Ron,
Thanks for correcting that spelling... I caught after my editing time had expired..
Chief of Counter-Intelligence at Los Alamos with an agency known for not giving damn about security. Professional CI folks don't take jobs like these unless they can't find something else. There were plenty of CI position at CIA (Aldrich Ames created a nice opening..:0)
Here's something from the Cox report about one "Peter Lee" (no relation to Wen Ho Lee), but something that occured under Vrooman's watch:
Investigation of Thefts of Information Related to
the Detection of Submarines and of Laser Testing
of Miniature Nuclear Weapons Explosions
Peter Lee is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Taiwan. Lee worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1984 to 1991, and for TRW Inc., a contractor to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, from 1973 to 1984 and again from 1991to 1997.10
Lee has admitted to the FBI that, in 1997, he passed to PRC weapons scientists classified research into the detection of enemy submarines under water. This research, if successfully completed, could enable the PLA to threaten previously invulnerable U.S. nuclear submarines.
Lee made the admissions in 1997 during six adversarial interviews with the FBI. According to Lee, the illegal transfer of this sensitive research occurred while he was employed by TRW, Inc., a contractor for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The classified U.S.information was developed by Lawrence Livermore as part of a joint United States-United Kingdom Radar Ocean Imaging project for anti-submarine warfare applications.
Specifically, on or about May 11, 1997, Lee gave a lecture in Beijing at the PRC Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM). Among the attendees were nuclear weapons scientists from the IAPCM and the China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP).
Lee described for the PRC weapons scientists the physics of microwave scattering from ocean waves. Lee specifically stated that the purpose of the research was anti-submarine warfare.
At one point in his presentation, Lee displayed an image of a surface ship wake, which he had brought with him from the United States. He also drew a graph and explained the underlying physics of his work and its applications. He told the PRC scientists where to filter data within the graph to enhance the ability to locate the ocean wake of a vessel.
Approximately two hours after his talk was over, Lee erased the graph and tore the ship wake image "to shreds" upon exiting the PRC institute.11
In 1997, the decision was made to not prosecute Lee for passing this classified information on submarine detection to the PRC. Because of the sensitivity of this area of research, the Defense Department requested that this information not be used in a prosecution.
Throughout much of the l990s, the FBI conducted a multi-year investigation of Peter Lee, employing a variety of techniques, but without success in collecting incriminating evidence. Finally, in 1997, Lee was charged with willfully providing to the PRC classified information on techniques for creating miniature nuclear fusion explosions.
Specifically, Lee explained to PRC weapons scientists how deuterium and tritium can be loaded into a spherical capsule called a target and surrounded by a "hohlraum," and then heated by means of laser bombardment. The heat causes the compression of these elements, creating a nuclear fusion micro-explosion. This so-called "inertial confinement" technique permits nuclear weapons scientists to study nuclear explosions in miniature - something of especial usefulness to the PRC, which has agreed to the ban on full-scale nuclear tests in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Lee's admission that he provided the PRC with this classified information about nuclear testing using miniaturized fusion explosions came in the course of the same 1997 adversarial FBI interviews that yielded his admission of passing submarine detection research to the PRC. Lee's delivery of the miniature nuclear testing information to the PRC occurred in 1985, while he was employed as a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Lee said that during a lecture in the PRC he answered questions and drew diagrams about hohlraum construction. In addition, Lee is believed to have provided the PRC with information about inertial confinement lasers that are used to replicate the coupling between the primary and secondary in a thermonuclear weapon.
Lee was formally charged with one count of "gathering, transmitting or losing defense information," in violation of Section 793 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, and one count of providing false statements to a U.S. government agency, in violation of Section 1001, Title 18. On December 8, 1997, Lee pled guilty to willfully passing classified U.S. defense information to PRC scientists during his 1985 visit to the PRC. Lee also pled guilty to falsifying reports of contact with PRC nationals in 1997.
Lee was sentenced to 12 months in a halfway house, a $20,000 fine and 3,000 hours of community service.12
The Select Committee judges that, between 1985 and 1997, Lee may have provided the PRC with more classified thermonuclear weapons-related information than he has admitted.
The PRC apparently co-opted Lee by appealing to his ego, his ethnicity, and his sense of self-importance as a scientist.
Ron's Note: Classic recruitment technique.
