Wen Ho Lee: ‘I’m Innocent’
Chinese American scientist goes on ‘60 Minutes’
By Associated Press and Connie Hsiao

WASHINGTON -- A government scientist fired under suspicion that he passed U.S. nuclear weapons secrets to the Chinese says he’s innocent of espionage and that transferring sensitive information from classified to unclassified computers was common among his colleagues.

“The truth is I’m innocent,” Wen Ho Lee said in an interview aired Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Suddenly, they told me I’m a traitor. ... I just don’t understand this.”

But Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said on the program that it was “wrong and improper” for Lee to have moved the information at the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., to an unsecured computer. That would make it easier for spies to have gotten access to the information.

“He violated our national security procedure at Los Alamos as a government employee of the United States,” Richardson said. “This is something that we are not going to tolerate.”

Lee was fired last spring after being under investigation for possible espionage since 1996. He came under scrutiny after it became evident the Chinese might have acquired secret design information about the W-88 nuclear warhead. Lee worked on that project and had made several trips to China.

Evidence emerged after his firing that Lee had shifted thousands of classified nuclear weapons codes to an unsecured computer. The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that a legal brief Lee’s lawyers submitted to the department stressed that Lee had “used considerable care” to protect the security of nuclear codes that he moved to an unclassified computer.

The attorneys argued that Lee had good reason to transfer the files, saying it was easier to work outside the classified system and the extra file provided a backup in case of computer breakdowns.

In the broadcast, Lee called such data transfers a common practice. He said he used three passwords on his unsecured computer so “it’s almost impossible for anybody to break in. You know, sometimes I even had a hard time to break in myself.”

Asked why he was singled out for the espionage investigation, Lee suggested that authorities needed a scapegoat, and as an ethnic Chinese born in Taiwan, he fit the bill. “They think I’m perfect for them,” he said.

Soon after the interview, opinions about the interview resonated on Asian American bulletin boards, chat rooms and email lists on the Internet. “Without Wen Ho Lee coming out and giving some flesh and projecting his own humanity, and fighting for himself, those of us who think he is a victim of mass hysteria and racism will be hamstrung,” wrote Eddie Liu, a San Francisco lawyer.

However, others felt that Lee did not make enough of a point about the racism he was subjected to.

“Lee ... fell short of saying that he was singled out on account of his race,” opined UC Berkeley Professor Ling-chi Wang in an email. “This is the point we have to make, if he does not want to make this crucial point.”

On the program, Richardson denied that Lee, a U.S. citizen since 1974, was being made a scapegoat. “This man massively violated our security procedures at Los Alamos,’’ he said, referring to improper contacts with Chinese officials and violations of security rules.

But the way some viewers saw it, the fault for the imbroglio sat more with the New York Times, which published a story about the Lee investigation just days before Lee’s March 8 firing, and with the Cox Report, a House subcommittee document on the issue of spying.

“I was glad also that the New York Times was justly accused of instigating and inciting the national hysteria and the tormenting of Lee without evidence,” said Wang, who also criticized the segment for what he said was underreporting about the Cox report.

“This is the outrage!,” said Wang. “This is also racist!”

Large parts of the report were released this spring, but the part that remains secret is believed to contain details of the still vague allegations about Lee.The Justice Department still has not decided whether to charge him with any crime.

“Instead of waiting for an indictment, I only wish now that [Lee] will file a complaint against UC and the Energy Department for arbitrary dismissal from his job on the one hand and against the New York Times, and others for libel on the other hand,” said Wang.

After all of this, Wang said Lee shouldn’t give up. “There’s hope Wen Ho Lee will be his day in court and be fully reinstated in his old job at the lab with an apology and just compensation.”