House Of Cards

You have to wonder about our noble and wonderful staff at the Justice Department. It was a little over a year ago when everything hit the fan at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico, and the man of the hour (as in suspect) was Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-born naturalized U.S. citizen. What was going on at Los Alamos was that security was being exposed for the joke that it was and had become.

It turns out that the Chinese were stealing nuclear secrets of all kinds from the United States, the world’s sole remaining superpower and preparing itself for a step into the big leagues – who knows, maybe even a first strike capability against the United States, which they reportedly now have as far as Honolulu and Los Angeles are concerned. In fact, they threatened to fire nukes and make the West Coast light up in the dark during a high-stakes game of chicken a few years back.

For three years, the FBI ran an investigation into allegations of spying at the lab. As all this was going on, Congress was doing a report on both weapons acquisition and of spying on the part of the Chinese. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA) chaired this committee, and the Cox Report was damning indeed. Congressman Norman Dicks (D-WA) had spoken to Richardson and told him that the report was not at all flattering and that Richardson should do something. The report had no evidence whatsoever that Wen Ho Lee had passed on secrets of any kind to China, but Richardson, who had vice-presidential aspirations, was under pressure to do something, so it was decided that they would make an example out of Lee, and that they did.

In March of 1999, Richardson ordered the University of California to fire Lee from the lab, where he had worked for nearly 20 years. The official reason for the dismissal was a series of minor security breaches in addition to a failure to report contacts with Chinese scientists. A week later, the FBI and officers from the lab examined Lee’s computers and discovered that quite a bit of information – about 430,000 pages worth, and that he had done it from a secure computer to an unsecure desktop and portable tapes.

Eventually, Lee was indicted and subsequently arrested on a 59-count indictment that carried a possible sentence of life imprisonment under the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. This act was designed for the purpose of dealing with government employees and consultants who exposed nuclear secrets in which there was no espionage evident. The judge ordered Lee to be held without bail. All of Lee’s visits with his family had to be supervised by an FBI agent and his family could only speak to him in English. Most if not all of his time was spent in solitary confinement. This was done in an effort to squeeze out of him any information they thought he might be holding.

As seems to be the case with the government when they are too quick to make a point, mistakes in the case are made of monumental proportions, and in this case, they were. In the first portion of Lee’s confinement, they had him in his cell 23 hours a day, with his legs shackled for the one hour a day he was out exercising. As time passed, they began to allow him reading materials, longer exercise periods and more visits from family.

As time passed, the government came to the conclusion that their case had significant holes in it, much like some of Steven Spielberg. An FBI agent had given inaccurate testimony among other things and there were internal FBI memos critical of the lead agent on the case. Those internal memos still have not been made public, and in all likelihood, they never will be in light f the deal the government cut this past week with Lee. In addition, FBI Director Louis Freeh had fears that if the government failed to win a conviction against Lee, they would never get the full story of the unauthorized transfer of data to the portable tapes, seven of which still remain missing.

Whether Lee violated the law as far as unauthorized passage of classified information may never be known. In exchange for having 58 of the 59 counts dropped, Lee plead guilty to one felony count and was given credit for time served and set free with an apology from the judge in the case. Lee was also ordered to sit down with the government and explain to them what all he did in regards to the tapes. In addition, Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Freeh have directed internal investigations to see whether government attorneys or FBI agents dropped the ball on this case. Also to consider if and how many people there were that were looking to advance their careers at the expense of Lee’s civil rights and rights of due process.

When all the dust settles from this case, and it will, the government will have some explaining to do. Whether they explain themselves to the public is at best doubtful – it will in all likelihood remain classified in the name of national security. Hopefully, if there is something to be learned, it is that security should be taken more seriously. When I was in the military, we took security very seriously and violations could get someone in very hot water. Most of that which is classified is done so for a good reason and is done for the safety and benefit of the American people.

The house of cards on which the government’s case against Wen Ho Lee collapsed because the feds didn’t have their ducks lined beaks to tail and because they were in too much of a hurry to do this investigation by the numbers. This is what often happens when investigators develop a case of tunnel vision and it happened here.

While it is doubtful, let us hope they can learn better the next time.

You can e-mail your comments to Timothy at trollins@idirect.com.

Copyright © 2000 by Timothy Rollins.
All Rights Reserved.

-Published with permission