Like many spy stories, there's much that's unknown about the case of Wen Ho Lee, the Taiwanese-American scientist jailed for almost a year in 1999 and 2000 on charges of spying for China before being released with the judge's apology. This exemplary investigative report by journalists Stober (a Pulitzer winner who writes for the San Jose Mercury-News) and Hoffman (of the Albuquerque Journal) goes a long way toward filling in the blanks. They first give a biographical sketch of Lee from his childhood in Taiwan to his college days, marriage and up-and-down engineering career before he arrived at New Mexico's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in 1978. At Los Alamos, he first built computer models of nuclear reactors before creating and maintaining the codes used by bomb designers. The authors also detail the rivalries and confusion among politicians, government investigators and agencies—and media outlets— exploring the case. Congress and the media, they write, "were locked in a game of one-upsmanship, describing Lee's crime in ever more superlative-laden rhetoric." The authors also show how the case against Lee intersected with the burgeoning political and scientific relationship between the United States and China during the 1980s and 1990s. The book is full of new information, and, to the authors' credit, even where they're unsure of the answer, they soberly explore all the possibilities. Agents, John Brockman, Katinka Matson. (Jan. 14)
Forecast:This will run up in bookstores against Wen Ho Lee's own book, also due out in January from Hyperion (and tightly embargoed). Whether that volume spurs sales of this one or each cannibalizes the other may depend on the respective review and media attention each book receives.
