From the WSJ Opinion Archives
ON THE RECORD
The FBI 'Profiles' Wen Ho Lee
An excerpt from the joint statement for the record by Attorney General Janet Reno and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Louis J. Freeh on the investigation and prosecution of Wen Ho Lee, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sept. 26, 2000. The full statement is available at www.fbi.gov/pressrm/congress/congress00/wenholee.htm. A related editorial appears here.
Dr. Lee has been known to the FBI since 1982. At the time, he worked in Los Alamos in X Division. His name surfaced when he contacted a suspected agent of a foreign power who was the subject of an ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation. He offered to help that person identify who had brought him to the attention of the authorities. When Dr. Lee was first confronted by the FBI in November 1983, he denied having contacted the individual. In fact, he denied even knowing the person. Only after Dr. Lee learned that the FBI had indisputable proof that the contact took place did he finally admit it. After providing an explanation of the reasons for the contact, he agreed to cooperate with the FBI regarding the individual being investigated for passing classified information. After he provided limited cooperation, the FBI ultimately closed that first inquiry into Dr. Lee because nothing else developed.
A decade later, in 1994, Dr. Lee again came under investigation because of his actions. Dr. Lee met with a senior foreign government nuclear weapons designer who was part of an officially approved delegation visiting the United States. The circumstances of the encounter clearly indicated that they knew one another, even though Dr. Lee had never reported meeting this weapons designer on prior trips abroad, as he was required by the conditions of his employment to do. As in the 1982 case, Dr. Lee did not reveal his relationship with this individual. . . .
The FBI's investigation into this 1994 matter was still ongoing when Dr. Lee emerged as a potential subject in the 1996 Administrative Inquiry by the Department of Energy (DOE) into the possible compromise of information related to the W-88 nuclear warhead. . . . Ultimately it was closed in favor of the larger W-88 investigation that began to be focused on Dr. Lee.
On May 26, 1996, DOE's Administrative Inquiry identified possible potential candidates for the leak but concluded that "Wen Ho Lee appears to have opportunity, means and motivation" to have compromised the W-88 information. The FBI opened an investigation of Dr. Lee in May 1996 based on this predicate. Clearly, the FBI should have conducted an additional, independent investigation to verify what was reflected in the Administrative Inquiry. The same should have been done to eliminate other suspects and to validate the conclusion that Dr. Lee was the most likely individual to have compromised the W-88 information. Nevertheless, when his name surfaced in the DOE investigation, Dr. Lee already had a history with the FBI. . . . Given those circumstances, the FBI began an investigation of the person who DOE concluded to be the most probable candidate for the W-88 leak. Additional classified information has been provided to the Committees about this episode.
As of December 1998, the FBI had not been able to verify that Dr. Lee was responsible for the possible compromise of the W-88 information. However, in subsequent months the investigation led to the discovery of the secret nuclear weapons information that Dr. Lee had been accumulating over a period of years from Los Alamos, as explained in greater detail below, in the section dealing with the criminal investigation.
After opening the investigation into Dr. Lee's possible involvement in the W-88 matter, the FBI sought to develop sufficient indicia of probable cause for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to conduct surveillance of Dr. Lee. The initial FISA application was submitted in 1997 but was not presented to the Court. The Department of Justice and the FBI had a good faith disagreement as to whether the application alleged sufficient probable cause to support a FISA warrant. The FBI's subsequent efforts to enhance probable cause, which admittedly could and should have been more aggressive, were ultimately unsuccessful. Additional classified information about this portion of the investigation has been provided to the Committees.
In March 1998, Dr. Lee traveled to Taiwan. In later investigation it was determined he consulted with the Los Alamos computer "Help Desk" to determine if he could access the secure Los Alamos computer system from overseas. He was told he could not.
In December 1998, Dr. Lee again traveled to Taiwan for three weeks. He returned on December 21, 1998. DOE, which oversees Los Alamos, conducted a polygraph examination of Dr. Lee with the concurrence of the FBI on December 23, 1998. To avoid alerting Dr. Lee of the FBI's interest in him, DOE characterized the examination as a standard, post-travel polygraph, combined with his five-year reinvestigation for security clearance purposes.
