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.