Accused of Spying for China, Until She Wasn’t
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
From Wikipedia:
[A] Taiwanese American scientist who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He created simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of scientific inquiry, as well as for improving the safety and reliability of the U. S. nuclear arsenal. A federal grand jury indicted him of stealing secrets about the U. S. nuclear arsenal for the People's Republic of China (PRC) in December 1999.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wen_Ho_Lee
The charges agains Wen were ultimately dropped, and $1.6 million paid from the US Government and media organizations, though his reputation continued to suffer. He's now retired.
The second thing that strikes me is to never talk to law enforcement. The lying to Federal agents charge came from Chen's describing a trip as occurring in 2011 rather than 2012.
A couple of things about the Wen Ho Lee case. The first is that the NYT presented leaked documents and innuendo from unnamed sources about Lee's culpability. All this turned out to be either not true or completely blown out of proportion.
The second is that Robert Scheer, a reporter for the LA Times (back then) and The Nation magazine, and now editor of Truthdig.com, really risked his reputation in defending Lee when he was under attack by the major media.
Scheer ended up winning an award for his work, and as you mention, Lee got a $1.6M settlement from the media and from the government. For more: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060606_robert_scheer_l...
Now that we know that parallel construction is a tool used by intelligence agencies, along with discrediting targets as another routinely used device, when are we going to mandate "citation or GTFO" from the already-discredited media?
The questioners are rarely treated seriously by media organizations like the NYT, but they still certainly exist.
Mere suspicion of having something to hide is all it takes for prosecutors to file charges, and ruin your life.
Reminds me of what my Pakistani-American friend said. He has no problems when he goes to the airport. They know when he leaves, what route he takes, when he arrives.
Not right, but maybe true?
The way this article is presented (and the way a few commenters are responding to it), it's almost as if they had zero cause to investigate her. They most certainly had cause to check her out. Plenty of the things she did was suspicious. She has linked to mid-level government officials in China (they didn't know the nature of the relationship at the time, how could they), she traveled to China once a year, and she was asking for sensitive information which required passwords that she didn't have.
It's easy to look back now where you have all the information. But put yourself in a position where you have been compromised by Chinese spies numerous times before, know there are Chinese spies operating as you speak, and you have some pretty alarming evidence/connections which are throwing up red flags.
It's not like they just scooped her off the street and accused her of being a spy... Again, it's a shame what happened to her. I hope she's compensated well for the hell she's been through. But I feel there was enough evidence to justify further looking into her actions.
Chinese spies have taken a page from the Russian playbook where they will be model citizens for decades (Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04...) before taking action. They also busted a large Chinese spy ring just recently. (Source: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-f-b-i-cracke...)
Reasonable, but it's followed by a caveat which misses the key point:
> However, after reading the article, several of her actions did and should have throw up some red flags. Flags which should have been (and were) investigated.
No one, including her, is claiming to be hurt by an investigation. Government workers are investigate all of the time. People with secret clearance have to have their lives investigated before the clearance is granted.
The bone of contention here is the prosecution. A competent investigation would result in a report of "No evidence of any malfeasance. Much evidence of her following proper channels". At that point, she might not even know that the investigation had taken place.
Someone who truly felt for her would feel for her real pain. The pain of being falsely prosecuted. And not spend most of the comment talking about "An investigation is reasonable".
I find this attitude deeply disturbing. This woman was abused by an incompetent, uncaring, or malicious prosecution. Your response to that is similar to the prosecutors, TBH.
Which is a bit ironic since you missed my point. I agree she was abused by an uncaring and incompetent prosecution. I don't think anyone disputes that. My point was that the article and the comments here and on the article seem to insinuate that she was free of culpability and should have never been investigated. Again, they're treating this almost as if they just scooped a random person off the street and accused them of spying.
That could be further from the truth. She had all the red flags. Hell, she could still be a Chinese spy for all we know. Not that I believe it, but the only thing we know for certain is that the prosecution dropped the case. We don't know why they dropped the case. A lack of evidence isn't proof of innocence. Or she could have even been a double agent and maybe their prosecution was a miscommunication or an accident, or maybe it was to make everything appear more legit. Not that I believe any of that, but they do say reality is stranger than fiction.
Speaking of possible double agent, Wen Ho Lee's wife was a spy for the CIA, and one of the accusations against Lee was when he was in China with his wife, while she was at a conference and apparently "working". And there's some evidence that one of the people that Lee was in communication with sending NOFORN documents to, Lee mistakenly thought was working for Taiwan, not China. I have never given up thinking it's possible something else was going on there and the government may have known more than it could reveal in court to secure a prosecution. But if you read contemporary media accounts, Lee's case has been completely whitewashed of any suspicious behavior that rightfully should have flagged an investigation whether or not it turns out he was actually guilty of anything.
In passing.
> My point was that the article and the comments here and on the article seem to insinuate that she was free of culpability and should have never been investigated.
I didn't get that impression from the article, or from the comments here. My impression is that everyone agreed the investigation came up with nothing, and the subject should have been dropped.
> She had all the red flags. Hell, she could still be a Chinese spy for all we know.
Nothing like kicking her while she's down.
> but the only thing we know for certain is that the prosecution dropped the case. We don't know why they dropped the case.
Poor likelihood to convict is a reasonable assumption.
> A lack of evidence isn't proof of innocence.
It's certainly insufficient to charge her with a crime, much less convict her.
I think my concern with your comment still stands.
If we look for spies, we find spies. If we look for child abusers, we find child abusers. If we look for terrorists, we find terrorists (sometimes we have to create them ourselves first and then arrest them).
In theory, there are checks and balances and procedures and, to be honest, sensible adults in the system to ensure that we aren't just joining up disparate facts about people into bullshit conspiracies. However, the system is not working properly and these are the victims.
Also, going to China, where you have family, is suspicous now? On a tangential note, I'm (amongst other things) a naval officer; I've been to China and North Korea on holiday, more than once, and my unit security officer's reaction was to say "Wow, brilliant!", because he's an adult.
Did you read the article? She went to China and met with a senior Chinese official. She then came back to the U.S and immediately started asking about sensitive and protected information. So yeah, I would say that's pretty darn suspicious.
To me it sounds mostly like the kind of information that should be made publicly available.
I understand that. I'm arguing that it shouldn't be.
More than that, you're not responsible for a nation's security so you don't know what kind of threats and challenges a country faces (not just the U.S). There could be perfectly valid and justifiable reasons for wanting to keep something that might "appear" mundane, a secret.
Err.. My post asked "Just how sensitive was the information she shared?"
I was hoping someone would have some details of what the information was. I'd note that there are no claims it was classified let alone top secret, just that some fields weren't publicly available. There appears to be no claim she shared those non-public fields.
The details of funding sounds precicly the kind of information that should be public - and probably is - somewhere.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/05/us-governments...
If there is evidence in the Snowden files that the US DOES do anything like that, please post a link. Finding that there is someone in government who advocates doing that doesn't mean much.
So let's take just one of the cases. NSA hacked Brazilian Oil Company Petrobras to win bids on offshore oil drilling locations.