Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - A retired Los Alamos nuclear security official filed a lawsuit Monday to try to force the government to allow the release of his book on the Chinese nuclear weapons program.
June 18, 2001
Ex-Nuclear Official Sues Over Book
By Robert GehrkeFor the last 18 months the government has blocked the publication of Danny Stillman's book while various agencies scrutinize each line to decide if it divulges national security secrets, according to his attorney, Mark Zaid.
"We're not threatening to release classified information," Zaid said. "We're challenging the government to prove their case and we don't think they're going to be able to do it."
The suit against the Defense Department, Energy Department, Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. It alleges the agencies have violated their own rules for classifying material and Stillman's constitutional right to publish the book.
Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood said the review of the manuscript is continuing.
"We plan to do a thorough job. We're not going to rush it," he said.
Stillman worked for 28 years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, 14 as the head of the intelligence division. He retired in 1993.
Between 1990 and 1999, Stillman made nine trips to China, visiting a nuclear test site and a nuclear lab, meeting with scientists and attending lectures.
None of the trips was taken at the request of the U.S. government, although he was voluntarily debriefed by government officials when he returned.
Stillman took notes of his trips and compiled them into a 500-page manuscript entitled "Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program." In January 2000, Stillman turned over the manuscript to the government for a security review -- a prepublication condition imposed on any government worker granted security clearance.
Since then, Stillman and his attorneys have pressed the Energy Department and Defense Department to finish the review.
A Defense Department memo from last September said the Pentagon objects to publication of any portion of the manuscript because of security concerns. The memo also said publication could "damage American foreign relations with China," according to the lawsuit.
Zaid said that argument is absurd, since the Chinese scientists and other officials in the program gave Stillman all of the information for the book.
"This can't embarrass China, because the Chinese expected this information to get (out)," Zaid said.
In his book, Stillman argues that the Chinese weapons advances were made without the benefit of espionage.
About the time Stillman finished his manuscript, Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-born Los Alamos scientist, was arrested amid fears of Chinese espionage.
Lee was charged with 59 counts of illegally downloading nuclear secrets, not espionage, and eventually pleaded guilty to one count of mishandling information. A judge apologized for the nine months Lee spent in solitary confinement, saying he had been misled by prosecutors.
Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy specialist with the Federation of American Scientists, said national security is not a blanket excuse to limit free speech rights.
"It would be one thing that if they said there is this or that detail that needs to be modified in the interest of national security, but it is completely implausible to claim the entire manuscript needs to be suppressed," he said.
Copyright © 2001 The Associated Press