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To: lainie
by the way, who was this judge who presumed to speak for the USG and apologize to Wen Ho Lee, anyway?

Judge James A. Parker.

Short version -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee
Nitty gritty -> http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/lit/lee/

76 posted on 01/07/2006 9:57:21 PM PST by Cboldt
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To: Cboldt
I'm trying to learn more about Judge Parker. I did find the exact verbage and date of his 'apology' --

Last week the Government abruptly abandoned its case against Wen Ho Lee, the former Los Alamos scientist who was originally charged with high espionage. After holding Lee in prison for more than nine months, the Government agreed to a single charge of “mishandling nuclear secrets” and no additional jail time. As reported in The New York Times on September 14, 2000, District Judge James A. Parker “stunned” the Government at the sentencing hearing “by implicitly singling out Attorney General Janet Reno, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and senior officials in the Clinton White House for what he said was a questionable indictment, for misleading him about Dr. Lee's supposedly deceptive behavior and then for ignoring his urgings that the government ease the ‘demeaning, unnecessarily punitive conditions’ under which Dr. Lee was being held. . . . ”

Judge Parker said he felt so deeply troubled by the government's consistent pattern of abusive actions that he expressed to Dr. Lee his dismay that the government had unleashed the full force of its powers so arrogantly. "I have no authority to speak on behalf of the executive branch, the president, the vice president, the attorney general, or the secretary of the department of energy," the judge said, but "as a member of the third branch of the United States government, the judiciary, the United States courts, I sincerely apologize to you, Dr. Lee, for the unfair manner you were held in custody by the executive branch."

At another point, the judge added that he felt he had improperly denied bail to Dr. Lee because he was misled into thinking that Dr. Lee posed a threat to national security. "I tell you with great sadness that I feel I was led astray last December by the executive branch of our government through its Department of Justice, by its Federal Bureau of Investigation and by its United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico.” He continued that those Government officials involved “have embarrassed our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it.”

94 posted on 01/07/2006 10:34:39 PM PST by lainie
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