WEN HO LEE BAIL HEARING
December 29 ,1999
pbs.org
A three-day hearing concluded today on whether Wen Ho Lee will remain in jail awaiting trial. He's the fired government scientist accused of mishandling nuclear secrets at the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico. Prosecutors and defense lawyers are awaiting the judge's ruling in Albuquerque. Lee has pleaded innocent to all 59 counts against him. He's been denied bail once but appealed that earlier ruling.
Margaret Warner talks with Walter Pincus of the Washington Post about the story.
MARGARET WARNER: For three days, government prosecutors and lawyers for indicted nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee have been sparring in an Albuquerque courtroom over whether Lee should be held in jail while he awaits trial. He was arrested December 10 on charges of mishandling nuclear secrets at the Los Alamos labs where he worked.
Though the case arose from a probe into whether China had acquired U.S. nuclear secrets, Lee was not charged with espionage; that is, with disclosing classified information to any foreign government. But he is accused of downloading highly classified nuclear weapons data onto unsecure computers and copying that data onto portable computer tapes, several of which have disappeared. After Lee pleaded not guilty, his request for bail was denied. This week, a federal judge had been hearing his appeal on that issue. Earlier this evening, the judge again defied bail for lee. For more on the hearing and the result, we turn to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post. Welcome, Walter.
WALTER PINCUS, Washington Post: Good evening.
MARGARET WARNER: Good evening. The news has just moved across the wires saying that the judge cites possible "enormous harm to the country if the fired scientist, Wen Ho Lee, were set free on bail awaiting trial." What is the harm that the government sees in letting him be free awaiting trial and that the judge apparently agrees with?
WALTER PINCUS: Well, he's downloaded, as you said, tapes with -- that in effect each one provides sort of a road map in how to build a thermonuclear weapon -- some of our older designs, but also some of our most modern. And he meticulously did that. And he has claimed that he destroyed seven tapes that are missing. But what the prosecution has convinced this judge, as they did in earlier magistrate, is that Wen Ho Lee has no proof. He's not offered any proof that these tapes are destroyed. Therefore it's possible that they're still out there somewhere, and by some means he could, if he were free, either send a signal or open up the opportunity for somebody else to find those tapes and get them and take them out of the country.
MARGARET WARNER: Tell us a little more about the hearing this week. As we said, it's a second bail hearing. What kind of evidence was the government presenting, what kind of witnesses to demonstrate the need for keeping him in prison?
WALTER PINCUS: Well, they essentially brought forward two different types of witnesses. One were a group of ranking scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, people who design the nuclear weapons that we have today in our stockpile. And they described what are known as codes that were part of the data that Lee downloaded from the secure computer system at Los Alamos to his unsecured system. In order to do that, you had to in effect lie to the machine that the data you're downloading, which Lee had access to, was unclassified.
MARGARET WARNER: In other words, he reclassified it himself?
WALTER PINCUS: He in effect reclassified to the machine or certified to the machine that the data he was downloading was unclassified when, in fact, it was classified. He then went a step further, and in the case of a group of tapes, he put together originally ten, but three have been recovered. He put together a group of tapes, each of which provided certain data that would be necessary for somebody who wanted to build a nuclear weapon. And he downloaded those to what are in effect video cassette-type tapes. And seven of those are missing. And of those seven, all are considered extremely important if somebody wanted to use them to build a nuclear weapon. It's sort of a road map to how to build a weapon.
MARGARET WARNER: OK. Now what did Lee's lawyer say to counter this impression, this portrait that was presented by the government? How did they explain all this in a benign way?
WALTER PINCUS: Well, they were explaining that the government has had an investigation going for more than four years. More recently 60 agents were working full-time on this particular downloading, which they only discovered last May. But the government's been unable to prove that anybody has seen the tapes other than Mr. Lee, and they've been unable to prove he showed them or gave them to anybody else. They also assert without any proof, as far as I know, that lee has destroyed these seven tapes.
MARGARET WARNER: But Lee, I gather, of course, did not testify. Yet they have testimony he's given to FBI agents?
WALTER PINCUS: It's an FBI agent who was present at a number of interviews of Mr. Lee where there were proffers made, and again, the scientists. Then they had a computer expert who talked in great detail of exactly what Mr. Lee had done and how he had done it. And it wasn't really haphazard. It wasn't done so he could get material to work on his home -- on his computer that's easier than a secure computer. Nor was it just collecting work that he had done over the years, because part of the downloading was done in '93 and '94, 1993 and 1994, when he was under threat of perhaps losing his job and was looking for a job elsewhere.
MARGARET WARNER: Now yesterday, according to the stories both in the Post and the Times and elsewhere, the judge seemed to be trying the look for another alternative, like couldn't we just restrict his communication or home monitoring? Was there another alternative? Why was the government opposed to that alternative?
WALTER PINCUS: Well, they've explored an electronic sort of monitoring of him and an agreement that he would be accompanied by the FBI. Wherever he went. I think what the government did was the make a very strong case that because this information was so important, that Lee, if he wanted to, could by sending a signal, maybe through one of his children, through his wife, that where they're located or what to do, assuming he's got these tapes somewhere else. It's something that they couldn't prove, but because the data is considered so important, I think the judge was convinced that there was no sort of 24-hour monitoring that the FBI. Could have on Mr. Lee that would totally prevent him from communicating with a third party if he wanted to do it.
MARGARET WARNER: Finally, just looking at this 59-count indictment, even to a lay person like myself, it looks very detailed about the Los Alamos computer system. These two hearings have talked more about it. They talk about the software. They talk about what's in what program. How concerned are security officials, nuclear officials that this very trial, just this bail hearing is itself offering a road map to knowledgeable people about how the Los Alamos computer system works?
WALTER PINCUS: Well, I think they have outlined in rough form how the computer system works. It's quite another thing to try to get into it. One of the things that's happened in the last year since this story first broke is that Los Alamos and the other nuclear labs have tightened up their security enormously. So it's very difficult to get into even the unclassified section, no less the classified section. Nobody could today do what Wen Ho Lee did in '93 and '97.
MARGARET WARNER: I see. Well, all right. Well, Walter, thanks very much.
WALTER PINCUS: You're welcome.
======Scientist Settlement
Government agencies and news organizations arrived at a settlement to pay former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee for damages in leaked reports that he was allegedly acting as a spy. Jeffrey Brown talks about the case with an attorney who specializes in first amendment media cases.======= |