The DOE polygraph examination, done by a contract polygrapher, focused on whether Dr. Lee had any unauthorized contacts or shared any classified information with unauthorized persons. During the polygraph, Dr. Lee admitted for the first time that he had been approached in 1988 by PRC nuclear weapons scientists, one of whom became the head of the PRC nuclear weapons development program, in an effort to obtain classified information about U.S. nuclear weapons. At the conclusion of the DOE contract polygraph on December 23, 1998, FBI agents on the scene were told that Dr. Lee had passed the examination. This was an opinion that FBI and polygraph experts from another agency later concluded was mistaken.
Immediately after the December 23 polygraph, based on admissions by Dr. Lee about unreported contacts that he had had during foreign travel, Los Alamos officials informed him that for the next 30 days his access to the section of X Division where he worked would be denied. He was instructed to report to unsecure space in T Division. Dr. Lee's section within X Division was one of the most secure portions of Los Alamos and a location where research into nuclear weapons design takes place. Despite being informed that his access was removed, and that he could no longer enter X Division space without an escort, Dr. Lee improperly attempted, without success, to enter his section within X Division five different times on the evening of December 23, 1998. He then tried again on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1998, at 3:30 in the morning. In addition to those six attempted entries, Dr. Lee made 12 other attempts to enter X Division between Christmas Eve, 1998 and February 10, 1999. All such attempts were improper.
Records also indicate that when Dr. Lee officially reported to T Division on January 4, 1999, after the Christmas holiday, he sought assistance from the Los Alamos computer "Help Desk" to revive his X Division secure computing privileges. In making this request, Dr. Lee did not disclose that DOE officials had removed his access to the Division X server. Being unaware that Dr. Lee's access to Division X's server had been blocked for security reasons, the computer Help Desk reactivated his account. Once he regained access to his account, Dr. Lee deleted files from his X Division server.
In the meantime, after being informed on December 23, 1998 that Dr. Lee had passed the DOE polygraph, the Albuquerque Division of the FBI arranged an interview of Dr. Lee in preparation for closing out the pending FBI investigation of him on the W-88 matter. The FBI conducted this interview on January 17, 1999. Throughout the four-hour interview, Dr. Lee sought to appear cooperative and forthcoming. He provided new and additional details about contacts he had with foreign scientists, one of whom was related to information causing the FBI's 1994 investigation. Dr. Lee denied any involvement with the loss of the W-88 information. On January 21, 1999, at the request of the FBI, Dr. Lee signed, under oath, a statement that memorialized this interview. At that point, Albuquerque FBI, believing that Dr. Lee had passed the polygraph and was cooperating, advised FBI Headquarters that it had serious doubts that Dr. Lee was the appropriate suspect in the W-88 investigation. Consideration was given to closing the case.
The FBI had requested and later received from DOE copies of the charts from Dr. Lee's polygraph examination of December 23, 1998. These were submitted to FBI Headquarters for review by the polygraph experts who do quality control for the FBI. The Polygraph Unit at FBI Headquarters did not receive the copies until January 28, 1999, because the FBI did not aggressively pursue receipt of the charts from DOE. After completing the internal review of the polygraph results on February 2, 1999, the FBI polygraphers who conducted a "blind" review concluded that Dr. Lee's response to the question whether he had ever committed espionage against the United States was at best inconclusive. Review by experts at another agency of government reached a similar conclusion. The FBI shared the FBI results with DOE immediately.
As a result of this development, Dr. Lee was asked to submit to a polygraph administered by the FBI. On February 10, 1999, the FBI conducted a polygraph examination of Dr. Lee, after advising him of his rights. During this examination, the FBI asked Dr. Lee whether he had provided "these two sensitive [nuclear weapon] codes" to any unauthorized person and whether he had deliberately obtained any W-88 documents. The examiner found Dr. Lee's responses to be inconclusive. After discussion between the examiner and Dr. Lee about exactly what was being asked, the examiner rephrased the questions by asking Dr. Lee: "Have you ever given any of those two codes to an unauthorized person?" Answer: "No." "Have you ever provided W-88 information to any unauthorized person?" Answer: "No." The polygraph examiner concluded that Dr. Lee's responses to these two questions were deceptive. In a post-polygraph interview, Dr. Lee admitted helping nuclear weapons scientists from the People's Republic of China to solve a mathematical problem that they had previously been unable to solve. Dr. Lee conceded that the solution he had provided could easily be used in developing nuclear weapons, but he stated that he had not given up any classified information.
