Charles Lieber, one of the country's top research chemists, sat at the Harvard Police Department, trying to explain to two F.B.I. agents why he had agreed to partner with a lesser-known Chinese university.
The university had money to spend and that is one of the things China uses to try to seduce people, according to Dr. Lieber. He said he returned from several trips to China with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, wrapped in a brown thing with some Chinese characters on it.
He said money wasn't the reason he became involved. He wanted to burnish his credentials by training young scientists in the use of technology that he had pioneered.
He said it was embarrassing. Every scientist wants to win a prize.
The trial of Dr. Lieber, which is expected to conclude this week, has offered a glimpse inside the big-money, big-prestige world of elite science as the U.S. government began the China Initiative, an effort to root out scientists suspected of sharing sensitive information with
The case against Dr. Lieber does not bring charges of espionage or intellectual property theft, but rather a failure to disclose Chinese funding that could be seen as a conflict of interest by the U.S. government.
Dr. Lieber is accused of lying to the government about whether he participated in China's Thousand Talents Plan, an effort to attract foreign-educated scientists to China, as well as failing to declare income earned in China on his tax returns. Making false statements to government agencies about the Chinese recruitment program is not a crime.
The China Initiative, which began under the Trump administration, has experienced a number of setbacks. In July, the Justice Department dropped cases against five researchers accused of hiding ties to the Chinese military, and in September, the one against Anming Hu, the first prosecution to reach the trial stage, ended in an acquittal.
The verdict in Dr. Lieber's case is being watched in scientific circles as an indicator of whether the Justice Department will proceed with the prosecutions of other researchers.
The department of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard was chaired by Dr. Lieber. He is on leave from the university.
The government could not prove the false statements charges because the two interviews in question were not taped or transcribed.
He said that the F.B.I. turned off one of the leading lights in the world of science when they raided Charlie's home and office.
The government doesn't have proof beyond a reasonable doubt, so a guilty verdict requires it. The government would win if there was a prize for inventing something out of nothing.
A sentence of up to five years in prison is possible if you are convicted of a false statement charge.
The most prominent researcher under federal prosecution is Dr. Lieber. He was seen by many in the field as a potential winner of the prestigious prize for chemistry and chemical biology, as he was the chair of Harvard's department of chemistry and chemical biology.
Every morning, a few of Dr. Lieber's colleagues file into the gallery in Boston's federal courthouse to listen to testimony.
Adam Cohen, a professor of chemistry, chemical biology and physics who attended last week, called him one of the best and most impactful chemists alive.
Brian Timko, who heads his own laboratory at Tufts University, said that Dr. Lieber invented electronic chips that could be injected into the human body.
He said that the technology could lead to breakthrough in bioelectronic medicine, like restoring sight to blind people or movement to paralyzed limbs.
Dr. Timko said he was devastated by the way all of Charlie's accomplishments were twisted. Charlie spent his entire career trying to help the world, and a few people who don't understand how science works to destroy it. That is not fair.
Mr. Mukasey tried to shift the focus to the importance of Dr. Lieber's work by asking one government witness to read aloud a paragraph from his curriculum vitae.
Dr. Lieber was in 2002. He is a researcher at Harvard and has pursued commercial projects. He was considered a contender for the chemistry prize.
It is standard for high-level academic researchers to enter into contracts with outside employers, either consulting with private-sector firms or maintaining affiliations with universities in other countries.
One of Dr. Lieber's former students took a post at the Wuhan University of Technology, where the joint venture was started in 2011.
The jury was shown a three-year contract that made Dr. Lieber a "One Thousand Talent High Level Foreign Expert" and gave him $50,000 a month, plus $150,000 in living expenses and more than 1.5 million dollars for a laboratory.
Mr. Mukasey compared the document to a letter from Publishers Clearing House.
Dr. Lieber, who has been on paid administrative leave from Harvard since his arrest in 2020, told the F.B.I. that he received a smaller amount, with between $50,000 and $100,000 paid in cash and another portion deposited into a bank account in China, which at one time contained about
Emails were read at the trial of Dr. Lieber. In one email, Dr. Lieber complained to a colleague that his partners were pressuring him to credit their grants in his published work.
He was upset that he was not elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an outcome he described in an email as an insult to him and all the Chinese scientists. He was elected in 2015.
In an email to a Chinese colleague at another institution, Dr. Lieber said that he did not have a good taste in China. We will not let these people use me, because they want to. We will always be polite in the mean time.
Harvard administrators discovered that the Wuhan institution was using Harvard's name without permission.
The Wuhan arrangement was a serious problem for Dr. Lieber by the end of the year. The investigators from the Department of Defense asked if he had participated in the Thousand Talents program.
He wrote to a Chinese colleague that they were threatening to end his funding and force him to pay back the money they had spent on his work.
The Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health have given $18 million to Dr. Lieber's lab since 2008.
The Justice Department has dropped cases against five researchers accused of hiding ties to the Chinese military, and one case ended in acquittal.
The F.B.I. agents arrested Dr. Lieber at 6:30 a.m. on January 28, 2020, at his office in Cambridge.
He answered the agents questions for three hours after initially asking for a lawyer.
He suggested the charges may have been based on a mix-up, because he had written a paper with a former student who had Thousand Talents funding, which is a big no-no.
He told them that he had never received payment from the university, that he had not qualified for the Thousand Talents grant, and that he had never been to China.
The agents produced a number of documents, including contracts from the year 2011. Dr. Lieber remarked at one point, "I should pay more attention to what I'm signing."
He said that it was pretty damning. I remember, now that you mention it.
He explained that a portion of his salary was deposited in a Chinese bank account and the rest was paid in $100 bills, which he carried home in his luggage.
He acknowledged that he had not been forthcoming when the Defense Department approached him two years later.
He said that he was scared of being arrested.
Dr. Lieber said that relationships with foreign partners were not as straightforward as they first appeared.
If someone said that they would pay your travel to and from, you didn't think much about it, but partners always wanted something from you.
He said that a lot of countries have money that is in excess.
He tried to impress the two special agents that the desire for fame had brought him to partner with Wuhan and train scientists there.
He said he was younger and stupid. I want to be remembered for what I have done. Everyone wants to be noticed. He compared his son to him. He said that the prize is like an Olympic gold medal.
He said that the prize he won recently was more like a bronze medal. He said that the underlying reason was probably that.
