I'd like to cover the curious case of Wen Ho Lee 李文和, a Taiwanese-American scientist at Los Alamos who was accused of spying for the People's Republic of China. 
Lee grew up in Taiwan where he got a degree in mechanical engineering, and then came to Texas A&M to finish continue his studies. he got a doctorate, specializing in fluid mechanics in 1969 and became a US citizen in 1974
he worked in various research firms before he was hired at Los Alamos in 1978, where he worked on weapons design, focusing on applied mathematics and fluid dynamics
Lee created simulations for nuclear explosions, which were supposed to help gauge the safety of the US nuclear weapons arsenal
on March 6, 199, the NYT put out a front-page story entitled "China Stole Nuclear Secrets for Bombs, US Aides Say". two days later, Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson leaks Dr. Lee's identity, and Lee's employment is terminated
Dr. Lee was fired in March, but was not arrested until December 1999. for six months, Lee and his family are subjected to a media frenzy, and constant overt FBI surveillance. why?
Dr. Lee was arrested on fifty-nine charges of mishandling classified information - thirty-nine of them carried life sentences under federal sentencing guidelines
"FBI agents descended on Los Alamos, administering polygraphs to weapons scientists, commandeering their offices, and, in some cases, dragging them from their beds in the middle of night and driving them two hours to Albuquerque for interrogations"
Dr. Lee was "held in solitary confinement for 278 days w/ handcuffs attached to a metal belt shacked at the ankles, and only allowed on hour of exercise per week". his treatment provoked public demonstrations and outrage among the Chinese-American community
his treatment was so bad that the presiding federal judge James Parker would later "apologize profusely", which, you know, is not something federal judges do that often. so uh, what was going on here?
under the media frenzy and in direct response to the Wen Ho Lee affair, the Republican-controlled Congress created the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a quasi-autonomous agency under the DOE
what's the NNSA supposed to do? it is "responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of nuclear science". what was first on the table? wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
the thinking was, security at Los Alamos was so fucked up that clearly new management was required to "safeguard nuclear science", and as always, why do with government what you could do better with private industry? that's right baby, the NNSA recommended privatization
Department of Energy official Tom D'Agostino claimed to review recommendations from a board of officials and found that, of course, the best course would be to award the contract to run Los Alamos to Bechtel Corporation
previously, Los Alamos was administered by the University of California and the DOE directly, without any profit motive or financial incentivation, but not now, lolll
"the greatest irony is that US leaders turned over mgmt of the nuclear weapons complex to the private sector at the very moment that there should have been an open debate about the public purposes of the laboratories and facilities" wrote Kennette Benedict, an industry publisher
to return to the story, FBI Director Freeh was stoking media hysteria, talking about a "very serious" espionage threat from China
"the public perception of the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories as a hotbed of spies and infiltrators took hold", and DOE Secretary Bill Richardson was on the warpath in order to position himself as a possible VP pick
"Senior lab officials testified at a bail hearing that the information in Lee's possession would change the entire global strategic balance if passed to US enemies" which is such an insane statement, and it's hard to overstate the media hysteria
"after 278 days in jail w/o trial, Lee took the government's plea offer to drop 58 of the 59 counts against him. he admitted to one felony count of mishandling classified information for removing computer disks from the lab that contained copies of top secret nuclear codes"
the disks in question, btw, were actually found behind a copy machine at the lab just days after being reported missing. no evidence ever surfaced that the codes had been given to anyone, much less a foreign government
so, Dr. Lee was actually innocent. he was so clearly innocent that the aforementioned judge said "I am truly sorry that I was led by our executive branch of government to order your detention last December"
Judge Parker went on to blame President Clinton, VP Gore, Bill Richardson, and the DOE for instigating the case: "As a member of the third branch of the US gov., the judiciary, the US courts, I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner you were held in custody"
Dr. Lee was compensated a $1.6 million settlement from the U.S. federal government and five news organizations for privacy violations, and has gone on to write a textbook and his memoirs
the book "A Convenient Spy" states that there's more to the story than the government just shitting the bed on Dr. Lee's prosecution
"Wen Ho Lee was an invented crisis, not an intelligence operation. It was a crisis designed to portray the University of California as a bad manager so the labs would go into private hands" said Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group
"Regardless of Lee's motives, the Wen Ho Lee affair was an ugly chapter in US history. It was a time when democratic ideals were forgotten in the name of national security, when ideology and ambition overpowered objectivity, and when partisan warfare trumped statesmenship"
"That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."
the end. check out 'A Convenient Spy' for the Lee affair specifically, and 'the Profiteers' has a good chapter on it as well.
oh and I wasn't gonna cover it, but the Profiteers' next chapter talked about the inevitable tons of layoffs and firings of older employees at Los Alamos and the dragged-out lawsuits that they filed against Bechtel because suddenly Los Alamos works like a company, lol
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