UCLA Access to Computer at Los Alamos Investigated

On numerous occasions in 1994, someone at UCLA used Wen Ho Lee’s password to enter Los Alamos National Laboratory’s computer system via the Internet.

Lee’s attorneys say it was his daughter, Alberta, playing a computer game. But federal prosecutors, who are continuing to investigate the log-ins, are not so sure. They are trying to determine whether someone else at UCLA may have gained access to the nuclear secrets that Lee transferred from the classified computer network at Los Alamos to a less secure, unclassified network.

Over a year, Lee’s password was used about 70 times to log in to the unclassified Los Alamos network from the UCLA campus. Investigators are examining whether it was a coincidence that three of those sessions took place within hours after Lee downloaded fresh batches of secrets to the unclassified computer.

Lee, a 60-year-old Taiwanese American physicist, is being held without bail at a federal prison in New Mexico on charges of mishandling classified information, a felony that could bring a life sentence.

The government, however, has not charged Lee with passing secrets to any foreign country, and one of the major uncertainties of the case is whether Lee’s actions harmed U.S. national security.

Lee’s daughter, who was a mathematics major at UCLA, told a grand jury that she often used her father’s password in 1993 and 1994 to get into a supercomputer at Los Alamos to play Dungeons and Dragons, a complicated computer game, her father’s attorneys said.