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Scientist tranfers secret data from government computer
The New York Times
Date: 04/28/99 11:15
WASHINGTON -- A scientist suspected of spying for China improperly transferred huge amounts of secret data from a computer system at a government laboratory, compromising virtually every nuclear weapon in the United States arsenal, government and lab officials say.
The data -- millions of lines of computer code that approximate how this country's atomic warheads work -- were downloaded from a computer system at the Los Alamos, N.M., weapons lab that is open only to those with top-level security clearances, according to the officials.
The scientist, Wen Ho Lee, then transferred the files to a widely accessible computer network at the lab, where they were stored under other file names, the officials said.
The Taiwan-born scientist transferred most of the secret data in 1994 and 1995, officials said.
American experts said the data would be useful to any nuclear power trying to replicate this country's atomic designs. But one American scientist said the codes and accompanying data were not, by themselves, sufficient to produce an exact copy of an American weapon.
American officials said there was evidence that the files were accessed by someone after they were placed in the unclassified network. Other evidence suggests that this was done by a person who improperly used a password, the officials said.
The investigation is continuing, and officials do not know whether the data transferred by Lee was obtained by another country.
In 1996, Lee became the focus of an FBI investigation into a separate case, what American official believe was China's theft from Los Alamos of design data for America's most advanced warhead, the W-88. That theft apparently took place in the 1980s. China has denied stealing the material.
Now officials fear that a much broader array of nuclear test data may have been moved to Beijing in the 1990s. Lee has not been charged with any crime.
Federal investigators did not discover the evidence of huge file transfers until last month, when they examined Lee's office computer in connection with their investigation of the earlier theft at Los Alamos, a sprawling lab complex about 35 miles outside Santa Fe.
They then found evidence that Lee, who held one of the government's highest security clearances, had been transferring enormous files involving millions of lines of secret computer code, officials said.
Although Lee had been under investigation in the W-88 case for nearly three years, Los Alamos officials failed to monitor his computer use and let him retain his access to nuclear secrets until late 1998.
Lee was fired by the Energy Department for security violations on March 8. His attorney, Mark Holscher of Los Angeles, did not return a telephone call. In the past, Holscher has denied any wrongdoing by his client.
President Clinton was first told of the new evidence by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on March 31. During a subsequent meeting at the White House residence in early April, the president told Richardson to "get to the bottom of it," Richardson recalled in an interview Tuesday.
Earlier in March, before being briefed by Richardson, the president said he had not been told of any evidence of espionage during his administration.
In response to the new evidence and with the president's support, Richardson shut down the classified computer systems at Los Alamos and two other major nuclear weapons laboratories this month. He ordered changes in the computer security procedures to make it more difficult to move nuclear secrets out of the classified networks.
"These Wen Ho Lee transgressions cannot occur any more," Richardson said in the interview.
Congressional leaders were told of the new evidence in classified briefings last week.
The huge scale of the security breach has shocked some officials, and has prompted a new sense of urgency in the FBI to solve the Los Alamos spy case. The bureau is now pouring additional agents and resources into the investigation. The evidence of transfers from his office computer provided the basis for an FBI search of Lee's home on April 10, officials said. Lee is believed to be still living in Los Alamos.
Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview that the briefings on the new evidence "confirmed my worst fears that China's espionage is ongoing, it's deep and we can't wish it away."
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