Wen Ho Lee's freedom does not change anti-Chinese bias

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Village Voice, September 20 - 26, 2000

Advocates Doubt Wen Ho Lee Release Will Change Anti-Asian Politics Not a
Chinaman's Chance
by Chisun Lee

The plea agreement that last week sprang former Los Alamos nuclear
scientist and suspected China spy Wen Ho Lee from a nine-month stint in
solitary was widely viewed as the pathetic conclusion to an especially
embarrassing moment in U.S. counterintelligence history. Only days after
dubbing Lee too great a national security risk to release on $1 million
bail and under strict house arrest, government prosecutors on September 13
accepted a guilty plea on one out of 59 charges of improperly transferring
restricted information, without additional time to be served. Those who
supported Lee should have been jubilant.

Yet in reality, while it took a hit in the press, the government may have
won bigger than even its attorneys claimed. Prosecutors crowed that, at
last, they would get an explanation about seven computer tapes supposedly
containing U.S. nuclear secrets, which Lee apparently destroyed. But the
real score for the national security crowd, Asian American and civil rights
advocates say, was not having to address accusations of selective
prosecution, racial profiling, xenophobic rhetoric, and unconstitutional
maneuvering-problems with significance far beyond this single case. For
that reason, some of Lee's staunchest supporters regret the deal that set
him free.

The press last week used words like "crumbled" and "collapsed" to describe
the government's case, and the presiding judge, James A. Parker, lamented
that the highest officials had "caused embarrassment by the way this case
began and was handled."

One article explained that the Chinese had been perfecting their technique
of "tasking thousands of Chinese abroad to bring secrets home one at a
time, like ants carrying grains of sand" since "at least   the fourth
century B.C."

In fact, the case against Lee was riddled with weak spots. Some major
problems included: 99 percent of the "crown jewels" of national defense
data that Lee supposedly stole turned out to be easily accessible public
information, according to defense experts, and was only classified as
secret or confidential after he was arrested; from a list that included
several non-Asians suspected of similar offenses, only Lee was singled out
for investigation; no substantive evidence emerged to suggest that China
actually possessed the nuclear secrets in question; prosecutors were unable
to charge Lee with espionage and in fact had trouble deciding whether to
assign his loyalties to China or Taiwan; an FBI agent admitted to
repeatedly giving false testimony that cast Lee as deceptive and too
dangerous to be released on bail.

Nevertheless, Lee for nine months was locked up in solitary confinement and
shackled for his daily hour of exercise. Investigation of Lee coincided
with a wave of dramatic news stories that relied on government sources to
describe a massive Chinese nuclear espionage effort. A March 21, 1999,
Washington Post article explained that the Chinese had been perfecting
their technique of "tasking thousands of Chinese abroad to bring secrets
home one at a time like ants carrying grains of sand" since "at least the
fourth century B.C., when the military philosopher Sun Tzu noted the value
of espionage in his classic work, The Art of War."

(Full story at http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0038/lee.shtml)


Louis Proyect

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