-Caveat Lector-
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The Wen Ho Lee Fake-Out
A bungled prosecution, another scandal dodged.
Friday, September 29, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT
Yes, there was a Keystone Kops quality, as Senator Richard Bryan
put it, to the government's handling of the Wen Ho Lee
investigation. But the chattering classes are on the verge of a
major intellectual flake-out, enshrining Mr. Lee as a victim of
racism. No doubt he will soon be collecting a hundred grand a
year on the lecture circuit and selling his life story to
DreamWorks.
Any serious person, though, ought to read the accompanying
narrative from the statement of Janet Reno and Louis Freeh.
This is of course the prosecution's case, and we're not sure it
would be enough to convict on the counts alleging intent to harm
the U.S. But it is abundantly clear that Mr. Lee was up to no
good, that there was plenty of reason for investigators to look
at him with a jaundiced eye, and that under serious investigation
he acted like a guilty man. Having pleaded guilty to one felony,
he promises to cooperate with investigators in revealing the fate
of still-missing tapes. We won't hold our breath.
The prosecution's mistake was overkill. It framed the most
serious possible charges, and then asked for onerous detention
conditions prior to trial. Much of this was the work of John J.
Kelly, a college classmate and longtime crony of President
Clinton, who was U.S. Attorney in Albuquerque and has resigned to
run for Congress there. The Senate committee investigating the
incident ought to get him in and hear his story.
The overkill, plus some blunders in the investigator's testimony,
led Judge James A. Parker to feel he's been misled. So he made
some anti-government rulings on motions by Mr. Lee's attorneys
in hearings on the Classified Information Procedures Act. The
CIPA rulings were likely to give the defense nearly free rein in
rummaging through FBI and CIA procedures in similar cases.
Facing this "graymail," and with the promise of cooperation, the
government dropped 58 of its 59 counts.
This outburst of overkill followed a long period of laxity about
security under this Administration. Energy Secretary Hazel
O'Leary opened reams of nuclear secrets, the CIA chief downloaded
classified information to a laptop, the State Department lost
laptops with classified information and discovered a bug in one
of its conference rooms, and so on. In the Wen Ho Lee case
specifically, the Justice Department took some seemingly
inexplicable positions regarding the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, denying FBI requests for a wiretap on Mr.
Lee.
This week's Reno-Freeh statement glosses over this as "a
good-faith disagreement." But the FISA decision was studied at
length by the Senate Government Affairs Committee. Despite the
reasons for suspicion outlined in the Reno-Freeh statement, the
State Department refused even to take the Wen Ho Lee request to
the special FISA court for a decision. Senator Joe Lieberman
said he disagreed, but felt the decision defensible. Senator
Fred Thompson said that if the request had been granted the tapes
might have been salvaged, and that "the Justice Department's
refusal to permit surveillance was apparently the only time in
the more than 20-year existence of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) that such a request was ever denied."
Keystone Kops indeed. To understand the government's bungling
you have to keep in mind the context of this investigation.
That is, keep in mind such names as James Riady, Maria Hsia,
Charlie Trie and Ng Lap Seng. Our news department broke the
Chinese contributions story in the final weeks of the 1996
campaign; the FISA denial came in June 1997. Mr. Kelly's
prosecutorial overkill came on the heels of the Cox report
criticizing security lapses at Los Alamos and other national
labs.
This is of course not to say that orders went out of the Oval
Office to go easy on Wen Ho Lee at first or to throw the book at
him later. But strange things inevitably happen, and serious
suspicions arise, when a President (and in Ms. Hsia's Buddhist
Temple case, a Vice President) let themselves be put in the debt
of a foreign intelligence service.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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