Lee has not been charged with breaking any laws  ALSO: New bill would bar lab visits by scientists from 'sensitive' countries

April 28, 1999
Web posted at: 6:53 p.m. EDT (2253 GMT)

In this story: Computer transfers Experts: How it may have happened FBI under fire RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Energy Secretary Bill Richardson tells CNN there is evidence that a scientist suspected of spying for the Chinese took information from a secure computer database at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory and transferred it to a less secure system accessible from outside the lab.

Richardson said the computer data was allegedly downloaded over a number years, from 1983 to 1995. Wen Ho Lee, who was fired in March from his Los Alamos post for alleged security violations, has been identified as the man suspected of downloading the information.

Lee, 59, has denied passing secrets to Beijing and has not been charged.

China also has denied spying on the United States.

Richardson says not to panic, yet

Computer transfers

According to Richardson, the information in question is related to U.S. nuclear weapons design and simulated testing for nuclear weapons.

According to The New York Times, most of the file transfers occurred in 1994 and 1995, just before China signed a nuclear test ban treaty in 1996.

The information -- including codes used to analyze nuclear test results, design nuclear weapons and rate the safety characteristics of nuclear warheads through computer simulation -- is highly classified and would be very useful to U.S. adversaries.

Someone outside of Los Alamos tried to access the material after it was placed in the less secure computer system, CNN's sources said.

Lee was the focus of an FBI probe into China's alleged theft from Los Alamos in the 1980s of design data for America's most advanced warhead, the W-88.

Federal investigators did not discover evidence of vast file transfers until recently, when they examined Lee's office computer in connection with the probe into the 1980s theft.

Experts: How it may have happened

The top-level secure network at Los Alamos is comprised of 1,000 to 2,000 devices capable of getting the data, including a variety of computers, servers and printers, according to a source at the Department of Energy familiar with the system.

Since the data concerned weapons simulations, an outside security consultant tells CNNfn, it almost certainly was stored on one or more of the Los Alamos supercomputers on which it was run.

But the data is accessed using the familiar "client-server" architecture also used in the business world, although the servers are probably connected with workstations (powerful personal computers with large processors, even multi-processors, and a huge amount of memory), not ordinary personal computers.

The source said the system did not rely on a "firewall" to keep secret information from the outside world. It used what security experts call "an air gap." In other words, it had no physical or network connection to the outside world.

But for someone authorized to access the secret data, moving it to a less secure system would be as simple as transferring files from the top-level clearance system to a floppy disk.

And security experts say they are aware of previous instances elsewhere in government offices where classified information was accidentally re-classified or transferred to less secure systems with no evil intentions.

The source familiar with the Los Alamos weapons lab says, "We went through the two-week top-secret systems stand-down to insure there was no way to inadvertently remove information from the secure network."

The source says Los Alamos is still "formulating a plan for making it impossible or eventually impossible."

According to the source, it's not impossible now, but "it's very difficult."

Investigators search car in front of his home

FBI under fire

The FBI is under increasing scrutiny for how it handled the Lee investigation. Sources say they learned of the computer problem following interviews with Lee earlier this month. The FBI had not been able to get the Justice Department to pursue a court-authorized wire tap or search warrant up until that point.

Sources said Richardson also has ordered an internal review to determine how Lee continued to have access to highly classified material even after he was under investigation.

Sources familiar with Richardson's inquiry say he is considering disciplining up to five Energy Department officials from both Washington and Los Alamos.

In a related development, the sources said Lee's wife, Sylvia, who also worked at Los Alamos, was an FBI informant from 1985 to 1991, providing information on Chinese delegations that toured the nuclear lab.

The FBI disclosed Sylvia Lee's role as an informant to key lawmakers last week, the sources said.

Congressional leaders are angry that they were not told earlier. Lower level FBI officials said they did not believe the information about Sylvia Lee was important and so they did not pass the information on to FBI Director Louis Freeh or to Congress.

Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.