Word: richardson
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...came crashing to the ground last week. No one was bleeding so heavily as the FBI and its director, Louis Freeh, whose top agent recanted some of his testimony against the 60-year-old Los Alamos engineer. But there was rubble everywhere you looked. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, whose department had ignored security lapses at Los Alamos for years, was walking around in a daze. Rescue workers were still searching for Attorney General Janet Reno and her deputy, Eric Holder, who were trying to explain why they had suddenly agreed to drop 58 of 59 charges against a man once...
Then, on March 6, 1999, the New York Times disclosed the FBI probe without mentioning Lee's name. The next day, FBI agents rushed to his home to "sweat him" before he clammed up completely. A confused Lee owned up to nothing, and on March 8 Richardson fired him for unrelated security violations turned up during the W-88 investigation. His name was leaked to the press, and he became known as a "suspected Chinese spy." He still had not been charged...
...case. That spring, several Senators tagged Reno in public for denying the FBI its warrant to inspect Lee's computer in 1997. By the fall, Reno and the rest of the Administration were under intense pressure--and not just from Republicans--to move against Lee. Energy Secretary Richardson was pushing for the prosecution of Lee--on any ground that could be found. The government might not be able to prove Lee was a spy, but he was certainly sloppy with secrets. "There was a tremendous amount of pressure on the Executive Branch to do something and to deal with what...
...deal and eventually dismissed all but one of the 59 counts. Before releasing Lee on Wednesday, Judge Parker scolded the government for its handling of the case, apologized to Lee and told him he had served enough time already--278 days in prison. Afterward, Richardson argued improbably that the government had triumphed. "The issue here," he says, "is are we getting the tapes back, and do we find out what happened to those tapes. The plea bargain enables us to get that information." Maybe so, but there had to have been an easier...
...lose their Most Wanted image - had pledged earlier. Shock value enough perhaps - if only in the Gore-dwarfing size of it - and the administration kicked it up a notch with that old market-making chestnut, the threat of further intervention. "After 30 days, after 30 million barrels," Bill Richardson declared to the talkies Sunday, "the President will make an assessment and see where we are." (No doubt Al Gore's pollsters will be in on that meeting...