SNATCHING AMERICA'S WEAPONS SECRETS
Documents Provide New Details About How the Chinese Did It
May 12, 1999
By Jim Krane
NEW YORK (APBNews.com) -- A major chapter in the Chinese espionage scandal that has enveloped the White House, Congress and the Pentagon began in a quiet meeting of two scientists in a Beijing hotel room in January 1985.
One of the scientists, physicist Peter Lee, was a Chinese-American researcher on U.S. defense projects at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore lab in California.
The other, a scientist with China's nuclear weapons agency, Chen Nengkuan, wanted Lee to share his secret knowledge of lasers and nuclear weapons simulations. Chen pleaded with Lee to help China, saying Lee's native land was a "poor country."
So Lee obliged. According to federal court documents related to Lee's 1997 prosecution on espionage-related charges, Chen told Lee that he could answer questions about classified U.S. technology without speaking, just by nodding his head.
Related Documents:
Government statements from the Peter Lee prosecution:
GIF PDF (3.32 MB)
Peter Lee's sentencing memorandum:
GIF PDF (7.16 MB)
Turning over laser technology secrets
By the meeting's end, Lee had given Chen American laser technology secrets, according to an FBI agent's description of a confession Lee gave after failing a polygraph test in 1997.
The next day, Jan. 10, 1985, a Chinese scientist picked Lee up at his hotel in Beijing and drove him to a meeting with a group of Chinese scientists who worked for the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, the agency responsible for the country's nuclear weapons program.
For the next two hours, Lee answered questions and discussed problems with U.S. nuclear weapons testing simulations. He drew scientific diagrams, issued specific numbers regarding U.S. weapons technology and revealed experimental results, the court documents state. Lee also divulged the classified findings of one of his own research papers, written at Livermore.
Among the scientists listening to Lee's surreptitious presentation was Yu Min, described in the court documents as "China's Edward Teller." Teller was a leader among scientists who developed U.S. nuclear weapons.
More giveaways
The 1985 meetings in Beijing weren't Lee's only technology lessons for Chinese scientists. According to court documents and evidence records, Lee met with Chinese scientists in the United States and China and communicated with them by telephone, e-mail and fax.
In 1997, while Lee was working on a classified Pentagon contract with TRW Inc., the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics paid Lee's expenses for a three-week visit to China, where Lee handed out vital radar technology used to track underwater submarines, the documents reveal.
Lee made these visits possible, records show, by falsifying his travel reports for TRW -- required by employees with access to secret technology -- and denying he met or cooperated with Chinese intelligence gatherers.
Slight punishment
But efforts by the FBI to prosecute Lee for his confessed transgressions bore little fruit. According to The New York Times, the U.S. Justice Department and Department of the Navy declined to give prosecutors permission to discuss details of the secret radar technology. Thus, Lee was able to plead guilty to reduced charges in a plea-bargain.
In December 1997, Lee began serving 12 months in a halfway house and three years' probation. He was also ordered to pay a $20,000 fine.
A textbook case of espionage
According to Chinese Intelligence Operations, written by U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Nicholas Eftimiades, Chinese intelligence agencies employ a "time-honored practice" of using Chinese scientists to invite U.S. counterparts to China on "academic exchanges."
Lee's lecture to Chinese scientists appears quite similar to the scenario described in Eftimiades' 1994 book:
"Generally, COSTIND [China's Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense] covers all expenses for visiting scientists and their families. After the scheduled classroom lectures, 'special sessions' are held for the commission's experts."
In addition, Eftimiades wrote, COSTIND sends Chinese scientists to the United States to collect information and identify needed technology or weapons systems.
Highlights from the court documents
The Government's Response to Defendant's Position
The FBI gave Peter Lee two polygraph examinations. After Lee failed the first exam, on Oct. 7, 1997, "defendant confessed to passing classified information to the PRC in 1985." Peter Lee also failed his second polygraph examination, given on Feb. 26, 1998. (pp.4-5)
Gilbert R. Cordova, special agent with the FBI's Los Angeles Division, states: "Two scientific institutions within the PRC [People's Republic of China] in particular are involved in targeting American scientists, inviting them to the PRC, ostensibly for discussions and lectures relating to non-classified subjects, and then attempting to obtain discrete pieces of classified scientific and technical information from visiting American scientists ... the China Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), which is responsible for all aspects of the PRC's nuclear weapons program, and the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM) ... which designs the PRC nuclear weapons arsenal." (p.2)
Cordova states that Lee has been involved in a radar ocean-imaging project with anti-submarine warfare application and has researched nuclear weapons detonation simulations, including experiments involving the use of laser energy in these simulations.
