Los Alamos scientist downloaded top-secret data into his own non-classified computer, officials say

Los Alamos scientist downloaded top-secret data into his own non-classified computer, officials say

By H. JOSEF HEBERT

WASHINGTON (April 28, 1999 10:07 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - For more than a decade, a scientist suspected of spying for China transferred top-secret nuclear weapons data from a highly restricted computer system to his own where the material could be widely accessible, government officials said Wednesday.

Most of the transfers - including millions of lines of computer codes used to design and evaluate weapons - took place in 1994-95, though some have been traced back to as early as 1983, the officials said.

The manipulation of computer data was uncovered only last month after Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, had been fired, the officials said.

Lee has been the target of an FBI investigation at Los Alamos since 1996 after authorities became concerned that critical information about one of the country's most modern warheads, the W-88, might have been obtained by the Chinese in the 1980s.

One government official, who spoke on condition of not being identified, said there was no evidence that the data found in Lee's unclassified computer had been seen by anyone from outside the laboratory but that such access also could not be ruled out.

Investigators in early March, after Lee had been dismissed, found that over the years the scientist had downloaded massive amounts of top-secret data into his less secure computer, officials said.

The data included computer codes used in weapons design and analysis of nuclear tests. The codes are especially important in the government's assessment of weapons performance without actual nuclear testing, but could also be helpful to someone trying to copy U.S. warhead design, nuclear weapons experts said.

Lee's job at Los Alamos for some time involved work on the Energy Department's program of simulating nuclear tests, according to government sources.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who informed President Clinton of the discovery of the extensive file transfers in a briefing on March 31, said Wednesday that new security measures installed this month will prevent such transfers in the future.

"Classified nuclear weapons computer codes at Los Alamos were transferred to an unclassified computer system," Richardson confirmed in a statement, calling it "an egregious security breach."

"We believe we have now made it impossible to transfer information from a classified to an unclassified computer system" through both a physical firewall and other restrictions, said Richardson. "I believe we are cyber-security safe."

After evidence of improper transfers of weapons data was found last month, Richardson ordered all computer work at three government weapons labs, including Los Alamos, halted for two weeks until new security procedures could be put in place.

The file transfers were first reported Wednesday in The New York Times.

The discovery of top-secret data in Lee's less secure computer is expected to raise new questions about why the Taiwan-born scientist was allowed to keep his security clearance and allowed continued access to some of the lab's most sensitive weapons data long after he became a suspect in a major espionage investigation.

An internal Energy Department investigation has indicated both communications and judgment failures, one official said Wednesday. He said some officials in both the department and the Los Alamos lab may face disciplinary action.

Although Lee had been the prime target of an FBI espionage investigation since early 1996, Los Alamos officials did not closely monitor his use of computers, including the lab's top-secret system, and he kept his security clearance until late last year.

One official said that the FBI could not even get access to Lee's computer until after he had been fired on March 8 because the Justice Department would not give approval for such a search.

A government official said Wednesday that there was difficulty arranging a search of Lee's computer. When a search was first proposed in 1996, both FBI and Justice Department lawyers concluded that a warrant would be needed because the computers did not carry warnings that they were subject to search and Los Alamos employees had never been put on notice that the government might search their computers at work, this official said. Without such warnings the fruits of a search might not have been admissible in court.

Unfortunately, agents didn't have enough hard evidence to obtain a warrant, the official said, but they did get Lee's permission to do the search this spring, when the transfer of the files was discovered. Until this spring, the government's investigation of Lee was done clandestinely, so that he would not be aware of it, but finally a decision was made to confront him.

By coincidence, Lee's wife worked as a secretary at Los Alamos and from 1985 to 1991 was an unpaid FBI informant who wrote profiles of Chinese visitors to the lab for the bureau, the official said. She was dropped when the work no longer seemed useful. The official said investigators have never seen any evidence to suggest that she was a double agent working for the Chinese during the time she served as an FBI informant.