THE
TALE OF WEN HO LEE
The
spy-hunters soon had their quarry cornered: Wen Ho Lee, a
scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, was confronted
with accusations that he had handed over vital secrets to
the Chinese government. The evidence? Mr. Lee had been to
scientific conferences in China; he had been seen hugging
an alleged Chinese agent; he had once made a suspicious telephone
call to another alleged Chinese spy. Pretty hot stuff, eh?
OBSOLESCENT
"SECRETS"
The
most serious allegation, however, was that he had downloaded
the top secret "legacy codes," a computer database
recounting the history of U.S. nuclear weapons development.
Much is made of these secret codes by the conservative wing
of the War Party: Aha! Here, at last, is the proverbial
smoking gun. What the Cox
Report fails to mention, however, is that these much-vaunted
codes are virtually useless. According to John A. Pike, an
analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, the difference
between the outdated codes downloaded by Lee and the codes
currently in use "is the difference between the special
effects in a 1950s movie like Destination Moon –
a cardboard rocket on a thread – and what you see now
in Star Wars. In computer jargon, the term 'legacy'
means 'obsolete.'"
WHY
IS THAT MAN LAUGHING?
Convicted
in the media – and especially by the New York Times,
which has taken the lead in giving credence to the charges
– and depicted by Republicans as the man at the center
of the most spectacular case of espionage since Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg, the diminutive Mr. Lee denies the accusations.
What he downloaded was unclassified; his trips to China were
approved by his superiors; he has cooperated with the investigation
in every possible way. And he has yet to be charged with any
crime. In a photo taken a few months ago, near his home in
Los Alamos, Mexico, he smiles at the camera and appears quite
cheerful. It looks like he might even be laughing. But what's
so funny about being branded a traitor?
THE
STING
The
joke is that Lee will probably never be charged with any crime:
the FBI could not even muster sufficient evidence against
him to justify a phone tap. Not only that, but it turns out
that Lee consented to having his wife become an FBI informant,
who taped her conversations with Chinese scientists. Some
Chinese spy! But what really takes the cake is the news that,
in return for his cooperation, the FBI then ran a sting operation
against him: agents approached Lee, ostensibly on behalf of
the Chinese government, asking him to spy for China. He refused.
Instead of being persecuted, hounded by the media and the
government (or do I repeat myself?), Wen Ho Lee should be
given a medal for enduring such relentless abuse.
FORGET
MUMIA – WHAT ABOUT MR. LEE?
If
Wen Ho Lee really is a Commie spy, as the resurgent
Cold Warriors of the Right aver, then why hasn't the Left
come to Lee's defense? Why are they wasting their time on
a loser like Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is obviously guilty? With
the recent revelations in Vanity
Fair that Jamal admitted to feeling "regret"
over killing a police officer, the cat is out of the bag –
not that this will stop them from canonizing him as a holy
martyr.
CONDEMNED
TO INNOCENCE
But
what about Wen Ho Lee, accused of spying for "Red"
China – why haven't our homegrown Reds and Parlour Pinks
come rushing to his defense? One reason is because the labor
unions are a key component of the Hate China Lobby, along
with Gary Bauer and David Horowitz. Another echoes the old
Sino-Soviet split of the sixties: the remnants of the Old
Left and their political periphery are viscerally hostile
to Beijing, whom they blame, in part, for the breakup of the
USSR. For old Commies, Wen Ho Lee is a poor substitute for
Julius Rosenberg. Unlike the Rosenbergs, and Mumia, Lee is
innocent – and perhaps we have stumbled, however
unintentionally, on the real reason for leftist disinterest
in his case.
ACCUSED,
BUT NOT CHARGED
Fired
from his job for downloading unclassified files for his own
use into his secured computer, Lee denies passing information
on to the Chinese government or anyone else. Accused, but
not charged – Lee's status is similar, in this atmosphere,
to that of every other Chinese-American scientist working
in defense-related facilities, and to millions of Chinese-Americans
from every walk of life whose loyalties are questioned by
the authors of the Cox Report. In breathless tones
more appropriate to a cheap novel than a congressional report,
we are treated by the authors of the Report to the
tale of one Yen Men Kao, whose Chinese takeout in North Carolina
was a front for a Chinese spy operation.
WHAT
HAS THE COX COMMITTEE BEEN SMOKING?
And it isn't just Chinese restaurants
– Chinese dissidents and others fleeing from an oppressive
Communist system aren't to be trusted, either. The Cox
Report solemnly informs us that these could be "sleeper
agents, who can be used at any time but may not be tasked
for a decade or more"! What have the members of the Cox
committee been smoking? What this means is that no one
of Chinese extraction is to be immune from official suspicion,
and that American-born citizens of Chinese descent, as well
as all Chinese immigrants, are to be treated as potential
Manchurian candidates.
THE
RACE FACTOR
The
authors of this pernicious Report could never have
gotten away with such blatant racism if our great enemy were,
say, the Congo, or South Africa, instead of China. Because
in that case, African-Americans would be the suspected fifth
column, singled out as potential traitors on account of their
race – but naturally that would never be allowed
to happen!
EVERY
CHINESE SCHOLAR A SPY?
Chinese-American scientists and
scholars are singled out for special abuse. As the Cox
Report puts it, "the PRC [People's Republic of China]
is increasingly looking to PRC scholars who remain in the
United States as assets who have developed a network of personal
contacts that can be helpful to the PRC's search for science
and technology development." Not since the rise of the
California Workingman's party of the 1800s and the Anti-Chinese
and anti-Japanese Exclusion movements in the Pacific Northwest
at the turn of the century, have we seen such an explicit
appeal to anti-Chinese sentiment raised at such a high level.
