Chinese Americans Raise Funds for Accused Physicist

As Los Angeles-area Chinese Americans on Sunday launched local fund-raising to defend fired Los Alamos physicist Wen Ho Lee, the former chancellor of UC Berkeley expressed concern that the nuclear secrets case is casting a pall of suspicion over Asian American scientists and engineers.

“Asian Americans must be mobilized to demand a very fair and speedy trial and not have this hanging out over every Asian American engineer’s and scientist’s head,” Chang-Lin Tien said.

Tien said Lee was singled out because of his Asian American background from the very beginning of a federal probe into the mishandling of nuclear weapons secrets at the New Mexico laboratory.

His remarks came hours after a group of Chinese Americans called a news conference in a Cerritos hotel to announce the fund-raising for Lee’s legal fund.

Lee is being held without bail in Albuquerque, after being indicted late last month on 59 counts of violating the Atomic Energy and Espionage acts for allegedly transferring data on the nation’s newest nuclear weapons to unsecured computers and computer tapes, which the government says are missing. Lee, who was fired from his Los Alamos job last March for security violations, has pleaded not guilty.

After a highly publicized federal investigation, Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, was not accused of passing classified information to any foreign government.

U.S. District Judge James Parker has denied Lee bail and expressed concern about possible “enormous harm” to the country if he is freed. Parker’s decision is being appealed.

On Sunday, Tien called the denial of bail unreasonable, adding that he has never met Lee and does not know if he is guilty or innocent.

But Tien--an engineering professor and chairman of the Asia Foundation--said Asian Americans must assist in paying for Lee’s legal defense. He made similar remarks Saturday night to the annual meeting of the Society of Chinese-American Aerospace Engineers, also held in Cerritos.

Tien’s words were echoed by Roy Chang, a retired Orange County computer executive who said he fears that the rights of Chinese Americans are being threatened by the government’s aggressive prosecution of the scientist.

“We have to do something to make sure there is justice,” Chang said Sunday as he delivered almost $4,000 in checks to organizers of Lee’s legal defense fund.

Chang was among the group of Chinese American businessmen who appealed to Southern California’s vast Asian community to come to Lee’s aid. “We have to help him because it’s kind of like the whole government going against an individual,” Chang said. “In order to prove his innocence he has to find the best lawyers he can find.”

Others in the group argued that the maximum sentence--the 60-year-old scientist is facing possible life in prison--is extreme and is having a chilling effect on Asian Americans.

“The situation is very bad,” said Charlie Sie, a retired executive and vice chairman of the Committee of 100, an influential nationwide group of Chinese American leaders.

He told reporters that months of leaks from the FBI and Department of Energy about Lee have spawned an atmosphere of “mistrust and suspicion” about Asian American engineers and scientists at Southern California aerospace and defense contractors and in other industries.

Brian A. Sun, one of Lee’s lawyers, said the scientist is a victim of scapegoating of Chinese Americans by government officials stung by reports of a culture of lax security at the nation’s nuclear labs.

Such an atmosphere is not Lee’s fault, he said.

The Santa Monica attorney likened the government’s pursuit of Lee to the “kind of hysteria” seen “whenever you raise the specter of national security.”

He noted a long history of actions against Asian Americans from the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, to distrust and fear of Communist China and recent allegations of Chinese attempts to influence the American political process and steal American nuclear secrets.