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| Government settles case with Wen Ho Lee |
| 2006-06-06 |
| The government and five news organizations agreed Friday to pay former nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee $1.6 million to settle his lawsuit that accused officials of wrongly identifying him as a suspected spy for China. Lee sued the Justice Department and the Energy Department claiming officials violated his privacy rights when they leaked damaging information about him to the press during a 1999 investigation into files allegedly missing from the nuclear research facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Government officials, including then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, publicly named Lee as a target of the probe, and investigators suspected the Taiwan-born U.S. citizen was spying for China. Lee, 66, was indicted on 59 counts of stealing nuclear weapons data from the Los Alamos facility. He was fired from his job, labeled a national security threat and spent nine months in solitary confinement. He was released in 2000 and all but one count was dismissed. He pleaded guilty to mishandling classified computer files, a felony. A federal judge sharply criticized the prosecution's case and President Clinton apologized to Lee for his treatment. Lee now lives near Sacramento, California. After his release from prison, Lee sued the government under the Privacy Act, alleging officials leaked false and incriminating information to several reporters. Rest at link. |
| Posted by:ed |
| #2 Mr. Lee also wanted the names of the people who leaked his information to the reporters but they refused. A judge ordered them to divulge their sources but they still refused and the Judge held them in contempt of court and the fines they would have to pay out of their own pockets would have bankrupted them. A deal was struck by wich the newspapers in question paid Mr. Lee an unspecified ammount of money in return for the Judge lifting the fines from the reporters. The MSM was calling foul all around. I still think the leakers names should be made public. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2006-06-06 11:01 |
| #1 This is a event that will undermine Gov. Bill Richardson's [D-NM] presidential ambitions. Los Alamos was under his authority as head of DoE when these events unfolded. When the media was abuzz with stories of Chinese spying, Mr. Lee became the target of government efforts to show "gentlemen we got to do something to protect our phony baloney jobs". Mr. Clinton's administration had no problem with racial profiling. |
| Posted by: Uloger Whease2177 2006-06-06 08:39 |