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SECURITY RISKS
During a March 19, 1999, press conference, President Clinton stated: "I tell you that there has been no espionage at the labs since I have been President. I can tell you that no one has reported to me that they suspect such a thing has occurred."1 He lied. "The espionage case of Peter Lee, as well as several others, was detailed in a November 1998 report sent to the White House, under their orders."2 Peter Lee’s family was originally from China. They moved to Taiwan to escape Communism, and then immigrated to the United States. Lee reportedly graduated from the California Institute of Technology in 1975, having earned a Ph.D. in Aeronautics.3 After several years of working as a physicist at Lawrence Livermore, Lee joined the Los Alamos Lab in 1985. A Chinese visitor to the lab had invited an American delegation to visit China; Lee was reportedly brought along to act as a translator. On January 9, 1985, "Lee met with top Chinese nuclear scientists, where he twice divulged secrets about his laser work and ‘discussed problems the United States was having in its nuclear weapons testing simulation program.’"4 Lee’s "divulgence" was no casual slip of the tongue. Lee willingly provided sensitive information to a fellow scientist in his Beijing hotel room. The following day, "Lee was picked up at his hotel and driven to another hotel to meet a group of Chinese scientists. He answered their questions for two hours, drawing diagrams and providing specific mathematical and experimental results related to laser fusion research."5 Shortly thereafter, intelligence officials began investigating him. Despite the fact that the transferred information would be declassified in 1993, his conveyance of this information in 1985 could still be considered espionage.6 He left Los Alamos in 1991 for a job with TRW, Inc. The Pentagon, in conjunction with the British government, contracted with TRW, Inc. to design a submarine tracking and detection system. The Pentagon had been developing this project for almost 20 years for Naval use.7 When he applied for another position within Los Alamos a few short years later, intelligence officials advised against rehiring him. His application was turned down.8 Nevertheless, that did not prevent him from causing further damage to the United States. "In the spring of 1997, Lee made a three-week trip to China as a paid guest of China's Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, which handles the design of China's nuclear weapons."9 On May 11, 1997, while in Beijing, Lee gave a two-hour lecture on the submarine tracking technology being developed by TRW, Inc. This lecture was not authorized by anyone at TRW, Inc. Moreover, Lee told his supervisors it was a "pleasure" trip.10 In July of 1997, counterintelligence officials notified Sandy Berger about the breach. The FBI intervened in October, 1997.11 While Federal Prosecutors wanted to pursue charges of espionage, Naval officials, fearing that the sensitive technology would be further compromised through testimony, did not. Further, the Justice Department was also against pressing charges.12 Prosecutors eventually filed charges in a United States District Court in California.13 Ultimately, Lee pled guilty to filing a false document and to divulging classified secrets. On March 26, 1998, U.S. District Court Judge Terry J. Hatter sentenced Lee to 1 year in a halfway house, 3,000 hours of community service, and a $20,000 fine.14
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