I was taken to a small cell with a window on the door. The guards watched as I changed from my street clothes into a red prison jumpsuit made of heavy denim material, stiff and not very comfortable. They put the shackles back on me and gave me a box for all my things. They let me keep two pieces of underwear.
My family didn’t even know where I was–the judge didn’t tell them or my lawyers where I would be imprisoned. I was allowed to make one phone call my first night in jail. I called my wife and told her I was in Santa Fe and that I would be okay. That was the only call I was allowed to make to my family for the entire month to come. My wife sounded frightened, and told me that my family members were all very anxious, not knowing where I was or what was happening to me. They remembered that the FBI had threatened execution, “like the Rosenbergs,” and they were in a panic. It was terrible to make them worry so. I knew it was deliberate, the FBI and U.S. attorney’s way of putting pressure on them, to torture them too.
I had no way of knowing if my treatment was typical or not, but I soon learned that I was a “special” prisoner. New inmates usually went into one of the big group lockups in the booking, where there are no beds, just a plastic pad and a blanket for each prisoner. With no place to sit, all you can do in the group lockup is lie down. Or scream and yell, as some inmates did every night.
I felt that the government was torturing me now, that they were trying to break me down without coming right out and shooting me. I said to myself, they’re trying to get me to cave in and confess to something that I didn’t do, to get me to say, “Okay, you’re right, I’m a big spy.” I figured if I didn’t confess, they’d want me to kill myself. But their dirty tricks only made me madder. I wasn’t going to let Bill Richardson and the government break my spirit. I kept telling myself, I will never give up, I will never surrender to their dirty tricks and lies.
I spent the turn of the century in solitary confinement, in my windowless cell, amid the cries and moans of the medical ward. In jail, New Year’s Eve ranks below Christmas Eve, when steak is served for dinner, the only special meal service out of the whole year. Though my hunger was constant, I didn’t want to eat red meat and possibly increase my risk of cancer, so I didn’t touch the steak, and missed out on the annual special meal. However, the New Year was useful to the FBI, which used the millennium change as another excuse for keeping me in jail. The FBI said that the international terrorist threat and the chaos resulting from the collapse of worldwide electronic systems on New Year’s Day would keep them too busy to monitor me.
I think my spirits were at their lowest point during this time. For my first month in detention, I wasn’t allowed out of my cell except once a day, Monday through Friday, to walk 15 feet down the hall from my cell to take a shower. On weekends, I couldn’t even do that. A light stayed on in my cell at all times, even when I tried to sleep. One hour per week, I could see my family during their visiting hour–with two FBI agents standing right by us, listening to every word. I also was allowed out of my cell when my lawyers visited, once or twice a week, to meet with them. Otherwise I stayed in my cell for 24 hours, as there was no outdoor exercise time for me during that first month. No books, no newspapers, no television, no radio, no paper, no pens, no hot water, no contact with anyone except under very restrictive conditions.
For my mental health, I knew I had to keep my mind occupied. I spent time working on my case, trying to remember anything that would be useful to my lawyers. I asked for paper and was given a few sheets at a time. I resolved to write a math textbook. I asked for books from the jail library, but there was no way of knowing what the jail would send me.
In mid-January 2000, after a month of being shut in that dark cell, the jail officials moved me to Pod A, the maximum-security part of the detention facility. Two guards were on duty watching the pod at all times.
Even in Pod A, they treated me differently. I was not allowed to make phone calls, and when I was let out of my cell, the guards put my shackles and chains on in the innermost common area. The other inmates in Pod A would shout from their peepholes, “Hey, Wen Ho Lee!” and offer strange questions or stupid comments. I never bothered to answer back. Some of them were very scary-looking. Most were quite young, maybe 21 or 22 years old. I felt bad for them, especially because most of them had had little education.
Sitting alone in solitary confinement with a light bulb burning continuously, I sometimes felt like I must have made a mistake and should not have come to America in 1964 for my Ph.D. I must have done something terrible to have ended up like this. As I sat in jail, I had to conclude that no matter how smart you are, no matter how hard you work, a Chinese person, an Asian person like me, will never be accepted. We always will be foreigners.
On the last day that I was shackled and chained, the chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico apologized to me.
After 278 days of solitary confinement without benefit of a trial, on September 13, 2000, I was finally being freed. Judge James Parker, the federal judge who presided over my “theft” of the “crown jewels”–our most critical nuclear secrets–said in his deep and authoritative voice, with America as his audience: “I have been misled by our government.”
The judge and the nation were indeed terribly misled. I knew–and the other nuclear weapons scientists who watched this elaborate show knew–that the “nuclear secrets” I was falsely accused of stealing were not really secrets but were available in the open literature. Also, the files I had downloaded as part of my job as a nuclear code developer were not the state-of-the-art weapons codes that the government wanted everyone to believe. Euphemistically known as “legacy codes,” they were in fact far older, more decrepit, and more flawed than the space station Mir. Judge Parker was not yet done with his message to me, which he said for the whole world to hear:
“I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner you were held in custody by the executive branch.”
Behind me, a cheer sounded and the whole courtroom erupted into a loud buzz. In the crush of the courtroom, I found the faces of my family: My wife, Sylvia, smiled as I hadn’t seen her do in a long time. I saw many of my friends and neighbors and coworkers in the courtroom, rooting for me.
Once I had been a trusted member of the elite scientific corps at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal is designed and maintained, where the atomic bombs that ended World War II were created. I lived and worked for more than twenty years high atop the Los Alamos mesas in the foothills of New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Like other people who lived “on the hill,” 7,600 feet above sea level, I was a nuclear scientist and a soccer dad, an outdoorsman, an active participant in this special scientific world.
That part of my life was over, a distant memory of another lifetime–the time before my government and the news media accused me of committing espionage, before I was imprisoned without benefit of a trial or even a fair hearing. Before I learned to distrust my government and just about anyone who works for it. Before I learned that no one should ever talk to FBI agents without an attorney or at least a trusted witness present. Before I was branded a spy and an enemy agent–a disloyal, lying traitor, one of the most base and awful labels imaginable. I can tell you this, because I know.
