By Associated Press
A top FBI official misled Congress about his confidence in his part of the investigation into former Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, government watchdogs say.
FBI Assistant Director Neil Gallagher told Senate committees in June 1999 that he had full confidence in an early Energy Department inquiry into Los Alamos. He told senators that the inquiry made a “compelling case for focusing the espionage investigation at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to include Wen Ho Lee.”
That testimony was inaccurate and misleading, said Robert Hast, managing director of the General Accounting Office’s special investigations office, in a letter to several senators Thursday.
The FBI’s Albuquerque bureau had written to the national office in January 1999, saying they had serious concerns about the inquiry, giving Gallagher ample opportunity to know about its concerns, Hast said.
Gallagher admitted to not reading all of the briefing book — which included the Albuquerque e-mail — prepared for him before talking to Congress, the letter said.
“He said that had he read the Jan. 22, 1999 electronic communication before he testified, his testimony would have been different,” Hast said.
Gallagher told GAO investigators that the mistake was inadvertent. “Although we determined that Mr. Gallagher’s testimony was inaccurate, we were unable to determine whether he intentionally misled the committee,” Hast said.
Gallagher insisted that he would never intentionally mislead Congress. He said the attorney general, the FBI director and others also did not read the part of the briefing book that he skipped because “it simply was not a significant issue at the time.”
“To the degree that your report suggests that I personally misled Congress, that is simply not accurate,” Gallagher said. “While I would have preferred to have had known all available information at the time of my testimony, the fact remains that I did not.”
Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen for more than 25 years, was indicted on 59 felony counts for transferring nuclear weapons information to portable computer tapes. The charges stemmed from an investigation into possible Chinese espionage, but Lee was not charged with spying and denied giving information to China.
Lee eventually pleaded guilty to one felony count of downloading sensitive material. The judge in that case said he was misled by prosecutors and apologized to Lee for the nine months he spent in solitary confinement.
Lee has sued the government for allegedly leaking information to the media to portray the Taiwan-born scientist as a Chinese spy. |
