An unreleased portion of a classified Justice Department report suggests the FBI's probe of Taiwanese-born nuclear scientist Lee Wen-ho (李文和) was more seriously bungled than officials have previously disclosed, The Washington Post reported.
Referring to a 166-page chapter it obtained, the paper said in yesterday's editions that it paints a picture of inept agents making amateurish mistakes and ignoring orders to consider other suspects.
Part of a larger report on the Lee investigation, the Post said the chapter outlines a succession of blunders, misjudgments and faulty assumptions by the FBI that contributed to a shoddy investigation of the former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist, who was suspected of giving nuclear secrets to China.
FBI supervisors in Washington compounded the problem by failing to correct the mistakes or to keep the investigation on track, the report said.
The chapter says FBI Director Louis Freeh was not kept informed of the case's shortcomings, including problems with the investigation in New Mexico and disagreements among government experts over the seriousness of the suspected security loss.
"This investigation was a paradigm of how not to manage and work an important counterintelligence case," says the report, written by federal prosecutor Randy Bellows.
If Lee was a spy, Bellows concludes, the FBI let him get away. If he was not, the bureau blew repeated opportunities to consider other options -- including the possibility that nuclear weapons secrets were not obtained by the Chinese in the first place.
Originally charged with 59 felony counts, Lee pleaded guilty last September to one felony charge of mishandling classified information. He was not charged with espionage and has repeatedly denied giving information to China.
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