Wen Ho Lee

Wen Ho Lee or Li Wenho (born December 21, 1939) is a Taiwanese-American nuclear scientist and a mechanical engineer who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

He created computerized simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of scientific inquiry, as well as for improving the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Wen Ho Lee was born on December 21, 1939, to a Hoklo family in Taiwan during Japanese rule.

He was a young boy in Taiwan when Republic of China (ROC) forces violently suppressed the February 28 Incident of 1947.

Taiwan was placed under martial law; his brother died when he was a conscript and his commanding officers allegedly would not allow him to take medicine.

Lee overcame steep odds.

He had what he describes as a wonderful teacher in the 6th grade who encouraged his intellectual abilities.

Eventually, he made his way to university, where he became interested in fluid dynamics and studied mechanical engineering.

He graduated from Keelung High School in the northern part of the island in 1959, after which he attended National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering in 1963.

In My Country Versus Me, Lee describes life as being harsh.

His father died when Lee was very young.

His mother suffered from asthma and eventually committed suicide so that she would not 'burden' the family.

Lee came to the United States in 1965 to continue his studies in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University.

He received his doctorate in mechanical engineering with specialization in fluid mechanics in 1969 and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1974.

He was employed at industrial and government research firms before he moved to New Mexico in 1978.

A federal grand jury indicted him on charges of stealing secrets about the U.S. nuclear arsenal for the People's Republic of China (PRC) in December 1999.

After federal investigators were unable to prove these initial accusations, the government conducted a separate investigation.

Ultimately it charged Lee only with improper handling of restricted data, one of the original 59 indictment counts, a felony count.

He pleaded guilty as part of a plea settlement.

He filed a civil suit that was settled.

He worked as a scientist in weapons design at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in applied mathematics and fluid dynamics, from that year until 1999.

He created simulation software for nuclear explosions, which were used to gain scientific understanding and help maintain the safety and reliability of the US nuclear weapons arsenal.

Lee was publicly named by United States Department of Energy officials, including Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson, as a suspect in the theft of classified nuclear-related documents from Los Alamos.

Richardson was criticized by the Senate for his handling of the espionage inquiry because he had not testified sooner before Congress.

Richardson was less than truthful in his response by saying that he was waiting to uncover more information before speaking to Congress.

On December 10, 1999, Lee was arrested, indicted on 59 counts, and jailed in solitary confinement without bail for 278 days.

On September 13, 2000, he accepted a plea bargain from the federal government.

Lee was released on time served after the government's case against him could not be proven.

Part of his defense rested on a graymail strategy, which tried to compel prosecutors to release large amounts of classified material related to nuclear weapons.

He was ultimately charged only with one count of mishandling sensitive documents, which did not require pre-trial solitary confinement.

The other 58 counts were dropped.

President Bill Clinton issued a public apology to Lee over his treatment by the federal government during the investigation.

Lee filed a civil lawsuit to gain the names of public officials who had leaked his name to journalists before charges had been filed against him.

It raised issues, similar to those in the Valerie Plame affair, of whether journalists should have to reveal their anonymous sources in a court of law.

In June 2006, Lee received $1.6 million from the federal government and five media organizations as part of a settlement leaking his name to the press before any charges had been filed against him.

Federal judge James A. Parker eventually apologized to Lee for denying him bail and putting him in solitary confinement.

He excoriated the government for misconduct and misrepresentations to the court.

Lee's lawsuit was settled by the federal government in 2006 just before the Supreme Court was set to decide whether to hear the case.

The federal judge who heard the case during an earlier appeal said that "top decision makers in the executive branch...have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen."

After an intelligence agent from the People's Republic of China (PRC) gave U.S. agents papers which indicated that they knew the design of a particularly modern U.S. nuclear warhead (the W-88), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started an investigation codenamed "Operation Kindred Spirit" to look into how China could have obtained that design.