Five reporters are ordered by U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to answer questions
about their sources for stories that portrayed Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at the Los Alamos
Laboratory, as a chief suspect in a Chinese espionage investigation. "It does not detract from the
importance of the First Amendment principle at stake to conclude, in the instant case at least,"
that making possible evidence of government leaks available for trial outweighs the interest of
keeping sources confidential, wrote Jackson.
Lee is suing the Energy Department and Justice Department alleging government officials
provided private information about him to reporters and suggested he was a suspect in an
investigation into the possible theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory in
New Mexico. Lee was indicted in December 1999 on 59 felony counts alleging he mishandled
nuclear weapons information. He was held in solitary confinement for nine months, then was
released in September 2000 after pleading guilty to a single felony count. The judge apologized
to him, saying the government's handling of the case "embarrassed our entire nation and each of
us who is a citizen of it." The journalists ordered to give depositions under Jackson's order are
James Risen and Jeff Gerth of The New York Times, Robert Drogin of The Los Angeles Times,
H. Josef Hebert of the AP and Pierre Thomas of CNN. (Source: Robert Gehrke,| Associated
Press, Oct. 15, 2003)