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DATE=8/24/2000 TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT TITLE=WEN HO LEE GRANTED BAIL (S-L) NUMBER=2-265839 BYLINE=MIKE O'SULLIVAN DATELINE=LOS ANGELES INTERNET=YES CONTENT= INTRO: A U-S federal judge has agreed to free scientist Wen Ho Lee on bail on Thursday as he awaits trial on charges of mishandling nuclear secrets. Mike O'Sullivan has a report from our West Coast Bureau TEXT: Dismissing government objections that the defendant is a security risk, the judge in Albuquerque, New Mexico, agreed to release Mr. Lee on one million dollars bail. The former scientist for the Los Alamos National Laboratory had been denied bail twice before. He was not released immediately, but will go through a hearing Tuesday to determine his bail conditions. District Judge James Parker said in a written decision that Mr. Lee should be kept at home with electronic monitoring. The scientist is accused of illegally copying computer data on nuclear weapons design. He was fired from his job last year and arrested in December. Mr. Lee was born in Taiwan but is a naturalized U-S citizen. Supporters say he was targeted because of his Asian background, and that most of the information he copied can be found in public records. Prosecutors say he copied thousands of pages of nuclear secrets on unsecured computers and tapes, and that some of the tapes are now missing. The case is scheduled to go trial in November. /// REST OPT FOR LONG /// This month, a key prosecution witness admitted he was mistaken in earlier testimony when he said Mr. Lee was deceptive on several key issues during interviews. In one case, defense lawyers submitted Mr. Lee's own report on his contacts with Chinese scientists, after the prosecution witness said Mr. Lee had concealed those contacts from supervisors. The scientist was being held in solitary confinement, and the American Civil Liberties Union and Asian American groups have rejected the government's argument that he posed a security risk if released on bail. (Signed) NEB/MO/TVM/PT 24-Aug-2000 19:45 PM EDT (24-Aug-2000 2345 UTC) NNNN Source: Voice of America .