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

191 (...continued)
Times, September 14, 2000.
CRS-47
At the beginning of 2001, as the Clinton Administration neared its end, John
Deutch reportedly negotiated an agreement with the Justice Department to plead
guilty to a misdemeanor. However, on January 20, 2001, President Clinton pardoned
Deutch, preempting the plea agreement that he had signed the night before and
surprising Special Prosecutor Paul Coffey and DCI George Tenet. Deutch reportedly
faced a $5,000 fine and no prison time. The chairmen of the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees, Representative Porter Goss and Senator Richard Shelby,
criticized the pardon for sending the wrong message. Senator Shelby also lamented
that “Deutch essentially walked away from what is one of the most egregious cases
of mishandling of classified information that I have ever seen short of espionage.” 192
In an August 2001 report, the Senate Intelligence Committee said that it began
its own inquiry into Deutch’s case in February 2000. The report said that “the
Committee confirmed that Mr. Deutch’s unclassified computers contained summaries
of sensitive U.S. policy discussions, references to numerous classified intelligence
relationships with foreign entities, highly classified memoranda to the President and
documents imported from classified systems.” It stated that Deutch displayed a
“reckless disregard for the most basic security practices required of thousands of
government employees throughout the CIA and other agencies of the Intelligence
Community.” 193
Notra Trulock. The resignation of Notra Trulock, DOE’s primary
investigator, in August 1999 was another complication in the investigation. As the
Washington Post wrote, “Mr. Trulock may well have stated the overall problem in
terms more dramatic than the evidence clearly supported. And his single-mindedness
with respect to Los Alamos and Mr. Lee in particular — which is alleged by some
detractors to have been related to Mr. Lee’s ethnicity — also may have closed off
significant investigative leads.” 194 In turn, Trulock blamed the FBI for mishandling
and delaying the W88 case. 195
Racial Profiling and Selective Prosecution. There were concerns that,
in rightfully protecting national security, racial profiling and selective prosecution
were used in law-enforcement and that Lee, as an American entitled to a presumption
of innocence, was unfairly targeted as the prime suspect in a narrow investigation and
in media reports because of his Chinese ethnicity (even though he was born in
192 David Vise and Vernon Loeb, “Deutch May Plead Guilty to Misdemeanor,” Washington
Post, January 19, 2001; David Abel, “Ex-CIA Chief Deutch Gets Presidential Pardon,”
Boston Globe, January 21, 2001; Bill Miller and Walter Pincus, “Deutch Had Signed Plea
Agreement, Sources Say,” Washington Post, January 24, 2001; Vernon Loeb, “Senate
Committee Questions Clinton’s Pardon of Deutch,” Washington Post, February 16, 2001.
193 U.S. Senate, “Special Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence, United States
Senate, January 6, 1999 to December 15, 2000,” Report 107-51, August 3, 2001.
194 “Mr. Trulock’s Resignation,” Washington Post, August 27, 1999.
195 CBS, “60 Minutes,” December 17, 2000.