New York Times May 26, 1999
Op Ed - Page A33
Well, Is He a Spy -- or Not?
By HOYT ZIA
ASHINGTON -- After serving almost five years in the Clinton
Administration, I've learned a number of things about Washington --
and one of them is how innuendo can ruin a reputation in no time.
In my job as chief counsel for export administration in the Commerce
Department, I work daily with classified information in order to help
regulate technology exports to China and other countries that can be
used for military purposes.
As such, I am well familiar with the risks to national security that
could result from the improper disclosure of classified information, as
well as the highly politicized nature of technology transfers to China.
>From this vantage point, I find myself greatly troubled by the
atmosphere surrounding the espionage allegations leveled against Wen Ho
Lee, a nuclear weapons scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in
New Mexico. I'm afraid this tension is only going to get worse with the
release yesterday of the report from the Congressional investigation led
by Representative Christopher Cox.
The case against Mr. Lee goes something like this: In 1996, intelligence
officials obtained a Chinese document from 1988 containing classified
information about an advanced American nuclear warhead. Since Mr. Lee
had traveled to China for scientific conferences in 1986 and 1988, and
in 1982 had called a Chinese-American scientist at another national lab
who was suspected of espionage, he was added to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's list of possible Chinese spies.
After a three-year investigation by the F.B.I. yielded insufficient
evidence to support a charge of espionage, Mr. Lee was fired from his
job in March for unspecified breaches of security and identified as an
espionage suspect. While recent Congressional investigations into the
matter, including the one led by Representative Cox, have concluded that
Chinese spying at the labs is pervasive and ongoing, there is no other
evidence that Mr. Lee passed classified information to the Chinese,
intentionally or otherwise. Nonetheless, many in the media and in the
Government have pronounced Mr. Lee guilty of passing nuclear weapons
secrets to the Chinese.
Let me make clear that I do not defend Mr. Lee's alleged misconduct or
contend that he has not done anything wrong. While the F.B.I. has yet to
uncover any evidence to support charging him with espionage, he appears
to have committed gross violations of the rules for handling classified
material. The details of the security violations for which he was fired
were never specified, but subsequently it was found that he had
transferred highly classified nuclear weapons programs from a protected
classified computer system to his unprotected desktop computer. If Mr.
Lee indeed mishandled classified information, then he deserves to be
punished for those violations, the same as anyone else.
Nevertheless, such violations do not on their face make him a spy. A
charge of espionage requires the specific intent to steal the secrets of
one in order to turn them over to another. Mishandling classified
information has nothing to do with giving secrets away, but simply
failing to safeguard them properly.
It has been reported that many of Mr. Lee's colleagues at the national
laboratories have also been lax about observing these rules. Even John
Deutch, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, was
reportedly investigated after being accused of mishandling classified
information, including allegedly having 31 secret C.I.A. files on his
unsecure home computer. And it is well known that the major national
weapons labs long resisted F.B.I. and Congressional pressure to tighten
their security policies.
While Mr. Lee should not be excused because "everybody does it," neither
should he be singled out if he has acted no differently from many of his
colleagues of all ethnicities.
Although the problem of lax security has been around for two decades and
largely unnoticed, the controversy surrounding Mr. Lee will not let up.
Attorney General Janet Reno has been vilified for the Justice
Department's decision not to order wiretaps on Mr. Lee. Under normal
circumstances would this even have been considered given the inadequate
evidence? And there has even been talk of banning those scientists with
"dual loyalties" from our scientific laboratories.
Why this single-minded pursuit of Mr. Lee? There is an obvious
difference between him and others in his position: He is of Chinese
ancestry. For reasons that I cannot fathom, and notwithstanding numerous
cases of exemplary service to this country, Asian-Americans continue to
be accused of having dual loyalties to a degree far greater than any
other immigrant group in this country.
I know -- I, too, have been accused of having dual loyalties because,
though an American, I happen to be of Chinese ancestry. During the
Congressional investigations into improper campaign fund-raising, I,
like many other Asian-Americans, was interviewed by Federal and
Congressional investigators as well as by self-appointed "watchdog"
groups with their own political agendas.
Though I was not involved in fund-raising and had no personal ties to
the Chinese Government, I was named as a possible link to China by
far-right publications like The American Spectator. The sole evidence
was my Chinese ancestry. No official evidence was ever given to support
those offensive falsehoods, but the damage to one's reputation from
accusations of disloyalty are irreparable.
The link to possible controversy was enough to cause Administration
officials to withdraw my appointment to a higher position in the
Department of the Navy where, as a former Marine officer, I hoped I
could serve. I will forever have to explain to prospective employers why
my loyalty as an American was called into question.
It is no secret that the Chinese, like the Israelis, Russians, French,
Germans and every other industrialized country, are spying on us every
day. Perhaps it is also a fact of life that politicians conjure up fears
against minority groups to achieve their objectives.
But in the United States, there is something called due process. If the
Government has evidence that Wen Ho Lee committed espionage, it should
charge him and let the accusations be aired in a courtroom. If it
doesn't, then it should put the matter to rest rather than allow
innuendo and rumor not only to smear Mr. Lee but to call into question
the loyalty of every Asian-American.
Hoyt Zia is chief counsel for export administration in the Commerce
Department.
