Customer Reviews

A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage

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This book could have been the definitive, unbiased account of this whole ugly situation. Unfortunately, the authors appear to have had very little access to Lee himself, or his family, and so this book does not feel complete. This book is strongest when discussing the failings of the FBI and CIA, but it is weaker when discussing its main subject, Wen Ho Lee. Stober and Hoffman's depiction of Lee sometimes seems unnecessarily dark, like the shadowy picture of Lee on the book cover. For example, they exonerate him as a spy, but repeatedly mention that Lee was a mediocre talent at the labs. It's not clear why this even matters, but even if it did, Los Alamos is an elite lab that could have hired anybody it wanted - even an average performer there is probably quite decent by outside standards.

I also wonder how well the authors understand Lee and his background. For example, they accept at face value reports that Lee was seen hugging a foreign weapons scientist, suggesting suspicious intimacy with the "enemy". But Lee himself always strenuously denied that the "hug" ever took place, and Lee himself comes from a generation and a culture where public displays of intimacy are not terribly common. Hoffman and Stober choose to believe a culturally incongruous report, and not Lee. Why?

Did Stober and Hoffman not push hard enough for more access to Lee and his family? Was Lee advised by his lawyers not to talk to Stober and Hoffman? Whatever the case, this book missed a golden opportunity to present two complete sides of a very complicated case. The authors probably did the best they could with the material they had, and their descriptions of Lee's egomaniac accusers Notra Trulock and Bill Richardson are very eye-opening. However, the title should be reversed to "The Politics of Nuclear Espionage, and Wen Ho Lee".

It was a difficult job to write a book which completely, and yet readably, presents the background and all aspects of the Wen Ho Lee controversy.
On the one hand, Wen Ho Lee's supporters present a view of a scientist who, for no reason except his national origin, was persecuted by the government.
On the other hand, the Justice Department portrayed Lee as an evil and incredibly dangerous master spy.
The truth is not just in the middle, but multi-faceted.
Wen Ho Lee acted suspiciously. He contacted, and gave non-classified information to, foreign governments. He repeatedly downloaded very comprehensive and secret information on the US atomic bomb program to non-secure computers and tape drives - a security lapse which could have been devastating.
On the other hand, the Justice Department was operating under political pressure to find a scapegoat to prove the administration was not "soft on China." They held Lee without bail, in solitary confinement, under threat of life imprisonment, for 278 days, with no evidence that Lee gave secret information to a foreign government. (In comparison, when John Deutch, former CIA Director, was discovered to have stored very sensitive national security secrets on his internet-connected home computer, which was used by a household member to access pornographic internet sites, nothing was done to him except that he lost his security clearance.)
The book gives plausible reasons that Lee may have downloaded the information, consistent with Lee's character and past actions, which do not involve spying.
This is a very well-written, balanced, and thorough book; I recommend it to anyone who wishes to learn more about the Wen Ho Lee controversy.

I've followed this case in the news and was very disturbed by both the government's actions and the media's complicity in the grossly unfair treatment of Dr. Lee. This book exposes a lot of the government's wrongdoing, but it whitewashes the media's role, maybe because the authors were among the press corps.

I was disappointed on a few levels. First, that authors rely only on an Anglo spy expert to explain China, Chinese culture and Chinese people, including Chinese Americans. THis biased view only perpetuates the same attitudes that lead to Dr. lee's incarcration to begin with, and its too bad the book is still doing that.

Second, it bothered me that the book made it seem that the authors had spoken with Dr. Lee and his family and friends so much that they knew what he was thinking and what his motives were. I went to a book reading by Dr. Lee and learned that they never spoke to him or his family and that there are many errors in the book. Now I question the accuracy of what they wrote about him.

I was hoping for an unbiased, objective book, but i was disappointed.

The characters are so alive. It's almost like watching a movie.

In one occasion, Wen Ho¡¦s son, Chung, was questioned about any gambling loss their family had on their stops in Las Vegas, so that a connection between huge gambling loss and a motive to spy can be drawn. But only to find out yes, there was loss, about 50 dollars. And that made Wen Ho very upset and stop playing for a long time. Dud. I can imagine how this scene can be played in a movie.

