Wen Ho Lee, Free, Still Faces Challenges

Sep. 14 -- Wen Ho Lee may finally be free, but his ordeal is far from over.

Though highly educated and a qualified nuclear scientist, and though he has been exonerated of virtually all the charges levied against him in a government investigation into alleged spying of U.S. nuclear secrets for China, he is shadowed by the questions posed over his trustworthiness.

He must now deal with the legacy of months in the public eye, the loss of his job at one of the most prominent research laboratories in the country, and a felony conviction on his record for life.

“This is going to be worse than a returning prisoner of war,” says Phyllis Hedges, an acquaintance of the Lee family and a Los Alamos attorney. “A prisoner of war wouldn’t be in the public eye for so long, and wouldn’t have suffered this volatile trauma.”

Legal Debt, Dim Job Prospects Lee, 60, “can be in real trouble because of his age,” said Kent Dedrick, a former physicist involved with the Wen Ho Lee defense fund, and may find it hard to get a new job.

Lee’s expertise is in a field of physics most applicable to defense interests, but it is unlikely he will get such work with a felony record, several acquaintances said.

His wife is retired, and the couple’s son is in medical school. Their daughter works in the computer field in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lee will also have to deal with millions of dollars of reported debt for legal expenses accrued during his incarceration.

Lee was arrested last December on 59 counts of illegally copying design secrets, amid government allegations that China was spying on the Los Alamos nuclear lab’s weapons designs. He was held for nine months in solitary confinement.

He was never charged with espionage, and the government never presented solid evidence to support all its claims. On Wednesday the scientist pleaded guilty to one felony count of downloading nuclear weapons design secrets to a non-secure computer as part of a plea bargain. The other 58 charges were dropped.

Lee throughout the ordeal fervently denied spying.

U.S. District Judge James Parker in Albuquerque, N.M., sentenced Lee to 278 days — one day less than time served, and apologized for government treatment of Lee (see related story).

Lee will have a number of ways to try to get back what he has lost. But, experts say, he may have a tough time.

Looking at Lawsuits

Lee could sue the prosecution or the state accusing them of maliciously prosecuting him, one expert said.

“He can sue them and say ‘this is the damages you cost me.’ A civil action,” says Alfred P. Rubin, professor of international law at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.

But his guilty plea could also affect any attempt at redress, says Rubin. And the fact that the other counts were dropped also doesn’t mean they were baseless, another expert said.

“Merely dismissing counts doesn’t mean prosecutors believe that they have no foundation,” says Surell Brady, a former Department of Justice staff member and currently a law professor at the University of Maryland.

Under Lee’s plea deal, he could still face lie detector tests, and prosecution under counts he faced previously, if he doesn’t pass the test.

However, Brady says a federal statute provides for attorney’s fees for individuals who believe the government has unreasonably prosecuted them in “vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith.”

Lee could sue on the basis that he was singled out for prosecution, she says, citing the case of former CIA director John Deutsch. A CIA investigation earlier this year showed Deutsch, like Lee, improperly transferred documents containing national security secrets.

But Deutsch was not jailed. Current CIA director George Tenet says Deutsch’s lapse in security had not been comparable to the one Lee had committed.

Still, Brady isn’t optimistic for such a case by Lee: “The current case law does not look on such charges favorably.”

For Lee to make a case of being singled out for prosecution, Brady says, he would have to base a charge of discrimination on race or ethnic origin, and not because Deutsch was a more prominent or important figure.

Many Lee supporters said he was singled out because of his ethnicity. Lee, now American, is from Taiwan. But for Lee to bring these cases would mean more lawyers fees.

Some Hope Though Lee’s supporters fear that his felony record could hamper his further employment, they are staying optimistic.

“There might be people who want to hire him just to show their feelings in the matter,” Dedrick says.

Dedrick says Lee could possibly work in the private sector by applying his expertise in hydrodynamics, the study of how matter flows around other matter, to demolition companies.

“That would mean leaving his home. But I think that would be a rotten change,” he says.

Other Lee supporters say the former scientist may have turned his energies toward writing a math book. “I think he may have spent some of his time in prison working on that,” Hedges says.

Lee’s next door neighbor and one of his strongest advocates, Don Marshall — also a scientist at Los Alamos — said Lee was studying Web design and e-commerce.

Marshall was hopeful for Lee. “He’s basically retired,” he said, noting Lee was allowed to take a percentage of his pension after being fired nine months short of retirement.

“He’s a very smart man with a lot of interest in life,” said Marshall. “He will find something to keep him intellectually occupied.”

According to an unclassified FBI transcript obtained by an advocacy group for Lee, the Los Alamos scientist was threatened with a dramatic change to his lifestyle.

During an interrogation before Lee’s arrest, an FBI agent tried to scare Lee by telling him his life would be turned upside-down, the transcript said.

“You’re going to be an unemployed nuclear scientist with no job and if you get arrested you’ll have no money,” an FBI agent reportedly said to him during questioning.

“[Then] I will open a Chinese restaurant,” Lee replied, perhaps in jest.