Federal Judge Affirms FBI’s Grounds for Probe of High-Tech Export to China

After reviewing classified documents, a Los Angeles federal judge said Monday that the FBI had ample grounds for launching a criminal investigation of a Taiwanese American businessman who was acquitted on charges of illegally exporting a sophisticated infrared camera to China.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper rejected a defense request for a declaration that the government was “vexatious, frivolous or in bad faith” when it prosecuted Jeffrey Jhyfang Lo, 52, of Cypress in a nonjury trial last year.

Such a declaration would have forced the Justice Department to pick up the tab for Lo’s legal fees under a law enacted by Congress in 1997. In addition, it would have represented a stinging rebuke of the U.S. attorney’s office along with the FBI and U.S. Customs Service, which investigated the case.

In November, Cooper acquitted Lo on grounds that he was illegally entrapped by an overzealous FBI Agent who, she said, pressured him into taking the camera out of the country without a license. Lo was arrested with the camera at Los Angeles International Airport as he was about to board a flight to China.

Cooper also found that FBI Agent John Zelinsky’s trial testimony was “simply not plausible.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Maurice M. Suh argued Monday that the agent’s testimony was “inartful and poorly explained” because he was duty-bound not to disclose classified information about FBI foreign counterintelligence operations.

Cooper agreed, but she refused to withdraw her earlier findings about Zelinsky’s lack of credibility on the witness stand.

Suh told the judge that “the message the court has sent [through her verdict] has been heard loud and clear” at the highest levels of the U.S. attorney’s office, the Justice Department and the FBI and “we have taken steps to see that it does not happen again.”

The judge also rejected a defense claim that Assistant U.S. Atty. David Vaughn, the trial prosecutor, acted improperly when he tried to keep Lo from being freed on bail and when he sought to prevent Lo’s lawyer from mounting an entrapment defense.

Lo’s lawyer, Richard M. Steingard, expressed disappointment afterward, but said Cooper was “very careful” in reaching her decision. U.S. Atty. Alejandro N. Mayorkas said he was pleased.