A Convenient Spy
Subtitle: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage
Edition: 1st edition
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2002-01-08
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9780743223782
Subjects: Arms negotiation & control; International relations; Nuclear weapons; U.S. - China Relations; Lee, Wen Ho; United States; Nuclear Proliferation; Politics - Current Events; Politics / Current Events; Politics/International Relations; China; USA; Los Alamos; Espionage; Military - Nuclear Warfare; Political History; Current Events / General; 21st century; 20th century; Espionage, Chinese; History; New Mexico
Other titles: A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage
First sentence: World War II had just begun in Europe when Wen Ho Lee was born-December 21, 1939.
Description: "No espionage case in recent decades has been anything like the Wen Ho Lee affair. As Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman describe in A Convenient Spy, an astonishingly inept investigation of a crime that may never have occurred ended in a national disgrace. A weapons-code scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lee was hunted as a spy for China, indicted of fifty-nine counts, and held in detention for nine months as a threat to the entire nation.

But after pleading guilty to just one count, he went home - with an unusual and emotional apology from a federal judge. Prosecutors' claims that Lee had stolen America's "crown jewels" of nuclear security simply evaporated. Yet Lee's motives have never been satisfactorily explained, and his often-repeated excuse that he was just backing up his work files does not stand up to scrutiny."--BOOK JACKET.