China: Suspected Acquisition of U.S. Nuclear Weapon Secrets

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hearing the documents emerged, dismissed those doubts about Lee being the prime
suspect, saying that FBI agents were “thrown off” course by the 1998 polygraph. 140
By November 1999, the FBI reportedly obtained new evidence that China
acquired information about U.S. nuclear weapons from a facility that assembles those
weapons. The evidence apparently stemmed from errors in the PRC intelligence
document said to contain a description of the W88 warhead. The errors were then
traced to one of the “integrators” of the weapons, possibly including Sandia National
Lab, Lockheed Martin Corporation (which runs Sandia), and the Navy. 141
On May 16, 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno reportedly was briefed on the
classified, four-volume report of the Justice Department’s internal review of its
handling of the original investigation. The review by federal prosecutor Randy
Bellows reportedly said that the FBI mishandled the espionage probe, in part because
of internal turf wars, by not acting sooner, not committing enough resources sooner,
and prematurely focusing on Wen Ho Lee as the only prime suspect. The report was
said to state that the government could have discovered Lee’s downloading of
computer files years earlier, since he had signed a privacy waiver and a court order
was not required. 142 FBI agents acknowledged multiple mistakes in the investigation
of Wen Ho Lee. 143 New details about Bellows’ report emerged in August 2001, when
the Washington Post said that the report contained extensive criticisms of the FBI,
its field office in Albuquerque, DOE, and the Justice Department’s OIPR. Bellows
found that DOE made “misleading representations” about Wen Ho Lee in a 1995
report that prompted the FBI’s investigation and that the FBI spent “years
investigating the wrong crime.” 144
In October 2000, it was reported that the investigation had shifted significantly
to examine the Pentagon and its facilities and contractors, after intelligence agencies
concluded that PRC espionage acquired more classified U.S. missile technology,
including that on the heat shield, than nuclear weapon secrets. Difficulties in
translating 13,000 pages of secret PRC documents resulted in this delayed finding.
The Pentagon then decided to hire 450 counter-intelligence experts. 145
140 Loeb, Vernon, “Spy Probe Raised Doubts,” Washington Post, March 7, 2000.
141 Loeb, Vernon and Walter Pincus, “FBI Widens Chinese Espionage Probe,” Washington
Post, November 19, 1999.
142 Vise, David A. and Vernon Loeb, “Justice Study Faults FBI in Spy Case,” Washington
Post, May 19, 2000.
143 Cohen P. Laurie and David S. Cloud, “How Federal Agents Bungled the Spy Case
Against Lee,” Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2000.
144 Eggen, Dan and Ellen Nakashima, “U.S. Probe of Nuclear Scientist Assailed,”
Washington Post, August 14, 2001; Dan Eggen, “Report Details More FBI Blunders in Wen
Ho Lee Probe,” Washington Post, August 27, 2001.
145 Pincus, Walter and Vernon Loeb, “China Spy Probe Shifts to Missiles,” Washington
Post, October 19, 2000; “Pentagon to Add 450 Experts to Protect Defense Secrets,” October
27, 2000.