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Suspected Communist Spy Goes Free Under Plea Bargain September 28, 2000 Suspected communist spy Wen Ho Lee was freed on September 13th under a plea bargain with the Justice Department. The fired Los Alamos nuclear scientist was released from jail nine months after he was incarcerated on suspicion of transferring nuclear secrets to communist China. Under the plea bargain, Lee, 60, pled guilty to one felony count of downloading nuclear secrets to an unsecure computer. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop the remaining 58 counts, including almost 40 counts of "acting with intent to harm the United States," which could have put Lee in prison for life. U.S. District Judge James Parker sentenced Lee to time served for the guilty plea and ordered Lee released from jail. The Justice Department has come under fire both from Lee's supporters, who claim that he was unfairly jailed, and from those who believe that the Justice Department was wrong to plea bargain in what was apparently a strong case against Lee. Lee copied the equivalent of 400,000 pages of classified data onto unsecure tapes. He refused to tell why he spent an estimated 40 hours downloading the data, what he did with it, or why he tried repeatedly to enter a restricted area after losing his security clearance--once at 3:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve. During the plea bargain proceedings, the unrepentant Lee read a statement in court in which he admitted using an unsecure computer to download nuclear secrets and knowing that his actions were illegal. Shortly before finalizing the plea bargain with Lee, the FBI learned that Lee had created a duplicate set of the original ten computer tapes. Only three of the tapes have been found, discovered in Lee's office at the Los Alamos after he had been fired. Under the plea bargain, Lee agreed to tell the FBI what happened to the 17 missing tapes (seven originals and ten copies) that have not been found. The potential exposure of nuclear secrets at a trial was cited by FBI Director Louis Freeh as a critical factor that led the government to settle the case. Following Lee's release, federal prosecutor Norman C. Bay told a Senate subcommittee on that Lee's lawyer threatened to reveal nuclear secrets at the trial. "My guy is not going to take any charge in the indictment," Bay reported the defense lawyer as saying, "and if you don't like that, I'm going to put you on a long, slow death march under CIPA." Under the CIPA, or "Classified Information Procedures Act," defense lawyers are allowed to argue that divulging of classified information is necessary to obtain a fair trial. But Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a former prosecutor, replied that prosecutors should not have been worried by the threatened blackmail. "If someone had told me they were going to put me on a long, slow death march," Specter said, "I would have told them, 'Let's start walking.'" Lee's lawyers claim that they were not blackmailing the government but were simply insisting on the public airing of evidence. The Lee investigation began in 1995, when the CIA obtained a document from China, which revealed that communist weapons designers had obtained highly classified details of the U.S. W-88 nuclear warhead. The investigation of the leak was turned over to the FBI, which concluded that the information had come from Los Alamos. The Energy Department compiled a list of 12 people who had access to the material and contact with Chinese officials. Lee was one of the 12. In July 1997, Attorney General Janet Reno turned down an FBI request for permission to search Lee's computer because the agents lacked "probable cause." However, in 1998, the Energy Department had Lee polygraphed, and both the FBI and Energy Department concluded that Lee was lying. Lee's security clearance was then suspended, and he was reassigned to another job. On March 6, 1999, the New York Times disclosed the FBI probe, and on March 8, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson fired Lee for security violations. Following Lee's firing, FBI agents searched his office and discovered three computer tapes containing nuclear weapons codes. Computer experts concluded that Lee had used his classified computer to download mathematical characterizations of various nuclear warheads to an unsecure computer drive. Prosecutors said he borrowed a colleague's computer to download the data onto 10 tapes. Only three have been found. On Dec. 10, Lee was arrested and charged with 59 counts of mishandling nuclear secrets. The case against Lee included testimony from the FBI's chief investigator, who said Lee had engaged in a pattern of deceit, misled the government about his contacts with Chinese officials, and written letters seeking employment overseas. FBI sources report that Lee met with a communist spy in 1982 and maintained a relationship with the head of China's nuclear weapons program after 1994. In the intervening months following his arrest, Lee continued to stonewall, and in July, Parker dealt the prosecution a crushing blow by ruling that the defense could use highly secret nuclear information in open court, forcing the government to accept a compromise of nuclear secrets. Before releasing Lee on Wednesday, Parker scolded the government for its handling of the case. "The issue here, is, are we getting the tapes back, and do we find out what happened to those tapes. The plea bargain enables us to get that information." The government made the same argument when they accepted a plea bargain from Soviet spy John Walker in 1985. Lee will probably claim that he destroyed the tapes, and there will be no way of verifying whether he he's telling the truth. Meanwhile, Chinese communists are laughing at America even as they install the stolen warhead design on their newest missiles.
© 2000 TruthNews. All Rights Reserved. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
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