Asian-Americans Want Investigation

by Jim Lobe

They want a formal investigation into why Wen Ho Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was singled out for investigation and prosecution and whether the fact that he was of Chinese ancestry played a key role in that process.

Lee, accused of downloading the nuclear secrets while working at the Los Alamos National Laboratories, was held in solitary confinement for nine months.

"The government's prosecution of Wen Ho Lee was politically motivated and tainted by racism from the start," said Margaret Fung, executive director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

"A public investigation should be held into the practices of the Department of Energy and the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) that led to this violation of human rights," she pointed out.

Lee was released from jail in Albuquerque, New Mexico, after pleading guilty to only one count of mishandling classified information and agreeing to cooperate with investigators' efforts to determine the fate of seven missing computer tapes on which Lee had downloaded data bearing on the U.S. nuclear arms program.

The other 58 counts that had been filed against him in December, including three dozen which carried life sentences, were dropped in a tacit admission that the central elements of the government's case against Lee -- that he was transferring the data to a foreign country -- had completely collapsed.

In an extraordinary rebuke to the government, the presiding judge in the case, James Parker, apologized for keeping him so long in custody and under such tight security conditions.

Over the past nine months, Lee was repeatedly denied bail, permitted only brief, supervised visits with his family, and kept shackled during periods he left his cell for exercise or to meet with his lawyers.

"I have no authority to speak on behalf of the executive branch, the president, the vice president, the attorney general, or the secretary of the department of energy," the judge said.

But "as a member of the third branch of the United States government, the judiciary, the United States courts, I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner you were held in custody by the executive branch."

Parker said he had been "led astray" by the government which had told him that the data missing from Lee's archive were the "crown jewels" of U.S. nuclear-weapons secrets which could cause the loss of "hundreds of millions of lives" if they fell into the wrong hands.

If Lee were given bail or even permitted to go free or even mingle with other prisoners, the government had argued, he might find a way to transfer them through code or other means.

Government witnesses also had testified that Lee had lied to investigators about the circumstances under which he had downloaded the data. The chief FBI investigator in the case, however, later retracted those allegations, which hastened the case's demise.

In addition, the actual data downloaded by Lee turned out to be far less sensitive than the government had alleged, according to other scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where most of the government's nuclear research has been conducted since the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb in 1945. Most of it was publicly available.

The government's lawyers "have not embarrassed me alone," said Parker. "They have embarrassed our entire nation."

But the judge's extraordinary apology may not be enough for many Asian Americans and civil rights groups, for whom the case has become a cause celebre.

They have argued that Lee was the victim of "racial profiling" on the part of federal security personnel at the national laboratories and in the defence industries, and of anti- Chinese hysteria that has been whipped up as a result of recent tensions with China and the belief held by many in the intelligence establishment and Congress that Beijing has been systematically stealing U.S. weapons' secrets.

That finding set off a frenzy among Republicans in Congress who charged that the Clinton administration had been lax about security and naive about China's strategic intentions. Subsequent hearings about alleged Chinese penetration of the U.S. nuclear complex created headlines around the country.

Attention focused on the national laboratories as the source of the information.

The government has denied that it focused its investigatory efforts almost exclusively on Chinese-American scientists who, like Lee, were known to have visited China.

But the former chief counter-intelligence officer at Los Alamos, Robert Vrooman, disclosed last August that Lee's ethnicity was a "major factor" in his identification as the government's prime suspect.

Vrooman himself long ago concluded that Lee was innocent of spying for China. But amid rising pressure from Republicans in Congress and a crescendo of leaks from zealous investigators, Lee was fired from his job in March 1999 and arrested nine months later.

Lee himself admitted that he had downloaded sensitive information but insisted that it was common practice for scientists at the laboratory to transfer information to unsecured computers, as he had done.

He also said he had destroyed the missing tapes and, at the time of his indictment, offered to cooperate with investigators in tracking down their fate. The offer was ignored, and he was thrown in jail as the government proceeded with its case.

"Under the banner of 'national security,' members of our political establishment were willing to discard fundamental tents of our democracy -- due process and the assumption that one is innocent until proven guilty -- in order to find, prosecute, and ultimately ruin the life of a Chinese American individual who in the end had all but one count for mishandling classified data against him dismissed," said Daphne Kwok, head of the Washington office of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

"We really need to examine the broader implications of what this is all about," said John Tateishi, national director of the Japanese American Citizens League.

"We've struggled for decades to prove to this country that we are in fact American. This really damages Asian Americans all over the country. I don't think this issue is over and done with," he added.

Indeed, many Asian American scientists have since reported increasing scrutiny of their work since the Congressional hearings.

One of the Energy Department's top experts on nuclear proliferation, Edward T. Fei, had his security clearance lifted in November after a security officer questioned him about an e-mail message which all of his colleagues and supervisors insist was completely innocuous.

At the same time, many Asian American scientists have boycotted positions at the three national laboratories, where post-doctoral appointments of Asians and Asian Americans fell from 14 to seven percent in less than one year.