CIA warned FBI on Lee probe, classified part of report reveals
Published 9:00 pm Friday, August 31, 2001
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Then-FBI director Louis Freeh supported pulling the security clearance of Wen Ho Lee as early as fall 1997 because of suspicions the nuclear scientist was spying, but his advice went unheeded, secret sections of a government report show.
The unreleased chapters also divulge that Freeh and other FBI officials received a CIA analysis in September 1997 that challenged the underpinnings of the Lee case.
Instead of reassessing the stalled investigation, the FBI "fumbled an extraordinary opportunity" to recognize three years earlier than it ultimately did that the espionage inquiry was off the mark, according to the chapters reviewed by The Associated Press.
"This (CIA) report could have and should have caused the FBI to re-examine the predicate for the entire Wen Ho Lee investigation," wrote Randy Bellows, the prosecutor who conducted the review of the government’s handling of the Lee matter.
FBI assistant director John Collingwood said Freeh was focused on other issues — guarding against additional losses of nuclear secrets — at the time the CIA assessment was offered in 1997.
"Because the investigation was stalled, Freeh was focused on preventing even greater damage to the weapons program and was fully engaged in helping the Energy Department establish a more vigorous counterintelligence effort," Collingwood said.
He said the bureau recognizes now it should have discovered flaws in the investigation much earlier, and has made significant changes — including those recommended by Bellows.
The Associated Press reviewed parts of the report that have not been publicly released because they contain classified information or sensitive investigative information, such as the CIA assessment.
The still-secret chapters reveal that Freeh in 1997 told the Energy Department that it should withdraw Lee’s security clearance as a scientist at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico, given the suspicions he was a spy. However, Energy Department officials failed to heed the advice.
At a meeting in the fall of 1997, Freeh told the Energy Department to take "right off the table" any concerns that pulling Lee’s clearance might hurt the criminal investigation, according to notes of the meeting.
Freeh recognized that "Wen Ho Lee’s continuing access to sensitive nuclear secrets was a problem that needed fixing immediately," Bellows wrote.
Lee, in fact, kept his clearance for months until investigators discovered he had transferred many of America’s prized weapons secrets to unsecure computers.
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