Edition: U.S. / Global


Published: September 14, 2000

The former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee pleaded guilty today to a single charge of mishandling nuclear secrets and left court a free man with an apology from a federal judge, who accused administration officials of abusing their power and misleading him into thinking that Dr. Lee posed a threat to national security.

This emotional scene marked the virtual abandonment of the government's case against Dr. Lee, who had spent nine months in prison awaiting a trial that will now never take place.

Dr. Lee, 60, was embraced in the courtroom by a throng of family members and supporters. But before that celebration, Judge James A. Parker of Federal District Court stunned a suddenly hushed courtroom by implicitly singling out Attorney General Janet Reno, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and senior officials in the Clinton White House for what he said was a questionable indictment, for misleading him about Dr. Lee's supposedly deceptive behavior and then for ignoring his urgings that the government ease the ''demeaning, unnecessarily punitive conditions'' under which Dr. Lee was being held. [Transcript, Page A25.]

It was a moment of enormous weight, since it is exceptional for a federal judge to give such an excoriating tongue-lashing to high-level federal officials.

Dr. Lee, a slight, soft-spoken man, was gleeful after the hearing and did not discuss the judge's remarks. ''For the next few days I'm going fishing,'' he said.

Judge Parker, a Reagan appointee known for his measured manner and unusual patience, said he felt so deeply troubled by the government's consistent pattern of abusive actions that he expressed to Dr. Lee, a man who minutes before had admitted to a felony, his dismay that the government had unleashed the full force of its powers so arrogantly.

''I have no authority to speak on behalf of the executive branch, the president, the vice president, the attorney general, or the secretary of the department of energy,'' the judge said, but ''as a member of the third branch of the United States government, the judiciary, the United States courts, I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner you were held in custody by the executive branch.''

At another point, the judge added that he felt he had improperly denied bail to Dr. Lee. ''I tell you with great sadness that I feel I was led astray last December by the executive branch of our government through its Department of Justice, by its Federal Bureau of Investigation and by its United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico, who held office at that time.''

The United States attorney who brought the indictment was John Kelly, who has since resigned and is running for Congress.

Judge Parker said the ''top decisionmakers'' handling the case''have not embarrassed me alone. They have embarrassed our entire nation.''

The judge said he had been perplexed because an F.B.I. agent had recanted crucial testimony about Dr. Lee's behavior, and because prosecutors had fought furiously to keep Dr. Lee incarcerated claiming that he could cause the loss of ''hundreds of millions of lives'' -- and then simply dropped its case.

The F.B.I. agent admitted he had been wrong when he claimed Dr. Lee lied to a colleague to gain access to his computer for the downloading.

A central element in the prosecution's case had been a claim that Dr. Lee downloaded the nuclear secrets to enhance his prospects of getting a job at foreign scientific institutes, but the agent admitted that the letters Dr. Lee had written to those institutes had never been sent.

After a tearful, private reunion with his family in a conference room, where he and his family members sobbed, exchanged high-fives and shared their first unsupervised moments of warmth since Dr. Lee was indicted and then arrested on Dec. 10, he stood under a broiling desert sun in front of the courthouse and thanked his supporters.

Chung Lee, his son, expressed mixed emotions over seeing his father finally set free. ''It was thrilling, but at the same time I became very sad thinking about the last year, with my dad shackled.''

Under the plea deal, Dr. Lee agreed to tell prosecutors why he downloaded the trove of nuclear secrets, exactly what he did with the information and whether anyone else had seen it. He also conceded that the government had been justified in investigating the downloading.

Prosecutors insisted afterward that this cooperation was what they had sought all along. ''Justice is the winner today,'' said George Stamboulidis, the lead prosecutor.

Asked about Dr. Lee's terms of confinement, Mr. Stamboulidis said, ''When you steal our nuclear secrets, we're not going to let you communicate with anyone.''

Dr. Lee was never charged with espionage, but had been investigated for at least five years on suspicion that he leaked secrets of a sophisticated nuclear warhead, the W-88, to China. He was fired from his job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in March 1999, and his name -- as well as the government's accusations -- were leaked to news organizations.

The government soon abandoned the concerns about spying because of a lack of evidence, but agents later searched Dr. Lee's home and found evidence that he had improperly downloaded a library of nuclear weapons secrets to an unsecure computer and then to 10 computer tapes.