On March 5, 1999, the FBI interviewed Dr. Lee again. During this interview, he consented to a search of his X Division and T Division offices at Los Alamos. On March 7, 1999, the FBI questioned Dr. Lee one last time in an attempt to secure information about his involvement in the compromise of the W-88 information. Unfortunately, by that time, the investigation concerning Dr. Lee had been leaked to the press. This effectively eliminated any possibility of the normal, structured counterintelligence interview by specifically trained agents fitting for this circumstance. The interview was rushed, an inappropriate level of aggressiveness was applied, and the interview was unsuccessful. Dr. Lee did not admit or discuss what is now known to have happened. He gave no indication of having made any tapes or having done anything improper or illegal.
One approach that was taken during that interview was not consistent with the conduct expected of agents during an interview. Specifically, Dr. Lee was reminded of the fate of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for espionage. Confrontational interviews often call for tough statements by investigators, but that implication was inappropriate. Again, Dr. Lee ended the interview without providing any useful information and without giving any indication of the actions to which he has now pled guilty. Meanwhile, however, the search of Dr. Lee's office at Los Alamos was underway. That search disclosed evidence that led eventually to his indictment.
The search of Dr. Lee's X Division office produced a notebook containing a one-page, computer-generated document that listed all of the files on a directory that Dr. Lee had created within the computer Common File System (CFS) at Los Alamos. An X Division physicist examined this list of files (given the name "kf1" by Dr. Lee) and determined that the files listed in Dr. Lee's "kf1" directory were contained in the open or unclassified part of the CFS. The physicist then confirmed that the file descriptions appeared to refer to highly classified information concerning thermonuclear weapons design and testing--information that under no circumstances should have been in an unclassified directory.
This discovery caused Los Alamos scientists to search the X Division portion of the Common File System. The physicist who reviewed the list found in Dr. Lee's notebook logged on to the system and tried to access the files listed in Dr. Lee's "kf1" directory. He discovered that the majority of the files had recently been deleted. Examination of all of Dr. Lee's directories showed that Dr. Lee had deleted more than 360 files and two complete directories between January 20, 1999 (three days after being interviewed by the FBI) and February 10, 1999 (the day he was polygraphed by the FBI). The Government was able to determine that the deleted files contained highly classified nuclear weapons data.
As an indication of Dr. Lee's criminal intent, and his awareness of the classified nature of the files, the following circumstances, among others, are relevant:
Dr. Lee started improperly manipulating and moving the files in question from the classified to the unclassified system in 1993. He did not begin to delete those files until January 20, 1999. They remained on the unclassified system for as long as six years before Dr. Lee began deleting them. The deletions started three days after the FBI's January 17 interview.
In addition, two days after the deletions began, Dr. Lee contacted the "Help Desk" at Los Alamos and asked for help in deleting files. Specifically, he was concerned that despite his best deletion efforts, the files were "not going away." The help desk explained to Dr. Lee that this was a safeguard built into the system in case a file was accidentally deleted. This safeguard ensured that a backup copy of the deleted file remained in the system for a period of days. Dr. Lee inquired whether there was a way to delete these backup copies, and after being instructed how to do so, he deleted the backup files that had been automatically created by the system as a result of his deleting the original files.
On February 1, 1999, Dr. Lee again contacted the Help Desk for assistance because he was connecting to the Los Alamos computer system from home but he kept getting disconnected.
Finally, Dr. Lee deleted files again on February 10, 1999, the day he failed the FBI polygraph examination. On that day, Dr. Lee deleted 310 of the 470 files that he had improperly moved from the classified to the unclassified system. . . .
By the end of March 1999, experts at Los Alamos had retrieved the entire contents of the "kf1" files and confirmed that Dr. Lee had indeed moved highly sensitive nuclear weapons information from the classified to the unclassified side of the Los Alamos computer system. As exhaustive computer forensic efforts later established, effecting these transfers required numerous deliberate steps. There was no accidental or inadvertent method for completing the transfers.
