In 2018, as the China Initiative got underway, investigators from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health approached Dr. Lieber to ask if he had taken part in the Thousand Talents programs. Over the weeklong trial, jurors heard from a series of witnesses who said that in both instances, Dr. Lieber had denied participating.
They also watched video clips from an F.B.I. interrogation, conducted on Jan. 28, 2020, the morning Dr. Lieber was arrested at 6:30 a.m. at his office at Harvard.
After initially asking for a lawyer, Dr. Lieber went on to answer the agents’ questions for about three hours, acknowledging at several points that he had misled investigators.
At first, he denied receiving income from the Wuhan university or participating in the Chinese recruitment program. Then the agents produced a series of documents, including contracts from 2011 and 2012, and Dr. Lieber examined them, remarking at one point, “I should pay more attention to what I’m signing.”
“That’s pretty damning,” he said. “Now that you bring it up, yes, I do remember.”
He went on to offer detail about his financial arrangements with the Wuhan university: A portion of his salary was deposited in a Chinese bank account and the remainder — an amount he estimated as between $50,000 and $100,000 — was paid in $100 bills, which he carried home in his luggage.
“They would give me a package, a brown thing with some Chinese characters on it, I would throw it in my bag,” he said. After returning home, he said, “I didn’t declare it, and that’s illegal.”
He acknowledged, as well, that he “wasn’t completely transparent by any stretch of the imagination” when approached by investigators from the Department of Defense in 2018, and that he was aware he might face charges.