Vickie Rozell

Director/Dramaturg, Author, Editor

December 21, 1939--Wen Ho Lee is born in Taiwan.

 

 

August 1945--Atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, killing over 100,000.

 

 

May 1949--Mainland China establishes a communist government called the People's Republic of China and refuses to acknowledge the Taiwanese Republic of China as legitimate.

 

 

July 1957--The first U.S. miniaturized nuclear bomb is detonated in the Nevada desert.

 

 

1964--China detonates its first atomic bomb.

 

 

1964--Wen Ho Lee enrolls in Texas A&M’s graduate engineering program. He receives his Ph.D. in 1970.

 

 

1966--China detonates its first hydrogen bomb.

 

 

1972--President Richard Nixon visits China. Diplomatic and military ties are established.

 

 

July 1979--Wen Ho Lee is hired at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico to help create and maintain computer codes, which attempt to replicate the action inside an exploding weapon, known as “legacy codes.”

 

 

November 1980--Lee’s wife, Sylvia is hired at LANL as a secretary.

 

 

Winter 1981--Sylvia Lee volunteers to translate for a visiting Chinese delegation. In future visits she also hosts dinners and sightseeing trips and facilitates the exchange of unclassified documents.

 

 

1984--The W-88, a miniaturized U.S. nuclear warhead, enters the engineering design phase.

 

 

1984--The FBI recruits Sylvia Lee as an informant.

 

 

1985--The CIA begins using Sylvia Lee as a “support asset.”

 

 

1988--Production of the W-88 begins.

 

 

April 1988--Wen Ho Lee begins to collect his own personal tape library of the “legacy codes.”

 

 

June 1988--On Lee’s trip to a Beijing conference, Hu Side calls on him at his hotel. Side asks Lee a specific question about the design of the W-88. Lee replies the information is classified.

 

 

February 1994--A delegation of Chinese weapons managers visits LANL. Side embraces Lee and they talk.

 

 

January 1995--The DOE receives information from a U.S. spy about a bomb tested on September 25, 1992, in China. The description of the bomb is similar to the W-88.

 

 

Early 1995--The CIA obtains a large stack of internal Chinese documents dated in early 1988, including descriptions and rough hand sketches that look like the W-88.

 

 

July-August 1995--The Department of Energy (DOE) opens an investigation into the possible theft of the W-88.

 

 

May 30 1996--The FBI opens an investigation of Wen Ho Lee for alleged espionage.

 

 

July 29, 1996--China sets off its final nuclear blast and agrees not to test after September, 1996, in accordance with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

 

 

December 18, 1998--The DOE informs the FBI they stripped Lee of his security clearance.

 

 

December 23, 1998--Wen Ho Lee takes a lie detector test, given by the DOE on the pretense of routine renewal of security clearance. The test shows Lee was not deceptive. Despite his results, he is barred from his office and transferred to an unclassified section of the lab

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March 6, 1999--The New York Times reports government investigators believe China has an accelerated nuclear weapons program with the aid of stolen American secrets. They report the government has focused its suspicions on a Chinese-American scientist at LANL but do not use Lee’s name.

 

 

March 8, 1999--The government identifies Wen Ho Lee as the suspect of “serious security violations” at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and reports that Lee has been fired.

 

 

April 10, 1999--The FBI searches Lee’s home. They confiscate all computers and anything with Chinese writing on it, including the collected works of Tennessee Williams.

 

 

December 10, 1999--Wen Ho Lee is arrested and indicted with 59 counts of mishandling classified nuclear weapons information.

 

 

December 13, 1999--The government claims Lee downloaded the “crown jewels” of the nuclear weapons program. He is denied bail and sent to solitary confinement where he is held for nine months, with one hour of solitary exercise a week, no radio, TV, books or newspapers, and is shackled when he leaves his cell.

 

 

August 17, 2000--The lead FBI agent admits he misled the judge on several topics regarding Lee’s case.

 

 

August 24, 2000--Federal District Court Judge James A. Parker announces Lee will be released on $1 million bail on August 30, 2000.

 

 

August 30, 2000--The government convinces the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to bar Lee’s release.

 

 

September 13, 2000--The government drops 58 of its 59 charges against Lee in exchange for Lee’s guilty plea to a single charge of improperly downloading classified material onto an unsecure computer and mishandling nuclear secrets. He is released with an apology from the judge. Lee pays no fine and his sentence is time served.