Reno, Freeh Insist Wen Ho Lee Posed ‘Great Risk’ to U.S.

In an extraordinary preview of government evidence for a trial that will never take place, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh laid out in painstaking detail Tuesday why they remain convinced that former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee “put this country, and the world, at great risk.”

In a joint appearance and statement to the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees, the nation’s two top law enforcement officials also disclosed that Lee unexpectedly told government lawyers for the first time earlier this month that he had made copies of seven computer tapes containing decades’ worth of nuclear weapon design and development data.

“This is a national security matter of paramount importance,” Freeh said. “At least seven, and possibly 14 or more tapes containing vast amounts of our nation’s nuclear secrets remain unaccounted for. This is not rhetoric. It is a simple, frightening fact.”

The FBI was supposed to begin a series of detailed interviews with Lee on Tuesday to determine why the Taiwan-born scientist made the tapes and whether his claims that he destroyed them are true. But the FBI postponed the debriefings so agents could prepare for the Senate hearing. Lee’s lawyers said that they have not been told when the sessions will begin.

Lee agreed to the debriefings two weeks ago as part of a court-approved deal under which he pleaded guilty to one felony count of mishandling nuclear secrets at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and was sentenced to the 278 days he already had spent in jail. The government dismissed 58 other felony counts and dropped the prosecution.

Judge, Clinton Criticized Tactics

The surprise plea bargain, as well as Lee’s lengthy pretrial incarceration under harsh conditions, sparked intense criticism of FBI and prosecution tactics. U.S. District Judge James A. Parker, who presided over the case, said it “embarrassed this entire nation,” and President Clinton said later he was deeply “troubled” by the outcome.

In many ways, Reno and Freeh’s prepared testimony was like a prosecutor’s closing argument to a jury. But their 39-page statement, most of which was read by Freeh, appeared aimed at swaying the court of public opinion and countering claims that Lee was unfairly targeted, falsely accused or improperly treated in jail. Unlike at a trial, Lee’s attorneys were not present at the two-hour hearing to provide a defense.

Reno gave no quarter in her remarks. “We remain convinced that we made the right decisions, for the right reasons, at the right time,” she said. Lee, she added, “is no hero. He’s not an absent-minded professor. He’s a felon.”

But Freeh admitted that FBI agents were overly aggressive when they questioned Lee on March 7, 1999, the day before he was fired from Los Alamos. “Specifically, Dr. Lee was reminded of the fate of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for espionage. . . ,” Freeh said, referring to the convicted Soviet spies. “That implication was inappropriate.”

Freeh said that the FBI and the Justice Department have conducted “detailed reviews” of court testimony given by Robert Messemer, the lead FBI agent in the Lee investigation. Messemer admitted that he had falsely accused Lee of lying to a colleague when he downloaded weapon data, an error that Freeh called “a serious matter.”

“While we do not believe this error significantly undercut the overall evidence against Dr. Lee, it did affect the agent’s credibility and thereby damaged the prosecution,” Freeh said. Even more damaging, Freeh added, “it created an unmistakable public perception that the government’s case against Dr. Lee was ‘crumbling.’ ”

Although Freeh insisted that prosecutors could have convicted Lee of all 59 felony counts if the case had gone to trial, he outlined the reasoning that he, Reno and other senior officials considered when they agreed to let Lee plead guilty to a single charge and go home.

Among them, he said, was fear that Lee “would succeed in his attempt at graymail.” He said prosecutors were convinced that Judge Parker would allow the defense to use highly classified evidence in court and would reject the government’s pleas to use substitutions or summaries instead.

Fear of ‘Crossing an Exposure Threshold’

“The court’s ruling would have exposed extremely sensitive nuclear weapons information during a public trial, crossing an exposure threshold we had already determined posed an unacceptable risk,” Freeh said.

The government detailed much of the evidence in its case against Lee in the original Dec. 10, 1999, indictment and in subsequent court testimony and filings. Among numerous new details provided Tuesday:

* Lee sought to enter the X-Division, the top-secret nuclear weapon design division at Los Alamos, 18 times after Energy Department officials had revoked his physical and computer access on Dec. 23, 1998, because of security concerns. “All such attempts were improper,” Freeh said.

* Lee subsequently asked the Los Alamos computer “help desk” to restore his X-Division secure computing privileges. Unaware that Lee’s access had been officially revoked, the lab reactivated his account. Freeh said that Lee then deleted files from the server.

* The help desk again aided Lee when he complained that, despite his best efforts to delete files, they “were not going away.” He then was instructed on how to bypass a computer safeguard system that automatically made backup copies of deleted files.

Freeh strongly denied that Lee was unfairly prosecuted. “This has not been an easy case for the government, for the court or for this country,” he said. But the responsibility “rests exclusively with Wen Ho Lee, whose deliberate, unjustifiable, criminal actions put this country, and the world, at great risk.”

Reno and Freeh denied that Lee had been treated unusually harshly in jail to coerce a confession and insisted that Lee’s lawyers never complained about his wearing leg irons and manacles, even during outdoor exercise sessions.

But in telephone interviews, Lee’s attorneys said they repeatedly cited those conditions in pleadings with prosecutors.

In a statement, Lee’s lawyers said that the scientist intends to cooperate fully with the FBI and looks forward to “returning to a normal life and putting this horrible experience behind him.” A friend said that he has planted a backyard garden and caught a 12-inch trout since his release from jail.

Several senators criticized the original FBI investigation into alleged Chinese spying, which ultimately led to Lee’s arrest last December. “It was almost a textbook case of how not to conduct an espionage case, a ‘Keystone Kops’ investigation,” said Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.).

Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, called the inquiry “a gravely flawed exercise characterized by inadequate resources, lack of management attention and missed opportunities.”