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C100
Pleads for Integrity and Honor in Wen Ho Lee
Case
August
10, 1999
The Honorable
Janet Reno
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice, Room 5111
10th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
The Honorable
Bill Richardson
Secretary of Energy
U.S. Department of Energy
Forrestal Building, Room 7A-257
1000 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20585
Re: Dr.
Wen Ho Lee
Dear Attorney
General Reno and Secretary Richardson:
I am writing
to each of you about the case of Dr. Wen Ho Lee
on behalf of the Committee of 100, a non-profit
501(c)(3) organization comprised of some of the
nation's most eminent Americans of Chinese descent.
Enclosed is a small brochure that describes our
membership and our two-fold mission: to be advocates
for the greater inclusion of Chinese Americans
in all aspects of our American society and to
promote friendship and understanding between
the people of the United States and the people
of China.
The Committee
of 100 believes that Dr. Lee's case requires
our organization to address the public policy
issues raised by his potential criminal prosecution.
Your imminent decisions on whether to file criminal
charges against Dr. Lee may have profound effects
upon thousands of Chinese Americans who are similarly
situated at the national laboratories and elsewhere
within the U.S. defense establishment as well
as on U.S-China relations, particularly at this
delicate point in history. We hope our comments
below will assist you both in reaching a fair
and just result purely on the merits of Dr. Lee's
case and not because of any political pressure
or public hysteria about perceived breaches of
national security.
Our fundamental
concern is that Dr. Lee receive due process and
equal protection of the law from the Energy Department
and the Justice Department in the exercise of
the Government's prosecutorial discretion. It
has only been a few years since the U.S. Government
had to apologize publicly to more than 100,000
Japanese Americans who were horribly scarred
by their internment during World War II, an action
that was ill taken in haste and clearly the result
of racial prejudice and popular hysteria. Many
other American citizens were similarly injured
during the infamous McCarthy period of the 1950's,
when the Government again acted heedlessly in
response to public hysteria that was whipped
up by political groups. The Committee of 100
respectfully requests that, in dealing with Dr.
Lee's case, your decision be grounded on fundamental
fairness, so that it will not be seen in history's
light as yet another miscarriage of justice.
In making
this request, we also wish to acknowledge with
gratitude the thoughtful and sensitive consideration
that has already been given by Secretary Richardson
to this case and to the plight of many thousands
of other Chinese American scientists and engineers
employed at the National Laboratories and elsewhere
within the American defense community. Secretary
Richardson was the featured guest speaker at
the Committee of 100's annual meeting in New
York City in May and spoke candidly and eloquently
about his personal dedication to the principles
of racial equality and due process of law. We
have confidence that, in the end, both of you
will do what is right and just, not what is politically
expedient.
There
is obviously no way that the Committee of 100
can know what you and your staffs know on the
basis of the Government's investigation of Dr.
Lee. We therefore do not presume to speak on
the ultimate question of his guilt or innocence.
However, on the eve of the prosecutorial decision
in this case, we believe that three factors have
already cumulated to raise serious questions
about the possibility of selective prosecution in
Dr. Lee's case. In our view, these three factors
are as follows:
1. The
Alleged Flaws in the Investigation
It is probably
neither necessary nor helpful to you for the
Committee of 100 to repeat the various charges
that have been leveled at the investigation of
Dr. Lee's case and, indeed, at the investigation
of the entire subject of classified data protection
at Los Alamos National Laboratory. However, we
are deeply troubled that, among the media reports,
it is said Senators Thompson and Lieberman have
already heard top Justice Department officials
testify on the investigation's failure to examine
other possible sources of the classified W88
nuclear warhead information besides the Los Alamos
scientific community and, even within the Los
Alamos laboratory, a further failure to check
on other potential individual suspects besides
Dr. Lee.
If those
reports are true, as only you would know, then
the investigation surely began with the assumption
of Dr. Lee's guilt rather than coming to that
reasoned conclusion after a thorough and professional
investigation that would be proportional to the
gravity of the national security interests involved.
The nation has the right — and a need — to know
that the Justice Department has resolved the
serious question of whether others besides
Dr. Lee may in fact be responsible for the alleged
national security breaches.
Plainly,
if the investigation was so flawed or tainted
from its inception, an aggressive defense effort
at trial by Dr. Lee's counsel will expose and
magnify those flaws for everyone to see. Any
prosecution of Dr. Lee under these circumstances
would raise an objective question whether he
is being singled out for prosecution solely to
still the public criticism of the Energy Department,
the FBI and the Justice Department and as an
effort to pacify those who have demanded that "heads
roll" for the apparent breaches of national security.
If it is already known and officially acknowledged
that Dr. Lee was prematurely and perhaps unfairly
singled out for investigation, then the Justice
Department has a clear duty not to exacerbate
that problem by singling him out, again, for
prosecution. We at the Committee of 100 recall
the words of the Justice Department's own credo:
Qui pro domina justitia sequitur.
