Testimony from Krajcik and Messemer came during the second day of a bail hearing requested by Lee's attorneys. Prosecutors are trying to keep Lee in jail for up to a year while he awaits trial on 59 felony counts of mishandling classified information. U.S. Attorney John J. Kelly has argued in court papers that Lee's inability to account for computer tapes containing nuclear secrets sufficient to build a thermonuclear weapon, coupled with a pattern of deception at Los Alamos, makes his release on bail a threat to national security. Lee was indicted Dec. 10 on 59 felony counts of mishandling classified information downloaded in 1993 and 1994. He is accused of transferring nearly all of the computer files the equivalent of more than 800,000 pages of information to 10 computer tapes.
Prosecutors say seven tapes are missing.
Lee's attorneys say the tapes have been destroyed, asserting that Lee began deleting numerous classified files in his possession after he was transferred out of Los Alamos's top secret X Division in December 1998 and realized he was no longer cleared for such access. While U.S. authorities identified Lee as a suspect in the Chinese espionage case at the time of his firing in March, they have subsequently acknowledged that they do not now have any evidence showing Lee spied for China or any other foreign government. Lee's downloading of classified material was not discovered by investigators until late March, weeks after he was fired and publicly identified as an espionage suspect, and Kelly has said in court papers filed here that the charges brought against Lee for downloading nuclear weapons data are unrelated to the earlier espionage probe. Prosecutors offered Krajcik's testimony about his brief conversation with Lee in February not to support espionage charges but to to bolster their contention that Lee remains a national security threat who should be denied bail. Under cross-examination, Los Alamos computer official Cheryl Wampler acknowledged that Lee called Los Alamos's computer help desk in January, three days after he was interviewed by FBI agents, and asked for help in deleting classified files.