Like many spy stories, there's much that's unknown about the case of Wen Ho Lee, the Taiwanese-American scientist jailed for almost a year in 1999 and 2000 on charges of spying for China before being released with the judge's apology. This exemplary investigative report by journalists Stober (a Pulitzer winner who writes for the San Jose Mercury-News) and Hoffman (of the Albuquerque Journal) goes a long way toward filling in the blanks. They first give a biographical sketch of Lee from his childhood in Taiwan to his college days, marriage and up-and-down engineering career before he arrived at New Mexico's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1978. At Los Alamos, he first built computer models of nuclear reactors before creating and maintaining the codes used by bomb designers. The authors also detail the rivalries and confusion among politicians, government investigators and agencies and media outlets exploring the case. Congress and the media, they write, "were locked in a game of one-upsmanship, describing Lee's crime in ever more superlative-laden rhetoric." The authors also show how the case against Lee intersected with the burgeoning political and scientific relationship between the United States and China during the 1980s and 1990s. The book is full of new information, and, to the authors' credit, even where they're unsure of the answer, they soberly explore all the possibilities. Agents, John Brockman, Katinka Matson. (Jan. 14)Forecast: This will run up in bookstores against Wen Ho Lee's own book, also due out in January from Hyperion (and tightly embargoed). Whether that volume spurs sales of this one or each cannibalizes the other may depend on the respective review and media attention each book receives.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

In December 1999, Wen Ho Lee, an immigrant from Taiwan who worked on nuclear weapons research and development at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, was accused of downloading top-secret material and an open-access portion of the lab's computer network onto tapes (which he claimed he destroyed) and then handing them over to Beijing (and perhaps Taipei as well). This convoluted case wound up making Lee into a minor folk hero and leaving the federal government with egg on its face when he was set free in September 2000 after pleading guilty to a minor charge. International, domestic, and bureaucratic politics were all involved in this shadowy scenario, as were personal egos and perceptions. After completing this book by journalists Stober and Hoffman, who relied largely on unattributed interviews, readers will have to decide for themselves whether Lee was a devious spy or an eccentric victim. This title should be placed alongside Wen Ho Lee's forthcoming My Country Versus Me (Hyperion, 2002) and is suitable for public and academic libraries. Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.