BIPARTISAN
BIGOTRY
Conservative
Republicans do not have a monopoly on the China issue. While
Gary Bauer
has been denouncing China from the Right, Democratic stalwart
congresswoman Nancy
Pelosi, the quintessential San Francisco Democrat,
has been excoriating them for years from the Left. The four
Democrats on the Cox committee all signed on to the report,
including Norman
Dicks of Washington. The new vogue for anti-Chinese racism
is a bipartisan affair. But, like all fashions, both political
and sartorial, there is nothing new about it: it is the same
old West Coast fear of Oriental subversion
THE
RETURN OF THE YELLOW PERIL
The
Yellow Peril is back, and there is more than a touch of explicit
racism in the propaganda of the Hate China Lobby. Unlike the
more traditional forms of American racism, however, which
looks down on other races (blacks, Latinos, etc.) as inferior,
fear and hatred of the Chinese is generated by the sense that
they are superior.
THE
POLITICS OF RESENTMENT
Chinese-Americans,
lauded as the "model minority," have been the primary
victims of affirmative action on the West Coast, barred from
choice high schools and colleges on account of their race
and their ability. Known for their preference for and proficiency
in the sciences, Chinese-American students and immigrant scholars
consistently outperform their Caucasian, African-American,
Latino, and other minority classmates; intelligence testing
reveals a similarly consistent pattern. A corrosive American
youth culture that devalues academic achievement has largely
been resisted by the Chinese community, where the old values
of work, study, and family are largely intact. The resentment
from other minority groups is a palpable presence in the schools,
and a not-so-subtle undercurrent in "adult" politics.
THE
NEW NAZIS
The
Cox Report has mobilized this sentiment, and given
it a focus: it is the Mein Kampf of the Hate China
Lobby, a manifesto of militant Sinophobia that posits an all-pervasive
anti-American conspiracy. Instead of the International Jew,
the traditional bogeyman of Nazi demonology, the International
Chinaman (Chink, to you lumpen-conservatives) is the locus
of evil. Like the Nazis, the Sinophobes are a curious amalgam
of Right and Left elements, united in their hatred of a common
racial enemy and a common overseas military "threat."
As is well-known, German arms manufacturers had a hand in
financing Hitler; today, in this country, the pattern repeats
itself, with the Southern California-based "defense"
contractors, who have a vested financial interest in a new
Cold War with China, shoveling money into the Hate China Lobby
hand over fist.
DISINFORMATION,
PLEASE
The
irony of all this brouhaha about Chinese spies running rampant
through America's defense laboratories is that it may all
be the deliberate creation of the Chinese government. For
the Chinese intelligence agent who supposedly betrayed the
secret of China's penetration of US nuclear secrets was later
found out to be a plant, an agent under the control of the
Chinese Ministry of State Security. But why –
why would the Chinese deliberately reveal that they had purloined
US nuclear secrets? A recent report in the Washington Post
relates the theory advanced by Houston Hawkins, a former Defense
Intelligence Agency nuclear weapons expert now in charge of
intelligence at the Los Alamos lab, who maintains that the
Chinese, desperate to stop the brain drain which is depriving
China of an enormous pool of scientific talent, deliberately
triggered the spy scare in order to make life as uncomfortable
as possible for all those Chinese students who stay in the
US after graduation. "Are the Chinese sophisticated enough
to do this?" asks Hawkins, and his answer is food for
thought: "They've been practicing espionage for 2,000
years."
ANECDOTAL
EVIDENCE
This
rings true, as far as my own experience is concerned. In 1994,
California passed the infamous Proposition 187, which deprived
illegal immigrants of welfare benefits and sent a strong anti-immigration
message that resounded from coast to coast. As I became active
in the campaign, I came in contact with the various groups
that formed the Yes on 187 coalition. In politically correct
San Francisco, of course, the pro-187 group was small –
but well-organized and quite determined. The leader was a
leading local anti-immigration activist who was also active
in the U.S.-China People's Friendship Society; he had married
a Chinese woman, lived in China for a while, and, in his quiet
way, was a loyal supporter of the Chinese government, as near
to a Chinese "agent" as one is likely to find outside
of a spy novel. During one strategy session luncheon, he candidly
stated that the position of the Chinese government was to
discourage Chinese immigration to the US, especially students
in such fields as engineering and the sciences: after the
Chinese government had so generously subsidized their education,
these ungrateful sons and daughters would leave the mother
country to seek their fortunes in a foreign land. But not
if the Chinese government could help it.
A
SUBTLE SUBVERSION
What
rich irony! Here is the Hate China Lobby doing the bidding
of the Chinese government, blissfully unaware of its own subversive
mission. One can only marvel at the beauty and subtlety of
the Chinese deception, with all its nuance and humor. How
they must be laughing at the foolish Americans, who stumble
about like blundering giants and are their own worst enemies.
Dependent for its success on the weakness, vanity, ignorance,
and willful blindness of the West, the Chinese deception is
a true work of art.
INTRODUCING
JOE STROMBERG
Tomorrow
we will be introducing a new columnist: Joseph R. Stromberg,
an adjunct scholar with the Center
for Libertarian Studies, who is one of the best writers
we have come across in a long time. His column, "The
Old Cause," will relate the lessons of history to the
situation we find ourselves in today: the glorious history
of the American noninterventionist movement, and the inglorious
history of America's wars of conquest. I know you will enjoy
it, and it is a great coup that Antiwar.com was the first
to sign him up and introduce him to a large audience for the
first time. His weekly column is going to be one of our highlights,
so be sure to check out his debut.
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