G'day all - Larry, I was about to post about the same topic. As many of you may still remember, I was rather vocal in defense of Lee's innocence until proven guilty. Now, it seems that unless Lee steps up the plate somehow, he is not be able to wash away the mounting evidence against him [see exhibit A]
Having said that, Larry, while I am reversing myself [regarding Lee's situation] now, I do not think I was wrong to concern with the possible rise of McCarthyism before we have the facts. Mind you, the infamous Unamerican subcommittee in the 50s probably did prevent some instances of espionage, but it did so with an kill-1st-and-question-later attitude. It was further exacerbated by others with their private agenda or susceptible to emotional appeal [let's face it, even you got so caught up that you have decided to abandon a rational approach and begin the dehumanisation process by calling this person a sob. Maybe I am overly sensitive, but I can still remember how we use words like 'commie' and 'gook' to make someone less than human.] Therefore, I do not think the concern was unwarranted. OTOH, if this article had been published when the news first broke, then it would have been more difficult not to call into doubt of Lee's situation.
best, Bosco
Exhibit A
mercurycenter.com
Posted at 12:41 a.m. PDT Wednesday, April 28, 1999
Bomb secrets placed at risk
BY JAMES RISEN
AND JEFF GERTH
New York Times
WASHINGTON -- A scientist suspected of spying for China improperly transferred huge amounts of secret data from a computer system at the Los Alamos laboratory, compromising virtually every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal, government and lab officials say.
The data -- millions of lines of computer code that approximate how this country's nuclear warheads work -- was downloaded from a computer system at the government's New Mexico 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. Lee, a U.S. citizen who was born in Taiwan, transferred most of the secret data in 1994 and 1995, officials said. Lee, 59, has not been charged with any crime.
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.
U.S. 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.
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 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 April 10, officials said. Lee is believed to be still living in Los Alamos.
Focus of FBI probe In 1996, Lee became the focus of an FBI investigation into a separate case into what U.S. officials 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.
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 March 8
Lee was fired by the Energy Department for security violations March 8. His attorney, Mark Holscher of Los Angeles, did not return a phone 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, Clinton told Richardson to ''get to the bottom of it,'' Richardson recalled in an interview Tuesday.
Earlier in March, before being briefed by Richardson, Clinton said he had not been told of any evidence of espionage during his administration.
In response to the new evidence and with Clinton's support, Richardson temporarily 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. Changes were made at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
''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.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chair 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.''
There were varying assessments of the gravity of the security breach. One official familiar with the new evidence said, ''This is much, much, much worse than the W-88 case.''
But an Energy Department official said that because it remained unclear whether China actually obtained the data, the case at this point 'is serious but not of the scope of the W-88.''
The fact that the huge data transfers were not detected until the past few weeks has sparked outrage among officials who wonder why computer use by a scientist already under suspicion as a spy was not being closely watched by Los Alamos or the FBI.
An internal investigation at the Energy Department into why Lee retained access to American nuclear secrets while he was a spy suspect was begun a month ago and is nearing completion. It is likely to prompt disciplinary action against some lab and Energy Department officials, according to a senior Energy Department official.
FBI officials have told Congress that Lee and his wife, Sylvia, had prior relationships with the bureau. In the early 1980s, Lee volunteered information to the bureau, but officials would not provide details. Sylvia Lee, who worked at the lab as a secretary, provided the bureau with information on foreign visitors to Los Alamos from about 1987 to 1992, but her information was not considered valuable.
Clinton denies blame Until now, Clinton and his aides have portrayed Chinese nuclear espionage as a problem that occurred during previous administrations.
Amid the furor over the Clinton administration's handling of the earlier theft of the W-88 data from Los Alamos, the White House has stressed that the espionage occurred in the 1980s, long before Clinton took office.
But the new evidence raises the stakes of the congressional probes now under way into how the Los Alamos case was handled after the W-88 theft was first detected in 1995.
The information improperly transferred by Lee included what Los Alamos officials call the ''legacy'' codes. According to John Browne, director of Los Alamos, the legacy codes consist of computer data used to design nuclear weapons, analyze nuclear test results and evaluate weapons materials and the safety characteristics of America's nuclear warheads.
''They are codes that integrate our best understanding of the processes that go on in a nuclear weapon,'' Browne said in an interview.
The legacy codes can be used to help design nuclear weapons through computer simulation, and so are valuable on their own. But they become more valuable when combined with specific performance data, which would then enable someone to generate a computer simulation of American warhead designs.
Officials said Lee transferred both the legacy codes and the input data for specific U.S. warheads that go with the legacy codes. The codes and performance data provide what a Los Alamos scientist described as a ''rough approximation'' of the physical processes that occur in a nuclear weapon.
Ray E. Kidder, a nuclear weapons physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said the combined data was equivalent to a scientific blueprint.
''If you've got the source code and the input data, you can reverse-engineer the thing and have a complete plan for the nuclear explosive part of the weapon,'' Kidder said.
The FBI has told Congress that it believes that the new information of computer transfers is the strongest evidence they have against Lee, officials said. The New York Times delayed publication of this article for one day at the request of the FBI, which said the latest disclosure could impede its inquiry. |