Authors went through a large variety of sources to write this book. This book is well titled: ¡§¡Kand the politics of Nuclear Espionage¡¨

Due to the fact that authors were not able to interview Lee for first hand information, (probably at the advice of Lee's lawyers) there is an apparent lacking of Lee¡¦s view. But that perspective is complimented in his own book: ¡§My Country versus Me¡¨, which I just read, a wonderful book too.

However, there is a more serious aspect. Although authors examined in detail about Las Alamos Lab, FBI, DOE, DOJ, there is a unbalanced lacking of behind the scene stories on news media. Among all the mighty powers controlling the fate of Lee, New York Times, Washington Post and Times were as influential as DOE, DOJ and FBI. There is no scrutiny of any of them at all, neither media bosses nor the corresponds. Authors missed that part of the democracy system completely. Well, to be optimistic, we might expect those stories to appear in ¡§A Convenient Spy II¡¨. Just like those popular movies.

The books fails to cover the security aspects
of the Wen Ho Lee case accurately. This is
more dissappointing considering Hoffman did
covered the security aspects at the Los Alamos Labs
in his original newspaper articles but such
coverage did not make it to this book.

Hoffman and Stober incorrectly refers to Wen Ho Lee's
data as classified when infact the data was technically
not considered classifed when Wen Ho Lee was working
on them. Data security at Los Alamos is defined at
multiple levels. While Wen Ho Lee had a very high
security clearance, the software and data Wen Ho
Lee was working with was defined as "Protected As
Restricted Data"(PARD) which is not considered
classified but one step below it. Classified data
at the lab was defined as "Classified Restricted
Data" (CRD). The files that Wen Ho Lee copied onto
the infamous tapes were all PARD; however, after
the FBI found his backup tape notebook - the DOE
retroactively redefined the tapebackup data files
as CRD and "Top Secret"(TS). This allowed the
FBI to prosecute Wen Ho Lee as a felon. The
government ploy was to intimidate Wen Ho Lee
in hopes that they could get Wen Ho Lee to
disclose a spy handler or a spy ring.

Much of the data at Los Alamos is listed as PARD
because none of the researchers wants to go over
the many lines of code to determine if there were
any secrets worth protecting. In the past, efforts
by DOE intelligence to eliminate the PARD
classification has met with resistance from most
of the scientists at the atomic labs because
researchers found PARD useful in reducing the
security workload (so they could focus on their
work at advancing science and weapon technologies).
IIRC while the installation of PARD data on non
classified computers was against security
regulations - it was not a felony - one might
could lose one's security level or at worst be
dismissed. Reportedly more often than not the

mishandling of PARD data would only bring a
reprimand. Prosecution's argument for treating
the Wen Ho Lee case differently was that a
massive amount of data was involve. However,
Many of the lab scientists who normally work
with massive amounts of data felt that the
prosecution of Wen Ho Lee amounted to an
abuse of power by security. To make such
matters worst, it was disclosed that CIA Dir
John Deutch was caught editing Top Secret documents
on home computer which was not approved
as a classified computer ( FBI officials were
relucant to prosecute Deutch. Deutch's case
was a source of embarassment to the Clinton
administration. John Deutch case was
closed when he was pardon by President Clinton.
Wen Ho Lee however was unable to get a
presidential pardon. )

Hoffman and Stober's puts a great deal of effort in
describing the case against Wen Ho Lee. The book
reads rather unevenly. In general, when the book
describes possible error or problems with government
agents like Trulock and Dan Bruno, the authors
immediately provide a defenses or alibi to deny
any wrongdoing or dismissing any error. However,
in general when the book presences evidence against
Wen Ho Lee the author do not provide any immediate
defense for Wen Ho Lee but rather tries to build
up Wen Ho Lee as the mystery man; the reader has
to wait until the end of the book for Wen Ho Lee's
defense. I suppose this was for dramatic buildup?
In writing this book the authors acknowlegde
they had immediate access to the government agents.
The book's acknowlegdement seems to indicate
that the authors did not have immediate access
to Wen Ho Lee - who was writing his own book
about his experience.

