Albuquerque - The former Los Alamos scientist, Mr Wen Ho Lee, was freed yesterday when a judge approved a plea deal that dropped all but one count in a government case that once threatened to jail him for life on charges of mishandling US nuclear secrets.
The 60-year-old Taiwan-born scientist pleaded guilty to one felony count of downloading nuclear weapons design secrets to a non-secure computer at the Los Alamos laboratory. As part of the deal, he signed a statement under oath that he never intended to harm the United States and never passed the secrets he copied to any third party.