After dinner Don and his wife, who also works at Los Alamos, headed back to work. As they turned their car around and were about to head up the hill past the house of their good friend and neighbor of 20 years, Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, they noticed, as if out of a movie, a man suddenly appear from the shadows. It was James Risen, the reporter from the New York Times. He wanted to know if they'd heard that Lee had been accused of spying for the Chinese. They talked for a while on the front lawn. "It's one of those images that's burned in my memory," says Jean.

Stunned, the Marshalls drove to the lab, where they surfed the Web in search of news articles and found the New York Times' March 6, Page 1 piece. It was coauthored by Jeff Gerth and Risen, and it had exploded like a grenade inside Washington: "Breach at Los Alamos: A Special Report: China Stole Nuclear Secrets For Bombs, U.S. Aides Say." Although it did not name Lee (that came two days later), the 4,000-word story made it clear he was the prime suspect in what the paper was calling a historic bout of Communist espionage, and one that the Clinton administration had dragged its feet on uncovering.

Out in northern New Mexico the Marshalls were not aware that the Sunday political talk shows had been awash in talk of Chinese spies. Republican Sens. Trent Lott, John McCain and Richard Shelby were among those making the rounds, calling for investigations into an alleged White House spy coverup. On "Meet the Press," Shelby described the reported Los Alamos breach as "probably the worst leak we've had in many, many years."

The Marshalls also didn't know that on that Sunday, frantic FBI investigators, unhappy the story had been printed and feeling intense pressure from Washington headquarters, had interrogated Lee at the lab. In a grueling session conducted without an attorney present, the agents urged Lee to confess to passing classified military secrets to the Chinese during his trip to Beijing in 1988. But according to FBI transcripts, Lee, 59, in his halting English, insisted he was innocent. "I believe [God] will make the final judgment for my case. And I depend on him."

"You know what?" shot back the agent. "The Rosenbergs professed their innocence. They weren't concerned either. The Rosenbergs are dead. They electrocuted them," he said, referring to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of leaking Los Alamos secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

The agents used an important prop to dramatize to Lee his dire situation: a copy of the Times' March 6 article.

"This is a big problem," stressed the FBI investigator. "I think you need to read this article, because there's some things that have been raised by Washington that we have got to get resolved."

The agent continued, "You know, Wen Ho, this, it's bad. I mean look at this newspaper article! I mean, 'China Stole Secrets For Bombs.' It all but says your name in here. Pretty soon you're going to have reporters knocking on your door. They're going to be knocking on the door of your friends. They're going to find your son at [college]. And they are going to say, 'You know your father is a spy?'"

Later in the interrogation, a bewildered Lee responded, "That reporter or whoever [in] the media [can] say that. I'm innocent, but I don't know what can I do. I'm, I'm, I'm, I tell you how I feel, I feel, how you call that? Hopeless, OK."

When Don Marshall returned Monday night to his home in White Rock, N.M, he dialed the phone number that the Times reporter had left behind. "I spoke my conviction," says Marshall. "I told him they had the wrong man. He didn't want to believe it of course. He didn't comment, but he probably thought, 'Ah-ha, Wen Ho really pulled the wool over your eyes.'"

Eighteen months after the original blockbuster exposé ran, editors at the New York Times may be wishing somebody at the paper had listened to Marshall, and to others who raised red flags about the paper's early Wen Ho Lee coverage.

Because instead of accepting congratulations for breaking the biggest spy story in a decade, editors are battling what one Timesman calls "a brewing storm" inside the paper of record.

Politics 2000: Unflinching daily political news, analysis and commentary.