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And then a description of the DOE Counter-Intelligence Program (if you can call it that):
The FBI reportedly has sent several agents to the Department of Energy in the last 10 years to try to improve the counterintelligence program, but has repeatedly been unsuccessful. A significant problem has been the lack of counterintelligence professionals, and a bureaucracy that "buried" them and left them without access to senior management or the Secretary of Energy. The Department of Energy's new Counterintelligence Director now has direct access to the Secretary.
After traveling to the laboratories and interviewing counterintelligence officials, the Department of Energy's new Counterintelligence Director reported in November 1998:
The counterintelligence program at DOE [the Department of Energy] does not even meet minimal standards ... there is not a counterintelligence [program], nor has there been one at DOE [the Department of Energy] for many, many years.
The Department of Energy's counterintelligence program requires additional training, funding, and accountability, according to this counterintelligence official.
At present, the Department of Energy's background investigations are conducted by an Office of Personnel Management contractor. The new Director's opinion is that the present background investigations are "totally inadequate" and "do [not] do us any good whatsoever."
Ron's Note: These OPM investigations oftentimes don't even require in depth criminal records and their is currently a MAJOR backlog of security investigations pending for ALL agencies, DOD, CIA, DOE... etc.
Another problem area is that the Department of Energy's counterintelligence process presently does not have any mechanism for identifying or reviewing the thousands of foreign visitors and workers at the U.S. national weapons laboratories. On one occasion reviewed by the Select Committee, for example, scientists from a U.S. National Laboratory met foreign counterparts in a Holiday Inn in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in order to circumvent their laboratory's security procedures.
Ron's notes: Obviously these individuals didn't want to provide "contact reports" to the Chief of CoIntel
One responsibility of the Department of Energy's new counterintelligence program will be to find out who visits the laboratories, including those from sensitive countries, what they work on while they visit, and whether their access is restricted to protect classified information. Mechanisms have been recommended to identify visitors and fully vet them. The Department of Energy will attempt to improve the database used for background checks.
Classified information has been placed on unclassified networks, with no system for either detection or reliable prevention. There are no intrusion detection devices to determine whether hackers have attacked the Department of Energy's computer network. According to damage assessments reviewed by the Select Committee, however, attacks on the computers at the U.S. national weapons laboratories are a serious problem. E-mail is also a threat: the U.S. national weapons laboratories cannot track who is communicating with whom. For example, over 250,000 unmonitored e-mails are sent out of the Sandia National Laboratory alone each week.
In the year 2000, the Department of Energy will concentrate on increasing its analytical and investigative capabilities. Until at least the year 2000, the Department of Energy's counterintelligence program will not be adequate.
The five U.S. National Laboratories (Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Sandia, and Pacific Northwest) are the primary focus of the counterintelligence plan. The Department of Energy is hiring senior counterintelligence experts who will report directly to the Directors of these laboratories.
Many of the specific recommendations in the Presidential Decision Directive are not new, and similar changes have been attempted unsuccessfully before.
house.gov
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As for Wen Ho Lee and his unreported travels in the PRC, that information was provided in a briefing I caught on C-span delivered by Sen. Fred Thompson and Joseph Lieberman. There may be a written transcript somewhere, but I don't where.
So there is your proof that under Vrooman's watch, Peter Lee admission that he provided classified information to the PRC.
The fact that Vrooman and his counter-intel program at Los Alamos were considered WOEFULLY inadequate and that he and his CI counterparts lacked appropriate training is provided by the FBI report.
One bit of background information... There has ALWAYS been a rivalty and conflict in the intelligence community between "operators" and counter-intelligence personnel. CI folks are derogatorily referred to as "buddy f**kers" and absolutely despised by the "operators" who believe CI security measures prevent their being able to perform their collection missions.
Operators seldom think about obtrusive and unwieldy security protocols if it gets in the way of what they are trying to achieve.
Now I can't say that I know Vrooman character, but being a former CIA operations spook, I'll betcha he was more interested in seeing what he could collect from those visiting Chinese, than he was about protecting our information.
He might have even been engaged in playing around with what we call an offensive counter-intelligence operation in an attempt to spread deliberate disinformation.
Who knows? But we do know that one of the scientists under his wing was engaged in espionage (by his own admission), and that should have "rang his bell" that maybe he should be demanding greater security measures be enacted.
That's why I opine that Vrooman is trying to cover his own @ss by proclaiming that Wen Ho Lee was a scapegoat. If WHL is guilty, then that would make scientist #2 that he failed to catch.
Pretty damning evidence.
Regards,
Ron |