Seven of those tapes were missing, and Dr. Lee said through his lawyers that they had been destroyed.

Those missing tapes became the focus of the 59-count indictment accusing him of mishandling classified information to benefit a foreign power. They also were the government's justification for jailing Dr. Lee, keeping him in solitary confinement, shackled during his brief moments of exercise time, and giving him only one hour a week of time with his family, all with an agent at his side.

Judge Parker criticized the government for rejecting Dr. Lee's efforts to reach an agreement in December, and cited a letter from a defense lawyer seeking to head off an indictment by offering a similar level of cooperation agreed to today.

The lawyer, Mark Holscher, wrote in a Dec. 10 letter offering ''to accept Mr. Kelly's request that we provide him with additional credible and verifiable information which will prove that Dr. Lee is innocent,'' including an agreement for Dr. Lee to take a lie-detector test on his assertions that he destroyed the tapes.

That letter could have been the basis of an agreement, the judge suggested, which would have made the bitterly contested and highly divisive prosecution unnecessary.

Numerous Asian American and civil rights groups took up Dr. Lee's cause, insisting that the scientist, a naturalized citizen born in Taiwan, had been unfairly singled out for prosecution because of his Chinese ancestry. These concerns were buttressed by the claims of some intelligence officials that, since Chinese spies focus on Asian Americans in their recruitment efforts, it was appropriate to place Asian Americans under special scrutiny.

Judge Parker expressed dismay today that the defense's efforts to determine why the government had singled out Dr. Lee, and whether it used racial profiling, would be dropped along with the case. Previously, the judge had ordered the government to hand over by Friday thousands of pages of classified documents about how it investigated Dr. Lee and others suspected of mishandling secrets, so he could determine the validity of defense claims that Dr. Lee was a victim of selective prosecution.

''What I believe remains unanswered,'' the judge said, ''is the question: What was the government's motive in insisting on your being jailed pretrial under extraordinarily onerous conditions of confinement until today, when the executive branch agrees that you may be set free essentially unrestricted? This makes no sense to me.''

Norman Bay, the United States attorney here, and himself a Chinese American, rejected the judge's criticisms, saying he was ''particularly proud of the Department of Justice.''

''This case is not about race,'' Mr. Bay added. ''It is about the actions of a man who downloaded a huge amount of national security data.''

But, as several people noted, Judge Parker had not focused on race in his withering remarks today, just the government's tactics and misleading actions.

Mr. Stamboulidis attempted to refute the judge's remarks by suggesting that he simply did not understand the national security issues.

''He is not responsible for our national security,'' said Mr. Stamboulidis. ''It is not his charge.''

Already stung by criticism following reports on Monday that prosecutors were dropping virtually their case against Mr. Lee, Justice Department officials were further embarrassed by the judge's remarks.

Attorney General Janet Reno and F.B.I. Director Louis J. Freeh were unapologetic about the actions of prosecutors and agents.

Ms. Reno said in a statement that the guilty plea would allow the government to determine, by interviewing Mr. Lee, what happened to the missing computer tapes.

''Of equal importance,'' Ms. Reno said, ''the trial court's recent ruling regarding classified evidence suggested that a trial of Dr. Lee might have required the government to divulge nuclear secrets at trial. The plea agreement avoids that harm to our national security.''

Some experts at Los Alamos have disputed the importance of records that Mr. Lee copied, but Mr. Freeh said that much of the information was highly sensitive. ''While some of the information was not classified,'' his statement read, ''the government was prepared to prove that much of it was highly classified nuclear weapons information.''

Other senior law enforcement officials said they were not surprised at the judge's denunciation of their efforts to keep Mr. Lee locked up, acknowledging that prosecutors had failed to demonstrate why he merited such treatment.

Some law enforcement officials had said they hoped imprisoning Mr. Lee would pressure him into pleading guilty and possibly admitting more serious crimes. Even so, they conceded, that strategy was no justification for confining him.

Photos: Dr. Wen Ho Lee left the courthouse in Albuquerque yesterday with his lawyers, John Kline, rear, and Mark Holscher, and his daughter Alberta. (Associated Press)(pg. A1); Wen Ho Lee pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of mishandling nuclear secrets and was set free with an apology from a federal district judge. ''For the next few days I'm going fishing,'' Dr. Lee said. (Associated Press)(pg. A25)