Q: Who is Dr. Wen Ho Lee?
A: Dr. Lee is a 60-year-old Taiwanese American scientist who has been charged with mishandling restricted nuclear data at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had been an employee for over 20 years.  As a Los Alamos employee, Dr. Lee had a security clearance to review certain nuclear technology information.  However, the government charges in a 59-count indictment that he downloaded data to unsecure computers in violation of federal laws. Dr. Lee is the first civilian who has been criminally prosecuted for mishandling classified information. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Q: Has Dr. Lee been charged with spying?
A: NO, the government has not charged Dr. Lee with spying.  Despite a lengthy investigation involving over 1000 interviews and review of over one million files, the FBI did not uncover any evidence that Dr. Lee passed on classified or restricted information to foreign agents.  The FBI originally suspected that Dr. Lee provided China with W88 nuclear warhead design information, but a subsequent investigation exonerated him.  The “FBI has now admitted that Lee and the Los Alamos lab where he worked never had access to the flawed design drawing of the weapon” (Robert Scheer, What's Left of Case Against Lee? Not Much, LA Times, Dec. 14, 1999).

Q: Where is Dr. Lee now?
A: The FBI arrested Dr. Lee on December 10, 1999 and has imprisoned him in a federal penitentiary in New Mexico.  Even though there is no evidence that he spied, the government refuses to release him on bail.  The conditions of Dr. Lee’s confinement are severe.  He has been placed in solitary confinement, shackled with leg irons and chains every time he leaves his solitary cell, denied access to daily exercise and showers, and has very limited access to phone calls, visitors, or outside information.

Q: Why do people think Dr. Lee is a victim of “racial profiling”?
A: Because extensive evidence has emerged showing that the federal government singled out Asian Pacific American scientists, including Dr. Lee, for espionage investigations because of their race.  Consider the following:

• The former head of counterintelligence at the Los Alamos lab, Robert Vrooman, reported that federal investigators focused their investigation on Chinese American employees while ignoring other employees who could have been spies.  According to Vrooman, “Lee’s ethnicity was a major factor” in being targeted for investigation (Washington Post, Aug. 17, 1999). 
• Vrooman’s statements are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s own task force against racial profiling.  The task force reports that numerous Asian Pacific Americans complained they were singled out for investigation because of their ethnicity, and racial profiling remains an ongoing problem in their work place (Task Force Against Racial Profiling, U.S. Dept. of Energy, Jan. 2000). 
• The sworn affidavit the U.S. Attorney Office used to obtain the warrant to search Dr. Lee’s home claimed that Dr. Lee was more likely to commit espionage for China because he was an “overseas ethnic Chinese.”
• Dr. Lee is the only civilian who has been criminally prosecuted for mishandling classified data.  Many other people, including former CIA Director John Deutch, who have mishandled information consider far more “top secret” have not been prosecuted.  Most recently, the six persons responsible for safeguarding hard drives containing sensitive nuclear information that were missing at Los Alamos were placed on “administrative leave.”  Again, no criminal charges were brought.

• Leaking false information prior to Dr. Lee’s arrest that he gave away “sensitive nuclear secrets” and “the crown jewels” of the U.S. nuclear weapon system to foreign countries. 
• Reclassifying the data that Dr. Lee allegedly downloaded with a higher security label only after firing Dr. Lee.  The “sensitive nuclear secrets” that Dr. Lee allegedly downloaded may not have even been confidential.  According to documents released by the government, the data in question were originally either unclassified or given a “PARD” designation, a low-level warning to “protect as restricted data.”  The government later reclassified the data to give a higher security label after firing Dr. Lee.  As a columnist for the Los Angeles Times noted, “The fact the that government suddenly classified the files as secret is fueling suspicion that Lee is being persecuted as a scapegoat by the Justice Department…” (Robert Scheer, LA Times, April 18, 2000).
• Lying about the results of Dr. Lee’s polygraph test.  FBI agents misled Dr. Lee into believing that he had failed his December 1998 polygraph test when in fact he had passed it.  Afterwards, they threatened him with execution if he did not confess.

Q: What’s going to happen next with Dr. Lee’s case?
A: The judge in Dr. Lee’s case is urging the government to negotiate a plea bargain and in a highly unusual move is ordering mediation.  He has scheduled a new bail hearing on August 16, 2000 to determine whether Dr. Lee should be free pending trial.  “With no direct evidence that he provided information to any country, [the government] has taken a smorgasbord approach to establishing a motive, filing court papers saying Lee might have taken the computer codes to help mainland China or to impress prospective employers in Taiwan, Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore or Switzerland”  (San Jose Mercury News, July 19, 2000).  Many experts have ridiculed the government’s new legal theory on the grounds that a number of these countries do not even have nuclear research programs. “The case against Lee has unraveled since the indictments in December… it's now clear the government wrongly targeted him from the start and overreached in its prosecution.” (San Jose Mercury News Editorial, July 28, 2000).

Prepared by Chinese for Affirmative Action (www.caasf.org).  Please feel free to distribute with attribution.