Espionage

WASHINGTON -- Congressional leaders of both parties sought yesterday to cool the heated rhetoric on China, even as Republicans hinted that the Clinton administration was responsible for leaking secret information about alleged Chinese espionage at a U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory in the 1980s.The bluster has grown increasingly fiery since last weekend, when reports emerged that a Taiwanese-born scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory allegedly passed crucial secrets to China that helped it develop advanced, miniaturized nuclear warheads that can be clustered on the tips of intercontinental missiles.

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh have ordered federal agents to broaden their investigation into evidence of Chinese nuclear espionage, far beyond the earlier scrutiny of a scientist fired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, government officials said yesterday.The widened inquiry will include reopening a fundamental debate on whether American nuclear secrets were stolen and, if so, where and how the theft might have occurred, law enforcement officials said.

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - The court-martial of an airman accused of attempted espionage was delayed yesterday by what a defense attorney said was interference from the Justice Department and by a last-minute memorandum from a top defense official. The Air Force said the delay was caused by efforts to coordinate between agencies. "There's been no improper manipulation" by the Justice Department, and the Air Force still has final authority in deciding charges in a military court-martial, said Air Force Col. John Kellogg, deputy staff judge advocate for Travis.

MOSCOW - Just two days after Edmond Pope was convicted on spying charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison, Russia's presidential pardons commission unanimously recommended yesterday that President Vladimir V. Putin release the American businessman. Officially, the commission urged clemency because of Pope's poor health, but individual members strongly condemned the conduct of his trial and what one called the "espionage mania" gripping Russia. The commission, which has considered about 9,000 appeals from prisoners this year, met in a special session yesterday solely to take up Pope's case.

WASHINGTON -- A scientist working on a classified Pentagon project in 1997 provided China with secrets about advanced radar technology being developed to track submarines, according to court records and government documents.Submarine detection technology is jealously guarded by the Pentagon because the Navy's ability to conceal its submarines is a crucial military advantage.The information about the radar technology, which is considered promising and has been in development for two decades, was divulged to Chinese nuclear weapons experts during a two-hour lecture in Beijing in May 1997 by Peter Lee, an American scientist, court records show.

Campaigners for human rights in Russia call it "spy mania": In the past eight years, perhaps a dozen people, including environmentalists, scientists and journalists, have been charged with spying. The arrests began in 1996, when Alexander Nikitin, a retired Russian navy captain, was charged with espionage and treason for helping to write a report for Bellona, a Norwegian environmental organization. Nikitin, who had served with Russia's northern fleet, helped document the danger of deteriorating nuclear reactors on Russian submarines.

Robert R. Granville, 89, an FBI agent in New York who headed the team that arrested Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in a sensational Cold War espionage case, died April 12 in Tampa, Fla., two weeks after suffering a stroke. Mr. Granville began working for the FBI in 1940 and was promoted to field supervisor of Soviet espionage in the New York office six years later. On July 17, 1950, he and fellow agents arrested Julius Rosenberg in his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Mr. Rosenberg was charged with giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

WASHINGTON -- The legislation tightening security checks that CIA Director R. James Woolsey endorsed yesterday would subject "top secret" federal officials to the sort of financial surveillance that could have uncovered the millionaire lifestyle of Aldrich Hazen Ames."

PROWLERS.Eugene Izzi.Bantam Books.341 pages. $19. "Catfeet" Millard could've testified against mobster Darrin Favore and avoided spending 28 months in the county lockup. But Catfeet had done the right thing, knowing he would be rewarded for his silence. Maybe Favore would forget the 22 grand Catfeet owed him. It would only be right.But Favore isn't interested in "right." What he is interested in is getting rid of Catfeet so he can get close to Catfeet's woman. That's why he let the meter run on Catfeet's bill.

WASHINGTON -- The CIA has determined that its espionage operations inside the Soviet Union and Russia in the 1980s and early 1990s were riddled with double agents who fed streams of disinformation back to the United States, going undetected for years until after Soviet mole Aldrich H. Ames was arrested.What's more, some CIA officials may have realized that their operations had been compromised by the Soviets -- and failed to inform the White House or senior U.S. policy makers of just how badly U.S. spy operations had been penetrated.