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September 18, 2000

THOUGHTS ON WEN HO LEE

I'm sure glad Wen Ho Lee is free. But I don't feel as good about the US government's handling of the case against Dr. Lee, and how the government handled Lee personally.

Wen Ho Lee's travails have rippled out far beyond the effect they've had on his life and his family and friends.

I don't know if investigators and prosecutors from the US Department of Justice targeted the Taiwanese-born Lee because of his ethnic Chinese background; they say they had a legitimate case against the nuclear scientist that had nothing to do with his race. That's how they defended their actions for the better part of a year, although it must not have been that good of a case, since they let him go free last week, after nine months of solitary confinement.

One thing's for sure: Lee's case would not be such a cause celebre if the DoJ hadn't acted with the full power of its paranoia, and locked him up with such public ferocity.

The 60-year old Chinese American nuclear scientist was fired from the nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico in March, 1999 for allegedly passing along US nuclear secrets -- a 50-year blueprint of the country's nuclear missile program -- to China. The FBI had been investigating him for three years for the infractions, which supposedly took place in the 1980s, and he was charged and arrested in December of last year. He was repeatedly refused bail because, as various federal courts put it, he was a ``clear and present danger to the national security of the United States," he would cause "enormous harm" to the country, and his release might "change the strategic global balance." It wasn't until last month, August 24, that bail was set for Lee, at a million dollars. That bail was also blocked and Lee wasn't released until he agreed to a guilty plea on the one charge, of mishandling classified documents.

Of the 59 other charges that were dropped, 39 carried life sentences, but after months of hard-line statements about Lee's dangerous nature -- he wasn't even allowed to speak to anyone while imprisoned for fear that he would pass along more secrets to the Chinese government -- none of them seemed important enough to keep him locked up last week. Despite consistent denials while incarcerated, Lee was repeatedly interrogated, with not-so-subtle threats of being electrocuted like Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the couple who were put to death as spies who gave away nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

As the government's case started crumbling, the public found out that one of the FBI agents who originally investigated Lee admitted he had misled prosecutors with false testimony. And, the supposedly top-secret documents Lee downloaded weren't as sensitive as originally characterized, and some had even been declassified since the start of the case. When he finally released Lee, federal district court judge James Parker blasted the Justice Department for its handling of the case. Even President Clinton told the media that he is troubled by the way the process was handled, and couldn't see why he was told for months that Lee couldn't be freed because he was dangerous, only to have him released after admitting to one minor charge out of 60.

Lee's ordeal is far from over yet. The DOJ will be interviewing Lee for the next year about the disposition of seven out of 10 tapes on which he allegedly stored information he downloaded, and if the authorities feel the scientist is lying or covering up, they can revoke the plea bargain and take Lee back to trial at any time.

Lee's travails have rippled out far beyond the effect they've had on his life and his family and friends. I feel certain that Lee's past year will impact me for some time to come. Cases such as his can rouse the fears and suspicions of people who have kept their prejudices in check, and it could lead to a wave of racial stereotyping, prejudice and harassment.

Because of this potential, Lee has become a fulcrum for a surge of civil activism almost unheard of within the Asian Pacific American (APA) community. There are plenty of people who think that Lee was singled out as a patsy because of his ethnicity. And representatives of Asian organizations will confront the Clinton administration in a meeting for the White House Initiative on Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders. Organizations such as WenHoLee.org and the 80-20 Initiative, which was originally formed to get APA voters to back one candidate (the group, which is named for the percentage of people it takes for any group to have power as a voting bloc, endorsed Al Gore), are lobbying for a Presidential pardon and official apology.

We should all pay attention to what happens to Lee now.

The Chinese were the first immigrant group in the US to feel the sting of racism through immigration laws, when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and made Chinese ineligible for immigration (along with "lepers, prostitutes, and morons"), and denied citizenship to Chinese already in the US. Similar laws later were adopted towards Japanese immigrants. If it turns out that Lee's arrest and imprisonment had an element of ethnic profiling (the assumption that a person of Chinese heritage would be more likely to help the Chinese government as a spy), the case can eerily echo the way Japanese Americans were rounded up and incarcerated at the start of WWII merely because of the fear that they would aid the Japanese government in an invasion of the US.

Racism is a barely controlled element under the thin skin of our civilized society. Every Japanese American -- in fact everyone of Asian heritage ... in fact, every American -- should shiver, because the chill wind of racial hatred could be unleashed. I'm feeling the goose bumps, and it's not from autumn weather.

Supporters of Lee have a Web site at WenHo Lee.org with an extensive archive of media coverage from the past year following the case; the 80-20 Initiative also has a Web site.