Spy Charges

* I do not see the need to bring charges against Wen Ho Lee (Dec. 11). Not one scintilla of evidence has been found of criminal espionage against Lee. The FBI was negligent to have singled out this scientist for revealing secrets about the U.S. nuclear weapons program, when there were potentially thousands of other sources from which this information could have been obtained.

Prosecution of Lee would only indicate that the Justice Department is trying to cover the mistakes of the FBI, which focused its investigation for three years on Lee by making him a scapegoat, while former CIA Director John Deutch, who committed a similar act of mishandling classified information, has only had his security clearance suspended. Does the Justice Department clearly use a double standard, with possibly racist motives, in deciding whom to prosecute?

JEFF WONG

Hacienda Heights

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Your story quotes the U.S. attorney in New Mexico regarding the Lee arrest: “This case is being prosecuted because Wen Ho Lee has denied the United States its exclusive dominion and control over some of the nation’s most sensitive nuclear secrets.”

Hmm. Yet another government figure who regards us citizens as morons--we know that Lee is being prosecuted because the U.S. government ended up with egg on its face in its futile efforts to prove him a spy.

MIMI MERRILL

Ridgecrest

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The main point I will recall from “Old Spies Refusing to Fade Away” (Dec. 12) is that former KGB Maj. Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who spent 34 years as a Soviet spy, now lives in the Washington area!

RICHARD J. CHRYSTIE

Orange