Asian caucus to fete former accused spy
New patriotic group upset with lawmakers honoring Wen Ho Lee
Posted on 06/04/2004 10:50:14 AM PDT by Impeach98
Asian caucus to fete former accused spy
New patriotic group upset with lawmakers honoring Wen Ho Lee
SACRAMENTO -- Asian lawmakers from the Bay Area and Southern California said Thursday their small caucus in the Legislature will honor former accused spy Wen Ho Lee with a "profile in courage" award -- a move that infuriated a new group formed in California to support the war on terrorism and U.S. military.
Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, an Oakland Democrat, said the event -- to be emceed by actor Lou Diamond Phillips -- will appropriately honor Lee for the "courage and strength he showed through the ordeal" that ended in uncertainty.
But Move America Forward said caucus members may be violating their oaths of office to defend against domestic enemies.
"This is so wrong on so many fronts," said former state lawmaker Howard Kaloogian, whose group's roots extend into the Bay Area.
Move America Forward, which launched an Internet site this week, announced Thursday it will stage major patriotic-oriented events across the nation on Sept. 11 -- including a rock concert in San Francisco.
The six-member California Asian Pacific Islander Caucus ceremony honoring Lee is scheduled during a Sacramento dinner Monday at the conclusion of the group's first policy summit.
"There really was very little substantiation to, especially the more serious, charges about him being a spy," Chan said. "The Asian community rallied around him (during the episode) three or four years ago.
"I think it's appropriate he's going to be there," she said.
Other members of the caucus include Assembly members Leland Yee, D-San Francisco; Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park; Carol Liu, D-Pasadena; and George Nakano, D-Torrance. The sixth member is state Board of Equalization member John Chiang.
Lee, a former computer engineer in the nuclear-weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was jailed nine months, under special orders approved by then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and then-Attorney General Janet Reno.
Previously, the federal government applied those conditions only to terrorist and Mafia defendants.
He never was charged with stealing nuclear secrets for China, although that was the gist of news coverage of his case for almost two years. Nor was he exonerated.
Kaloogian, a Republican involved in the recall of former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, said Lee engaged in "very suspect, questionable activity" and that the lawmakers honoring him took oaths to defend against foreign and domestic enemies.
"I wonder if they (caucus members) have ever considered whether a domestic enemy could possibly be the man that they are honoring," Kaloogian said. "I would think that they would be able to find other role models."
The roots of Move America Forward, which was launched in part to rebuff criticism of the war on terror and the military, extend to the Bay Area, where KSFO AM-560 radio personality Melanie Morgan serves as a vice chairwoman.
The most serious charges against Lee -- 39 counts of copying secrets with intent to aid an unnamed country or harm the national security of the United States, all punishable by up to life in prison -- were dropped in September 2000.
Lee pleaded guilty to a single felony of using an unclassified, unsecure computer to download "information related to the national defense."
He and a large band of supporters, many of them from the Bay Area, claimed the government pursued him simply because he was a Chinese American.
Lee's ethnicity did fuel investigations of him by U.S. Energy Department counterintelligence agents and the FBI, but so did his copying of an extraordinary amount of nuclear weapons software to portable tapes.
He offered a persuasive account of throwing his tapes, containing what federal prosecutors called the "crown jewels" of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, into a Dumpster, which then was emptied into a landfill.
The Dumpster's contents were buried in one of two locations. An FBI team unearthed the shallowest garbage heap and found nothing. Verifying the deeper home of the "crown jewels" would, by FBI estimates, have cost at least $45 million, and it was never dug up.
Lee never persuasively explained his need for the tapes, and his case ended in uncertainty.
Staff Writer Ian Hoffmann contributed to this story.
Contact Steve Geissinger at sgeissinger@angnewspapers.com .
Wow - not a single comment. No one seems to mind?
Assuming Lee is innocent, he still didn't do anything particularly courageous to merit an award exemplifying the trait.
Since he spoke Chinese better than English and visited China, it's reasonable that the US would suspect him more than they would an American-born person, given the same evidence (with which I'm not familiar). Many 1st generation immigrants love this country, but it's easier for them to harbor foreign sympathies.
It's great that we can hire the best scientists from around the world to work for us, but we just have to be careful where their loyalties lie.
Persuasive to WHOM?! Wen Ho Lee's a spy and a traitor and the Clinton Justice Dept. let him get off scot-free...MUD
That's an incredible assumption, imho...MUD
They love commie spies. This is no surprise. Just another Enemy Within.
It's too bad that they're all Democrats. Some represent areas that have high Asian populations, but their GOP competitors were probably Asian, too. Some of those areas (e.g., San Francisco and Oakland) are so liberal that a conservative person of any ethnicity has no chance.
Many years ago my Assemblyman was Republican Nao Takasugi, whose name sounds Asian. I'm sure he won the elections based on his merit, not his ethnicity, because the area is relatively "white" with a very low Asian population.
Maybe the tactic of leading voters to vote for the candidate of their race works better for Democrats? (Sort of along the lines of the Democrat herd mentality, with Republicans thinking more independently.) It certainly didn't work for GOP Senate candidate Matt Fong in 1998.
I should have said "not guilty" instead or whatever you call it when the prosecution can't put together its case.
I just think it's stupid to give him an award for "profile in courage." It's like giving O.J. Simpson the same award.
Me too...MUD
Great analogy!
Wasn't he born in Taiwan? How could he be pro-Mainland? The whole case was very weak. Even the judge felt compelled to apologize to him.
Some people in Taiwan spy for China, and some Taiwanese feel that China is their homeland. Likewise, we have Communist sympathizers in the US; that is to say, they're not necessarily vocal and they don't comprise a large percentage of the population, but they exist. The distinction here is between the overall feelings of an entire country and the actions of an individual person.
The whole case was very weak.
I guess that's why it was thrown out! We didn't have resources to investigate thoroughly, so who knows what really happened.
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