From: Allen Thomson <thomsona@flash.net>
Newsgroups: alt.war.nuclear
Subject: Re: Wen Ho Lee Downloaded Material Not Related to His Job
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 19:24:27 GMT

In article <8r0tvr$5lb$1@gw.retro.com>,
  gherbert@gw.retro.com (George William Herbert) wrote:

> Of course, without a detailed inventory and description of
> what was on the tapes we'll never know.  It appears that the
> government feels the tapes contents remain a security risk
> and can't be described in detail...

It also appears that as of now (mid-day 29 Sep 2000) they haven't
gotten concerned enough about the matter to ask WHL to provide the
details of what happened to the tapes.

Which leads me to the following speculation, which has been growing for
some time: The gummint knows what the answer is likely to be and isn't
anxious for it to come out. Namely, that the approved tape disposal
method at LANL didn't require a record to be generated, and there are
dozens if not hundreds of X Division tapes that are just as "missing"
as WHL's seven, or seventeen.

Secondarily, nobody (AFAIK, of course) has said where the three tapes
that were recovered were recovered.  If they had been found at Lee's
house or similar off-LANL location, that would likely have showed up as
an account in the indictment (or in DOJ press releases), and it
didn't.  So they were probably found at the lab, quite possibly in
WHL's paper-PARD-approved office.

So, if these speculations are more or less true, the gummint can't show
that he took tapes off site, indeed the recovered tapes were at the lab.
And the most convenient way for him to have disappeared them was
perfectly legal, left no record, and was likely used by many other
people on many other tapes.

Pure speculation, but it seems to offer a mildly plausible explanation
of the government's weird behavior.