Freedom Rings Hollow

Jeffrey Jhyfang Lo still has faith in his adopted country. But after he was arrested by the FBI in a sting operation, jailed for more than two months and stripped of his possessions, his faith in its government has been sorely tested.

Lo, who runs an import-export business out of a cramped Cypress apartment, was found innocent late last week of charges that he tried to smuggle a high-tech camera to China, where it could have been used by the military.

A federal judge ruled that he was entrapped by FBI agent John Zelinski into breaking the law, even after repeated attempts by Lo to convince the agent that he wanted to export the camera legally. Zelinski, a counterintelligence specialist in Chinese espionage who was masquerading as a Raytheon marketing manager during the undercover investigation, testified he was trying to recruit Lo to spy for the United States.

“I treated him like a good friend and business partner, and he treated me like a criminal,” Lo said. Still, he said that “I trusted the U.S. legal system from the first day, because I knew I was innocent. But this is the U.S. How can this happen here?”

Soon after his February arrest at Los Angeles International Airport, the government seized his bank accounts, Lo said. For one excruciating week, his wife, Betty, had no money to buy food and milk for their infant daughter, he said.

Defense attorney Richard M. Steingard persuaded the government to release the accounts while Lo remained locked up, held without bail. He was released on $65,000 bail more than two months later.

“My wife speaks very little English, and she doesn’t drive. She and the baby depend on me for everything. That’s why I have my office at home. While I was in jail, I called her two times a day to comfort her and see how the baby was,” said Lo, 52.

Lo said his wife thought he was on a jet bound for China when 15 FBI agents knocked on her door in the middle of the night, rousting her and the sleeping baby.

“My apartment is only 700 square feet, so you can imagine what it was like with 15 agents inside. They took everything. My computer, my blackboard, everything,” he said.

Since his acquittal, Lo said, only a few of his belongings have been returned. His attorney has filed a motion seeking to have the FBI return the rest.

Lo’s case was the second lost by the FBI in the last three months involving Taiwanese American defendants suspected of providing military technology to China. Wen Ho Lee was freed in September after pleading guilty to a single felony count of illegally retaining national defense information, after the government dismissed 58 other counts, most of which carried life sentences.

Critics charged that Lee was targeted by the FBI because he is Taiwanese, and Steingard believes that Lo, a U.S. citizen, was also targeted for prosecution because of his background.

Diane Chin, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a San Francisco-based civil rights group, said the federal government has wrongly concluded that Chinese Americans are more likely to engage in espionage on behalf of China.

“They have this perception of us as foreigners who are disloyal. It’s a pattern. We learned from the Wen Ho Lee case that the FBI pursues these investigations on illogical premises,” Chin said.

An FBI spokesman denied that race was a factor, and an official with the U.S. attorney’s office said the case was handled no differently from other investigations.

“The FBI opened this investigation after they were contacted by Raytheon. Lo went to them about purchasing the camera, and they thought it was suspicious. That’s how this whole investigation started. He was never targeted,” said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

A motion filed by prosecutors Aug. 10 charged that Lo had previously tried to illegally export to China a restricted laser system, missile guidance gyroscopes and sextant used in missile systems. The government alleged that Lo used a German company to illegally export to China.

The government made these allegations as part of an unsuccessful move to persuade U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper to bar Lo from using an entrapment defense. Steingard said Lo was never actually charged with any of these allegations.

Zelinski did not respond to a request for comment. However, FBI spokesman Luis Flores in Los Angeles defended him. “Agent Zelinski was being truthful in his testimony, but the judge made her final ruling,” Flores said.

Lo said he had as many as 25 meetings with Zelinski. The two men even took a two-day business trip to San Jose together, where they stayed overnight at the home of Lo’s friend. He said he considered Zelinski a friend and colleague until he realized while in custody that it was the FBI agent who had set him up for arrest.

“Even when I was caught at the airport, I hesitated to release his name, because I didn’t want to get him in trouble,” Lo said.