Posted on: Thursday, August 16, 2001
Editorial
Bad assumptions biased Wen Ho Lee case
A Justice Department report on the Wen Ho Lee case concludes that it was everything news reports at the time suggested it was: a veritable "Three Stooges" gag fest.
The report says the FBI and the Energy Department "investigated the wrong crime" for nearly three years. This comedy of errors means that Americans may never know how — or even whether — the Chinese government stole technology on the the design of U.S. nuclear warheads.
In that it's nearly impossible to prove a negative assertion, we can't say with certainty that Lee, a Los Alamos scientist, wasn't a spy. We can say, however, that there's almost no reason to suppose he was.
But the Justice Department report rejects one of the central claims from Lee's supporters: that he was unfairly branded a spy because he was Asian American.
True, he was imprisoned for nine months and punished for the sloppy handling of secrets that many of his colleagues have admitted (anonymously) was widespread. He was vilified and persecuted because investigators concluded that A) the Chinese must have stolen the technology, being incapable of developing it themselves; and B) that the Chinese use only persons of Chinese heritage as spies.
The report suggests that these assumptions weren't caused by racial bias (despite sworn declarations from two Energy Department officials who said Lee was targeted partly because of his race), but were coldly calculated factual conclusions.
Whatever. Either the investigators were biased or incredibly dumb. Take your pick.
Some American experts have agreed with President Jiang Zemin's assertion that if the French could develop these warheads without American help, why couldn't the Chinese?
The second assumption, that all of China's spies are Chinese, of course guarantees perfect security for any Caucasian who might be spying for China.
It also explains why the investigators ignored evidence that might have led them in other directions, why they mischaracterized their findings and why they produced a gaffe a minute.
