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Morning News

Plea Agreement Sets Stage for Release of Former Los Alamos Scientist Wen Ho Lee

Aired September 11, 2000 - 10:28 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Federal prosecutors are dropping nearly all charges against former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee. Soon he will be a free man, a hearing scheduled later today in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

CNN's Tony Clark there now live with the latest on what's happening on this front.

Tony, good morning to you.

TONY CLARK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.

If fact, we expect Wen Ho Lee to be brought here to the federal courthouse in Albuquerque just in a very short time. He's being held at the Santa Fe correctional facility about a half hour, an hour away from here. And he has already left there.

Then, around 2:00 local time, 4:00 Eastern time, we expect him to walk into the third floor courtroom, and he will plead guilty to count number 57 of the 59-count indictment. That count says that he had unauthorized possession of, access to or control over documents and writings relating to the national defense.

This plea agreement sets the stage for Lee to be released. The 60-year-old Taiwan-born mechanical engineer was arrested last December and he's been held in solitary confinement ever since. He was never charged with espionage, but instead the 59-count indictment charged him with illegally downloading nuclear weapons material from secure computers to unsecure computers, and then to portable tapes. Three of the 10 tapes have been turned over to authorities. The seven remaining tapes, according to Lee's attorneys, have been destroyed.

If everything goes as expected, Lee will be released this afternoon, allowed to go home free.

His next-door neighbor, Don Marshall, says he has been waiting for this. He expected Lee to be released back two weeks ago to house arrest, and Marshall says now he is hopeful that Lee will be home tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON MARSHALL, NEIGHBOR OF WEN HO LEE: We're in a little state of shock in the sense that, you know, we thought maybe at the bail -- at each one of the bail hearings that he wouldn't be kept, you know, incarcerated, and the fact that each time we've gotten our hopes up and then sort of been dashed. So, anyway, there's, you know, there's a certain feeling, is it really, really going to happen this time?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CLARK: That's because just two weeks ago was when Lee was supposed to be released on house arrest. Marshall was supposed to be one of his custodians. But then prosecutors went to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to fight that to keep him in prison, saying that Wen Ho Lee was a security risk.

In fact, this morning just about half an hour from now, they were supposed to be arguing in Denver, Colorado before a three-judge panel, saying that Lee ought to be held in custody until his trial, which was set for early November. All of that now pushed aside, a plea agreement expected to happen a little less than six hours from now.

Tony Clark, CNN, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: All right, Tony Clark, live in Albuquerque. Tony, thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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