WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Jailed nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee was misled by federal investigators who told him he had failed a Department of Energy lie-detector test, CNN has learned. 

During a lengthy interrogation, FBI agents pressured Lee to admit to passing nuclear weapons secrets to China. Lee said he had not and insisted he was telling the truth. His interrogators, however, never told him that DOE polygraph operators had actually given him a high score for honesty

"I don't know why I fail," Lee told the FBI, according to a transcript of the interrogation obtained by "CNN & Time." 

"But I do know I have not done anything. ... I never give any classified information to Chinese people," he said during the March 7 questioning. 


Agents mentioned Rosenbergs 

The transcript indicates that the questioning by the federal agents was highly adversarial and ended only after Lee asked repeatedly to leave. Lee's family and supporters say the transcript reveals that the FBI was unfair and devious. 

Agents reminded Lee that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union during the 1950s, died in the electric chair, according to the transcripts. 


Daughter: 'I'm infuriated' 

In an exclusive interview with "CNN & TIME," Lee's children said they were outraged by the tactics of the FBI. 

"I can't believe the techniques they used in this interrogation, to try to get my father to confess to something he did not do," daughter Alberta Lee said. 

"I'm infuriated," she said. "I understand why he feels hopeless; he cooperated with them to begin with, and this is what happened." 

Her father, a 60-year-old Taiwan-born researcher, is being held without bail for allegedly copying classified nuclear data to computer tapes, seven of which are missing. 

Federal prosecutors deny their investigation was biased or unfair. They say the FBI's skepticism about Lee's statements was justified because he had lied in the past. Former prosecutors told CNN that such interrogation tactics are standard law enforcement procedure. 

The March interrogation took place one day before Lee was fired from his job at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. 

Lee has pleaded innocent to 59 counts under the Atomic Energy and Espionage Acts for allegedly mishandling classified information. He was not charged with sharing the information with a non-U.S. government or other espionage offenses. 

If convicted, he could face life in prison. An FBI spokesman said he could not comment on the indictment. 


January 8, 2000
Web posted at: 6:45 p.m. EST (2345 GMT) CNN Archive

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/01/08/lee.fbi.02/index.html


This sort of thing most likely happens on the pre-employment polygraph retest