Prosecutors have announced a 59-count indictment against computer scientist Lee Wen-ho (
Under suspicion as a spy for China for the past several years, Lee was arrested and charged Friday with unlawfully gathering and retaining defense secrets with the intent "to secure an advantage to a foreign nation."
He was not, however, charged with passing nuclear secrets to China or any other country.
PHOTO: AP
The prosecutors claim that Lee compromised US security by moving nuclear secrets from secure computers to portable computer tapes.
Seven of 10 high-volume tapes Lee allegedly filled full of nuclear computer codes at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are still missing, officials said. Three tapes were recovered.
"The mishandling of classified information alleged in this indictment has, in the government's view, resulted in the serious damage to important national interests," US Attorney John Kelly said.
The indictment charged Lee with violations of the federal Espionage Act, including tampering, altering and concealing classified information, and violations of the Atomic Energy Act, including removing secret weapons files from the Los Alamos computers.
If convicted, Lee, 59, could face up to life in prison and a US$250,000 fine, officials said.
Workers at Los Alamos lab about 145km from Albuquerque were mostly tight-lipped about the indictment and the lab itself declined comment.
But two of Lee's former colleagues jumped to his defense. "It's not like he smuggled plutonium out in his lunch pail," said Mark Tilden, a research scientist in the laboratory's physics division. "This is something that would basically put [author] Tom Clancy to sleep."
Bryan Kashiwa, an engineer who was collaborating with Lee on a project when Lee was fired in March, said it appeared Lee had been singled out as the target of the investigation. "I thoroughly believe that he is an honest guy, that he has acted in what he felt was an appropriate manner," Kashiwa said.
In Beijing, Chinese government offices were closed for the weekend and there was no immediate reaction to Lee's arrest. China has repeatedly denied allegations that it stole US nuclear weapons secrets or other high-tech military technologies, and Lee has denied spying for China.
The indictment said that Lee, working in 1993 and 1994 in a Los Alamos division dealing with "the most sensitive nuclear data and information possessed by the United States," assembled 19 files containing secret data relating to atomic weapon research, design, construction and testing.
He then transferred the information to an unsecure computer and downloaded files to nine portable computer tapes, the indictment said. Lee made a 10th portable computer tape with current nuclear weapons design codes and other information necessary to compare computer-generated, calculated results with actual test data, the court papers said.
Lee has acknowledged the transfers of "legacy codes" that provide a history of nuclear weapons development from a highly secure Los Alamos' computer system to his less-secure personal office computer. But he has maintained that he had put the codes into his office computer as a backup to safeguard against a computer crash.
"Scientists, engineers and employees at Los Alamos National Laboratory are entrusted with some of the most sensitive assets that this country has to offer," said David Kitchen, special agent in charge of the Albuquerque FBI office. "After an extensive investigation, the FBI has extensive information to suggest that Dr Lee has violated that trust."
The Taiwan-born scientist, who is a naturalized US citizen, appeared before a federal magistrate in Albuquerque on Friday and was being held without bond. The magistrate scheduled a hearing tomorrow to consider a motion to detain Lee, who was taken into custody at his home outside Los Alamos.
A senior government official in Washington said the government hoped Lee, facing the severity of the charges could be persuaded to disclose what happened to the missing computer tapes. Investigators have asked Lee's attorney about the tapes but received no response, said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The law firm representing Lee accused the Justice Department of mishandling the case.
Lee's firing fed a growing controversy in Washington over alleged Chinese spying at the Energy Department's nuclear weapons labs, specifically at Los Alamos.
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