"The question here is whether the FBI presented the Justice Department with sufficient evidence to justify a wiretap," says TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson. "If Justice turned a blind eye for political reasons, then Reno should be prosecuted. But rather than comparing it with the Rosenbergs, some people are calling this nuclear espionage's Richard Jewell case -- asking why, if Wen Ho Lee is so bad, we don't have enough to arrest the guy." Months of leaks from the Cox committee's classified report alleging nuclear negligence have prepared Washington to expect a damning indictment of the Clinton administration's national security record, and anything less may be an anticlimax.
Washington Braces for China Espionage Report
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Where have you gone, Joe McCarthy, oh, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.... Yes folks, Republican efforts to warn Americans of the danger of fuzzy liberals in charge of the nation's political system -- and its nuclear secrets -- are about to go into overdrive. On Tuesday, Representative Christopher Cox plans to release the report of his congressional inquiry, containing "grave" revelations of Chinese nuclear espionage that "continues to this very day." The Cox committee's star witness, former Energy Department intelligence chief Notra Trulock, on Sunday warned that this was the biggest thing since the Rosenbergs. And if the new "Who lost China?" campaign is to have its own Alger Hiss, the prime candidate appears to be Attorney General Janet Reno. Even liberal New Jersey Democratic senator Robert Torricelli Sunday joined the Republican chorus calling for Reno's resignation, on charges that she failed to authorize an FBI wiretap of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, suspected of passing nuclear secrets to Beijing.