Nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee came to public attention as a master spy, the man who supposedly gave hydrogen bomb secrets from Los Alamos National Laboratory to China. But by the time he walked free from a New Mexico courtroom he appeared--even to President Clinton--to be a victim of overzealous federal prosecutors. The full story is of a much more complicated man. Stober & Hoffman's vivid narrative reveals Lee & his wife Sylvia as an integral part of a secret intelligence game between U.S. & Chinese nuclear weapons designers, each side quietly trading information to learn about the warheads of the other. Stober & Hoffman, veteran reporters of the nuclear weapons world, provide the inside story of the court drama, of how participants in the quiet diplomacy offered behind-the-scenes help to the defense. The authors question whether there would have been any prosecution at all if the Republican Congress had not seized on the case as a way to attack the Clinton administration & create a new enemy--China--in the aftermath of the Cold War. A Convenient Spy also offers a window on the evolution of modern nuclear weapons & the implications for future Sino-U.S. relations.