WASHINGTON, January 15 (Xinhuanet) -- U.S. nuclear weapons
scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was once suspected of spying for China,
said he was prosecuted because of race in a book released on
Tuesday.
"Had I not been Chinese, I never would have been accused of
espionage and threatened with execution," Lee wrote of his ordeal
in his new book "My Country Versus Me," coauthored with journalist
Helen Zia.
The Taiwan-born scientist asserted that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and prosecutors singled him out because he was
Chinese.
Lee, 63 and a naturalized U.S. citizen, was fired from his job
at the U.S. Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory in
New Mexico in March 1999 amid espionage allegations the U.S.
government was never able to approve.
He was arrested on December 10, 1999, denied bail and held in
solitary confinement for nine months.
Lee was never charged with espionage. The U.S. government
finally dropped all but one of the 59 charges of mishandling
nuclear weapons data against him, prompting federal Judge James
Parker to apologize to Lee and accuse the U.S. government of "
embarrassing our entire nation."
The U.S. Justice Department released a report last month,
saying the FBI had conducted a "deeply and fundamentally flawed"
investigation of Lee's case, but the report rejected claims that
Lee was targeted because of his race.
Lee has filed a civil lawsuit against the U.S. government,
charging it with violating his privacy rights in the espionage
case.
Lee acknowledged that he downloaded classified data to a
nonsecret computer, but he said he was trying to protect his work
and many other scientists also made back-up copies.
In an interview on NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday, Lee said none
of those scientists who did the same thing are Chinese and
therefor they are not prosecuted or put in solitary confinement.
"I can tell you they are not core secrets. Some of them are
garbage," Lee said of the files.
Lee, who wept during the interview, said that he had never
spied on the United States, but "someone in the government has
done very damaging thing to me."
Lee has been unable to find work in the wake of the espionage
case which he said has ruined his reputation.
"If it's possible I'd like to know who started this and who
should be responsible for this. I'd like to know that myself, and
I hope they change their thinking about me, and I hope someday I
will get my dignity back," Lee said. Enditem
