U.S. Said Near Decision On Los Alamos Indictment

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Friday November 5 1:48 AM ET 

U.S. Said Near Decision On Los Alamos Indictment  

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States could seek a lesser 
indictment against Wen Ho Lee, the physicist accused last year of 
passing nuclear secrets to China, as early as next week, the 
Washington Post reported Friday.  

The Post quoted senior administration officials as saying that the 
government has decided not to prosecute Lee for espionage, since 
there is no evidence that he deliberately turned over nuclear secrets 
to China.  

However, the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque, John J. Kelly, may seek an 
indictment for gross negligence in handling classified information, 
the Post said.  

The federal government was in the final stages of determining what 
classified information could be presented in court against Lee, the 
newspaper said.  

Justice Department prosecutors have been wrestling for months over 
whether to seek an indictment against Lee, a U.S. citizen from Taiwan 
who was fired in March for alleged security violations at Los Alamos 
National Laboratory in New Mexico, where he had worked for almost 20 
years.  

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson was briefed last week on the types 
of classified information that might have to be made public as 
evidence in a trial, the Post reported.  

``Energy's security office has been working with other federal 
officials to make sure that if we do declassify information, that 
there is no harm to national security,'' spokeswoman Brook Anderson 
told the paper. ``The actual declassification decision has not yet 
been made.''  

The FBI focused on Lee three years ago as the main suspect in China's 
alleged theft of secrets about the W-88, the most advanced warhead in 
the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He was fired in March after he admitted 
failing to report some contacts with foreigners and after a polygraph 
test indicated he gave deceptive answers to questions about 
espionage.  

A subsequent search showed he had downloaded top secret ''legacy 
codes'' -- essentially, mathematical models of nuclear explosions -- 
from the classified computer system at Los Alamos to his unclassified 
office computer.  

Lee has denied giving classified information to China and has 
maintained that the legacy codes on his office computer were 
protected by at least three passwords, making unauthorized access all 
but impossible.  

China has also denied the charges.  

About a dozen suspects were initially considered by investigators 
before the list was narrowed to focus on Lee. Lee and some critics of 
the investigation say he was unfairly singled out because of his 
ethnicity.  

A congressional report earlier this year said China had obtained 
classified U.S. information about seven nuclear warheads and the 
neutron bomb over two decades. 

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/scperle

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