In a growing national security flap, Republican lawmakers demanded Tuesday that the Clinton administration explain why a nuclear weapons lab scientist kept his job for nearly three years while under investigation for espionage.
The Senate Intelligence Committee will have a closed-door hearing next week to ask administration officials, including Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and FBI Director Louis Freeh, about the espionage investigation involving the scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
A native of Taiwan, Wen Ho Lee, who is in his 50s, had worked at the prestigious weapons research laboratory in New Mexico for a dozen years or more before being dismissed on Monday at Richardson’s direction.
Lee has not been charged with any crime, nor arrested, but he has been the prime suspect in a three-year investigation into allegations that China obtained sensitive nuclear weapons design information from Los Alamos in the 1980s.
“We’re interested in what some people believe is a lax attitude toward security at some of our national labs, including Los Alamos” and whether the administration “reacted to possible breaches in that security in a timely manner,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the Intelligence Committee chairman.
Administration officials defended the way the Los Alamos investigation was conducted and emphasized that the alleged espionage occurred in the 1980s, in a Republican administration under President Ronald Reagan, and that President Clinton in early 1998 took steps to beef up counterintelligence efforts and security at the weapons labs.
