration of Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, complaining that Lee “appears to be a victim of unjust treatment” and that his case “reflects poorly on the U.S. justice system.”

The criticism was aired in an open letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and was signed by the presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine.

The complaint marks the first known case in which the three congressionally chartered academies have intervened on behalf of an American scientist, officials said. Over the last 25 years, the three institutions have written hundreds of letters and appeals to the former Soviet Union, China, Iran and other authoritarian governments to protest mistreatment of scientists who were unjustly detained or imprisoned.

In Lee’s case, the presidents of the academies wrote, their concerns and questions “are identical to those that our Committee on Human Rights regularly poses to foreign governments.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, Asian American groups and other scientific organizations have voiced similar complaints since Lee was jailed under unusually harsh conditions in December for allegedly copying a vast trove of nuclear weapon secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

But the prominence and credibility of the national academies raise the criticism to a new level. The 4,800 members of the three institutions are elected by their peers and are mandated by Congress to provide independent advice to the federal government on issues of science and technology.

In their letter, the presidents of the academies do not claim that Lee is innocent. But they argue “inaccurate and detrimental testimony by government officials resulted in Dr. Lee needlessly spending eight months in prison under harsh and questionable conditions of confinement.”

“We also urge that those responsible for any injustice that he has suffered be held accountable,” they added. “Even more importantly, perhaps, we urge that safeguards be put in place to ensure that, in future, others do not suffer the same plight.”

The two-page letter was signed by Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering, and Kenneth I. Shine, president of the Institute of Medicine.

‘An Outrageous Situation’

“I wouldn’t want our letter in any way to diminish the seriousness of what Dr. Lee apparently did,” Wulf said in a telephone interview from Washington. “But that doesn’t justify treating him the way they’ve treated him . . . this is a small step to rectify what we consider an outrageous situation.”

Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Washington, said the letter had just been received and she would not comment on it.

Lee, 60, may be released on $1-million property bond under a strict form of house arrest as early as today. More than a dozen FBI agents searched Lee’s family home and cars Thursday in White Rock, a Los Alamos suburb, starting at 9 a.m. and lasting throughout the day, in anticipation of his release. Police blocked the street to keep reporters away.

Lee’s lawyers separately removed a fax machine, wireless phones and other communication equipment, as required by the judge. Once released, Lee will be banned from leaving his house and backyard garden, and from speaking to anyone except his lawyers, his wife and two grown children, and two neighbors who will act as court-appointed custodians. Lee also will wear an electronic bracelet to monitor his movements.

But John Cline, one of Lee’s lawyers, said he expects federal prosecutors to seek a delay today to give the government time to appeal Lee’s release to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. The U.S. attorney’s office in Albuquerque did not return repeated calls for comment.

U.S. District Judge James A. Parker ruled Aug. 24 that he would grant bail to Lee. At a hearing Tuesday, Parker said he gave the government until noon today to appeal. But Parker only released his order in classified form late Thursday, meaning it can’t be made public until the government declassifies it. That raised doubts that Lee would go home today as expected.

“We need time to look at the judge’s order to seek a stay, if we decide that’s the appropriate thing to do,” said Florman, the Justice Department spokeswoman.

The latest development comes amid growing indications that the government case against Lee is unraveling.

On Tuesday, Parker ordered prosecutors to produce thousands of pages of internal government documents to help him determine if Lee was improperly singled out for prosecution because he was born in Taiwan. Lee became a U.S. citizen before he joined the nuclear weapon design division at Los Alamos 20 years ago.

Parker will examine the documents, due Sept. 15, before deciding whether to give them to Lee’s lawyers. But the ruling was the first indication that Parker has found grounds to consider defense claims that Lee was unfairly targeted for prosecution due to his ethnicity and not on the evidence then available.

Some of the current government evidence is also now in question. During a hearing in mid-August, the FBI lead investigator, Robert Messemer, recanted several crucial parts of his earlier testimony against Lee. Parker had cited Messemer’s claims when he initially denied bail to Lee in December.

Lee was fired from Los Alamos for security violations in March 1999 after he was publicly identified as the sole target of a three-year investigation into alleged Chinese espionage. The FBI has since said it has no evidence that Lee was a spy.

But Lee was indicted and arrested in December on 59 felony counts after the FBI alleged that he had copied decades’ worth of nuclear weapon design data onto an unsecured computer network at Los Alamos and onto portable computer tapes in 1993, 1994 and 1997.

Despite a worldwide search, the FBI has not located seven of those tapes. Lee’s lawyers insist he destroyed them but have not said when or how. The significance of the seven tapes is now a matter of sharp dispute.

Government witnesses have warned that the tapes contain nuclear secrets so sensitive that they could change the global strategic balance. But in the mid-August hearing, weapon experts called by the defense ridiculed that claim and insisted that 99% of the data already is public.

Although Lee was not charged with espionage, he was jailed under conditions usually reserved for convicted spies and terrorists. Until recently, he was kept in his cell 23 hours a day, and his hands and feet were shackled even during exercise periods. FBI agents monitored Lee’s once-a-week visits from his wife and children.

Newly released unclassified transcripts of closed-door hearings before Judge Parker during Lee’s bail hearing in December show that Messemer, the FBI agent, warned that if Lee still had the 6-year-old tapes, he might give them to a foreign agent “to take revenge against the United States for removing his liberty.”

‘The Fish Are Not Biting Today’

Messemer also warned that if Lee were released, he might be “snatched and taken out of the country” by a foreign intelligence service. He said Lee might say something seemingly innocuous that actually could be a sinister coded message. “For example, what if he were to say to someone, his brother in California, the fish are not biting today?” Messemer said.

In the letter issued Thursday, the presidents of the three academies said they wrote to Reno privately three times earlier this year to question Lee’s treatment. But they complained they were only sent a single “form letter” in reply, signed by the acting chief of internal security, that did not provide a “satisfactory response.”

Florman, however, said that Reno “gets thousands of pieces of mail a week, and she cannot respond to all of them. We try to be very responsive.”