Washington, D.C.
Ending a six-year fight, the U.S. government and five news organizations agreed last week to pay U.S. nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee more than $1.6 million to settle an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit. In 1999, Lee was fired from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico after several news outlets, citing anonymous sources, reported that he was suspected of spying for China. Never charged with espionage, Lee was held in solitary confinement for nine months; he was released in 2000 after pleading guilty to mishandling government computer files. Lee sued, demanding that the news organizations—ABC News, Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post—identify the sources who cast suspicion on him. Faced with heavy sanctions if they didn’t comply, the news organizations opted to pay the settlement. “It was not a decision,” said ABC senior vice president Henry Hoberman, “that any of the journalists came to easily or happily.”
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