Helping Dr. Lee -- Innocent or Not

Is the Wen Ho Lee Case Dividing APAs?

By Frank H. Wu, Howard University

The Wen Ho Lee indictment shows again not only that people will make judgments based on race and deny any awareness of the basis for their actions, but also that racial minorities and whites can perceive controversial matters very differently. The reaction to Asian American organizing to stand up for Lee is as troubling as the Lee prosecution itself. Yet Asian Americans face a series of challenges in this case and more generally if they intend to raise civil rights issues effectively and persuasively.

In the ongoing prosecution of the researcher for Los Alamos national labs' top-secret Division X, the list of issues troubling for APAs continues to expand, but it already includes serious problems. Among them: Political leaders have been escalating hysterical rhetoric about China, increasingly via partisan attacks such as the Cox report suggesting that the Clinton administration has compromised national security. The initial investigation of Lee was based on racial profiling. The decision to proceed represents scapegoating, because Lee is not accused of espionage and the allegations do not have anything to do with the loss of the W-88 warhead designs. He is being held to a double standard and subjected to selective prosecution, as others who have committed similar transgressions have not faced even the charges that could lead to life imprisonment.

Moreover, the most recent revelations confirm that Lee has been deprived of due process. The FBI investigators lied to him, telling him he’d failed polygraph testing that he’d easily passed, and then repeating their falsehoods to the public. Lee has basically been assumed to be guilty by the press. His actions have been used to stereotype Asian Americans as a group.

Worse, the reactions to Asian American organizing efforts has been less than sympathetic. Mainstream press coverage has been fair, but the prevailing sentiments of the popular culture are tending toward dismissal of APA concerns. Some have made ad hominem attacks on Asian Americans. They suspect that Asian Americans are involved in a conspiracy, or else discount what we have to say as merely raising another ethnic complaint.

In part, people are admitting that Lee’s ancestry was important to the inquiries, but insisting that it makes sense to use heritage in that manner. The claim is little different than the suspicion toward Japanese Americans during World War II, which resulted in an internment that almost everyone concedes was wrong. The reasoning is deceptively simple but reflects clear prejudice: China- or Taiwan-born are more likely than other Americans to spy on behalf of their countries of birth or ethnic heritage; if China has acquired sensitive information, it is Chinese Americans who ought to be interrogated.

Whatever else might be said of this analysis, it incorporates race as the crucial factor: it all turns on whether a person is Chinese or not. Never mind that Lee was born in Taiwan, with its complicated relationship with mainland China, and that he is a naturalized citizen of the United States.

There is a complication to the rebuttal. China apparently in fact targets Chinese immigrants as potential sources of intelligence. Their tactics do not rely on recruiting actual spies, but rather on gathering information from various sources that may be barely aware that they are disclosing data. Advocates of racial profiling – it may be hard to believe, but there are active proponents of this tactic who call it rational – declare that it is someone else and not domestic law enforcement who has invoked lineage.

This argument is unpersuasive. A foreign country, through its unilateral actions, cannot deprive an American of his rights. It is only by regarding Lee as intrisically Chinese, confusing the person with a nation, that his standing could be diminished by another government.

All that said, however, the Lee defense threatens to divide Asian Americans. The conflicts among Asian Americans must be raised, despite the crisis of the situation. The organizing to date has been done mainly by Chinese Americans. There has been a back and forth exchange between individuals eager to defend Lee’s innocence and organizations insistent on advocating for Lee’s civil rights, with each believing the other has selected the wrong tactic.

It makes sense to help Lee. The criminal justice system can be daunting and has proven to be biased. Even if it functioned perfectly, it requires a vigorous defense to do so properly. A defendant, especially an individual unfamiliar with the arcane maneuvers of the law involved in a high-profile case, can tell his story only with literal and figurative translators who can speak to the judge and the jury.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to confuse the merits of the Lee case with the due process concerns it raises. APA activists are acting on their faith and a sense of identity in doing their part for Lee, but they could turn out to be wrong. They do not know all the facts, which have not been presented in their full form.

Lee could be guilty, most likely of some sort of technical violation for which he does not deserve the extraordinary punishment being proposed. Even were that the outcome, the treatment he has received from his own government is not made any better. Emphasizing his innocence rather than his rights implies that he must be a perfect person if he is to enjoy Constitutional protections.

Furthermore, Asian Americans may play into the hands of their critics. If they agitate for Lee but not for other victims of racial profiling (as in the "driving while black" phenomenon that has attracted attention), they are betraying the racial solidarity that motivates them. If they distance themselves from other racial minorities, they will alienate the very supporters they need to attract to their cause.

Consider the FBI misleading Lee during interrogation. If it is wrong, it is wrong if it happens to an accused drug dealer or a suspect child molester; otherwise, it is impossible to explain why it is wrong at all, except by resorting to a self-interested sense of outrage that an Asian American is the suspect. Emphasizing Lee's racial identity will backfire, merely confirming that Asian Americans care because of race and not for better reasons. (In this respect, while it would not be appropriate to denounce Chinese foreign nationals who wish to articulate their views, defending China is a different agenda altogether.)

Asian Americans also should be realistic. Prosecutors are not likely to drop the charges, no matter how much some of us protest or how much money we raise. Neither the White House nor Congress can be expected to apologize, even if we were unanimous and aggressive in their campaign.

All along, the Lee case has been about much more than the allegations concerning loss of nuclear weapons technology. Until now, it has been about an unfortunate mix of partisan politics and racial profiling. If Asian Americans are to be effective in resisting racial profiling and achieving fair treatment for Dr. Lee, we must ensure our efforts improve to become a combination of principles and coalitions.