Rally Denounces Charges in Spy Case

Claiming that Asian American aerospace engineers and scientists in the Los Angeles area could be the next victims of racial profiling, protesters Thursday in Westwood denounced the arrest of nuclear weapons scientist Wen Ho Lee.

Charged with mishandling classified government information, Lee has been turned into a fall guy by U.S. officials desperate to figure out how China apparently obtained secret details of America’s newest thermonuclear warhead, asserted nearly 100 demonstrators who gathered outside the Federal Building.

The Wilshire Boulevard protest was part of a “National Day of Outrage” organized by Asian American groups angry over the treatment of Lee. Demonstrations were also held in Detroit, New York, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Washington.

Thursday marked the sixth month that the 60-year-old Lee, a U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, has been in jail. Held without bail, he is charged with 59 counts of mishandling top-secret information at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Although under suspicion of providing nuclear secrets to China, Lee has not been charged with espionage.

Protesters wearing bright yellow shirts and carrying signs reading “I’m Asian--Arrest Me Too” and “You Say He’s a Spy, We Say That’s a Lie” heard speakers call for Lee’s release on bail while he awaits a November trial date.

“His imprisonment is inhumane and unjustified. He’s not a flight risk,” said Saykin Foo, a Los Angeles resident who is vice president of the 105-year-old National Chinese American Citizens Alliance. “He’s a scientist working to protect American freedom.”

The crowd was told that Asian Americans working in sensitive positions at defense firms in Southern California are at risk if hysteria over national security leaks spreads.

“This sort of thing could happen to any of us because of our look or our ancestry,” warned Charles Sie, an engineer and retired vice president of Xerox from Palos Verdes. He is vice chairman of the Committee of 100, a national group of Chinese Americans active in international issues.

Alfred Foung, a Granada Hills resident and head of the Los Angeles chapter of the 80-20 Pac, a national civil rights group, agreed.

“It’s clear racial profiling and political scapegoating,” Foung charged. “‘It can happen to all of us. We have to tell the politicians we don’t want stereotyping.”

Investigators have denied singling out Lee as a possible spy because of his ethnicity. They say Lee was among 12 people--nine whites and two others of Asian ancestry--working at various U.S. facilities who had access in the mid-1980s to information about U.S. nuclear warheads that China might have stolen. China, meantime, has denied it engaged in spying.

Lee was arrested last December and accused of violating the Atomic Energy Act and the Federal Espionage Act by moving classified nuclear weapons data from a secure computer at the Los Alamos lab onto 10 portable computer tapes. If convicted of violating the Atomic Energy Act, he could face life in prison and a $250,000 fine. A conviction under the espionage act carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and a similar fine.

Pretrial hearings scheduled for Wednesday and next Monday were delayed earlier this week in Albuquerque when a federal judge unexpectedly removed himself from the case. There is speculation that the change in judges will delay the scheduled Nov. 6 start of Lee’s trial.

Protesters Thursday asked that bail be authorized for Lee so he can adequately prepare his case. Stewart Kwoh, head of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California, urged those in the crowd to demand that U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno intervene in the case.

Legal Center colleague Kathay Feng complained that the computerized material Lee is alleged to have downloaded was actually “low-security information” that the government reclassified later in hopes of making the charges against him stick.

Protester Sharon Lee, an El Monte television executive who is unrelated to Wen Ho Lee but is from his Taiwanese hometown, said she knows in her heart he’s innocent.

“He’s from Taiwan. He’d never give any information to China. No way,” she said.