I have read through this book. The most serious flow is that the authors despised Dr. Wen Ho Lee in some obvious tones. For example, the authors described Dr Lee as a "mediocre talents with hard work". If this is the case, how comes he stayed in LANL for almost thirty years. The authors hold a standing point from white ethnicity and obviously deviate from the subjectivity in general. Like his counterparts such as those from New York Times who failed to report the story through a thorough scrutiny, the authors did not undertook a multi-perspective viewpoints over the whole incident. The most significantly, most of his materials are more from sources in the mainstream white people rather from the Chinese or Asian ethnicity.

This was fascinating because it had been a headline story then suddenly just melted away. After reading this you will know why. You won't be impressed with how our U.S. government handles their affairs. Knowing from the newspapers that the judge apologized to Wen Ho Lee at his trial, I was expecting a story of false accusations and a completely exonerated Wen Ho Lee. What I got seemed to be a very objective story that showed he was certainly guilty of poor choices, to the point of stupidity. But the Federal Government seemed even dumber. A must read of an interesting case.

Wen Ho Lee, who helped develop the software used to design nuclear bombs at Los Alamos, becomes the target of suspected leaks of national security material. Admittedly he is not without blame for compromising highly classified material, but, according to Stober and Hoffman, it is unlikely he was a Chinese spy. Unfortunately for him Lee becomes the number one suspect in a political witch hunt despite the absence of any credible evidence.

Because President Carter wanted to "cultivate...an Eastern counterweight to Soviet power,"(52) Chinese and American laboratories, once shrouded in the utmost secrecy, were opened to exchange visits of high level weapons experts. Lee and other scientists traveled frequently back and forth between the countries and Lee even began sharing "Applied Technology" to China. This was not secret material but should not have been sent without approval. More troublesome, Lee, apparently for his own personal reasons, also began to shift secret coded material from the secure side to unsecured files in the laboratory's computers. This went undetected for years, but his name only became known to the FBI when he telephoned Gwo Bao Min who was under investigation for espionage under the code name "Tiger Trap." In many ways Lee set himself up for what was to come.

The FBI meanwhile was getting nervous about the freewheeling interactions of scientists and the GAO was concerned with the lack of background checks being performed on visitors. The DOE became involved when Notra Trulock, in charge of intelligence and counterintelligence, embarked on a mission to ferret out the "mole," convinced the design of the nation's most advanced warhead, the W88, had been stolen by the Chinese. Described as "the kind of man who could mistake a possibility for a certainty,"(114) Trulock, ignoring the cautionary advice of others and lied to the FBI to further the investigation. His assistant Dan Bruno was so bumbling that only the people whose travel records from Los Alamos came under investigation, with Lee as the target. The ultimate miscue came as a result of political infighting between President Clinton and the Republican Congress over Clinton's China policy in support of the comprehensive Test ban Treaty.

If this were a script for Peter Sellers playing the role of Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther, the humorous miscues of the Wen Ho Lee "investigation" could not get any better. The script would only have to meld the CIA, FBI, DOE actions into the character of Inspector Clouseau to make it work.

Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman raise many questions about the relationship of scientists and their work. In the Wen Ho Lee matter the critical issue was the balance between national security and personal liberty. This and other issues raised in the affair could as easily be applied to industrial, medical, or any other scientific inquiry. Since industrial espionage is as likely as spying, security can be sensitive in any facility, whether public or private, when confidentiality is important.

When it is necessary how do you maintain confidentiality while simultaneously encouraging scientific interchange? This can prove to be a delicate balance. Stober and Hoffman argue that Lee, while charged with spying, was merely eager to "share what he knew."(24) When the rules are too restrictive, scientists may simply chose to ignore them. At Los Alamos, to get around laws they thought to be too restrictive, scientists began to stamp material as "PARD, Protect AS Restricted Data. This was not a security classification, but it allowed easier access and sharing.

