Just a few things to remember about this report below.  Richardson chose not to be re-interviewed for this report—after reading a transcript of his remarks from 14 months ago, he stood by them and told Mike to run them again. So Richardson in this piece was videotaped  14 months ago and called last week. The Stephen Schwartz interview is new.

CBS News Transcripts
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SHOW:  60 MINUTES  (7:00 PM ET)
September 17, 2000, Sunday
LENGTH: 2571 words
HEADLINE: DR.  WEN HO LEE;  REACTION TO STATEMENTS MADE 14
MONTHS AGO BY
SECRETARY BILL  RICHARDSON  REGARDING THE DR.  WEN HO LEE
CASE
ANCHORS: MIKE WALLACE
BODY:
DR.  WEN HO LEE
MIKE WALLACE, co-host:
When Federal Judge James Parker released Dr.  Wen Ho Lee  from prison last Wednesday, the judge leveled some angry criticism at the US government. He said, from the bench, ‘The top decision ...
... troubled by the way Dr. Lee was treated.  But the man who fired Dr.
Lee,
Energy Secretary Bill  Richardson,  is not backing off. He told me he still stands by the allegations he made about Dr. Lee in an interview with us 14 months ago.  So we’ve gone back to that conversation with Secretary Richardson to compare what he said about Dr. Lee then with facts that have come out since.
(Footage of Wallace and Schwartz watching interview with Richardson;  visual of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) We showed Mr.  Richardson’s  original allegations to Stephen Schwartz.  He is executive editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the country’s leading nuclear journal.  And he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the matters at hand.  First, Schwartz watched what Secretary Richardson  had told us about one key issue: whether Dr. Lee told the truth during lie detector tests.
(Excerpt from previous program)
Secretary BILL  RICHARDSON  (Department of Energy): He tried to deceive the laboratory.
WALLACE: How do you mean?
(Footage of Dr. Lee)
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  (Voiceover) He was not up front.  He failed two polygraphs.
WALLACE: Wait a minute.  Two?
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  Yes.  One from the Department of Energy and one from the FBI.
(End of excerpt)
WALLACE: What about it, Mr. Schwartz?  Did he fail two ...
... Lee said, ‘I can’t do this.  This is not a secure facility.’ Even with all of that, the results of that test weren’t conclusive.
(Footage of  Richardson  and Wallace talking; a rocket being launched from the ocean; Los Alamos building)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) To explain why Dr. Lee was singled out in the first place, Secretary  Richardson,  in that conversation 14 months ago, brought up America’s most sophisticated nuclear warhead, the W-88, and said he ...
... gotten W-88 secrets from someone at Los Alamos, where Dr. Lee worked.
(Excerpt from previous program)
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  This incident at Los Alamos where it has been clearly determined that the United States lost nuclear secrets—the W-88, which is a Trident II warhead...
WALLACE: Mm-hmm.
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  ...where we probably accelerated China’s modernization of its nuclear weapons program.
WALLACE: And that  Wen Ho Lee  apparently is the follow who gave information on the W-88 to some Chinese scientist.  That’s the impression that everybody who has followed this story believes.
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  That is a legal case, and I’ll let the Justice Department settle that.
(End of excerpt)
WALLACE: Is there any evidence that  Wen Ho Lee  gave W-88 secrets to China?
Mr. SCHWARTZ: No, there’s not any evidence.  In fact, that was one of the first ...
... apart in this case.  In fact, it never turned up in the indictment at all.
WALLACE: Secretary  Richardson  said it had been clearly determined that China got W-88 secrets from Los Alamos.  Do the experts believe that today?
Mr. ...
... Dr. Lee had any intent to do anything with this information, other than use it as part of his job.
(Excerpt from previous program)
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  He violated America’s security procedures.
WALLACE: There’s no doubt—and I think he’s acknowledged that he’s done some things.  But he is not ...
... know that, as well as I. Apparently, he’s the only one who’s been fired at—or at least fired so publicly.
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  I felt that it was important because of these security violations, which are massive in themselves.
(End of excerpt)
WALLACE: Is there any evidence that Dr. ...
... a foreign country.  And it turned out that, of course, that not—not—was not true.
(Excerpt from previous program)
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  All I know is that it is wrong and improper to download nuclear weapons information from the classified component of the computer to the unclassified.  This was done.  This is something that we are not going to tolerate.
WALLACE: John Deutch did the same kind of thing, the head of the CIA.
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  Well, I’m not going to get into that because that’s, again, a law enforcement issue, and I believe that’s been settled.
(End of excerpt)

  ...

