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US Energy Department Misleads FBI in Wen Ho Lee Case: Report
The US Department of Energy (DOE) misled the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the case involving nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, a government report said Monday.
The report, while accusing the DOE of making "inaccurate representations" to the FBI at the very start, blamed the FBI for accepting the department's assessment without proper investigation.
The Energy Department's inquiry in 1996 "was a deeply flawed product whose shortcomings went unrecognized and unaddressed due to the FBI's own inadequate investigation," said the report.
"To say that DOE misled the FBI and to say that DOE improperly focused its conclusion only on Wen Ho Lee is only to describe half the problem," said the report.
"The other half was the FBI's unfortunate and unwarranted acceptance of DOE's description" of Chinese nuclear capabilities and the FBI's "unhesitating and unquestioning acceptance of DOE's identification of Lee as 'the most logical suspect,'" said the report.
The report also said that Wen Ho Lee was not targeted because of his race.
Lee, a U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, was fired from his job at the U.S. Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory in March 1999 amid the spy allegations.
After the spy allegations collapsed, Lee, 61, was arrested and charged in December 1999 on 59 counts of mishandling classified nuclear data.
The U.S. government dropped all remaining charges after Lee pleaded guilty last year to only one count of downloading nuclear secrets to a nonsecure computer.
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