Cordova says that after reviewing Lee's statements to the FBI, his employment records and various forms of surveillance, he has concluded that Lee "has had numerous contacts with representatives of the PRC, which he has failed to report to his employers. These contacts have included countless letters, facsimile communications, e-mail exchanges, telephone calls and personal visits with representatives of the PRC, including PRC nuclear weapons scientists." (p.6)
During his visits to China, one of the scientists Lee came in contact with was Wang Ganchang, whom Cordova says is "considered the 'father' of the PRC nuclear weapons program." (p.6)
Cordova says that in his 1997 China visit, Lee "traveled as a guest of the IAPCM and CAEP, which paid for his expenses while he was in the PRC." When contacted by Cordova later that year, Lee "said that he had paid all his own expenses during his trip to the PRC, and that his trip to the PRC had only been for sightseeing and pleasure."
Cordova refers to e-mail and fax communication between Lee and Guo Hong, in which Lee asks Guo "to provide him with receipts indicating that Peter Hoong-Yee Lee paid for his trip to the PRC, and Peter Hoong-Yee Lee asked that these receipts contain his and his wife's names in English and show that he paid cash." Cordova says that based on his "review of e-mail transmissions and telephone conversations" between Lee and Guo Hong, Lee "did not pay for his hotel or airline travel within the PRC, and the receipts provided are false."
Cordova says that Lee "has had countless contacts with nationals of the PRC, which he has not reported to TRW Inc., despite his obligation to do so in order to maintain his security clearance." Lee "has had countless contacts with PRC scientists in the PRC and in the United States," and noted that "these scientists include several known to be conducting nuclear and laser experiments with military applications at various institutions in the PRC." (p.9)
Cordova notes numerous communications between Lee and Guo Hong, a scientist at the South China Normal University's Institute of Quantum Electronics. Guo Hong was making arrangements for Lee "to meet with various representatives of the IAPCM and CAEP, to include He Xiantu, Du Xiangwan, Wang Ganchang, Chen Nengkuan and Yu Min. These are all high-level, well-known PRC nuclear weapons scientists." (pp.9-10)
In Cordova's statement about Lee's 1997 confession, he describes a videotaped interview that was conducted "immediately following the administration of the polygraph examination." Lee stated that on or about Jan. 10, 1985, "he was picked up at his Beijing hotel by a PRC scientist and driven to another hotel, where a group of PRC scientists were waiting for him in a small conference room." Lee said that "for approximately two hours he answered questions from the group and drew several diagrams for them, including several hohlraum diagrams, specific numbers which describe the hohlraum design and experimental results, and he discussed problems the United States was having in its nuclear weapons testing simulation program."
Cordova says that Lee "identified the scientists in attendance on Jan. 10, 1985, as Chen Nengkuan, Yu Min, Wang Shiji, Tao Zucong, all of CAEP," and three to five others whose names Lee could not remember. Cordova notes that Dale Nielsen Sr., associate director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told the FBI that Yu Min, one of the scientists with whom Lee met, "is considered the 'Edward Teller' of the PRC nuclear weapons program. (Edward Teller is considered the most important contributor to the U.S. thermonuclear bomb effort.) Nielsen said the fact that Yu was part of the discussion indicates the high priority the PRC scientists placed on [Lee's] information and the technical level of the questions the PRC scientists asked." (pp.14-16)
Cordova states that during Lee's 1997 China visit, "he gave a lecture at the [IAPCM] ... and provided to PRC scientists information concerning his work in support of a radar ocean-imaging project." Cordova says that Lee "identified the attendees at this lecture as He Xiantu, Du Xiangwan, Chen Nengkuan, Yu Min, all nuclear weapons scientists with IAPCM or CAEP," and some 25 others whose names Lee could not recall. Lee "said he told his audience that his lecture was on microwave scattering from ocean waves. Someone from the audience questioned [Lee] about its applications to anti-submarine warfare, [and Lee] said he agreed with the questioner that that was its application. ... He said he told the Chinese where to filter data within the graph to enhance the ability to locate the ocean wake of a vessel." (pp.16-17)
Highlights from the defendant's sentencing memorandum
Lee describes his work for the national laboratories and TRW: "in plasma physics, fluid mechanics and microwave scattering from water waves" for TRW from 1973-76; "in laser fusion experiments and diagnostic development" at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1976-84; "on experiments in pulsed power physics and strong-field physics using sub-ps lasers" at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1984-91; and on "microwave ocean-scattering physics" at TRW from 1991 through December 1997. (p.4)
