Okay, so it's not on the front page news that Wen Ho Lee is still in jail awaiting trial for passing nuclear-weapons secrets from Los Alamos, but seven months after arresting the Taiwan-native scientist, the government case has done nothing but prove how little of a case it has.

Most recently, the prosecution was told to list the countries in which Lee is suspected of trading nuclear secrets. The government decided to list every country Lee sent resumes in 1993 when Los Alamos was laying off employees. The People's Republic of China and Taiwan were on the list, but so were Australia, France, Germany, Singapore and Switzerland. Lee was trading nuclear secrets with Australia? What a wacky TV mini-series that would be. Get the rights and sign Paul Hogan and Chow Yun-Fat for the leads.

Basically, the prosecutors are being smug. Although the U.S. District Judge granted the request by Lee's attorneys to have the prosecutors supply a list of countries Lee was supposed to have aided, the government lawyers thumbed their nose at the order with the bogus list and publicly stated that the prosecution does not have to prove at trial that Lee did not have any particular country in mind when he downloaded nuclear weapons information.

That's right. Lee may not have had any country in mind when he downloaded the information. In fact, he may not have had espionage in mind when he downloaded the information. In fact, maybe he was only getting his work done.

The defense wants the classified documents he was supposedly downloading used as evidence during the trial, the prosecution does not. The government wants to convict a man without taking into account what information he actually transferred. Just because information is classified does not mean it is really secret.

I remember a college professor showing me classified police documents dealing with the United States illicit drug trafficking market. I was extremely excited that I was going to be able to look at special blue sections that were not meant for public eyes. To my dismay, I already knew everything the blue sections secretly declared. Most of it was common knowledge and the rest I knew from simple research. The information was classified because the police didn't want to admit the information, not that it was some big secret nobody knew about.

The same thing may be the case with Lee. The nuclear weapons information may contain details that Los Alamos does not want to admit, but is already known around the world. Thus, espionage would be pointless, and Lee would be set free.

I still maintain that Wen Ho Lee is a scapegoat for the leaking of nuclear weapons information from Los Alamos Lab. The government grabbed the first Asian person they found at the labs and stopped looking at other potential criminals. The government has consolidated their efforts to convict this one man when there may well have been two or three people passing along secrets. If you only arrest one member of a gang, you didn't fix the situation.

I believe Lee will be convicted of some of the charges against him. He has 59 felony counts against him, so I'm sure they can prove that he did do something wrong. In fact, Lee did do something wrong. He downloaded classified information. Probably to take work home with him (scientists like to work at home for some strange reason), but it's come back to bite him.

What I hope will happen is that Lee is acquitted of all charges and a counter suit settlement makes him a wealthy man for having to stew in jail.

We'll see. The trial starts in November. Place your bets early, folks. I'm betting against the government on this one.

Chris Jungle no longer reads classified information.