Stober, Dan

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Reporter and nonfiction writer. San Jose Mercury News, San Jose, CA, reporter.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pulitzer Prize for public service, 1989, for San Jose Mercury News coverage of a local earthquake.

WRITINGS:

(With Ian Hoffman) A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS:

Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman were both established newspaper reporters—Stober for the San Jose Mercury News and Hoffman for the Albuquerque Journal—when they collaborated on a book detailing the 1999 arrest of Wen Ho Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was accused of selling nuclear secrets to China. A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage begins with a biography of the former Los Alamos Laboratory researcher, then details how the Federal Bureau of Investigation built a case against Lee, how specious media coverage influenced the investigation, and ultimately how the case disintegrated due to lack of clear evidence.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented: "The book is full of new information, and, to the authors' credit, even where they're unsure of the answer, they soberly explore all [the] possibilities." A contributor to Kirkus Reviews stated that the authors "do a fine job of negotiating a path through the secretive, arrogant subcultures involved in the Lee affair." Writing for the American Scientist, Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky remarked that Stober and Hoffman's "excellent, sober and factual account is well worth reading for the light it sheds on murky events." Nation contributors Dusanka Miscevic and Peter Kwong wrote: "Written like a crime novel, their book is at its best as an expose of the behind-the-scenes workings of Washington politics."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Scientist, July-August, 2002, Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, review of A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage, p. 371.

Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2002, review of A Convenient Spy, p. 36.

Nation, April 15, 2002, Dusanka Miscevic and Peter Kwong, review of A Convenient Spy, p. 25.

Publishers Weekly, November 12, 2001, review of A Convenient Spy, p. 46.

ONLINE

Public Broadcasting Service Online,http://www.pbs.org/ (July 8, 2003), author interview.