Keeping research a secret is always a problem. One way is to compartmentalization the work. This technique was resisted by Oppenheimer during the development of the atom bomb. On the other hand, "China's weapons physicists and academic physicists were separate communities, unknown to each other."(48) Other methods of controlling secret data may be through travel restrictions, implementation of a stringent classification system, limiting the chance of personal contacts (Lee was jailed), or voluntarily limiting publication, as early atom scientists did. Institutional rivalry may even present a serious challenge in maintaining security: "At Livermore there was an expression that said it all: `Always remember, the Soviets are the competition, but Los Alamos is the enemy.'"(40)

Who decides what needs to be secret? Should it be the scientists, politicians, government, contractors, all of them, or others? Scientists themselves do not always agree on what is sensitive. They "warned Congress that the line between basic science and real, practical weapons was blurry."(245) But Stober and Hoffman point out that Von Neumann's work was "mathematics, not nuclear bomb secrets,"(34) yet it was highly classified for years. Fortunately for Lee, John Richter, a renown physicist, provided contradictory testimony that the real nuclear secrets were intuitive knowledge, not the codes that Lee had copied. At Los Alamos, scientists "harbored a growing disdain for government authorities and lawmakers who seemed to think everything about a bomb was a state secret."(35)

Los Alamos security was based on an honor system with ineffective oversight. Prosecutors argued "the system operated on a `sacred' trust and Wen Ho Lee had violated that trust."(262) But compounding the breach, human failure prevented a screening system from catching Lee's transfer of files to an unsecured system. Stober and Hoffman speculate Lee may have wanted to use classified materials in a consulting business he wished to establish though his real reasons remain a mystery.

Some of the problems that may arise in trying to balance the varied interests of scientific research, security, and intelligence are evident in A Convenient Spy. Wen Ho Lee became a scapegoat for the ineptness of those responsible for overseeing security; so much so that Judge Parker was compelled to apologize to Lee. "The Executive branch has enormous power, the abuse of which can be devastating to our citizens....I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee."(330)

Of the three Robert Hanssen books, and this one, if you want to see the FBI at its worst, this is the one. Though the nuclear physics in "Convenient Spy" can be a bit tough to slog through at times, plowing all the way through to the end will leave you fully informed and a more worldly reader.

"Truth is stranger than fiction," goes the cliche'. If you don't start talking to yourself in amazement while reading this factual investigative triumph, you have guava juice dribbling through your veins. Poor, lovable, misunderstood Wen Ho Lee. A two-time career loser in higher mathematics who manages to secure a position writing codes for nuclear weapons development. To make sure he has eternal access to practically the largest collection of nuclear weapons secrets ever amassed, he finagles them from the secure computer system at Los Alamos and leaves them on a network that any hacker could access, then copies them on storage tapes that several nasty nations would love to play. Why did he do this? The G-persons were sure it must be a Chinese plot to steal "the Crown Jewels" of our nuclear weapons programs. His indiscretion gets Lee clapped in irons and he is reviled as the most damaging spy ever to have threatened our national security. But was he merely stupid, neurotic, malicious or just insecure? Lee endures insult after insult, loses weight on the jail menu, and steels himself for a long ordeal that could end in death. His excellent L.A. legal team blames racial profiling on his arrest, and brilliantly pulverizes the prosecution, thanks to its dependence on lying, bone-headed agents who describe their prevarications as "mistakes." He cops a plea, gets credit for time served and is set free. As a convicted felon, he can't vote, but he can still live in sunny New Mexico, garden, fish and cook for friends. He can also write his own self-serving version of this fiasco, sell movie rights and turn his misery into money. After being treated to a keyhole view of his deceptions and outright lies I wouldn't believe much of what Lee has to say about himself. This whole episode cost every U.S. taxpayer money and may really have made life a little more precarious if our enemies did obtain and apply the information Lee made so accessible. But this book also shows how we are only a few averted visions from turning into a police state, and a couple of political fiascos from nuclear war. If you want to stay clear of suspicion in sensitive government weapons jobs, not only do you have to avoid committing crimes, but you have to pro-actively try to appear from every perspective as though every action were innocent. It also helps if you happen to be white. As the book reveals, there just aren't enough white scientists and engineers to fill the empty office desks and lab counters in our nuclear weapons programs, and after Wen Ho Lee's experience, scarcely any brilliant Asian-background applicants are lining up for these jobs.
The real heros in this drama are Lee's friends, neighbors, family and a few co-workers who stood up for him, put their life savings and personal reputations on the line, and kept close watch as a truly disturbed security heirarchy and fouled-up judiciary sliced and diced American justice. There ain't nobody perfect, but at the end you like the diminutive, deceptive Lee a whole lot better than the Goliath that tried to stomp him into dust. You just wouldn't want to buy a used car from him.