Scientist’s Wife Helped FBI, Reports Say

NEW YORK — The wife of a Taiwanese-born scientist suspected of passing nuclear secrets to China was an FBI informant, two newsmagazines reported Sunday.

Newsweek and Time reported in their latest issues that Sylvia Lee passed information to the FBI from 1985 to 1991 while she was an administrator at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Lee’s husband, Wen Ho Lee, is under investigation for possibly leaking information to China while he worked as a scientist at Los Alamos. Investigators alleged that Beijing used stolen information on the W-88 miniaturized nuclear warhead program to produce its own weapons.

China has denied the allegations and no charges have been filed in the case. Newsweek and Time reported that Sylvia Lee’s involvement with the FBI could further complicate the investigation.

As an administrator at Los Alamos, Sylvia Lee arranged lab tours for Chinese delegations and reportedly passed on information to FBI agents about the visiting Chinese scientists. Time reported that she was not paid for her information, which she stopped providing after 1991 when she moved to another job at Los Alamos.

Newsweek said that when Department of Energy investigators first determined that China might have stolen secrets from Los Alamos, they concluded that both Wen Ho and Sylvia Lee were likely suspects. But the magazine reported that FBI agents do not now consider Sylvia Lee a suspect.

Sylvia Lee’s involvement with the FBI was reportedly disclosed to top U.S. intelligence officials just this month. Newsweek reported that even FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and CIA Director George J. Tenet were unaware of the association.