Wen Ho Lee Denied Bail
By staff and wire reports

More than 10 months after being fired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and still facing no charges that directly accuse him of having given nuclear secrets to China, scientist Wen Ho Lee pleaded not guilty Monday to violating the federal Espionage and Atomic Energy acts.

U.S. Magistrate Don Svet denied bail, stating that Lee has too much knowledge of nuclear weapons information vital to national security. Lee, said the judge, presented a “clear and present danger” to society.

A date for his trial has not been set. Lee family attorney Brian Sun said there will be an immediate appeal of the no-bail decision.

“Obviously, he’s stunned by all of these developments,” Sun commented, “but he’s in good spirits. He understands we have a fight ahead of us.”

Speaking of the legal battle ahead, Sun added, “We’re not going to be intimidated into a plea or anything. The government made a number of charges that called for life imprisonment. ... We think for that kind of conduct, we think that is blatant over-reaching, given the fact they have acknowledged they don’t have any evidence” that information Lee handled fell into unauthorized hands.

While the government is prosecuting Lee for security violations, it has not been able to prove that Lee gave specific secrets to China or any other country, sources told the Associated Press. Lee has acknowledged that he transferred “legacy codes” -- which provide a history of nuclear weapons development -- from a highly secure Los Alamos computer system to his less-secure personal office computer. He maintains that he put the codes into his office computer as a backup against a computer crash.

The decision to charge Lee came days ago after a White House meeting. The Los Alamos scientist was arrested Friday at his home after a grand jury issued a 59-count felony indictment that charges him with tampering, altering and concealing classified information, as well as with removing secret weapons files from the Los Alamos computers. If convicted, Lee, 59, could face up to life in prison and a $250,000 fine, officials said.

In a statement released through the Wen Ho Lee Defense Fund, attorney Mark Holscher argued that the charges are “groundless,” and that the government’s reaction is unjustified. Lee voluntarily surrendered his passport and voluntarily let the authorities know about his travel plans beyond the Albuquerque area in the past nine months, added the attorney.

Cecilia Chang, chair of the defense fund and a longtime friend of Lee’s, castigated the government’s actions in an e-mail sent to supporters this week.

“This is probably the equivalent of the Rodney King case in the African American community!” she exclaimed. “Now that the judge has denied bail, we’re going to have to work harder to collect money for Dr. Lee’s defense fund.”

Lee lost his pension when he was fired March 8. His defense attorneys have been working pro bono, and only $12,000 has been collected within a month to help defend him.

That could change as Asian Americans rally to Lee’s side. The Committee of 100, a group of prominent Chinese Americans, is working with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, and luminaries including former presidential Race Commissioner Angela Oh and former U.S. Rep. Norman Mineta to issue a joint statement in response to Lee’s indictment and his denial of bail.

“No one is trying to determine the guilt or innocence of Dr. Lee,” Oh said. “Wen Ho Lee happens to be an Asian American who got into a situation that we all find to be deeply disturbing, but our concern is the bashing that may go on when people who sit in Congress for example, have the attention of the nation, and they paint a broad brush over all Asian America.

“Our concern is that people still don’t distinguish China or Chinese from Chinese Americans, nor do they have the ability...to see that an act of an individual is not the act of the entire people.”

Former UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien, who was passed over in favor of Bill Richardson for the Energy Secretary’s post last year, said he thought the scandal surrounding Lee was even worse than 1996’s “Donorgate,” which left many Asian Americans feeling as if all of them were tainted.

“We need a unified front on this issue,” Tien said. “Many Asian American scientists and engineers work in defense-related and Silicon Valley activities, but now there is a cloud of doubt being cast over them.”

Law enforcement officials maintain that what Lee did was criminal. FBI officials say agents have developed fresh evidence that warrants a continued look at Lee, including, they say, that he failed at least one lie detector test.

In addition, 7 of 10 high-volume tapes Lee is accused of filling with nuclear computer codes are still missing, officials said. Three tapes were recovered. At Lee’s hearing Monday, Holscher and attorney John Cline said the seven tapes had been destroyed, but did not specify how, when or by whom.

“Scientists, engineers and employees at Los Alamos National Laboratory are entrusted with some of the most sensitive assets that this country has to offer,” said David Kitchen, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Albuquerque. He added that the agency “has extensive information to suggest that Dr. Lee has violated that trust.”

Sources told the Associated Press about a sting operation in which an agent posed as a Chinese citizen and offered Lee help if he ever got in trouble. Although Lee and his wife promptly reported the incident, which occurred some months ago, the FBI concluded that he had not fully divulged everything that happened between him and the undercover agent.

At about the same time, however, the FBI had doubts that Lee had leaked information about the W-88 warhead, according to the Associated Press. After one of Lee’s superiors disclosed that as many as 250 workers besides the scientist had access to the information that China is said to have taken, the FBI broadened its investigation to focus more heavily on other suspects and locations.

Sam Chu Lin, Jason Ma and the Associated Press contributed to this report.