... dealing with.
WALLACE: And yet, the two men were treated in a totally different fashion.
Mr. SCHWARTZ: Right.
(Footage of  Richardson  and Wallace talking; Dr. Lee)
WALLACE: (Voiceover) Secretary  Richardson  also found fault with Dr. Lee’s government-approved trips to China.
(Excerpt from previous program)
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  He had had improper contact with members of the Chinese government without properly reporting them.  He did not tell us he was talking to the Chinese and what he gave them informationwise.
WALLACE: Wa—wait.  He did not tell you that he was talking to the Chinese and what information he gave them?
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  That’s right.  He...
WALLACE: How do you know that he gave them information?
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  We know because he wouldn’t tell us what he told them.
WALLACE: Dr.  Wen Ho Lee  had been to China twice with the OK of the DOE.
He’d made speeches there, twice, with the knowledge and cooperation of the FBI.
So somebody had dropped the ball someplace.
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  Oh, there’s no question that our security people and many dropped the ball.  That doesn’t excuse the fact that this individual didn’t tell us ...
... just completely improper the way that they handled it.
(Excerpt from previous program)
WALLACE: A quote from one Washington journalist.  “ Wen Ho Lee’s biggest crime may simply have been to be the wrong ethnicity in the wrong place in the wrong election year.”
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  I’m a Hispanic American.  I have gone out of my way to send a message to the Asian American community that we will not tolerate discrimination.  We’re not racially profiling anybody.
(End of excerpt)
WALLACE: Do you think that  Wen Ho Lee  was singled out because of his ethnicity?
Mr. SCHWARTZ: That appears to have played a major part in this case.
It
turns out there were ...

... ask, ‘Why was that?’
(Footage of Dr. Lee)
Mr. SCHWARTZ: (Voiceover) And the only explanation I can come up with is that it had something to do with where  Wen Ho Lee  came from and—and what he looked like.’ And that’s just—that’s unfortunate.
WALLACE: And apparently, there’s been a diminution, if you will, of Chinese scientists applying to work at ...
... best and the brightest often happen to be Asian Americans.
(Excerpt from previous program)
WALLACE: Let’s make this guy the scapegoat.
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  No.  No, no.  There was no effort to scapegoat this man.
We have tried to protect his legal status, his reputation, as much as we can.
WALLACE: Oh, Mr. Secretary, you’ve tried to protect his reputation?
You’ve
ruined the man’s life.

Sec.  RICHARDSON:  He violated America’s security procedure.
WALLACE: Why’d you fire him in such a public manner?
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  We—we made a press release and because of the furor over this issue, it immediately snowballed.  We expected that, and I am not apologizing ...
... Times reported that a scientist at Los Alamos was suspected of being a Chinese spy.  Two days later,  Richardson  fired Dr. Lee.
Mr. SCHWARTZ: I’m sure they saw that it was an incredibly sexy story that would make incredible ...
... I think they also should have stepped back and said, ‘Wait a minute, you know, we’re about to really ruin somebody’s life here.’
(Footage of  Richardson  and Wallace talking; Richard Jewell;
Christopher
Cox)

WALLACE: (Voiceover) In that interview 14 months ago, I reminded the
.

... secrets to China.
(Excerpt from previous program)
WALLACE: Christopher Cox says, ‘This could be Richard Jewell all over again.’
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  Well, I have my serious doubts about that, and we will find that out.
WALLACE: Mm-hmm.  If it is Richard Jewell all over again, will you give him his job back?
Sec.  RICHARDSON:  Of course not.  He violated our security procedures on a massive scale.  He will never go back to Los Alamos.  He ...
... Perhaps the last word should go to Dr. Lee and what he told us 14 months ago.
(Excerpt from previous program)
Dr.  WEN HO LEE:  I devote the best time of my life to this country to make this country stronger, particularly in the nuclear weapon area.

  ...

... doing that at all, period.
(End of excerpt)
WALLACE: But in a phone call last Thursday, Secretary  Richardson told me he not only stands by the answers he gave us 14 months ago, but that Dr.  Lee’s ordeal is hardly over. He told me there are some very serious additional problems Dr. Lee has, and that there will be more information coming out.
 
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