While the government cites the many scientists with whom Lee met, Lee himself describes his last visit as his "1997 travels, while on vacation, in the People's Republic of China." Lee says that he inaccurately filled out a required document describing his visit to China because he was "merely attempting to avoid the often burdensome paperwork and debriefings which accompany the disclosures of foreign contacts when [he] felt that the contacts were both harmless, unrelated to classified matters and often took place during his personal and/or vacation time." (p.5)
Lee says that his 1985 visit to China, in which he shared classified information relating to laser plasma physics, "occurred in a spirit of scientific camaraderie and was not a political act." Lee says that two fellow scientists who have offered statements of support "have both offered views of [me] completely consistent with [my] simple nonpolitical desire to work with and assist other scientists." (p.7)
Although Lee admits that in 1985 he did share information which was deemed classified, he says that "the classified hohlraum research which was disclosed, in fact, at the time it was disclosed, was far from a secret in the international scientific community." Lee quotes supporters as saying that there was "no realistic connection between nuclear weapons" and the research in which Lee was engaged, and finally that "the project's real vitality was its potential to provide energy self-sufficiency to populations in need throughout the world." Finally, Lee notes that this hohlraum information was finally declassified "in approximately 1993 in part because of the views of many who worked closely in the field that there was no need to classify it." (pp.7-8)
In response to FBI Agent Cordova's claim to contact between Lee and Wang Ganchang, Lee's response is the following: "What Agent Cordova has chosen to omit ... is the fact that Wang Ganchang, at the time he first met the defendant in 1980, was some 74 years old, had been out of nuclear weapons research for approximately 10 years and was working in the area of pulse power and excimer lasers (totally unrelated to weaponry) at the time of his acquaintance with the defendant." (p.12)
With respect to information Lee allegedly shared during his 1997 visit to China, "none of this information was classified [and this] has been confirmed ... by Dr. Bruce Lake at TRW, who supervised the project about which Dr. Lee gave his talk." The document continues to state that "following the defendant's post-plea debriefing by Dr. Richard Twogood of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, who formerly headed the radar imaging program, Dr. Twogood informed those present that the information about which Dr. Lee spoke during his 1997 lecture was 'clearly all unclassified' and 'meaningless.'" (p.15)
Erik Storm, Lee's former supervisor at the Lawrence Livermore, suggests that the information Lee revealed during his 1985 visit to China "was already available in the open literature and was declassified five years later." In addition, Storm says, "release of this information would have had NO impact on U.S. national security." He also says that "possession of a Q Clearance (as Dr. Lee had while at LLNL and Los Alamos) does not give automatic access to [classified information relating to] nuclear weapons design and operation and nuclear weapons stockpile information. Access to such data is on a strict need-to-know basis, and Dr. Lee did not have such a need at LLNL or at Los Alamos, and access to such data would have been recorded. Thus, unless LLNL and Los Alamos records show such access, Dr. Lee could not have imparted nuclear weapons sensitive data."
Storm states that Lee's work had to do with the generation of energy and did not have anything to do with technology involved in nuclear weapons.
Storm concludes that "Dr. Lee clearly violated the United States and DOE classification rules if in fact he disclosed [information relating to his work] in 1985. However, if that is all he did, the potential damage and impact to U.S. national security from the nuclear weapons point of view is not just negligible, but zero."
Court documents state Lee was born in 1939 in Chongqing, China. In 1948, Lee's parents, ardent anti-communists, fled to Hong Kong and then Taiwan. Lee was raised in Taiwan, attended college there until moving to Germany to study in 1963. In 1967, Lee migrated to the United States to join his parents, who had just relocated from Taiwan. In 1968, he began studying aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He graduated with a Ph.D. in 1973.
Jim Krane is an APBNews.com editor (jimk@apbnews.com). APBNews.com researcher Tom Martin contributed to this story.
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