2. Institutional
Laxity
Many of
the most recent media reports suggest that, because
of that flawed investigation, the Government
might not have sufficient evidence now to prosecute
Dr. Lee for espionage and so, instead, might
contemplate a lesser prosecution under 18 U.S.C.
Section 793 for mishandling sensitive and classified
government information. If that is indeed the
course now being considered jointly by your agencies,
we at the Committee of 100 again express our
concern about selective prosecution.
The Committee
of 100 has reviewed numerous press reports that
document the existence of institutional laxity
for some 20 years at the national laboratories
which house our nation's nuclear secrets. It
would appear that the Energy Department's own
management failed to follow specifically articulated
recommendations for corrective security action
over a very long period of time and essentially
allowed a "culture of carelessness" to be created
in which no clear guidance was provided to laboratory
employees such as Dr. Lee. These same reports
seem to suggest that dozens and perhaps hundreds
of others within the Government have engaged
in the same type of information mishandling (or
even worse) without any reprimand or loss of
employment, much less criminal prosecution.
We are
not defending here Dr. Lee's apparent mishandling
of sensitive nuclear information, and Secretary
Richardson has already caused Dr. Lee to lose
his career employment at Los Alamos because of
those lapses. However, we do question how the
Justice Department could responsibly and fairly
pursue Dr. Lee — or any other single individual — on
charges of personal negligence in handling nuclear
secrets when there was so much widespread institutional
laxity that all but encouraged such conduct.
To our knowledge, no other government employee
has ever been charged under 18 U.S.C. Section
793 in anything approaching the known facts of
Dr. Lee's case and certainly not when virtually
an entire agency seems to have been "guilty" of
the same kind of actions.
3. Problems
of Ethnicity
Finally,
and perhaps most importantly, we at the Committee
of 100 are concerned that any prosecution of
Dr. Lee not be based on impermissible motives,
such as his race or ethnicity. As Secretary Richardson
has reportedly said, it would be wrong to "play
the race card" in Dr. Lee's case in any manner,
for his race or ethnicity should be completely
irrelevant to the prosecutorial decision that
is now on your desks. His Chinese background
should not make him immune from prosecution if
the facts warrant such prosecution, but neither
should his ethnicity make him subject to prosecution
solely because he happens to be Chinese. That
is at the very heart of our constitutional protections
of due process and equal protection under the
law.
Why, then,
do we now raise the issue of race and ethnicity
in Dr. Lee's case? We do so because it has been
widely reported that high level Clinton administration
officials have openly admitted Dr. Lee's ethnicity
is a factor in his selective investigation. It
has also been reported that a high-level FBI
official has stated that Dr. Lee would be prosecuted
for "spitting on the sidewalk, if that case could
be made against him" -- a statement in essence
that Dr. Lee is being pursued vindictively as
a result of some personal or perhaps racial animus
toward him and plainly not because of any actual
felonious conduct. When you make your final choices
on Dr. Lee's case, all we ask is that you be
absolutely certain that the recommendations coming
to you from your staffs have not been tainted
by such vicious racism. Dr. Lee and the nation
deserve a case made on the merits of a through
and professional investigation, not a racist
witchhunt.
In closing,
let us share some painful truths with you. Largely
because of the handling of Dr. Lee's case to
this point, there have been countless reckless
statements by public officials and media pundits
about "espionage" and "Chinese spies" which have
cast a cloud upon the loyalty of all Chinese
Americans, particularly the thousands of Chinese
American scientists, engineers and technicians
who work in the U.S. defense and high technology
communities. Your prosecutorial decision on Dr.
Lee therefore has the potential to exacerbate
that hysteria and to unleash a virulent anti-Chinese
frenzy in this country. Such a high profile prosecution,
with its attendant media circus atmosphere, could
do incalculable harm to the welfare of millions
of law-abiding Chinese Americans and to our foreign
policy toward China itself.
We understand
each of you must, in the end, do your duty as
you see it in the discharge of your respective
responsibilities in this difficult case. We ask
only that you look carefully at the facts of
this case before making your final decision and,
when the decision is taken, you understand the
grave and potentially tragic consequences it
may have for the entire Chinese American community
and for the delicate strategic relationship the
United States is trying to build with China.
If there is anything we at the Committee of 100
can do to assist you in the honorable discharge
of this heavy burden, we hope you will let us
know. Thank you for taking time to consider our
views on this matter.
Sincerely,
Henry
Tang
Chairman
cc: The
Honorable Eric H. Holder
Deputy Attorney General
The Honorable
James K. Robinson
Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division
The Honorable
John J. Kelly
United States Attorney, District of New Mexico
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