The feds will make the case that the plea agreement gives them what they most needed from Lee his cooperation in accounting for the seven missing tapes of highly classified material he downloaded. Lee's detention without bail in solitary confinement had long been explained as a hardball strategy to force the supposedly recalcitrant scientist to cooperate with the investigation. But the fact that the agreement comes after a number of courtroom setbacks for the government the most disturbing of which was the recent admission by an FBI agent that he'd provided false testimony in Lee's bail hearing and shortly before the deadline by which the feds would have been compelled to hand Judge James A. Parker documents that would allow him to pursue the claim that Lee was singled out because of his ethnicity leaves the government facing a banquet of crow.
Indeed, Americans may well find some cause for disquiet at the spectacle of the nation's leading law enforcement agency, in the eye of a political firestorm over China's apparent access to blueprints of some U.S. nuclear warhead designs, appearing to rush a man into court for allegedly helping a foreign power steal the "crown jewels" of the nation's nuclear secrets, only to recant nine months later and concede that the accused was guilty only of something even a former CIA director has admitted doing mishandling classified misinformation. So while the feds may have finished with Wen Ho Lee, it's unlikely that Lee is finished with the feds.